Tag: TRump

Eyewash, Brainwash, Hogwash

jono55

There is a continuing puzzlement in the world of birds and their admirers. When it was discovered that John James Audubon was not only a slave owner himself but a dealer in slaves the National Audubon Society had to do some soul-searching vis-a vis the name of their organization. Two years ago the national group decided they would maintain the name as is.

But they set up a problem for themselves, because many of the individual smaller groups under their big umbrella have been repulsed by the knowledge of Audubon’s misdeeds and renamed themselves.

John James Audubon.

Dealer in slaves and painter of birds.

It seems a shortsighted move on the part of the National Audubon Society to keep a name that honors a man who we now know to have trafficked in human beings. I think it inevitable that they will make the change one day, but by then they may have lost connection with these smaller organizations who have been more progressive in this regard. All of those will have new names of which they may have grown fond.

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From The New Yorker

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Biloxi, by Rosanne Cash

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Most of those who are reading this paragraph thought they were Republicans or Democrats or Independents or Greens when they got up this morning. But in reality, there are really only two political parties in this country at present. There is the party of Trump and there is everybody else.

I am only one voice. One person has very little power, but two people have twice as much, four people four times as much … you get the picture. For the longest time I sat on my posterior expecting the Democratic Party to fight my battles and to look out for my interests as a citizen. That was a mistake. I am looking for new banners to march under now, new allies in the struggles for a better world.

Why do anything? Why not let it all play out on its own? Well … I have a short list for thee:

  • We are now cohabiting with Communists rather than consulting with long-time friends in our international relationships.
  • We have dropped connections with the World Health Organization when we are the epicenter of avian flu. The CDC is being reduced to a shadow of its former self, and is run by people using hearsay rather than science, people who suggest vitamins rather than vaccinations in the worst measles epidemic in generations.
  • Offices that we depend on such as Social Security, Veteran’s Affairs, the Department of Education and many others have become a total mess because of intrusion by people given license by Cluck to do whatever damage they can.
  • The DOGE workers are not really as interested in to achieve economies as they are trying to produce chaos, because small men like Trump and Musk profit in times of chaos.
  • The hard working men and women in our government need a sane atmosphere in which to do their work, but sanity is in very short supply.
  • When the people in charge of our nuclear arsenal and stockpiles are fired and then have to be sought out and hired back something is seriously wrong.
  • When the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is already underpowered, has its staff diminished by thousands of members and cannot keep our promises to our veterans, something is seriously wrong.
  • When the guardians of our national parks are reduced in numbers by the thousands at a time when they already are too few, something is seriously wrong.
  • When all of this is being done to be able to offer more money to a very small group of people who already have more wealth than they know what to do with, something is seriously wrong.

Remember when I said “the party of everybody else?” Well, this amorphous party dwarfs the Trumpian grotesquerie in numbers, and if it can be awakened and shown the way to use its power I believe that much of the harm that has been done could be repaired. We could even go so far as to strengthen our institutions against intrusions by future crops of lowlifes.

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You Pass Me By, by Lonnie Donnegan

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From The New Yorker

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How about a few quotes to get the old brain focussed on a Sunday morning?

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

Isaac Asimov

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.

Louis D. Brandeis

Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.

Thurgood Marshall

Ahhhh, that felt good. There is more than enough knowledge out there that could be used to build a society where we could live in mutual respect and develop just relationships, while largely saying goodbye to fear and want.

If you dig through the accumulated wisdom of humankind you come up with a conundrum. If we know what to do, and have been offered clear instructions for thousands of years as to how to do it, why do humans find themselves in one pickle after another? Why do we keep making such eminently bad choices? Why is it so easy to exploit us and pit us against one another?

(Please note the absence of anything coming from me that approaches being an answer to these questions.)

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I do have one positive suggestion to offer. Remember the story of the old woman at her 100th birthday party? She had been married to her husband for seventy years until his passing a few years back. An interviewer asked her how she had maintained a happy marriage to one man for that long. Without a pause she answered: “Low expectations”.

That might sound like a rueful or negative answer, but isn’t it really a re-statement of Mr. Voltaire’s aphorism: “Don’t Let The Perfect Be The Enemy Of The Good.” The phrase reveals the pitfalls of perfectionism.  The pursuit of perfection can lead to inaction or the abandonment of valuable, but imperfect, solutions. 

The lady in the story recognized this and took her man for what he was rather than exhaust herself in making him into someone he might never be. Perhaps she kept the small hope that he wouldn’t chew his food with his mouth open or wear stripes with plaids, but she was willing to wait it out while enjoying his company.

