On Monday we attended all of the several activities available here in Paradise that were celebrating Martin Luther King day. The free community breakfast, the hour of heartfelt speeches by men and women from a wide spectrum of the citizenry, the awards for organizations that help our town be a kinder one, the ten minute march to Centennial Square and then later watching an HBO documentary of the last couple of years of MLK’s life. All in all … six hours of talking about heroes and heroism. There are worse ways to spend one’s time.
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On Tuesday we were part of a political demonstration against fascism that took place on the old courthouse steps.
(Just in case the DOJ might be wondering, we are the couple with the yellow arrows pointing at us.)
After each of these activities we found ourselves wanting to do more, to resist in other ways the insanity of Cluck and the Gang. If you have an appetite for more reading, Rick Wilson has put together an excellent paper entitled A Declaration of Independence from the Mad King.
Read it and then tell me that what we now see every day are the acts of someone who is compos mentis.
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Sons and Daughters, by the Neville Brothers
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Still too little snow to speak of here in Paradise. Mutterings among the citizenry about fears of water shortages are becoming more and more frequent. Most of Colorado is dependent on snow piling up in those beautiful mountains each winter to feed our streams and rivers as it melts in spring and summer. We are way behind this year, locally and statewide. There’s just not enough of that wonderful stuff.
Friday mid-day it started to snow the tiniest of flakes, falling straight down on an absolutely windless day. At first they melted away instantly, but by evening there was a coating of white in the valley. Perhaps only an inch, but a precious inch indeed. The climate niche Paradise occupies is entitled “semi-arid,” which translates into almost a desert but not quite.
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We’re halfway through the winter now, moving about town in what must seem unbelievable comfort to our compatriots in Minnesota, those brave souls who are carrying the fight against the autocracy in below-zero conditions. They are up against the weather, tear gas, pepper spray, and thugs with guns yet still they come out to demonstrate and sow discord in the hearts of the enemy … the enemy being other Americans who were sent to control and intimidate them.
I am inspired beyond words. And we are all learning as we watch. Learning how to confront and confound this modern version of the Nazi brownshirts.
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Sons and Daughters (reprise) by the Neville Brothers
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Alex Pretti
Murdered by ICE agents in broad daylight in Minneapolis
Something I’ve noticed recently out here in Paradise. The nearly complete absence of MAGA caps. For years they were one of the core items of Montrosian male dress. Why, on any trip to the grocery store I would see at least five men wearing them, and interestingly, they were mostly cross-looking senior citizens.
The same thing has happened with the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia , the stars and bars. I would guess that a decade ago at least five percent of pickups in town were daily flying these emblems of slavery and treason. While this might seem a small number, keep in mind that pickup trucks are the signature vehicle of our community. Five percent of a bunch is a bunch.
I don’t know the reasons for the decline, I just make observations. Those crabby-looking older dudes might just have died off of advanced constipation. The flag-waving yahoos might have actually taken a closer look at those banners and decided to be offensive in some less complicated manner. Either way, it is getting that much harder to easily identify the dim bulb segment of our community.
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Lord, this is good. Until today I thought no one would ever touch Emmylou Harris’ rendition of her beautiful song Boulder to Birmingham. Dead wrong is what I was. Here’s Jessie Buckley.
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The pickings were sooo good this past few days. Here’s a prescient prose poem from 2011. Honestly, how could we not see this coming? Terry Ehret did and put it down clear as spring water.
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Wade In The Water, by The Rigs
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ICE in 1933 (reverse metaphor)
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Heather Cox Richardson’s postings Letters From An American have been like flashlights, something to find your way with on darker days. On Martin Luther King Jr. day, Monday, she posted this beauty:
You hear sometimes, now that we know the sordid details of the lives of some of our leading figures, that America has no heroes left.
When I was writing a book about the Wounded Knee Massacre, where heroism was pretty thin on the ground, I gave that a lot of thought. And I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them.
It means sitting down the night before D-Day and writing a letter praising the troops and taking all the blame for the next day’s failure upon yourself in case things went wrong, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower did.
It means writing in your diary that you “still believe that people are really good at heart,” even while you are hiding in an attic from the men who are soon going to kill you, as Anne Frank did.
It means signing your name to the bottom of the Declaration of Independence in bold script, even though you know you are signing your own death warrant should the British capture you, as John Hancock did.
It means defending your people’s right to practice a religion you don’t share, even though you know you are becoming a dangerously visible target, as Sitting Bull did.
Sometimes it just means sitting down, even when you are told to stand up, as Rosa Parks did.
None of those people woke up one morning and said to themselves that they were about to do something heroic. It’s just that when they had to, they did what was right.
On April 3, 1968, the night before the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white supremacist, he gave a speech in support of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Since 1966, King had tried to broaden the civil rights movement for racial equality into a larger movement for economic justice. He joined the sanitation workers in Memphis, who were on strike after years of bad pay and such dangerous conditions that two men had been crushed to death in garbage compactors.
After his friend Ralph Abernathy introduced him to the crowd, King had something to say about heroes: “As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about.”
Dr. King told the audience that if God had let him choose any era in which to live, he would have chosen the one in which he had landed. “Now, that’s a strange statement to make,” King went on, “because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.” Dr. King said that he felt blessed to live in an era when people had finally woken up and were working together for freedom and economic justice.
He knew he was in danger as he worked for a racially and economically just America. “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter…because I’ve been to the mountaintop…. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life…. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”
People are wrong to say that we have no heroes left.
Just as they have always been, they are all around us, choosing to do the right thing, no matter what.
Wishing us all a day of peace for Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2026.
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Stepping back and looking closely at this post I realize that the quality of writing is definitely improved. That’s the good news. The bad news is … (sigh) … it’s because I did so little of it.
Minneapolis is, right now, the front line of the entire country’s resistance to our fascist government and its agents. Those freezing January streets filled with people and the sounds of whistles and flash-bangs … the thousands of smartphone recordings that have been made and the thousands to come that reveal ICE’s now-naked war on America. There can be no doubt about it after the events of this past week. If you don’t see it, you never will … not until it is your door that ICE is knocking down.
Minneapolis is my old home town, where I spent the first thirty years of my life. I know those streets, recognize those addresses, have walked in areas now lit by police floodlights. Renee Good was shot and killed six blocks from my childhood home. I will never not be a Minnesotan, at least in part. This morning I can’t shake the ridiculous idea that I should be there. That I belong on that line. What is ridiculous is that I would probably be a liability to the those involved in the struggle. Someone that needed tending rather than someone who was good at carrying torches or blowing whistles.
Maybe not. Maybe I could be of some help, but no matter. The line will come to Colorado one day, who knows … perhaps even politically red Montrose will see its share of conflict because the Cluck machine is neither blue nor red. It is out only for itself, serving its masters both visible and hidden. I don’t have to travel across the country to mount the barricades … that opportunity will come to me.
My grandmother would have said: “Bloom where you’re planted.” Good advice, that. I will do my blooming right here.
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Our streets come alive Injustice quickening cold Fury in our souls
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How about something sweet and temperate? One of the best voices of this or any other time. Eva Cassidy singing Autumn Leaves and making it hers.
Autumn Leaves, by Eva Cassidy
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Our local recreation center has been so successful in recruiting members that it is becoming more and more frustrating to try to use its equipment. So far Robin and I have been unable to find some sweet spot in the day when the crowd is thinner and the machines we use in our respective programs are free.
Being able to move smoothly between devices is an important thing for my own training regimen, since at the slightest delay I am prone to simply leaving the building and returning home. Home being any place that doesn’t require physical effort and bulging neck veins.
The perfect venue for me, therefore, would be a large hall completely furnished with the latest and most scientifically studied equipment, with small loveseats sprinkled here and there to rest between exercises … and no one else allowed to be present when I was working out. Bank presidents, governors, and one percenters of all stripes would be shown the door as soon as I appeared.
I know, I know, there are some obvious hurdles to be overcome, but why not dream?
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Another tune from Eva Cassidy, submitted by daughter Kari. Sublime. Cassidy died in 1996 of melanoma, at the age of 33 years. Such has been the respect for and appreciation of her gifts that there have been nine posthumous albums released. Nine.
One of those albums was with the London Symphony Orchestra. A cut from the album was this version of Time After Time.
The story of Eva Cassidy and the London Symphony Orchestra is a posthumous collaboration, bringing her acclaimed voice to a wider audience through the 2023 album I Can Only Be Me, where the LSO performed new orchestral arrangements for her classic recordings, fulfilling a dream she never lived to see due to her early death from cancer in 1996, with technology allowing her isolated vocals to blend with the full orchestra.
Google AI search
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Every once in while I see a film that reminds me why we need filmmakers and darkened theaters to tell some stories. Tales so well told that you know you are a different person when you leave the theater than when you came in. You can feel it. Yesterday Robin and I took in such a performance, when we went to see Hamnet.
It was a tale of love and grief and their inseparability. Wrenching. Soulful. Beautiful.
Wore us right out. To the point where we needed ice cream right away.
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There are many emotions that today’s troubles bring up for me, and I recognize grief among them. There is such a deep sense of loss when I read the headlines, see the videos, hear the spoken cruelties. No matter that this convulsion will be over one day, with the skies cleared and some sanity restored to public life.
I have lost a certain naïveté. Once I realized the sheer numbers of my countrymen who can allow and even support horrors to be visited upon their fellow citizens as long as it doesn’t touch them personally. Who believe that the killings and torturings and imprisonments and the orphans and the lost children are likely deserved punishments. No matter that my ‘innocence’ has been clearly shown to have been always a fantasy, no matter that I now work every day with people who share my convictions, a loss is still a loss.
Music, as always, can be a balm for the wounded spirit. Here’s a bit of that.
When I go to the grocery store, I like to think that I am a knowledgeable shopper. I’ve received a smattering of nutritional teaching in medical school, can read most food labels without referring more than three or four times to an encyclopedia, and I can tell a parsnip from a carrot without fail.
But once in a while, serendipity takes a hand in things. Such was the case a few years ago when I was standing in front of the freezer case where the frozen pizzas were stored. Too many choices, thought I, and while some of the old brands that I recognized had memories of lackluster eating attached to them, I was willing to try them again, thinking “maybe they’ve improved in the past twenty years.”
When suddenly a hand was placed on my shoulder, and when I spun around to see where the assault was coming from I found myself facing a young man with wilderness hair, a full beard, cutoffs, and a t-shirt that really needed either laundry attention or to be discarded in the sort of bag one uses to dispose of nuclear waste. This unlikely oracle then spoke: “Screaming Sicilian, man, it’s the only way to go.” He then waited a moment without saying anything more, till finally I caught his drift and reached into the freezer to extract a Screaming Sicilian Supreme, and placed it in my cart. At that moment, he moved away and disappeared. I’ve not seen him since.
At first I was going to put the pizza back, but then I thought “Why not try it? What’s to lose?”
And it turned out to be the best frozen pizza ever. Within a couple of centimeters of being as good as a freshly baked one from the parlor down the street.
All thanks to that stranger’s exclamation: “Screaming Sicilian, man, it’s the only way to go.”
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Feel Your Love, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
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We’re finally getting some snow here in the valley. It started Thursday as those tiny flakes that might as well be raindrops because they melt on contact. It fell all day, mostly melting away as fast as it came down. At 5:30 a small group of people stood out in that snow/rain and held a vigil for Renee Nicole Good, who had been murdered by an ICE agent the day before.
Most of the candles being “lit” were LEDs and were thus invulnerable to the snow, but Robin and I had traditional candles that we’d purchased ten minutes earlier on our way to the vigil. Their tiny flames were threatened by each wet flake but never went out.
Some of Good’s own poetry was read, and many heartfelt things were said about the death of one of our comrades at the hands of a government thug. She had been doing nothing but non-violently protesting the unjustified and unconstitutional ICE occupation of Minneapolis. In our hearts those of us assembled know that there will be more vigils to come, with more empty chairs at family tables, before the horror passes. We know that the possibility exists that there will be a vigil one night where they say nice things about one of us. Such is life in a Cluckian country.
The ceremony was cut a bit short because of the unpleasant weather. Nearly all of us who were there were senior citizens who really should have been at home by our fires, not out on a Montrose street corner in danger of ‘catching our death.’ But it seems to be one of those odd paradoxes where the generation whose vision is daily failing is the one that can best see what must be faced. I like to think that we are blazing a trail that younger citizens can follow when it comes time to change regimes.
(BTW, I was proud of the Minneapolis mayor, who had used some colorful language at an earlier interview and when he was later asked if he wasn’t going a bit too far with his use of profanity, he answered that if we compare shooting a woman in the face for no reason with the dropping of an f-bomb … which gave the greater public affront?)
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Helpless, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
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Our cats don’t seem troubled by today’s politics at all. None of their habits have changed. None of their demands can be ignored lest they decide to rip open a sofa or forget where the litterbox is located. They trade purrs and snuggles for food and shelter and are content. As are we.
This snow that has fallen makes them think deeper before they venture out through the cat door to answer nature’s calls. They stare through the opening for a moment or two, and the expression on their faces is omigod … again? Were we not done with this?
One of the least lovely features of sharing spaces with cats and being responsible for their nutrition is a certain fickleness. A food that has been accepted for months or years is suddenly treated like it was nuclear waste and they walk away from it. A year from now that same dish of ‘toxic’ shreds might be just what it takes to make them ecstatic at mealtimes.
Now, the truth zone. I look at what I just wrote and realize that it applies to me as well. When Robin and I first got together she had two teenaged daughters still living at home. These three women had decided that the only meat that was safe to eat for any person who didn’t want to turn into a walking bag of suet was chicken. As a result, chicken was served at almost every meal but breakfast. After a few months of this, I had reached a point where even the mention of that medium-sized squawking bird was enough to provoke nausea and a near-seizure involving trembling of the extremities and paralysis of speech.
Once this trio was separated by time into three households and thus the influence of chicken monomania was broken, I slowly began to appreciate it as a part of a healthy diet. I can now hold a chicken sandwich without wondering where to throw it, and even occasionally order one in a restaurant without being forced or shamed into doing it.
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While I am on the subject of body weight, I am going to have to drop a couple of pounds. To my chagrin I have discovered that I have exactly the same BMI as the Pillsbury Doughboy.
What happened to me can be described by the following equation: mildly plump + Halloween candy + Thanksgiving poundage + Christmas poundage + less activity = all my clothes have shrunk.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more …
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Political cartoonists have never had such riches to work with. It is impossible for them to keep up with the daily misdeeds and outrages committed by Cluck and his gang.
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Ry Cooder has always been one of the good guys in music. This video is from 1973 and was originally shown on the BBC. Rings just as true this morning as it did then, and also as it did in 1940 when it was first recorded.