A society could do the same thing. Pick the good stuff out of the mess in front of it, and accept that as a beginning. Then move forward in a process of continuous and methodical improvement rather than have some pre-formed idea of a perfect final product and fight over how to get there.

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At present we have a set of socio-political problems that don’t lend themselves as well to the gradual approach outlined above. May I offer a poor example of a parable?

A farmer looks out his window and sees that his fields need some serious tending or the crops will wither and die, but there is a grizzly bear in the yard between him and the fields. He knows what he needs to do to save his grain, but first … he needs to deal with the bear.

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Angel Dance, by Los Lobos

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Each year large flights of Sandhill Cranes pass near Paradise on their migration north, and spend an evening on a small reservoir near a very small town an hour away from our home. The local Audubon Society sets up spotting scopes in several places near the water and invites the public to come for a viewing. Friend Rod and I drove out Saturday morning and did just that.

We only saw nine cranes, which apparently were the vanguard of a much larger flock coming tomorrow and Monday. No matter. The ones we saw were big and beautiful.

The host birders also found a golden eagle sitting on some irrigation equipment and a nesting pair of bald eagles for us to look at.

At noon a livestock association served up a free meal for the public. Free. Food. Took a few photos.

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Goosed

jono55

There is a wonderful film out there called Winged Migration that I can recommend highly. If you have never seen it, perhaps your library has a copy to borrow, or you can rent it on Amazon for less than four bucks. It documents the truly amazing journeys of many species of birds around the world. The hardships they face, sometimes overcoming and sometimes … well … you have to see the film to appreciate them, I think.

One overarching theme is how long these epic flight paths have been in existence, and what changes have gone on in the world beneath their larger family over time. But the earth turns, the birds fly, and even if our own species eventually self-destructs, the migrations will go on and on. They are ancient, much more durable than humans and their dramas. What is obvious is that we rarely have a positive influence on the natural world. We are more of an insult.

But enough of this light-heartedness, let’s get serious for a moment. I don’t know if you can call it courage as we define it in our own lives, but these migrations seem courageous endeavors to me. If I could flap my arms and once travel even ten miles to a new location, I would be crowing about it for the rest of my life.

We have a tendency to denigrate the achievements of other species, our calculations somehow always making us come out at the top of the heap. It’s just instincts, we say, implying that these “lower” animals don’t put much thought into what they are doing. (Birdbrains, we call people who are missing a card or two in their deck.)

One of our problems in understanding other species is that we keep using our yardsticks to do the measuring. We prize problem-solving, so any creature that seems limited in that way is lesser. We are enamored of our houses, our tools, and our intellectual achievements. Never mind that our evolution to a “spiritual being” has resulted in widespread murder and injustices as our history reveals members of one group after another happily plotting the bloody demise of the other groups.

Nope, if I want to look for models of good behavior for a citizen of this planet, I have to look outside of our species. Take the greylag goose, for example. Both sexes care for the young, they travel in flocks where some members stay vigilant while others rest. They mate for life, which is something humans talk about but fail to do a great deal of the time. Up to 20 per cent of greylag geese are homosexual, which doesn’t seem to upset the other members of the flock one bit. And greylag geese have never ever committed genocide.

So I keep an open mind, because being called “silly as a goose” may not be such a bad thing after all.

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Flying, by The Beatles

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Think about it for a moment. We can’t fly, can’t breathe underwater, have relatively poor eyesight and sense of smell, couldn’t grow a fur coat if we tried, and our top speed is not quite as fast as a hippopotamus. 

A tiger would smell us before we came into sight, spot us way before we could see it, and would be drooling at the finish line with a knife and fork in hand and a napkin tied neatly under its chin.

Add to this humbling scenario the fact that our young take more than a decade before they can fend for themselves and you wonder how we got this far as a species. If we hadn’t developed tools and weapons we would probably be no more than another case of scratchings on a Siberian cave wall that said Glorg Wuz Hear.

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I’m A Song, by Stephen Wilson Jr.

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It’s starting to get interesting (as in the curse: May you live uninteresting times). We may have a recession coming at us, which if it does, is clearly the work of only two men and their party. Usually recessions are a bit more nebulous in origin, but if this one arrives it will be the Truskcession for certain. Of course, if it weren’t for a spineless Republican party, they couldn’t mangle our economy the way they are doing. Have to give credit where credit is due.