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On Saturday Robin and I drove to Grand Junction to take part in yet another rally, this time honoring Renee Good and more than thirty others who have died at the hands of ICE. An affecting bit of cold weather theater was where each of their names was held up by a member of the local Indivisible group. There was a moment where each name was read aloud to the assembled crowd, which numbered pretty close to 1000 (by our estimation).
The anger that these senseless and lawless acts of our federal government provoke was obvious in the expressions of crowd members. We were told to take that anger and let it be part of the energy we bring to our engagement, in whatever role we are playing.
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.
Although celebrating New Year’s Eve quietly without Señor Ethanol anywhere in view rarely gives us those colorful stories to tell, we are content.
What we did do is drive to Delta CO and take a left turn out into the rural, looking for the resident population of sandhill cranes that live there all year. And we found them, in groups ranging from a dozen to fifty individuals, all feeding in picked-over cornfields. If we added them all together I would say that we saw more than five hundred birds in all. At times they were only a few yards from the car as we pulled over for closer looks.
Marvelous birds. Stately movements, smooth plumage, with that striking prehistoric voice of theirs. When new birds were coming in to land with their wings set, the scene was one of slow-motion grace, carrying serenity to the observer.
After this satisfying period of bird-watching we dropped into a restaurant in Delta and ordered some Navajo tacos that were … just okay … but which still qualified as solid comfort food. By now it was full dark for the drive back to Montrose, where we watched a couple of television programs until the call of a warm bed could not be ignored.
See, I told you, not colorful at all. But here I am, typing away on New Year’s Day. No hangover, full memory of the preceding evening’s events, and no new amends to make. Life is good.
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I dunno, maybe not everybody gets off on the stories behind the songs like I do, and truth be told, there aren’t a whole lot of tunes whose history even I will pursue. But beginning back in the late 60s I began singing along with For What It’s Worth. It was at a time when every day’s news was filled with tales of protest and fires and marches and shootings and responsive brutality. I listened to the lyrics and took it for an addition to the literature of that time.
Now, it turns out that it was a protest song, but not about the Viet Nam war or the national unrest dealing with civil rights, but something else. Here’s a bit of explanation from Wikipedia:
Stephen Stills was inspired to write the song because of the Sunset Strip curfew riots in Los Angeles in November 1966, a series of early counterculture-era clashes that took place between police and young people on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, California, the same year Buffalo Springfield had become the house band at the Whisky A Go Go . Local residents and businesses had become annoyed by how crowds of young people going to clubs and music venues along the Strip had caused late-night traffic congestion. In response, they lobbied Los Angeles County to pass local ordinances stopping loitering, and enforced a strict curfew on the Strip after 10 p.m. The young music fans, however, felt the new laws infringed upon their civil rights.
Sooo, civil rights, perhaps, but on a narrower scale. No matter. For me, in my ignorance, its message was easily applied to those larger theaters of unrest.
In my mind I am now applying the lyrics to today’s political situation. And the fit is nearly perfect. A really good song like this doesn’t go out of style but can be recycled in new ways, new places and times. Why is that? Well, child, because we human beings keep making the same mistakes over and over would be my answer.
Here is Buffalo Springfield singing the original version, from 1966.
As you listen, think about the invasions of our cities by Cluck’s armies, about ICE’s depradations being visited upon innocents across this country. Think about a national health department made up of quacks which is promoting unscientific health practices using stuff they just plain made up, stuff that is killing people at home and across the world. Think about … we could go on and on. There’s something happening here for sure, and there is very definitely a man with a gun over there.
Here is a lovely cover version by the Del McCoury Band, from eight years ago.
BTW: just in case you didn’t know the origin f that original group’s name, here is the Buffalo Springfield steam tractor.
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I’ve been doing this thing, this blog, for nearly twenty years. I’ve gone through three software changes during that time, things that I accepted only when there was no choice. That’s my uneasy truce with change … resist as long as I can, then going along with it when the feces is just about to hit the fan.
I archive an entry for a couple of years, and then delete it. This was my deal with myself, to create something that was the verbal equivalent of a Buddhist prayer flag. To hang out there in the wind and rain and freezing weather as thread by thread was teased out to drift away, leaving less and less behind. Eventually to vanish.
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Of course, I can do this because what I write is so perishable. If there is meaning in it on a given day, that meaning is for the day alone. A man like Tolstoy writes for the ages, I write for the forenoons. And in twenty years some of what I believed so strongly at the time is in the dustbin today. My body is certainly going the way of the prayer flag, why not my thoughts as well?
At any rate, this blog is mounted on WordPress, which has been kind enough to ask me to change only once. I refused, of course, because there was an out. A back door I could use. I could maintain the legacy theme if I called it “customizing.” Perhaps one day WordPress will message me one morning and tell me that I am no longer worth their trouble and would I please choose one of the other fine themes that they offer? When that moment comes I will move on to the new with what grace I can muster. And some grumbling, spread with a veneer of profanity.
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So now the Soprano family has taken over the territory of the Corleone family. Criminals fighting among each other, while ordinary citizens stand blinking in the searchlights and the bomb flares. Just another day in Cluck’s perverted version of America.
A couple of tunes come to mind on after yesterday’s ugly news.
Lives In The Balance, by Jackson BrowneBullet the Blue Sky, by U2
We are finally getting a taste of winter here in Paradise. Temperatures are down in the teens at night, although snow is still playing hard to get here in the Uncompahgre Valley. Last weekend we were supposed to rendezvous with daughter Allison in a small town named Rangely, northwest of us about three hours. But we dropped those plans when a snowstorm of about four inches came into the forecasts. Rangely is in a lonely part of the state, and services are thin up there for stranded motorists. Taking into consideration that my whole thrust in travel for the remainder of my life is to not become a stranded motorist in a lonely area in the winter, we cancelled and stayed right here in good ol’ Montrose.
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It’s New Year’s Eve and we have no plans. It turns out that senior citizens often have no plans for New Year’s Eve, so we are not alone in this. The raucous and often tipsy parties of the past have evidently lost their luster, whether one is in recovery or not. Staying up until midnight to watch a mechanical ball fall in New York City seems a scant way to spend one’s time. We are aware of the change of the years, of course, it’s just that wNewhen the ceremonies are over, there you are. Take away the calendar and December 31 is just like January 1. Not one problem or opportunity had changed one jot or tittle.
There are many New Year’s Eve parties that I would like to forget but the vagaries of memory keep them on file. Those are the ones where I learned what alcohol can do to the brain, stomach, and one’s behavior. I will not go into details, in the unlikely case that children might be reading this.
But one that I do remember in a mildly fond manner is the millennial change, 1999-2000, when we stayed up to see if the world came, not to an end, but to a colossal cluster-freak as all of the computers on the planet lost their minds. Mercifully that did not happen, but there was a good lesson in the fact that those geniuses who set up all those programs that we depended on didn’t have a clue as to what was going to happen at midnight 1999 because they hadn’t coded proper time changes into them. The geniuses turned out not to be gods, after all. Strangely reassuring.
The last New Year’s Eve Party we personally threw was more than fifteen years ago. We had several couples over and it was very nice but we found that by the time that the magic hour had rolled around everyone had left for the comforts of home and their own warm beds. By midnight every single one of the seasoned wastrels at the party was fast asleep, including the hosts.
And yet, here I am feeling all well-wishy and hoping that you all have a warm and lovely new year celebration, and a 2026 with 50% less Cluck in it.
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So Much Trouble In The World, Lucinda Williams with Mavis Staples
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Our national Department of Justice is moving right along developing its own variety of Newspeak. As of today, the definition of domestic terrorist includes just about anyone who is doing something that President Cluck doesn’t like. To the Attorney General, this definition seems tidy and is flexible enough to suit her. She knows that eventually they will run out of immigrants to abuse and be on the lookout for new victims, so creating a sizable pool of them in advance is a necessary strategy.
It pretty much goes without saying that our friends in the Indivisible organization will be on the naughty list. Almost everything this disreputable and seedy bunch does is deemed undesirable by the Cluck regime, especially their annoying insistence that the government ought to follow the Constitution in its actions. Cluck finds this document way too confining for a creative gentleman like himself, so he has tossed it into the bin and has the Department of Minions at work on a new one which will be out in Spring. Rumor has it that in the NEW CONSTITUTION the President is to be called GOD OF ALL THINGS, and worship services are to be held continuously.
Stay tuned.
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There are a thousand voices out there trying to tell the Democratic Party that business as usual isn’t working at all, and that their keepin’ on keepin’ on brings to mind the old definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.
What those thousand voices haven’t come up with yet is a clear statement of purpose for the party they hope to enliven. I couldn’t help notice that the infamous Project 2025 that the Republican white-power-faux-Christian nationalists came up with gave them a real headstart once Cluck was in office. All they had to do was hand a page to each henchperson along with a sledge hammer and tell them to go to work.
Every four years at the national conventions it has been traditional for parties to draft a platform, but nothing like Project 2025 had come along before. So … what if the Democrats came up with a Let’s Be Gettin’ Down To It 2028? A clear statement from a party that hasn’t completely lost its mind and actually has clearly stated goals which include working to benefit the people who get things done. Something you don’t need a doctorate in political science to understand.
The Democrats can’t afford to wait until 2028 actually arrives, but should be hammering out their proposal right now. Or else why should we respond to those incessant calls for donations that they send out?
Donate to what? The same old same old? No thanks, guys. I’d rather fold that money into paper airplanes* and see how far they would fly in the San Juans on a breezy day.
*N.B.: The bill in the graphic is a C-note. This graphic was taken from the web, and is somewhat more generous than a typical donation of the writer would be.
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(My favorite cartoon du jour)
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Magnolia, IMHO, is magnificent. My favorite of Lucinda’s.
What was the most intense year of my seven years of medical school and residency? No contest! It was my junior year in medical school. This was where we were turned out of the laboratories and libraries and shoved with little grace into the middle of a hundred patients’ stories at once. Stories that had predeeded our arrival and that would go on after we’d moved on to another clerkship.
[Definition: a clerkship was a portion of the junior year devoted to a specialty in medicine. A taste of everything, at least nominally to help the student pick out the discipline he or she would specialize in as a resident. The traditional clerkships were surgery, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, and psychiatry. ]
My first clerkship was on surgery, at the ancient Minneapolis General Hospital, a structure left over from the 19th century, with soaring ceilings, twenty-bed wards, inadequate wiring, no air-conditioning to speak of, and a patient population consisting of some of the nicest, some of the hardest-working, and some of the most dangerous people in town.
I loved it.
If you were being cared for on one of those ward there was only a curtain drawn to separate you from the other nineteen patients. There were few secrets to be kept, not when one loud-voiced medical attendant after another came to move or massage or feed you.
For the bookish student that I was it was almost unbearably exciting and completely exhausting at the same time. I would be on call every third night, and be up continuously that night. Next morning I would go to the outpatient clinics to act as if I weren’t half asleep, stumbling from litter to table to bed and seeing what kind of composure I could maintain in this new and desperate life.
The house staff, consisting of the interns and residents, and who were being abused in the same way, often regarded a medical student as yet another problem to be solved. Someone too earnest to ignore but too dumb to trust.
Perhaps one personal example will be enlightening.
I was spending the afternoon in orthopedic clinic, and had been assigned to change a cast on a twenty-two year old woman who had fractured her tibia weeks before. All I had to do was cut off the old cast and put on a new one, since by that time the bones had gone a long way toward knitting. The resident had informed me that the woman in question was a “working girl.” I was actually unfamiliar with that term but a couple of questions brought me right up to speed.
I thought to myself, well, then it’s nothing more than the meeting of two professionals and things ought to go well. I introduced myself, got out the cast saw and within no time at all removed the old and unsightly plaster.
Next I applied wrap after wrap of plaster cast material up and down the lady’s leg from just north of her toes to her upper thigh. If there was a bulge or a dent in this masterpiece I was creating I smoothed it over with a bit more plaster.
And then it was done, a thing of absolutely glistening porcelain beauty on one of the shapelier legs in Hennepin Country, I thought. I stood up and stood back and asked her to walk. The patient got to her feet, tried to take a step, and suddenly burst into tears. I had made a cast so heavy that she could not move it. It might have functioned as a construction pillar for a large department store.
I scurried to get the resident, who quickly diagnosed the problem. He consoled the sobbing lady and then, before he applied himself to taking off this monstrosity and replacing it with a workable version, sent me away for the afternoon. The look on his face was so clearly “Lord, what have I done to deserve this?,” that I did not quibble.
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Only You, by The Platters
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That same year, that same clerkship … a boundary was set for me. Remember I said that I was on call and up all night every three days? Well, on the days I wasn’t on call I would hang around the hospital, looking and listening to what was going on in that great beast. I loved every minute, even those where I screwed up or ran myself into walls. It was just such a vat of ferment.
But after two weeks of that very first adventure in the surgery rotation, I came home at eleven o’clock one night and the patient woman who was my wife was waiting up for me. I can’t quote her exactly but the sense of what she said went something like this:
“You have a wife and a baby daughter who need to see you. You can’t stay at the hospital when you aren’t required to be there and ignore us. If you keep doing that, one day we won’t be here when you do decide to come home.”
At that moment a boundary was set that I knew that I would violate at my own risk. I can’t say that there weren’t a few slips here and there, but there were significant periods of time between them. The problem was that those nights in the old barn that was General Hospital were among the most memorable … ever. So seductive. Such an attraction. Such a world had opened up there.
Aaaahhhhhhh … to be 24 years old again, wearing an ill-fitting scrub suit and eating free but tasteless cafeteria food and drinking free but thin coffee at three a.m. in the company of a cadre involved in fighting some of the best fights ever.Talk about your foxhole mentality … we had it.
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This Christmas Eve Robin and I were by ourselves. We did leave the house to drive to the village of Ridgway (population 1200) at suppertime, where our favorite Thai restaurant was keeping its doors open. There are several Thai restaurants on the Western Slope where we live, but the very small one in Ridgway has an artist in the kitchen.
They are not afraid to charge what they think their food is worth, and the Mango Curry was $19.95, which is high for such a dish in this part of the world. But what a curry!
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As I left the restaurant, I grieved that I hadn’t been able to completely empty my bowl, and had left an ounce or two of broth behind. But my lips had already passed from intense capsaicin-induced pain to complete swollen anesthesia and I feared that the rest of my face would follow suit.
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You Always Hurt the One You Love, by the Mills Brothers
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We had one of the best Christmas Days this year, compliments of three good friends. All of the food dishes that Robin and I had prepared turned out well, the weather was impossibly beautiful, and the conversations ranged from the historically interesting to the nitty gritty of today’s politics.
All five of us were liberals, two being Independents and three Democrats. At some point one of the our guests said something to the effect that when things are this bad there is nothing to do but hunker down until the bad guys go away. Give them enough time and they will implode, they said.
It was at exactly that point when the patriot Patrick Henry, whose words American schoolboys have had to learn for centuries, took over my body and began to speak. I began to make statements, outline resistance strategies, and make impassioned pronouncements as to the need for and the what of such resistance using words I only dimly understood and information to which I had little claim.
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775
When my mouth finally shut for a moment, there was no one more startled than I. I began to back off from what I’d said, and admit that there was no reason at all to listen to any of it because I was a known widely as a repeatedly convicted peddler of rampant nonsense. The rest of the group then settled down and lips that had tightened relaxed. When we parted amicably at the end of the evening and were still friends I silently thanked the gods for stopping me before I ruined what shreds of a reputation for probity that I still had.
But then Mr. Henry returned to say one more thing: “Well, Jon my boy, you’re a fainthearted patriot and that’s for certain. But give me a bit more time … I’ll make a bloody rebel of you yet.”
Sunday afternoon Robin and I drove down the Million Dollar Highway (US 550) to a point a few miles past Ouray on a scouting expedition. We were checking snow conditions, since in the valley the small amount of snow that had fallen in the past couple of weeks still lingered only in small patches where the sun couldn’t get at it. Otherwise – bare brown ground is the order of the day. What we found? No White Christmas this year, folks.
Higher up, the ski area at Telluride has only a few runs open, mostly blue and green ones. Thrill seekers will just have to wait a little longer to get their kicks. Behind the scenes at Telluride there are labor disputes to worry about as well. So not such good news in the Land of Shiny People for the holidays.
However, the restaurants, liquor stores, and shops that sell expensive things you could easily do without are all open and humming. It turns out that a person can aprés-ski with verve and panache even when they can’t actually ski. Good to know.
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Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming, by Ane Btun
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Our holiday plans are completely local this year. None of our children will be within easy reach, so we’ve invited several friends for dinner on Christmas Day. This group is composed of the sort of people who don’t need any prodding to begin a conversation that will start the moment they come through the door and end only when they have pulled away at the end of it all. Politically we are of similar mind, so there will be no need for wit sharpening. We can toss clichés at one another without fear of contradiction.
While that might sound boring and dreadful, one has to remember that we are living in an area where two-thirds of the voters picked a felon/rapist for President in November of 2024. So feeling slightly more comfortable in flying our freak flags is a treat. A blessed respite.
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Yesterday the temperature here in Paradise hit 68 degrees. Two days before Christmas Eve. In the mountains of Colorado. At times like these I feel sorry for those old-timers whose store of weather knowledge has been rendered nearly useless by climate change. They can’t predict things any more. The game is so changed that all they can do is ruefully shake their heads.
Of course I am also one of the ancients, but I am not so affected as some. As I went through life for the most part I was oblivious to what was going on around me. If I walked out the door and it was raining I might notice that I was wet but didn’t think more about it.
I had other things to think about that I believed more important. Things involving my work and family. I couldn’t do anything about the weather so I ignored it. In this way I was almost the polar opposite of a farmer, whose livelihood was so dependent on sun and rain and temperatures.
I took care of children indoors, and bother what was going on outside. It didn’t touch me unless the power went out in a thunderstorm and we had to somehow keep our machines operating on emergency systems.
So ask me anything you want about the weather … past, present, or future. I will smile and say “I have no idea.” Perhaps this will bring you some comfort if you realize that you are not the only one in that position.
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O Holy Night (Po Hemolele), by Joanie Komatsu & Ruth Komatsu
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God bless the political cartoonists. Actually, God bless cartoonist of any stripe. The best of them have the ability to boil a truth down from a chapter to a page to just the fewest words possible and then place it in a frame and offer it up to us. To me it’s much like when you are cooking and you make a reduction. Heating a liquid until just the right amount of water is evaporated and the contents couldn’t be distilled any further. They become the purest essence of what is contained in the pan.
That’s what the best cartoonists do. One thing I can say about the Cluck Gang, they come up with more than enough fodder for these entrepreneurs to chew on. Every single rock that one turns over has a snake under it, fanged and venomous and ready to go.
One interesting thing about political cartooning. To really get the full benefit from the better ones, the reader has to be reasonably well-informed. Look at this one, for instance.
First of all, the mask and bindings are right out of the movie Silence of the Lambs. The red tie and blonde hairdo identify the person being restrained as Cluck.
The elephant is the symbol of the GOP, and its support of at least one possible pedophile has become obvious from the ongoing Epstein saga.
I know that in the US of A we are supposed to be presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law. But get serious, folks. If there were nothing rotten about the Cluckster-in-chief in those files wouldn’t they have been released months ago, just to be done with it and regain the narrative? Can you think of any other reason for this drawn-out and clumsy cover-up? Really … I’m asking.
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Tonight is Christmas Eve. I love the story. When you’ve heard it as many times as I have, it gets Crispr-d into your DNA, and it’s hard to stand back and really look at it objectively. To paraphrase Jon Kabat-Zinn , “Wherever you go, there you are, and thy DNA tags along.”
So I enjoy the carols, watch all the Christmas specials on television, send out my cards, purchase my share of gifts … nothing has changed for me for generations now in how I observe the holiday, and I suspect that it never will. For one thing, the tale keeps on being repeated in daily life, with different characters.
Today the United States has its own version of Herod sending out armies to find the Josés and the Marias and the babies and do them harm. We have people who are without homes and must take shelter where they can. We have women delivering their infants in the equivalent of stables where infant mortality is so much higher than in better regulated and managed facilities.
So you can see that the legend is always fresh for me, even if the particulars are altered.
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Here’s a beauty to end the post on. I googled its origins and found that the Scots and the Irish have both claimed the tune as their own. We’ll let them carry on the fight while we enjoy its lovely melancholy, which is universal.
“The Parting Glass” is a Scottish traditional song, often sung at the end of a gathering of friends. It has also long been popular in Ireland, and modern versions reflect strong Irish and North American influences. It was the most popular parting song sung in Scotland before Robert Burns wrote “Auld Lang Syne.”
My cooking skills, which I have now spent many decades perfecting, are … sorta okay. If the subsistence level of chef-craft is a score of 2, and this means that you can reliably serve food that will not sicken your guests, I am perhaps at a 4, maybe a 5 on a good day (on a scale of 10). By the amount of time I spend talking about food preparation you would expect a much higher score, else why am I daring to speak about it at all? My problem is that I truly enjoy messing about in the kitchen, even if the output is not always legendary.
It’s very much like it is with my poetry, or my prose-writing. I can clearly SEE the enormous gap between myself and a Leo Tolstoy or a Robert Frost in those areas, and yet I enjoy doing what I can do very much. So I’m thinking that makes me a chef de peuple, rather than a chef royal. With a smile on my face and a Michelin 0.000005 star to boot.
Remember way back in time when I told you that my favorite meal, the one I would ask for on the eve of my hanging, was one of bread, soup, and cheese? It still is. But not just any old loaf, lump, or bowl, nossir.
I would be looking for a crusty loaf of bread, a crumbly wedge of cheddar or gouda cheese (the kind with a flavor that makes your eyes roll back in your head), and a soup that has already filled the kitchen air with amazing aromas all afternoon and now quivers in the bowl in front of you, with here and there a shred of carrot or potato peeping above the broth?
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I love making soups, especially those that force me to drag out the seasonings that I use so seldom that dust has collected on the caps of their bottles. I can dice and slice and chop all afternoon, watching small piles of onions and potatoes and celery and carrots rise in front of me. If I am careful, there is now a 99% certainty that I can do this prepping without lopping off and adding parts of my own body to the mixtures. (If you come to my home for dinner, just ask me to show you my hands. A complete lack of Band-Aids should reassure you on this subject. You might also count the fingers just to be certain).
My favorite soup recipe? There is no such thing. That honor is divided between so many as to be meaningless. My favorite so far this cooler season? That’s an easier question to answer. Last week I made Hungarian Mushroom Soup . Robin and I spooned up our portions and then shamelessly licked our bowls and spoons clean. It’s that good. I came across the recipe many years back and the soup has never failed to inspire.
I don’t ordinarily just post others’ photographs, but this one caught me and held on. It was taken in Yellowstone National Park by photographer Tom Murphy. The title given was “bison at 35 below.”
What extraordinary animals these are! I have seen them by the thousands driving through the Black Hills of South Dakota over the years, and have stopped hundreds of times to admire them.
(I have no photos of my own like this one, and I never will. Because at 35 below zero I would be quivering indoors and wearing anything warm I could get my hands on.)
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One For My Baby, by Josh White
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Mark Twain was a man of so many parts that I didn’t know about at the time I first read about the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
Later in life I ran across a bit of his writing so startling that I had trouble reconciling it with the humorist I thought I knew. But Twain was vigorously opposed to war, and wrote The War Prayer, which I now recommend to those of you who know of him only as a teller of amusing tales.
Like I said, it was startling.
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MUSHROOM NEWS
A reminder from the state of California that unless you are well trained in identifying fungal species you should not eat them. Some twenty-odd persons were stricken when they ingested death cap mushrooms, with fatalities.
Amanita phalloides is the most poisonous of all known mushrooms. It is estimated that as little as half a mushroom contains enough toxin to kill an adult human. It is also the deadliest mushroom worldwide, responsible for 90% of mushroom-related fatalities every year.
Wikipedia: Amanita phalloides
When I lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where its forests were a sort of wild mushroom paradise, I learned how to safely recognize a half dozen species that were safe to eat and were delectable as well. There were many more species that were delicious as well but were difficult to pick out from the unsafe ones, and I was advised not to take a chance on them.
My teacher taught me this categorization, which I have kept in mind all these years even though I no longer go wild-gathering for fungi.
Safe to eat but inedible
Safe to eat and tasty
Sickeners – those which made one briefly ill, often with beaucoup vomiting, but not lethal
Killers like the death caps, which typically did not make one feel ill for several hours, and by that time one began to have symptoms one’s fate was pretty much sealed
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A group of hikers in New York state decided to combine walking in the Catskill Mountains with ingesting “magic mushrooms” containing psilocybin. They were, need it even be said, young men in their twenties, one of the least cautious subspecies of humans in existence.
Eventually they had to be rescued because they had lost their way. Instead of following the clearly outlined trail, they made the group decision to travel in a straight line back to their car, which included crossing a bridge that one of the members of the party could see but could never get them to (and which did not exist).
This episode falls into the category of Type 2 fun. (It might be Type 3 for some people, depending on how embarrassing it would be to admit what an idiot you’d been.)
Type 1: enjoyable both at the moment and in the retelling
Type 2: difficult or uncomfortable while you are doing it, but can produce great stories to relate afterward
Type 3: no fun when occurring, and you don’t want to talk about it later
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Frankie and Johnny, by Lonnie Donnegan
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The button picture today is of the monarch butterfly, which has become a symbol to many immigrant communities. The butterfly migrates freely between Mexico and the U.S.
The artist has incorporated images of a family moving cautiously within the wings.
There are days when it is hard to begin to tell tales from my simple sort of life, when each day’s assaults on decency, morality, and just about everything I regard as the glue that holds things together is so incessant, it really has the character of a nightmare. One of those where you know you are still sleeping and hope someone wakes you up pretty soon … .
If it weren’t for my working with our Indivisible group here in Paradise getting out of bed in the morning would be a lot more difficult. But I have regular contact with people who are decent, unselfish, honest, and trustworthy. Their goals are largely the same as mine. To rid our country of this blight and re-establish our democracy. Not to go back to some old golden days, but to set in place a structure that allows and encourages us to move forward in the job of working toward a country which matches its promises.
These folks are willing to take their un-ease and translate it into works.
That’s what I find in our meetings and events. Ordinary people who can tell “shit from Shinola*“ and are not afraid to take some heat in speaking out. Although we live in what has come to be called a “red” city and county, we know that not everything “red” is awful. Not everyone who is a conservative is a bad guy. Among them are those who want exactly what we want but have different views as to the best way to get there. They are not filled with hate and vituperation. They are not grifters. They are not MAGA fools. They are potential allies.
Eventually I hope that these variant streams will join together, recognizing that we have a common enemy in the Cluck regime, and that any progress toward ideals we hold in common means that there is some serious clearing away to do before we can get back to constructive squabbling.
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WARNING! METAPHOR ALERT!
in South Dakota, where I used to live, there is a place where the silt-laden Milk River flows into the Missouri River. Where they meet you can easily see that the two streams are still largely separate because of the difference in the color of the water. But go a few miles downstream and it is now just one unified stream, a bigger and perhaps better Missouri.
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Memphis in the Meantime, by John Hiatt
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ScreenshotScreenshotScreenshotScreenshot
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At an AA meeting this week, I observed out loud upon the similarities between a typical meeting and a typical Christian church service. A meeting goes like this:
We start with the Serenity Prayer
Next there are readings from our most important texts, including the Twelve Steps, Twelve Traditions, and How It Works
We then take up a collection among the members present
Now comes a period of 40 minutes of sharing, with testimonies, observations on the meaning of AA in our lives, strategies for staying sober … anything at all that has a connection with alcoholism and/or sobriety.
Lastly, we close with a prayer once again.
There is a rule in meetings about something called crosstalk. It is not allowed. Crosstalk means that when one member shares, another then comments on what they have said. To avoid such incidents, which could sometimes be criticisms or attacks, we simply disallow them. Many of our members are shy people, and would avoid sharing if it meant they would be subject to cross-examination. Like most rules, there are occasional gentle breakages, but for the most part groups adhere firmly to this important working principle. It creates a safe space.
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Tip Of My Tongue, by John Hiatt
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The Serenity Prayer, written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, is among the wisest I know. Short and sweet it is, but loaded.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
Sometimes when I am saying the prayer I smile at the last line because that is where the kicker is, isn’t it? Knowing the difference between what must be accepted and what can and perhaps should be opposed. Oh, my, my. That Reinhold was a caution.
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Thank You Girl, by John Hiatt
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When daughter Kari introduced me to John Hiatt back in the 80s, I’m not sure that the genre “Americana” had been invented yet, but now I have learned that Hiatt’s music is firmly planted in it. What you get when you listen to a Hiatt album is a raspy voice, lyrics that tell a clear story, and some really good guitar.
Today’s tunes are from the album Bring The Family. It’s the album that made me a Hiatt fan.
On Sunday we had our first taste of snow here in Paradise. Only couple of inches fell, which is a good thing. This way we get the lovely landscape change without the hassles associated with larger amounts.
First warm day it will all melt away, and that’s okay too.
And look at this … how gorgeous! The combination of the snow/rain combination coupled with no wind at all has left windrows of snow along each branch.
The cliché that older people have nothing to say to each other than to talk about the weather has some truth in it. And a recurring theme is that there was much more snow when they were kids than there is now. For some locations this is true, although the reductions are modest, at best.
Conversations like this: “When I was a kid I remember the snow being so deep that we built igloos just by digging into the side of a drift. The snowdrifts along the road to our house were taller than I was.”
Well, I found the most amazing website dealing with snowfall*, going back to 1900, and I think that it explains a lot of things. For instance in Minneapolis, my old home town, the average yearly snowfall for the period 1981-2019 was 53.4 inches. The least amount fell in 1931, when only 14.2 inches fell. The greatest amount fell in 1983, and it was 98.6 inches.
If I were a kid in the 80s in Minneapolis what I would remember was that astounding year when 98 inches fell, forgetting about all the so-so years before and after. That’s how memory works. We recall the outliers and make them the norm until some know-it-all comes up with a chart than tells the truth.
Now comes the bragging, done by a licensed braggart. Here is a number to cause ooooohs and ahhhhhs to be uttered.
The record for total seasonal snowfall in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is 390.4 inches, set during the winter of 1978-79. This record was set in the Keweenaw Peninsula, which is known for heavy snowfall due to its location.
AI query
In the winter of 1978-79 I was living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, on the Keweenaw Peninsula, to be exact. And I shoveled every last one of those inches.
We lived in a one-story house which required that someone climb onto the roof periodically to remove the snow lest the weight literally break through into the house. By February, when I stood on the roof and shoveled the snow into the back yard, I was throwing snow UP! The pile was already taller than the house. And when I … I could go on but that’s enough about this topic.
*The chart is for US cities only. We’re a parochial bunch here in the States. We get crazy only about our own weather.
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Wintertime, by the Steve Miller Band
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I went to the Apple app store today to do a little shopping (for free stuff because I am incurably cheap) and failed. What I wanted for my Mac was available only for my phone or an iPad. But it started me reminiscing about the early days of personal computing. At least of my early days, which began with the first Macintosh, in 1984.
Once I had purchased the machine, along with the very few pieces of software that it could run, I buried myself in finding out just what it could do. I had prepared myself to be amazed and I was.
Fast forward to wanting to have more … more … more information so I joined the tiny MUG (Mac User Group) in our small town. There were only five of us, and one member was the states attorney for our district.Why do I single him out? Because he had already acquired a considerable library of pirated software which he was willing to demonstrate and share with any in the group who were as open to intellectual theft as he was. The irony of a member of the justice system being an accomplished intellectual thief was noted but not discussed.
This all happened at a time when the total library of software that a Mac could run could easily be owned by any individual who had a few extra bucks around to spend. But it grew so rapidly that within a year our user group disbanded. Our interests now diverged because each of us had a flurry of apps to choose from, and they were being developed at a pace that was impossible to keep up with.
But the fun that we had when all was new and exciting … I can remember the feeling even now.
BTW, this all occurred in the village of Yankton South Dakota. It wasn’t the only time that an officer of the law was involved in illegal activity had come to my attention. During the period when I was looking for a place to relocate to from Michigan, I was watching television in my motel room on a visit to Yankton, and one news item was of a group of men who had been arrested for operating an illegal poker game from a motel somewhere in the state. One of those men arrested was the South Dakota state attorney general.
Hmmmm, I thought, that’s colorful. Then I heard about a pair of bank robbers who were apprehended a few doors down from that very bank where they were already spending the loot. In a bar. On beers. But the best SD crime story of all at that time was the discovery of a large jet cargo plane in a field along the interstate. It had landed and been abandoned. Why, you might ask would a huge cargo plane in a beanfield be of special interest? Because what this particular aircraft was filled with was marijuana.
How could I miss the opportunity to live in a state with such a fine Wild West litany of crime stories coming at you every day? I packed up my family and my books and moved to South Dakota forthwith.
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I will admit that the extensive library of cat and dog videos has provided laughs for yours truly, but this one is a little more interesting. It suggests very different processing by cats and dogs. Is this true? Anybody know?
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Swingtown, by the Steve Miller Band
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It’s the second of December and we’re still not at war with Venezuela. I have no idea what the Cluck administration is waiting for, because I have my bags packed and am waiting for the national call-up of retired and seniorized medical personnel to begin.
President Donald Cluck wearing his war camouflage and showing his willingness to lead the charge up the Venezuelan beaches. However, apparently his bone spurs have acted up again, so he will be there in spirit when our armed forces go ashore, rather than in person.
It has been years now that I have had trouble sleeping because of Venezuela. Not that the people of the country had ever done me harm of any kind … I just didn’t like having that country out there existing without proper American meddling. It vexed me. Thank heaven that President Cluck has a clear vision of the threat that Venezuela poses, and was only waiting until he could round up a bunch of ships and planes and stuff and also had a Secretary of War and Dim Offensives who could be counted on to do his bidding.
Secretary of War and Dim Offensives Pete Hegseth at work on battle plans for the upcoming war with Venezuela.
But no matter. I am sitting by the door with my Google Spanish-English Translator in my hand. I have my electronically-sound-boosted stethoscope around my neck. I have a month’s worth of my blood pressure pills, my anti-stroke pills, my cholesterol-reducing pills, and my Metamucil safely stowed in my duffel bag. I checked and was disappointed to learn that there isn’t a Golden Age version of the Air Force uniform for those of us who are being recalled, one with all Velcro closures. But hey, it wouldn’t be a war without hardships, would it?
Now where is that darn transport, anyway?
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A brief note about those little round images over there on the right side of the page. Those are examples of my button-crafting, done in support of our Indivisible group here in Montrose County. My fervent hope is that each one of them will go on to annoy the very hell out of the opposition.
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And a brief note about today’s music. I like many of the tunes that the Steve Miller Band recorded. They put out smart pop-rock as far as I am concerned. But I had a good friend who used to tell me that this affection of mine for the band meant:
that my brain had already turned into pablum (this was twenty-five years ago)
that it showed that I had no taste at all in music
that having a handful of SM songs in my library put my immortal soul at risk
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.
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.
The following clip made me into an instant Elissa Slotkin fan. It also reminds me that there are plenty of men and women out there who can point the way for those working in the resistance to the Cluck regime. Who are they? Well, comedians like Jimmie Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, for instance. And the editorial cartoonists that I’ve been posting more of recently, and now the six serving members of Congress who made a video reminding members of the armed forces that not only can they refuse to obey illegal orders, but they are obligated to do so. Anyway, here’s the clip.
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Garrison Keillor came to Montrose this past Wednesday evening to present his one-man show to a respectful sellout crowd. He has been a beloved entertainer for nearly fifty years. There were many moments I could relate but I’ll pick just two.
All in all, Robin and I found the evening to be a moving experience. An elderly man of eighty-three years pacing the stage for nearly ninety minutes while basically giving a humorous and often touching autobiographical recitation. What made it so special was that as he did so he was also retracing parts of our own lives, since we have been fans of his for from the beginning.
Early on in the show he was talking about admiring the more popular hymns sung in his church and when he began to sing a line from one of them the entire audience sang quietly along with him as if we were being given cues and there was an invisible conductor. There was a soft murmur in the hall … a moment.
After speaking for nearly an hour and a half without an interruption he again lapsed into song and began to walk up the aisle toward the entrance to the auditorium. Just before he disappeared through the entry doors he shouted back to us “Goodnight, Everybody.” And he was gone.
The song was In My Life, by the Beatles.
In My Life
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There are places I’ll remember All my life, though some have changed. Some forever, not for better; Some have gone and some remain.
All these places had their moments With lovers and friends I still can recall. Some are dead and some are living, In my life I’ve loved them all.
But of all these friends and lovers There is no one compares with you. And these mem’ries lose their meaning When I think of love as something new.
Tho’ I know I’ll never lose affection For people and things that went before, I know I’ll often stop and think about them, In my life I love you more.
Tho’ I know I’ll never lose affection For people and things that went before, I know I’ll often stop and think about them, In my life I love you more.
In my life I love you more.
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ScreenshotScreenshot
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Okay, this is where I get serious. Don’t panic, it will be for only a moment. I’m a small-town boy in a small town in a part of the United States that is far enough from the seats of power that even ICE has trouble finding it when they want to persecute someone. I have no special talent for political divinations, no secret knowledge.
But I believe that Cluck is done.
He was never more than a bag of gas, like an ugly balloon sold at a holiday store. Inside there is nothing of substance. And the knives are in. It’s only necessary that we allow enough time to pass that the contained effluvium can make its way to the outside and he will collapse. At least politically. MAGA won’t disappear, but they are a mad minority, a delusional contingent that is forever stampeding in one direction or another, and without their figurehead they will retreat to where they came from, simmering in their own hatreds and looking for Cluck’s replacement.
But that leaves a whole lot of people who have found themselves standing up to their waists in a manure lagoon and wondering how they ever got there and how do they get out of it?
They know right from wrong, they know what putrefaction smells like, and they have been looking for an exit, a way back to fresher air and clearer thinking.
Don’t ask them what political faction they are in, that’s a waste of your time and theirs. Ask them instead if they want to get back to work they respect and understand. If they want solid schools for the children of their communities to attend. If they would like a return to living their lives as private ones, without government interference. If they would be willing to sacrifice when they could see the reason they were being asked to do so was real and worthwhile.
There is a Lakota saying which I first heard from the leader of a musical group of indigenous Americans called Brulé. The saying is Mitakuye Oyasin, and it translates into We are all related. It is what Mr. Schiller was thinking when he wrote the poem Ode to Joy which contains the line Alle Menschen werden Brüder … the translation is: Every man becomes a brother. It is a part of most of our religious traditions.
Point out what we need to do, show us the why we are doing it, and then stand back. We’ll figure it out from there. (Would someone please pick up that collapsed balloon and toss it in the trash? Thanks, I know I could count on you.)
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We Are All Related by Brulé
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With our national holiday devoted to eating nearly upon us the cartoon at right below says it all, really. It’s a parody of the Normal Rockwell painting that is entitled Freedom From Want. This Thanksgiving we have plenty of want around the good ol’ US of A, and a whole lot of it has been deliberately engineered by Cluck and his Claque.
Screenshot
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We offer thanks for the sun and the rain and the earth and someone else’s hard work.
So I’m driving to the grocery store which is in the midst of a major reconstruction and rearrangement, so much that each trip there is like taking part blindfolded in a mad scavenger hunt where the host changes the location of everything every day. But that’s my pain and why should I make it yours?
On the drive over I heard a song on the radio that contained a line that caught my attention. Really, a great line, one that the song does not fully explain. But I have been there many, many times in my short life. Here’s the chorus:
I’m living a war with time I could still reach out and touch you and I Wish I didn’t know the things I know I’m standing in an open door None of it was overrated and I Never gonna wanna let you go But I want you to go Don’t even ask me, just go
It’s the line “Wish I didn’t know the things I know” that opened the door of a room filled with recollections and remembrances for me … knowledge I could have happily done without … learning from experiences I didn’t plan to have.
In AA meetings I often hear the expression “I have no regrets.” I think to myself – are they bonkers? Is that really possible? Because it’s a bit of bravado that I certainly don’t share. I don’t dote on them, ruminate on them endlessly, or become entrapped by them, but regrets … I’ve had a few. But then again, as Frank Sinatra often sang, too few to mention.
Wish I didn’t know the things I know. Quite a line.
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The song I’m talking about, BTW, is entitled War With Time, by Brandi Carlile.
War With Time, by Brandi Carlile
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For me, at least, there is a short list of voices that I read nearly every day during these awkward times. Among them is the indestructible ancient Robert Reich, who wields a fiery pen and draws on a long lifetime hanging around politicians of all stripes. Right up there with him is Heather Cox Richardson, with her cool and level-headed assessments of the carnage as it happens. Next would be Timothy Snyder, whose book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century I read last Spring to fortify myself against the avalanche of horsepucky that Cluck and his enablers were bringing down upon our heads.
I came across the trenchant comment on the right, and even though it relates to No Kings by name, it could have been applied to the reading I do without changing the meaning one bit.
It helps to know that some very intelligent people are walking point for us, and that they can see that a positive resolution is possible, down what they predict is going to be a rough road. But success will come only if we are intrepid.
A recollection dusted itself off and presented itself last Thursday, unbidden and unwelcome. Because it reveals that at heart I am just another damned capitalist.
When I was around six years old, my family acquired a new puppy named Mollie. She was, like all the dogs in our extended family were, of mixed parentage. We brought her to our home on Second Avenue, and she was the darling of the family for the week that she lived with us. Her visit was cut short by her escaping through the backyard gate and running into the street where a passing car … you know the rest.
I was heartbroken. I gathered her up and placed her small body in a shoebox, to be buried in the backyard later that morning. At some point I decided that a creature as cute and lively as she had been deserved a funeral, so I scheduled one which was attended by the other boys my age from the neighborhood. There was a eulogy (me), some memorial stuff on display (collar, food dish), and then the interment.
Where does the capitalism come in, you ask? Well … I charged a five cent admission.
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Once a year, because I don’t want to spoil you, I serve up this song of songs. It goes beyond being a favorite of mine, whatever the next rung up would be. I think it was CRISPR-ed into my DNA while I slept.
Magnolia, by Lucinda Williams, who is an American original.
It’s 1946 and my family is decorating the Christmas tree while Perry Como is crooning songs from his new holiday album being played on an ancient 78 rpm record player which had been rescued from a rummage sale.
I am seven years old and this is the first Christmas that I know there is no Santa Claus. I don’t remember who told me, but no matter, I am still as excited as if that dreadful information had never reached my ears. I have chosen to accept both the literal truth (no Santa) and the imaginative truth (Santa) at the same time. Today, December 24, 1946, the imagination is holding perfect sway, and the power of Santa Claus is everywhere.
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Dreaming My Dreams With You, by Cowboy Junkies
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Came across this short film shot entirely with an iPhone.
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What we have all learned together these past years is that capitalism has a bunch of dirty secrets. One of them is that once you reach a certain level of wealth, you are almost immune to the problems that ordinary citizens face every day. And I’m not just talking about how much money they have. I’m talking about access to the levers of the machines that run the country, the stock market, the court system, etc. I’m talking about access to the politicians who are largely your own creatures, picked to do what you want to have done.
Turns out that the majority of people in politics seem unable to resist the smell of currency and the possibility of one day having piles of it around the house.
When Robin and I moved to Montrose, we considered ourselves Democrats, and once everything was unpacked we began to seek out others of our kind. Each year the local Democratic Party would put on a barbecue dinner for the membership, and we found it a very pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. But each year we would look at the attendees and knit our brows.
Those sitting at the tables were very nice people, but almost all of them were white and either senior citizens or on the brink of becoming one. Youth was absent. People of color were largely absent. All in all it looked like a political party on its way to self-extinction.
And the came the year when the casual barbecues of the past were left behind. Now it was to be a 50 dollar a plate dinner at a “better” venue. That was the point we stopped going to these yearly get-togethers. If anyone needed to see why the Democratic membership was such a narrow slice of the electorate you didn’t have to look any further than the ticket price. It was automatic exclusion of anyone for whom that was a significant amount of money.
So the two of us became Independents, and remain so.
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That’s All You Need, by Faces
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Sunday was my birthday and Robin and I decided to celebrate by taking a hike at the Colorado National Monument. The trail we took wasn’t a long one, and we’re still feeling the COVID effects just a bit, but it was a beautiful day and the scenery was grand. We hiked the Serpent’s Trail, named because within a relatively short distance there are sixteen switchbacks.
We may have overdone it, feeling some mild malaise when we had returned home, but ’twas well worth it. And at the end of the day there was cake. Of course there was cake. You may leave off the gifts, the cards, the well-wishing, the parties. But if there isn’t cake a birthday simply does not happen.
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One of the facts of living at altitude 5900 feet is that we can see winter for weeks before it gets to us here in the valley. Because we have those magnificent San Juan Mountains in view. First a tentative whitening on the mountaintops that goes away with the first sunny day, then a snow covering that remains … at around 11,000 feet … then 10,000 feet … 9,000 feet. Then a few flakes on a chilly morning whistling down the streets of Montrose. A very gradual introduction to the winter season.
With all this warning going on, there is really little excuse for being caught short. If you haven’t got the snow shovels out and placed them where you will need them, if you haven’t winterized your lawn sprinkling system, if you haven’t checked the tread on the tires of your car for seasonal suitability … well, I just don’t know.
And yet every year there is something that I don’t get done. Something that didn’t get put away well enough. I like to think that these minor mistakes are part of a built-in DNA package that keeps me from becoming too satisfied with myself. The question becomes: How could I ever think that I was perfect if I did that? It’s what a boob would do.
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When Bill Withers wrote “Lean On Me” in 1972, toying around on a small piano with only the phrase ‘lean on me’ to guide him, he never could have expected the song — about a rural man’s loneliness in the big city — would become an inspirational anthem to those rising up after tragedy, or a celebratory rallying cry of togetherness and resilience in times of trouble.
Re-listening to this tune 53 years after it was first released I am struck by how well it fits our time. It is a song made for those loneliest moments in life. Simple lyrics but man, what comfort (and solid advice) they have to offer.
Lean On Me (Carnegie Hall concert), by Bill Withers
When I was living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, my family did a fair amount of camping. The territory was beautiful, the streams clear, and the evenings reliably cool. There were a lot of black bears around, enough that we would see one about half the time when we camped out. Be careful, give them their space, and never get between a mother bear and her cubs were common bits of advice.
Then on one camping trip, when we were two families backpacking to a cabin in the Porcupine Mountains, we encountered a puzzlement. Miles into the forest and walking on a good path we came across two small black bear cubs in a tree. Our kids were young and very excited, dancing about the tree in hope that these cute little critters might come down where they could get a good and proper petting.
The adults in the party were not as charmed by the situation. The puzzle was this. When you are looking UP at the cubs and have no idea where their mother is … which way do you go now?
We resolved the dilemma by deciding that where we were standing was the worst place of all to be, and without any more information to guide us than that, we pushed on ahead toward the cabin. We never saw the mother bear.
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Crunchy Granola Suite
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I’m not quite sure what variant of ADHD I have, but I’m pretty sure I am somewhere in the spectrum. Finding out exactly which niche isn’t important at my stage of life, and so I am not pursuing it. But it does get in my way at times. Not because it has held me back in my education or profession, but … let me give a for instance or two.
Flickering images draw my attention immediately and drown out other stimuli. What’s the problem? It means that having lunch and a conversation in a sports bar is nearly impossible. Having a dozen television screens all screaming silently “LOOK AT ME” simultaneously is completely distracting. I mean completely. Robin and I avoid such places whenever possible, but even our favorite pizza emporium (The Brown Dog) in Telluride has several screens going and I wouldn’t consider it a “sports bar” at all. What I must do (to indulge myself in the pizza that I am certain is the one served in Heaven) is to turn my chair to where I can’t see any of the screens. It works but also means a lot of staring at unadorned wall coverings. A compromise.
These days the political circus is much like the sports bar. There are myriad voices shouting at the same time “Here … here … watch … listen … I’m talking to you, dammit.” Not just the “bad” voices, but the “good guys” as well. When I click on a link indicating that I will attend a virtual discussion on, let’s say, the problems posed by ICE, I immediately get an email advertising a half dozen other worthy discussions in the future that I can also sign up for right this very minute. Each of them offers six more opportunities … there is no end to it.
Some early mornings, like this one, I get drawn down one rabbit hole after another by this cacophanous din. My filters can’t keep up with the stimuli, and I have to just shut things off. The computer, the television set, my iPhone … all of them. I step outside and shiver in the night air … looking up at more stars than this Minnesota boy ever saw growing up in a big city. Nature allows me to compose myself and get a bearing. Just before hypothermia sets in I go back indoors and attempt to keep the clamor at low volume by turning one thing back on at a time.
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Cherry, Cherry
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Our yearly war with the yellowjackets, those creatures that come straight from Hell without stopping, has become little more than a series of light skirmishes for the past two years. A change in strategy has made the difference. There is a company that makes plastic devices which you hang about the yard.
You next open the small sealed packet and take out a pod that contains a potent enough attractant that it warns you to handle it carefully and wash your hands after you are done to avoid becoming very interesting to the pests. You put the pod into the device and walk away. Hundreds of the wasps come in and can’t find their way back out.
But the change we’ve made has been in the timing. Very early in the season the queens show up looking for places to set up housekeeping. They build their nests all over the house, the backyard fence – anywhere they get a little protection from the elements. If you get the traps out and catch the queens before they get a chance to fully establish themselves and raise their families, your summer is much more serene.
Oh, you don’t have yellowjackets where you live and aren’t sure what I’m talking about? Well, o thou inquisitive one, here is what they look like. They each come with a potent offense, can sting you several times, and are exceedingly cranky. You don’t need to do anything to get stabbed except to be outdoors.
Like I said … from Hell.
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In late 1972 Neil Diamond brought out a live album called Hot August Night. At the time I was an impressionable lad of 33 years with a family, living and working in Buffalo, New York. I was really just beginning my exploration of alcohol back then, never thought of it as a problem, even though if my life was a movie and I was watching it now I would say “Of course … there it is.”
After everyone else was in bed and asleep I would take my beverage of choice to the small attic room on the third floor of our home and put this album on, cranking the volume to the point where the groundwork for the ringing in my ears I now enjoy every day was laid. I did love that album then, and even now it can stir me.
I’ve included three cuts from Hot August Night here today. I suggest playing it loud enough that you can’t think of anything else. At that point it became, at least for me, an almost transcendental experience.
I woke last night out of one of those reality-based dreams where for a moment or two after waking I was still half in it. It went like this.
A friend and colleague of mine who was working with me in pediatrics called me on the phone to tell me how my patients were doing. At the time I was out of town bicycling somewhere with Robin and staying in a small cabin.
As he was talking I became overcome with guilt and worry. When he told me that baby Murray was doing okay I thought who the heck is baby Murray and why haven’t I been going in to see him? How long have I been AWOL? Whatever am I going to tell his parents now when I do make rounds tomorrow? That I’ve been ill? Away on a vacation?
I got up and walked into the kitchen with a head full of miseries but as I was filling a glass with water I realized – Hey! I haven’t been practicing for twenty years. There is no baby Murray that I have been neglecting. It was a dream! I am off the hook!
I might also add that the colleague who had called me died eleven years ago.
But some of the emotional charge of the dream is still with me as I type this. Whatever chemicals are released in such a fight or flight fantasy-drama take time to dissipate. But they are being tempered by the huge sense of relief that came over me when I fully realized that I had done nothing wrong and there was nothing that I needed to atone for.
I’m not one to parse dreams looking for why this or why that or any kind of meaning. The fact that my brain is not wholly in my control becomes obvious every time I sit down to meditate. As I am trying to clear my mind that gelatinous ball of mischief keeps on spinning yarns and making stuff up. I assume that it loves when I go to sleep because it can then create scenarios without being interrupted.
Anyway, how are things with you? I am just peachy here.
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Do I miss practicing pediatrics? Yes. No. Actually I’m still doing it, just secretly. If there is a person standing in front of me who is talking about some puzzling symptom their children are dealing with my mind takes the facts and runs with them, working to come up with a set of diagnoses. Happens automatically. Like a ChatGPT that is never off duty.
But, and this is a big one. I have no medical license any longer (too expensive to keep as a memento) and my clinical skills are -shall we be kind – rusty. Only if one of the diagnoses that I have come up with is a serious one that deserves being explored right now do I speak at all. And then I recommend that they see their physician ASAP. Otherwise I nod and listen without really listening.
I loved the challenges of emergency situations. This was when my variant of adrenaline junkie came into play. When you don’t know yet what is going on but you know that the clock is running and you get the chance to take everything you have learned up until that moment and bring it into play to try to solve a very high-stakes problem … that is a real high, my friends.
But there are those times when the clock runs out too soon and there is a crash to deal with. A version of depression mixed with self-recrimination sets in. I never learned to handle the losses well, but lordy did I love the wins.
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Fearless, by Pink Floyd
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By any account you are to read, except those emanating from Club Cluck, No Kings 2 was a dramatic and positive event. Prompted by the unholy mess that the New Fascist Party is making of our country, we found ways to rejoice in the feeling of solidarity that comes from finding thousands upon thousands of people who, like us, are shocked at our leaders’ bad behavior, ashamed of what is being done in our name, and resolute in taking the steps needed to replace this regime with thoughtful, firm, and honest leaders.
We are figuratively marching toward Washington DC right now. And we can already hear the mewling of the cowards there as they stare into crystal ball after crystal ball trying to find one with a good future in it for themselves.
Perhaps one day we will need to march there in person to show them where the door is and to turn them into the street where they can spend the remainder of their lives snapping at each other in dishonor and disgrace.
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I was introduced to Sister Rosetta Tharpe way too late in my life. Here’s a link to a recent article on Substack with a whole bunch of videos of this amazing musician.
She told the truth about her craft in a way only the greats dare to: “These kids and rock and roll—this is just sped up rhythm and blues. I’ve been doing that forever.” And she was right. Before Presley shook his hips, before Berry duck-walked, before Little Richard shrieked his way into immortality, Sister Rosetta had already been there, guitar in hand, voice like a hurricane, planting seeds in soil that would grow the rock and roll forest.
Bill King, Substack
BTW, if you need more, there is way more. All you have to do is go to YouTube and type in her name. Riches will flow into your life.
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There is record of only one protestor being arrested during the national No Kings event, and that was a woman in Fairhope, Alabama. She was carrying a sign that read NO DICK TATOR! However, it wasn’t the sign that got her arrested, but her costume. If there is to be a No Kings Hall of Fame one day, surely this courageous and resourceful lass will be one of the very first to be inducted.
Well, dang. After passing over us for years, COVID finally reached its clammy fingers into BaseCamp, our home. Robin came down with fever and a cough on a Monday night, and the diagnosis was confirmed a couple of days later. By Thursday I had symptoms as well, but much milder than poor Robin. Only three weeks ago we both received COVID boosters, so we hope to skip the worst part.
What burns most is that after the planning, making of signs and buttons, working with our committee on routes and safety issues … knowing that this may well be a historically important rally … we can’t go. Even if we felt physically able, there is the small matter of contagion. We are temporary pariahs and that’s all there is to it. What we may do is get into our car and do a bunch of drive-bys, adding some positive honking to the mix as the march passes by. We’ll see.
No matter. The 18th promises to be fascinating as millions of people (who so obviously hate America) get together to talk about our freedoms, the Constitution, redressing wrongs, taking care of our most vulnerable … and giving the good ol’ gang of thugs on Pennsylvania Avenue something to think about.
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Apparently Cluck has taken issue with being on the cover of Time Magazine. It’s the photograph. He thinks it is a poor one, and doesn’t catch a single one of his good angles. I don’t know … he’s got that Mussolini-chin raised, his eyes are on I dunno where, but it’s that neck and its doubled dewlap that seems to be the issue. Some observers have made scatologic fun of its appearance, but you won’t find any of that low sort of humor on this blog. Nossir.
Poor fellow. One of the most powerful men on the planet is turning into this creature in front of our eyes. Can’t the White House dermatologist do something? Isn’t there a lotion … ?
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Last night we watched a fine old film, one that both of us had seen years ago, but enough time had passed that only the faintest recollections remained. It was Elizabeth, from 1998 and starring Cate Blanchett and a host of fine actors including Daniel Craig and Kelly McDonald in small roles before they became really famous. Both Robin and I are seemingly endlessly interested in that part of English history beginning with Henry VIII and through to the end of Elizabeth’s reign.
I mean, geez, all that chicanery, plotting, religious warring, those heads being lopped off and all, what’s not to love? And what wouldn’t I have given to play the teensy part of an armored guard and having the chance to say: “Well, it’s off to the Tower for you, milady. Best pack a light bag.”
Nope, that’s back when politics was really fun, and the losers didn’t hang around to gripe over and over about things when each dustup was over. That’s because the losers were hung, beheaded, or chopped into several pieces and distributed around England to be displayed as object lessons. We could learn a lot from the past about what to do when a regime fell. ‘Twould make it more interesting if the consequences were a bit more substantial.
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Poco and I were spending some quality time with each other the other day, comparing aches and pains and the virtues of becoming old as dirt. It is his opinion that any energy spent on anything other than lying in a sunny spot during the warm part of the day is wasted. Being over the hill means that you are just that … over the hill. Accept it and get over it is his message. You can make a fuss, splutter and steam to your heart’s content, but it is a rare old gent or lady who is really listened to. Or if they are listened to it’s like: “Isn’t that cute? It can talk just like you or me.”
No, the days when the people of the tribe walked over to the banyan tree to consult with an elder are largely over. It’s too easy to say to oneself “What could someone who isn’t fluenton Instagram or TikTok possibly say that would be meaningful to me?” And I get it, I really do.
The pity is that so many of our problems are old ones dating back centuries and some of them do have remedies that have been worked out over generations. And thus that neglected information needs to be relearned and relearned anew, often painfully.
Oh well, I said to Poco, c’est la vie. Could you move over just a hair, I need a bit more sun on my left side.
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In November of 1975, I had only recently moved my family to Hancock, a small town on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan. The Keweenaw is a finger of land that sticks out into Lake Superior, on of the biggest bodies of fresh water in the world.
On the night of November 10, the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald, one of the big ore boats on the Great Lakes, disappeared in a Lake Superior storm. It was all the news in Hancock at the time, as was anything that happened on the Lake, but it wasn’t until Gordon Lightfoot recorded his song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald that the story was burned into our memories. The song played seemingly continuously on the radio back then, and every November afterward that we lived there. Lightfoot donated proceeds from his music to a fund for the widows and children of the lost sailors.
The NY Times ran a piece this week that brought up this old chestful of memories for me. I was working as a pediatrician in Hancock in 1975, and I had nothing to do with Great Lakes shipping, but if you lived anywhere that touched Lake Superior you were affected because of the enormity of the lake and of it’s caprices. Taking a boat ride out on the lake? Better have a good boat with working radar because fogs didn’t always roll in on you like they were supposed to do, sometimes they materialized in a minute all around you and finding your way back home became a measure of your skill as a navigator.
Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, by Gordon Lightfoot
The song is a haunting one, and some of that feeling of dread and loss comes up when it is played, even fifty years on. There is a line toward the end of the song that stands out for me.
Does anyone know where the love of God goes When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
It could also apply to any of those situations in life where one minute you are living in your everyday world and the next you are trying to survive what has blindsided you. Time slows down as horror slips in and now nothing is the same and never will be again.
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The national No Kings protest of October 18 was larger by millions than the first one, back in June. I don’t have local numbers at the time of this writing, but the crowd was solid. Robin and I weren’t well enough to mingle and march, and certainly didn’t want to spread our misfortunes to the celebrants, but we couldn’t stand missing the event completely so we got into our car and drive down to where the rally was taking place.
We had attached a large NO KINGS sign to the door of the car on the passenger side and we drove slowly along the line of marchers on the sidewalk with the windows open and the radio blaring Fire On The Mountain over and over again. The crowd responded vigorously and clapped for us as our Subaru “float” drove past and we in turn clapped for them. After circling the marchers’ route several times we dropped out and returned home to the infirmary to continue with more boring routines involving lots of well-earned coughing and self-pity.
Those of us living in Paradise are a long, long way from the turmoil in Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles, but we do have television sets and newspapers and while all of us are alarmed at the indiscriminate violence being unleashed by the Cluck administration, some are frightened enough to be rethinking their involvement in resistance movements. The realities of being involved in protest against lawless regimes are becoming more real. The more successful these movements become, the more they will be targeted. It is not to be expected that thugs with power will relinquish or restrain that power with good grace.
Having already been schooled in Nonviolent Protest 101 (civil rights movement) and Nonviolent Protest 102 (anti-Viet Nam-war protests), I have been aware since the beginning that there were risks, so while I can’t claim to be unconcerned, I am not at all surprised. The next large national demonstration (No Kings 2) is only six days away, on October 18, and the members of our small-town chapter of Indivisible will be out there doing our thing. Indivisible, of course, is not the only group involved in this movement, it is one part of a large and growing network of organizations who share a repulsion at what the Cluck gang is doing, and who come together to work at limiting the damage they can do.
We have been very much encouraged by the neutrality and professionalism of our local police department. The presence of their black and white cruisers seems to cool the ardor of the occupants of the flagged-up pickup trucks who roar past shouting obscenities and extending middle fingers.
Thus far there have been no episodes of direct confrontation, no scuffling or punches traded. Our plan is always to keep that number at zero if possible. Those of us who are involved in the planning of the demonstrations are getting quite a lot of training in the de-escalation of threats and in what we can do to stay safe.
On a lighter side, one of the aims of our local leadership is to gently discourage the carrying of signs prominently displaying the “F” word. Of course there is no censorship, but guidance is definitely provided.
But if you come to Paradise on the 18th and want to carry a banner that says Eff The Effing Fascists you will be warmly welcomed. Your presence is more important than the precise language you choose to express yourself.
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Chicago, by Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young
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This week Robin and I re-watched the movie Ghandi. What an excellent and inspiring story, revealing what change a single determined man or woman might achieve if their motives and objectives were clear. The film won seven Oscars in 1983, and deserved every one of them.
It’s available for viewing on Prime for the princely sum of 354 rupees.
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One of the sure signs of impending cold weather is the death of the marigolds. At 33 degrees Fahrenheit they are fine, at 32 they all die. Back during the several-year-period between my divorce and meeting Robin, my friend (who will remain unnamed to protect his exemplary reputation) and I would celebrate the changing of the seasons by gathering all those dead flowers after that first hard frost, open several bottles of Pilsner Urquell, and sit around a ceremonial campfire in my backyard. I think we were trying to work out what it all means … you know … meaning of life and that sort of stuff.
It wasn’t Burning Man by any means, but the Burning of the Marigolds was a short-lived tradition that did not survive the two of us going off and starting new marriages and new lives.
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For What It’s Worth, by Buffalo Springfield
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The calling out of the National Guard is not a new thing at all. What is new is that this time it isn’t needed at all, but is instead part of a traveling roadshow being staged by the present regime. There are hazards in calling up the Guard, and especially when they are armed. These are not combat-ready, steel-nerved and battle-hardened troops. They are younger servicemen and women, weekend warriors and summer soldiers from down the street.
One fine day in May of 1970 a group of such National Guardsmen faced a large group of protesters at a rally at Kent State University, in Kent, Ohio. Some of these protesters threw stones at the Guardsmen. Things went very wrong and suddenly there were four dead students, victims of rifle fire of frightened young men in uniform. Nine other students were also wounded in the volley.
Within a very short time, this next song was on the charts.
Ohio, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
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Yesterday being a dreary day, with clouds and damp and all, we betook ourselves to the town of Delta, a 20 mile drive from home. Our aim was to find a new spot to eat lunch, and voila! – there it was, the Taqueria Master. The food was good enough to merit a return visit on another day. I had my first chorizo taco and it was tasty.
One of the menu items was a taco where the meat source was labeled “cabeza.” That gave me pause, and I asked myself: “On this day, the 10th of October in the year of our lord 2025 do you really want to find out what goes into a cabeza taco?” And my answer to myself was “No.”
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This cartoon came across my computer/desk this week, and for me it is one of those haunting images that I cannot shake. I don’t know exactly what its author meant to tell us, and a search for that person’s identity ended when I ran into only Arabic language resources. But what I see is a father returning to a ruined city in Gaza where the ghosts of his children play.
The children’s names below appear on a list of victims of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, maintained by health authorities in the territory. As of the end of July it ran to 60,199 names, of whom 18,457 were under 18s. Far from comprehensive, the list does not include the thousands still buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings, as well as the war’s many indirect victims.
If one child is killed during a military offensive it is a tragedy, the euphemism “collateral damage” is often applied to such deaths. But on this scale … it is a crime that goes beyond anything that can be so categorized. Hamas bears responsibility for the ugliness and horrific violence of October 7 two years ago. But the Israeli government, its leadership, and its army committed this crime against humanity. You do not kill this many children unless you make no distinction between combatants and civilians. I believe that the briefest glance at the article in The Guardian from which the above quote was taken will sicken most readers, as it did me.
The murderers on both sides should be exposed and brought to judgment. We must speak for the silenced children.
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.
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.
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.
I can point to a short list of writings that have been truly formative when it comes to my view of life as a human being on a small planet. Their messages somehow stuck in a brain that too often seems to have a teflon surface, allowing many bits of knowledge that might have been important to fall to the floor and be swept away with the crumbs of that last bag of Cheetos. Put these books together and they could easily be carried in a knapsack.
What might these wonders be called, you ask? Here’s my list:
Wherever You Go, There You Are, by Jon Kabat-Zinn
The Bible
Buddhism Without Beliefs, by Stephen Batchelor
The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle
Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry (yes, yes, a Western novel)
The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz
At the head of the class is “The Four Agreements.” I really didn’t fully take it in until the second reading, and each subsequent perusal has reinforced its lessons. It is a straightforward owner’s manual for a freer life. Free of what, you say? Well, of shame and self-hatred and personal bigotry, just to mention a few items.
Be impeccable with your word: Speak with integrity, meaning, and truth. Use the power of your word to express yourself and your needs, rather than to speak against yourself or to gossip about others.
Don’t Take Anything Personally: Nothing others do is because of you; their words and actions are a reflection of their own reality, not yours. You won’t be the victim of needless suffering if you are immune to the opinions and actions of others.
Don’t Make Assumptions: You avoid misunderstandings and drama by finding the courage to ask questions and express what you truly want. Communicate clearly with others to prevent confusion and sadness.
Always Do Your Best. Your “best” is not static; it changes depending on your health, energy, and the circumstances of the moment. Accept that your best will vary and give your all in every situation.
Simple, right? Turns out that I like simple very much.
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There Is No Frigate Like A Book
by Emily Dickinson
There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human Soul –
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Emily, by Los Lobos
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What’s missing from the list above? Well, almost anything written by the man who I took as my teacher, even though we never met. His name is Thich Nhat Hanh. A Buddhist monk who worked all of his life for peace, and who taught that the way that I can contribute to peace in this world is to become peace in myself.
He told a story taken from the tragedy of the boat people in Viet Nam, who fled the country after the turmoil of the war. Of a twelve year-old girl who was raped by pirates and who then threw herself into the sea to drown.
She was only twelve, and she jumped into the ocean and drowned herself. When you first learn of something like that, you get angry at the pirate. You naturally take the side of the girl. As you look more deeply you will see it differently. If you take the side of the little girl, then it is easy. You only have to take a gun and shoot the pirate. But we can’t do that. In my meditation, I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, I would now be the pirate.
This story gave rise to a poem of his, Please Call My By My True Names. Here is a recording of Thich reading his poem.
Please Call Me By My True Names, by Thich Nhat Hanh
These days I am finding this teaching of his helpful in dealing with the conundrum posed by living among MAGA adherents. My first impulse when I hear one of them speak is usually to want to part the person’s hair with a stout cudgel. What holds me back is a suspicion that “if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, I would now be the pirate.” Substitute MAGA for pirate and there I might be.
I have no illusions about anyone being able to love these misguided ones back to happy normalcy. They are people so filled with hate and anger and fear that some of them are actually dangerous as a result and are quite capable of committing violent acts. But I can keep myself from letting their fear and hatred infect me by realizing that repulsive as their thinking and behaviors might be, I need not answer them in kind. It is chance that put me on one side and not the other.
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A Life of Illusion, by Joe Walsh
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I am reclaiming for myself the word “comrade.” For most of my life, that word was ceded to Communists for their private use by books, movies, plays … not a single one of the good guys in those stories was ever called “comrade.”
Comrade: a member of the same political group, especially a communist or socialist group or a labor union
Cambridge English Dictionary
But I like the word. It feels good rolling off the tongue. Do you know of a better expression of solidarity with someone, or a group of someones? So I am taking it back. Sorry, all you Communists and Socialists and Bolsheviks and Mensheviks … you have to share. It’s the right thing to do.
Comrade: a friend or trusted companion, esp. one with whom you have been involved in difficult or dangerous activities, or another soldier in a soldier’s group
Cambridge English Dictionary
And how appropriate for these troubled days we’re living in. Difficult or dangerous activities? You might call protesting the governance of a madman with a secret police force of masked unprincipled thugs a risky enterprise. A man who is presently showing us his disdain for life and the law by blowing up boats and the people in them? I don’t want to overstate things, but I don’t put anything past the noxious criminal at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
So if I call you comrade, I hope that you don’t take offense. Even if you don’t particularly care for the term, I am expressing my respect for you and what you are doing.
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EXPLANATORY NOTE: I have made a small change in the image on the margin of these digital pages, substituting the Straw Hat pirate flag for the upside-down American flag. The Straw Hat pirate flag has come to symbolize freedom, dreams, unity, and defiance against oppression. Although its origins are in a comic strip, in the real world the flag has been adopted by protesters in countries like Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines, England, France, and even the United States as a banner for youth-led protest and resistance to authoritarianism. I may not be a youth on the outside, but my inner child (NO FAIR!I’M TELLING!) has definitely been awakened and is now pulling many of my strings.
And, BTW, my inner child loves the pirate flag.
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MEMENTO MORI
Earth lost a real human being this past week, which is really too bad. There are never enough of them around. Jane Goodall came into my awareness in the late sixties and following her career has been an inspiration to me ever since.
Not a plaster saint, she was a forceful and determined worker for the rights of animals, including our own species. Wish I could’ve had her over for coffee, just to talk about those things that moved her most. Perhaps she’d have been too busy, what with working to save the planet and all, but I still could’ve asked. Missed that boat.
When I was a lad, a few dinosaurs still roamed the earth and most people lived in caves or slept out in the open. Television, computers, artificial intelligence, and air hadn’t been invented yet. It was that long ago.
We were ignorant but happy, living out our average lifespans of twenty years and then being gobbled by some scaly predator when our running speed had begun to slow.
So the difficulties of old age … almost nobody had ’em. Certainly not in enough numbers to care about. Actually, getting past a ripe old age at twenty drew suspicion that one might be possessed of some evil spirit, so my family of origin was forced to move frequently to avoid unpleasantness at the hands of our neighbors.
But, hey, who doesn’t have problems? Right? At some point we scuttled across the Bering Strait and invented real estate, whereupon we immediately began cutting up the new land into parcels to sell to the next new arrivals.
Today I look back on those growing-up years fondly, and yesterday when members of our present government were voicing the view that all progressives were possessed of evil spirits, I felt right at home. It was like old times.
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Mr. Tambourine Man, by Odetta
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Tale #1: One day when I was working at doctoring in South Dakota, my nurse handed me the charts of the next two patients who had come in for well-child examinations. They were from somewhere in the part of Nebraska that still hadn’t been named. Interesting was the fact that they had received no immunizations.
When I learned that the names of the two little girls were Quasar and Zanzibar, I paused with my hand on the doorknob of the room. At that point I knew that the chance I would change anyone’s mind and the vaccinations would begin that day was small … minuscule … and that proved to be the case. The kids were delightful, their mother polite and pleasant but adamant in not wanting to discuss issues of preventive medicine. I never saw them again.
Tale #2: There was a chiropractor who was fairly well-to-do, a complete charlatan, and rarely kept a wife for more than three or four years. When wife number four came along, it took almost no time at all for there to be two infants coming to our clinic. I was chosen as the family pediatrician and thus ran into the husband’s policy of NO IMMUNIZATIONS.
The children’s mother was from a New England state, and always had a sort of sorely stressed air about her. For she’d realized that her spouse was a fool who tired of his wives rather quickly, and that her old friends and family were thousands of miles away. After several years of marriage she made up her mind to take leave of the old prat, and this time it was she that filed for divorce.
During the drawn-out legal proceedings, she did something interesting. Bringing the kids in for routine exams, she had both of them immunized and brought right up-to-date, without telling their father. It was not quite the right motive and more than a little spiteful, but I obliged her in her important work of disobedience.
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This IsDefinitely A Rogue’s Gallery
ScreenshotScreenshotScreenshotScreenshot
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Before daylight this morning as I was composing more of the trash that I affectionately call my writing, I noticed the motion-sensitive spotlights in front of my neighbor’s house light up. An instant later a vulpine silhouette crossed the beam running from stage right to stage left. The fox was out, on a chilly night.
The Fox, by Bill Staines
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Here’s part of a longer piece and all I can say is that I am glad she isn’t angry with me. At least I hope she’s not.
Of course, this isn’t really about what we need to do — we’re already doing it. It’s about what the mainstream media, and anyone still cowering in silence, needs to do. Because silence isn’t neutral — it’s surrender. It hands the microphone to a bully and pretends that’s balance. And I need to be clear — this isn’t just about him. It’s about the crowd that roars for him too. The ones who leap to their feet when he says he hates half the country. The ones who fist-pump when he spits bile and take it as permission to be their worst selves. They need to know we see them too. They need to know this isn’t patriotism — it’s corrosion. It isn’t strength — it’s rot. Every cheer is a confession of their own emptiness. Every laugh is proof of how small they’ve let themselves become. And we aren’t pretending it’s normal. We’re calling it what it is: indecency on parade, depravity dressed up as politics. And the minute we stop saying that out loud, the minute we start shrugging and moving on, is the minute they win.
Our chapter of Indivisible got together Monday evening for a potluck supper. What savage revolutionaries we are! It was a small group, but we only see one another at events that are scheduled, and rarely get to talk about anything but the serious business of showing how democracy works to an unpleasant group of people who aren’t one bit interested – our national government..
All in all it was an enjoyable time. We even got to play a new card game whose name I have already forgotten and that’s okay because I sucked at it. The next meetings will all be in preparation for the second No Kings nationwide protest. It will happen on October 18. The last one back in June set records and showed how deep the distrust of the Cluck regime went. Since then they have done so many more bad things we anticipate a larger turnout.
A couple of days ago I was talking with one of my children on the phone, answering the perennial question: How are you doing? In answering I was to realize how much of my time is spent working on things political. I found myself wondering: Hey, you’re an impossibly old dude, what would you be doing now if you didn’t have a large bunch of fascists to deal with? And the answer is … probably nothing as interesting or compelling. So I guess I have Cluck and the gang to thank for providing a seemingly endless source of provocations to think about. Otherwise I might be just noodling in my rocking chair and wondering if it’s time for afternoon tea yet.
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I will close this post with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi. I almost hesitate to put it here, because if I really think deeply about it, perhaps there would be nothing in this space to read.
Okay, for some folks I guess it comes down to “Have you had enough, yet?” when dealing with the oleaginous monstrosity that is our present national government. We have incompetence throughout the executive branch, only half of the Senate with their wits about them, and a House of Representatives where the ability to tie one’s own shoelaces sets one apart from the herd. Add to this a corrupted Supreme Court and you have the full picture. Dismal, but full.
But we, the much-disrespected electorate, don’t have the sense to roll over and collaborate, as have some colleges and universities, CBS, ABC, and a distasteful number of our national institutions. Armed with our eighth grade civics lessons, a copy of the Constitution, a shred of decency, and a great deal of stubbornness, we persist in resisting. Go figure. There will be a nationwide rally on October 18 that calls itself NO KINGS 2.0.
It will be yet another chance to get together and see that you are not the only one who thinks our present situation is unsustainable madness. The first NO KINGS protest was massive, with more than 5 million people participating. This included 2500 souls who gathered here in Paradise, a small red town in a red corner of the state. It was peaceful protesting all the way. I have to give credit to the Cluck administration and Republican Party for doing so abysmally that it is easy to find a repellent situation to protest against. Too many to count, really. An embarrassment of riches.
My readership is spread around the globe, but if any of you are going to be in the US on October 18 you might want to drop over to Paradise and see small-town democracy at work. You can get more information at the national website for NO KINGS. Stop by, we’d love to have the opportunity to shake your hand and harangue the very beJesus out of you. (If you don’t have a place to stay we have more than a thousand square feet of floor space at our home and enough sleeping bags for six.)
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Watching the movie Out of Africa the other night at our own personal Robert Redford Film Festival, we were struck by how young and handsome Redford and Meryl Streep were in 1985. She was almost luminous at times. And then I thought … hey … forty years ago I was, if not luminous, doing okay as well. I could still run, leap without creaking, and I teetered very little.
I also owned a Honda Gold Wing at that time as did my friend Bill, and the two of us would take our motorcycles out to the wilds of a Nebraska two-lane highway and see how fast they would go. Mine topped out at 116 mph, and I have to confess that this was way past fast enough for this armchair cowboy. All it would have taken was a rabbit in the road and I would not be typing this deathless prose.
But Redford and Streep and the superstar of the show – Africa – what a trifecta that was! If you haven’t seen the film, it’s available on Prime and will cost you $3.99. Worth every penny.
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No One Is Watching You Now, by “Til Tuesday
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For those who are still silently waiting for our shared nightmare to be over, it’s time to wake up. Right now. A coup is under way. This time there is no cavalry coming to save us if we can just hold out. I keep seeing a phrase that goes with the spot we’re in very well, I think, and it is Silence is Complicity.
A quote from Elie Wiesel: “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented”.
Another, from Leonard Peltier: “Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity. But silence is impossible. Silence screams. Silence is the message, just as doing nothing is an act. Let who you are ring out and resonate in every word and deed. Yes, become who you are. There’s no sidestepping your own being or your own responsibility. What you do is who you are.“
And finally, one from Martin Luther King, Jr.: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.“
I could go on, as I too frequently do. But if I have a point, my friends, it is that it is an illusion to think that there are sidelines for any of us to stand on.
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Friday we traveled with friend Rod to Telluride, looking for fall color. It was a good day for such an outing, but the only problem was that we anticipated the leaves really looking good by perhaps a week or two. So, the trip was a failure, right?
Wrong. What we did find was a beautiful herd of elk in the valley leading into Telluride, a village that was surprisingly crowded with people who seemed as pleased as we were to be there, and a lunch consisting of the best pizza on earth (IMHO) at the Brown Dog. Not too shabby, I’d say, not too shabby at all.
I tend to malign Telluride too often, I think. To be sure, it is an easy target due to being overpopulated by the very wealthy oozing with their tiresome self-importance. But I have to grudgingly admit that not every zillionaire is a pompous ass. Some of them obviously came from modest beginnings and have managed to hang onto their souls as their treasure grew.
It all makes me wonder what would become of my ragged personality should I become rich through some windfall. I already have an overdeveloped sense of superiority in my present economic circumstances, and I suspect that there is at least an even chance that I would join the ranks of the insufferable. Saying things like “Oh, look there, Robin, a peasant. Be careful not to touch it, I’ve heard that they carry germs.”
Maybe not. Maybe I wouldn’t forget from whence I came. Not every one of my character traits is of the gold star variety, but maybe I’d still find a way to keep it real. Quien sabe?
The second is from CNN’s article on this manga pirate flag that is showing up in protests all over Asia. It is taken from a popular Japanese comic strip and flying it indicates dissatisfaction with the government. ‘Nuff said? Methinks I might need one of these. Maybe two of them.
All of the hallmarks of autumn are here but one. We have the cooler days, the rains that typically come in September, a level of humidity that is kinder to our skins, and leaves have been changing color at higher altitudes for several weeks now. what is missing is the aroma that only millions of leaves on the ground, some wet and some dry, can provide. It is as distinctive as a fingerprint.
The ash trees in our backyard are still full green, but they aren’t really good harbingers because these trees are the last each year to give up the ghost and to go dormant.
Nope, it just ain’t Fall until you can smell those dead leaves breakin’ down in the damp.
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Honky Tonk Pt. 1, by Bill Doggett
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The air is full of wails and shudders as a thousand frightened “influencers” become available for interviews these days. All because of an assassination in Utah. They are wondering whether their career choices, which a few days ago seemed just fine, might have been the wrong way to go.
They are wondering about personal security … whether they have enough … whether they have the right kind … whether any security can really do the job. And they are correct in at least one thing, perfect safety is beyond them.
Become available to the adoring public and there are all those rifles out there in all those gun cabinets, and there are all those disturbed people looking around for some way to make their mark.
I would be, of course, be a poor target for one of those shooters of celebrities. I have no celebrity and am not worth the trouble. When the smoke had cleared, the murmurs would sound something like: “He shot who? Who the hell is that?”
On the other hand, in the past several years here in Colorado alone, I could have been a victim in a nightclub, movie theater, or grocery store. Those murderers didn’t care who they killed, the victims’ anonymity was no protection.
Nope, reducing firearm availability is what will eventually make a dent in the awful numbers of shooting deaths in the US, but that will take quite a while. It might take a repeal of the Second Amendment (can you imagine the uproar during such a campaign, as thousands of neurologically damaged malcontents writhed in rage when their sacred tools became just so much hardware that could be confiscated?)
Barring taking those sorts of steps, anything else is just whistling in the dark. Start a program to pick out those unwell proto-perpetrators using mental health screenings? Have you ever tried to get an appointment for yourself with a psychiatrist and found you must wait until Christmas after next when something might open up?
I asked Google what my odds of being shot today might be, and received this answer: “Instead of focusing on a statistically insignificant daily number, it’s more helpful to consider the lifetime odds of dying from gun violence. For an average American, the lifetime odds of death from a gun assault are approximately 1 in 238. However, this aggregate figure is not representative of everyone’s specific risk. For most people who live low-risk lifestyles, the chance is far lower.
So cowering at home might be the best protection available. Never saying anything the least bit provocative might be another strategy (volitional mutism an even better one). And this entire blog post … I never wrote it.
BTW: for reference, our lifetime chances of being killed in a car accident in the US are 1 in 95.
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If I sit quietly on the front patio beneath the hummingbird feeders the birds often come within a meter of my head. They hover there, moving effortlessly from side to side, back and forth, always in a position of watchfulness. When their curiosity is satisfied they return to the feeders.
This afternoon is one of unsettled weather, clouds of all sorts moving through the sky. You can see on the radar image that quite a shower went by us, it missed but was close enough that we could hear the thunder.
I have a playlist on my Mac that is called “Latin,” and that’s what’s playing on the little blue box this afternoon. A lot of Cuco Sanchez, some Buena Vista Social Club, and even a dash of Nana Mouskouri. And … wait … how did that Enrique Iglesias get in there?
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I have discovered doing the plank as a new way to make my abdominal muscles hurt, without going through all that sitting up and everything. Just haul my prone self off the floor for 30 seconds and it happens almost magically. YouTube has a genre of videos dedicated to making senior citizens feel bad about the inevitable days of fallen arches and most everything else. They want you to be a miserable as you were in your thirties trying to get a set of six-pack abs so that you could impress … who was it again that you wanted to impress?
One video after another proposes that if you do these ten things (five things … four things … one thing) you will be happier, healthier, and never fall down again. Plus you will finally get that six-pack you’ve been wanting for fifty years now.
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Honky Tonk Pt. 2, by Bill Doggett
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MEMENTO MORI
When we learned of Robert Redford’s passing, of course we had to watch one of his films last night. We chose “Out of Africa.” It was the perfect choice for the night.
Even a classical music troglodyte like myself can’t help being affected. Over time there are pieces that insinuate themselves into the most sluggish chunks of gray brainmatter, including mine. For me, one such work is Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Way way back when I was a kid with little money to spend on such things, I decided that I should try to learn at least a little about classical music, including why people listened to it at all, since it seemed boring to me and was impossible to dance to.
Being a pauper meant looking in the record store for classical music on the budget Nonesuch label. For a couple of bucks you could buy a vinyl album, usually recorded by an orchestra or ensemble you never heard of. My first such purchase was The Four Seasons. I don’t recall the name of the orchestra, but I played the album quite a bit over several years before it was lost during one of my spasmodic downsizings.
Recently, though, I ran across this newer album starring a violinist named Justine Jansen. I immediately liked it. It seems so … I dunno … sprightly and quick on its feet compared in with some of the more lumbering versions I have heard in the past. Perhaps because it is being played by a small ensemble rather than a larger orchestra (but that is for people to answer who know something about music, which does not include me).
Here is her version of the first part of Concerto #3 of The Four Seasons: Autumn.
1. Allegro
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BTW, there are more than 1000 recordings of The Four Seasons out there. And that count was done in 2011, so who knows by now?
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In response to the reeking river of garbage information oozing from from the Department of Health and Human Services, many medical groups and societies are putting out accurate and scientifically sound health information to help the public make good decisions, especially with regard to vaccines.
Some people think that doctors are in the immunization “business” to make huge profits. Let me clarify this tired canard for you. When I practiced pediatrics in South Dakota, the state provided all of the mandated vaccines to our offices for free, and we were not allowed to charge for them. We did, however, have to purchase, on our own, special refrigerators in which to store the vaccines, and had to keep meticulous records on the refrigerator’s performance and on each dose of vaccine we dispensed.
We were allowed to make a small charge for the nurses’ time spent in preparing individual doses and actually giving the injections. But reimbursements for that time were routinely less than our actual cost.
So instead of being a generous profit-maker, prociding vaccinations was actually an expense for the participating physician. This state/physician partnership worked because both recognized how important vaccines were to the health of the state’s children, and that small sacrifices were well worth it to remove any financial barriers.
But an economic windfall? Fageddaboudit!
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One of the absolute delights of reading is when you come across a word that moves humanity forward. That happened to me today when I read an article by Jennifer Louden on Substack entitled How To Age Without Enshittifying.
Whut? Where did that one come from?
And thus I was off to rummage in my online resources where I found:
Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a pattern in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers (such as advertisers), and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.
Wikipedia
Originally defined within the digital world (and that was only two years ago, when the word was first coined) it has broadened to include other areas of life. Like the pound of bacon that cost $5.99 becomes the 12 ounce package of bacon that costs $5.99.
Therefore when Ms. Louden provides me with some pearls of advice, I pay attention. Who wants to become part of the problem in yet one more way? Not me, bucko. My momma didn’t raise no enshittified children.
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In a piece on Substack I found this interesting graphic, which was created to try to make some sort of sense out of the manure lagoon swirling around Cluck. It’s one of those times when a picture is worth, if not a thousand words, quite a few.
If the diagram intrigues you, you might want to read the whole piece, which is entitled: Making Sense of MAGA. As I mentioned in last Sunday’s post, “Get your programs here, you can’t tell the players without a program.”
I have to admit that just looking at this repulsive entwinement makes my right hand want to reach for a can of disinfectant and give it a good spritz. Forcing my Macintosh to display it might even be a violation of the laptop’s rights.
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Another fine neologism I picked up this week was coined by Andy Borowitz, when he dubbed the present occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Metamucilini.
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And finally, out of the blue, comes a piece of news that shoves all of the government’s criminality and assaults on our collective lives aside for a few blessed moments.
Imagine this if you will. A politician who is using her office to make the lives of New Mexicans better. Whose main goal is not to grift, steal, or murder.
Es increible! Es magnifico! Gracias a la gobernadora Michelle Lujan Grisham de Nuevo Mexico por hacer muy algo correcto!
(And thanks to Google translate for doing all the work of creating that last sentence)
Andy Borowitz is still out there seeing and telling it like it is (or at least as he sees it) Here is his latest.
Complicating Donald J. Trump’s plan to send troops to Chicago, on Tuesday thousands of National Guard members called in sick with bone spurs. The White House was plunged into chaos after receiving over seven thousand notes from guardsmen’s podiatrists, sources said. At the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowed that he would get to the bottom of the bone spurs epidemic by enlisting the nation’s finest medical minds, including Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil. “A sudden outbreak of this size is very suspicious,” Kennedy told reporters. “The most likely culprits are COVID-19 vaccinations.”
That is beautiful. Just beautiful. If he were here in Paradise I would hug him, even though I generally avoid those things like the plague. To me hugs are a socially acceptable form of assault.
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Finally – a break from the 90 degree-plus heat! I don’t know how to behave. Here it is mid-day and I am outdoors without a medical attendant and I am not pulling a wagonload of water bottles behind me.
Today I am reminded how summer once was, a season to be joyful and dancing and singing’s praises rather than cringing from it in fear and a double-slather of sunscreen.
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Sugar Magnolia, by the Grateful Dead, live at Fillmore East
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From The New Yorker
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Not one of you has asked me: “Hey, Jon, how is the psychedelic mushroom farm coming along?” So I will tell you, even though you obviously have no interest. First of all, I am growing small quantities of psilocybin-containing mushrooms, or shrooms. It’s not quite a farm, more like the smallest container garden you can imagine. Secondly, we have no plans to ingest these things in the amounts necessary to produce a psychedelic effect, but are microdosing to try something new in our approach to chronic pain struggles where standard methods have failed.
There is a lot of evidence, although it is largely anecdotal and sorely needs to be studied systematically, that many people are helped through this microdosing. Along the way if we inadvertently find ourselves in some celestial glade dealing with blue animals that eat from our hands and sing to us in Spanish, we will know that we are not in the land of microdosing any more and must retreat and reduce the amount we are taking.
That’s how it works, when it works. Anyone can buy the materials needed for mushroom culture online, but in only two states (Oregon and Colorado) can you legally grow shrooms for your personal use. But even here, try to sell the mushrooms to anyone else and you can be in trouble written large. Here’s a decent summary of the situation in our state.
So the basic rules here in Paradise are:
personal use has been decriminalized
selling them violates state law and fines or imprisonment could occur
you can share them with friends and family members
the physical space allotted to growing shrooms can be no bigger than 12×12 feet
My first crop was on the dismal side as far as quantity is concerned, but hey, so were my last couple of years with tomatoes in the back yard. If I were to describe my gardening skills I am not quite a black thumb, but I am more properly located in the “numb thumb” area.
Black thumb: This term implies a natural or notable inability to make plants grow successfully.
Brown thumb: Similar to black thumb, “brown thumb” also signifies a lack of gardening skill and a tendency for plants to fail in one’s care.
Numb thumb: This is a more informal and sometimes preferred term for someone whose lack of success is due to a lack of effort or understanding, rather than a complete lack of skill.
This is a photo taken from the web of a lovely crop of Golden Teacher shrooms, the species that I am presently fiddling with. At no time thus far has my production looked anything like this.
I am not too tempted to chomp down on a large mushroom to experience new worlds since I barely fit into this one. Remember, I was a practicing physician in the sixties, and was involved in the care of many who were having what was euphemistically called a “bad trip.” Three vignettes may reveal why I am reluctant to try them myself.
A young man is in the emergency room having been vomiting for hours and is moderately dehydrated. The nurse tells me that he has ingested some sort of mushroom. I ask if she has any idea what kind when a groaning voice from the man on the ER bed calls out “Amanita muscaria.” It’s not the only time a patient diagnosed their disease for me, but it was the only time that one did it in Latin.
In the middle of a deep winter night in the Upper Peninsula local police find a young man standing naked in a snow-filled churchyard and singing anti-war songs loudly enough to bother the neighbors.
He was admitted to hospital for hypothermia and being seriously out of tune. We never determined the exact species he’d eaten because not even he knew what he had been messing with.
One more young man who had sampled some shrooms was brought in in restraints by the Minneapolis police. His offense was to shout obscenities loudly and repeatedly on a downtown street and when the gendarmes tried to reason with him he became enraged and attacked them. They were having none of that, and thus the restraints. I was working a shift as an ER doctor and called the man’s physician of record. I reported that the patient was tied to a bed, incoherent, unable to have a conversation worth anything and asked the worthy doctor what we should do with him, expecting an order for a temporary protective psychiatric admission. I was surprised when his MD advised me to send him home and direct the patient to call the office in the morning and get an appointment to be seen. I sputtered in disbelief for a moment and said: “But doctor, the man is not in his right mind and will likely not remember anything we tell him.” The answer received was: “Put a note in his pocket.”
I hung up the telephone and called another attending physician who promptly admitted the unfortunate gentleman to psychiatry for a short stay.
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From The New Yorker
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The Wheel, by the Grateful Dead (Live at the Fox Theater)
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If we were only to read the papers to form our view of present-day American life, there would be an epidemic of razor blades and warm baths, I’m afraid. Because all of the news is dominated by one very poor excuse for a man. We are living inside of that perfect storm where all of the elements came together that were necessary to bring our democratic experiment to a halt. A pause, not an ending.
One of those elements is the media who have revealed their own weaknesses by utterly failing to give “equal time”to the stories of resistance, and to the excitement building in that largely uncovered sphere.
There are millions upon millions of brave hearts out there, and some of them write so very well. If you need something to brace a tired spirit there is no shortage of people to provide just that. One of them is a guy named Jack Hopkins, who put this piece together, and who frames the story in a way that fits better with what I encounter on the ground here in Paradise. I offer you a repost of his substack entry: Outlasting the MAGA Darkness. Right On, Brother Jack, right on. (I am sooo fixated in the Sixties … you’d think i’d be embarrassed).
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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair“
Robin and I drove to Durango on Tuesday morning, and we noticed that above 9000 feet many of the aspens are turning yellow. Now, I have a dim recollection that this means something about the coming weeks and months, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it is.
Maybe ChatGPT will know. They are my oracle when it comes to stuff like this.
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ChatGPT: what do you want now?
Moi: I was wondering if you knew what it means when the tree leaves turn colors in August..
ChatGPT: You have got to be kidding.
Moi: No, I’m just an ancient person and have forgotten many things.
ChatGPT: Sigghhhhhh … it’s one of the signs that autumn is coming.
Moi: But isn’t this sort of early for that?
ChatGPT: Not when you have a drought. The leaves turn early and their colors aren’t usually as bright.
Moi: How interesting. Did you in that one nanosecond that has passed since I posed the question scour the libraries of the world for your answer?
ChatGPT: No.
Moi: Then …
ChatGPT: It was in this morning’s paper.
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Robin is in Durango, spending time with Claire when her parents are away. The home is several miles out of town in an area that not infrequently sees bear activity. So much so that every home must keep their trash in a bear-proof container.
The problem is not just one of having one’s trash spread about, but of safety for the bear. If one of them becomes accustomed to finding food in garbage cans and starts hanging around human dwellings regularly, any aggressiveness on its part means a call to a wildlife officer, and often a bullet for the bear.
Wednesday, as Robin was retrieving the family’s container from the roadside collection site, a black bear approached to within less than ten yards. Robin neither moved toward nor away from the critter, and after a moment or two it continued on down the road, uninterested in anything that did not promise easy access to food. No threats offered, no offense taken, no phone calls made.
Except for the excited call to me here in Montrose to relate the story of the encounter.
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Bear, by The Shouting Matches
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From The New Yorker
When I lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we would see bears often while camping, about half the time, in fact. Their only interest was in food, so we kept ours all in the VW bus we traveled in. On one of these trips we were still in the process of setting up camp when one of our kids noticed a bear going through the campground, site by site, and opening each trash can to check out the contents.
When the animal approached our trashcan, the six of us got into the van to watch the bear do its inspection. Finding nothing, it moved on along its route. (I should add that this was nearly fifty years ago, when campers were not nearly so knowledgeable as to proper behavior with trash and around bears.)
During those years in the UP, there was only one episode of physical harm from a bear that I knew of. A teen-aged boy was camping without a tent all by himself in a wooded area. When he turned in for the night, he unwisely took his food into the sleeping bag along with himself so that the raccoons wouldn’t get at it. Along came a bear which found itself staring at what was (to the bear) essentially a large human burrito, and he began chomping away. The boy managed to get out of the bag and run off, eventually making his way to a local hospital, where he received some minor patching up.
The sleeping bag, unfortunately, was a total loss.
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Black Bear, by Railroad Earth
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From the New Yorker
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We are only one week away from September, that month each year when I give over to my most sappy, maudlin, mawkish, corny, and moony side. It might not happen if there weren’t that song* to play and listen to. Something about its wistfulness brings out these drippy weeps, and I don’t seem to have the will to not play it. Every autumn. Like clockwork.
If I am dreading it, I really can’t imagine what must be going through your minds. Perhaps if we all buck up we’ll get through to the other side and October, where lies safety. Hold that thought.
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As of this morning, I have reached one of those milestones. I am twenty years sober. This is not a boast, and I don’t publish as self-puffery, but to speak to anyone out there who is wondering about whether their use of alcohol is helping or hurting them … there are other possibilities.
One day at a discussion in a rehab center, a client stood up and said that he was one year sober and many in the room clapped. The moderator interrupted and asked “Why are you clapping? All he said was that for the past year he has behaved like a normal person and has stopped harming himself and those around him.”
And that moderator was right, I think. We announce our sobriety anniversaries to reach out to those whose hands are still shaking, not to show that we are some sort of paragons. To point out to those still carrying the weight of alcohol addiction that they can put down the rock and walk away. It’s no more than doing the next right thing.
And did I do that next right thing by myself? Surely you jest.
Sandy Denny was an English folksinger and songwriter with a gorgeous voice who sang with several groups including Fairport Convention and Fotheringay, and who put out a handful of solo albums as well. One of the most enduring pieces she wrote was Who Knows Where The Time Goes, a marvelously thoughtful and melancholic song about the passage of time.
I first listened to it as a much younger man and was instantly caught up in the lyrics, which seemed to speak directly to me and I thought How could Denny have written such a personal song when I had never met her and there was no way … but I imagine that’s everyone’s reaction to this lovely musical meditation. At every age I’ve been through since then it has spoken to me with an even clearer meaning, until at my present time of life when I listen it seems just the perfect fit, carrying the message of one of life’s most constant truths.
And yet she was only twenty when she wrote it. Amazing. Breaks your heart, really. It was the last song she ever sang at a public performance. Denny died after a fall down a flight of stairs, at the age of only 31. But even if this piece of music had been her only legacy … aahhh, love … it is timeless.
“Who Knows” has been covered by so many people. Each one that i’ve listened to beautifuin its own right, but none eclipsing the original by Sandy Denny herself.
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Who Knows Where The Time Goes, by Sandy Denny
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There are three people whose clear-minded writing about our present national political manure pile that I read regularly. They are Robert Reich, Heather Cox Richardson, and Timothy Snyder. There are many others producing worthy material, but the day is only so long and, alas, my attention span has its limits.
I marvel at each piece they post, and especially in the case of Richardson and Reich, they post nearly every day. E.v.e.r.y d.a.y they produce an essay that would get an “A” in Civics class. All three are available on Substack and can be followed on its app. I find that they cut through the clamor and smoke very well, pointing out over and over the lessons of the Andersen fairy tale: The Emperor’s New Clothes.
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Upon reflection, I have found that an almost perfect metaphor for the present-day version of the Republican Party would be the Freudian concept of the Id. I was going to ask Sigmund if he agreed, but was disappointed to find that the man was completely dead.
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Who Knows Where The Time Goes, byNina Simone
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Yesterday I made a fine meal of New England Clam Chowder, which Robin and I wolfed down with much lip-licking and slurping. It was only later when washing the dishes that I noticed a stinging on the tip of my right middle finger, and found that it was missing a bit of tissue measuring about 2×2 millimeters. Apparently during the slicing and dicing of the vegetables that went into the mix I nicked the finger but didn’t notice at the time. There exists the distinct possibility that the missing piece of me went into the chowder.
It’s a tiny thing, I know, but I have chosen not to share this information with my wife. She has a tender stomach, poor dear, and this might affect her attitude toward me and my meal preparations in general.
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From The New Yorker
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I visited the Black Canyon Park on Monday forenoon. It is only partially open, and there is no walking about in the burned areas at all, anywhere, said the burly Park Ranger to me as I came strolling back down a charred hummock. He also said that my hiking where I had no business being would encourage all the other people who were presently in that same parking lot to start doing it. And he definitely implied that this could be the end of civilization as we know it.
I assumed the humbled, craven posture that is my best weapon against angry authority figures and skittered away.
But even such a tense situation couldn’t hide the fact that only 40 days since the onset of the fire, there were one-foot tall Gambrel Oak seedlings already coming up from the rootstocks of the burned trees.
Hallelujah, brothers and sisters. Nature holds the cards. She started the whole mess with those lightning strikes, and now shows that she is repentant and can put it right again.
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Who Knows Where The Time Goes, byJudy Collins
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Across the evening sky All the birds are leaving But how can they know It’s time for them to go? Before the winter fire I will still be dreaming I have no thought of time
For who knows where the time goes? Who knows where the time goes?
Sad deserted shore Your fickle friends are leaving Ah, but then you know It’s time for them to go But I will still be here I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time For who knows where the time goes? Who knows where the time goes?
And I am not alone While my love is near me I know it will be so ‘Til it’s time to go So come the storms of winter And then the birds in spring again I have no fear of time
For who knows how my love grows? And who knows where the time goes?
Little Home In The Valley 