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Wind Behind The Rain, by Jason Isbell

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The Kindness of Strangers

jono55

“Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

One of the famous lines from the famous play by the famous playwright Tennessee Williams. This one was spoken in the play by the character Blanche DuBois. But it could have been me uttering those words at many occasions in my life, and I suspect that there are a lot of people who could say the same thing.

Robin and I had been hiking up on the Grand Mesa on a beautiful autumn day. As we returned to our car, we decided to go down on the north side of the mesa to check out yet more of the fall colors.

Robin was driving, and as she made a turn onto the Grand Junction bypass something happened to me. I could not think clearly and could not speak at all, only garbled sounds would come. Her response was to pull into a convenience store parking lot and run into the store for help. At that point a battalion of strangers marched into the story, did their job, and as a result I am still here today to annoy multitudes with my words.

Here is an incomplete list of people I owe for that day alone.

  • The c-store clerk who recognized my neurological emergency and phoned his EMT amigos
  • The EMTs who tossed me into the ambulance and broke several laws getting me to the hospital
  • The ER docs and nurses who moved me to the head of the line for attention
  • The radiology techs who snapped the quickest CT on the Western Slope
  • The nurse who managed the IV that rid me of the most annoying clot I’ve ever had or hope to have

The only non-stranger in this scenario was Robin, who never hesitated as she whipped our Subaru into that C-store parking lot and got that clerk’s attention. (Bless that girl.)

Problem was, for her, that she did such important and necessary work but all she got to take home for her efforts was the same doofus she’d started the day with a few hours earlier.

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Don’t Let It Bring You Down, by Neil Young

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From The New Yorker

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These days, I would guess that there are many Americans who start each morning as I do, by crying inside. At the lunacy, the corruption, the criminality, the disgusting spectacles unfolding. I certainly don’t blame any Canadian, Mexican, or European for saying “WTF” because that is exactly how I feel when reading my newspapers. It is very definitely WTF time in America.

In one month Cluck has done his best to take the office of the President all the way from leader of the free world to that of a turd in a punch bowl. Unbelievable, really, how quickly this has occurred. What his motives are … I have no idea, nor do I care. What he is doing is sabotaging generations of hard work done by much better and smarter men and women than he.

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turd in the punch bowl

n. A person who spoils a pleasant situation.

This metaphor is powered by a particularly vivid contrast: the inviting sensory appeal of a festive beverage juxtaposed with the revolting suggestion of feculent contagion . Therefore, labeling someone a turd in the punch bowl is most appropriate when the individual’s deleterious influence goes beyond mere faux pas or nuisance behaviors, and rises to the level of deliberate offense for its own sake. Consider that the literal act of depositing or excreting fecal matter into a communal food-service container would be sabotage.

The punch bowl and the feces connote certain additional nuances. The former is a symbol of public community, as such dispensers are frequently encountered at parties where they become a focal point for interaction. Freud famously identified feces with aggression and the possessive instinct. Thus a turd in the punch bowl suggests rage toward, and / or the urge to conquer, a community or society as a whole. … In particular then, to be a turd in the punch bowl is to be a willful and attention-seeking obstructor to the success of a social community.

Urban Dictionary.com

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From The New Yorker

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At some point in my life I realized that pain was the best teacher of all for me, for it always got and held my full attention like nothing else. I also realized that there was nearly always something positive that came from my misfortunes, if I looked for it hard enough. The misfortune may have been leagues worse than the benefit, but that nugget was still there. Something mitigating.

As an instance, now that I find myself governed by Ali Clucka and the Forty Thieves, my interest in reading the Constitution and the Bill of Rights has risen sharply. That’s a very good thing. In this particular regard I have been complacent for far too long.

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We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

Abraham Lincoln

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The Loner, by Neil Young

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Scouting For Dollars

jono55

The Girl Scouts have rounded up a few adults as helpers and are firmly established in front of our City Market, where in exchange for a few measly dollars they offer to sell me a product which is both delicious and unhealthy.

But, hey, if those were the only cookies that I was going to eat this year, there might be some justification in berating these kids for enabling me in my sugar cravings.

But alas, there will be others. And perhaps a slice of pie or two as well. And some cake.

Pudding … I think that’s a yes. Cobbler … bring it on.

I could save myself the trouble and expense of buying these ready-made products at the Market by simply sitting down with a pound of butter and a bowl of sugar and growling as I dove into them, but that would be gross and an ugly thing for any passing child to see.

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From The New Yorker

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Masters of War, by Vieux Farka Touré

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This morning I was reading yet more reportage on the now infamous interaction between Zelensky, Cluck, and Vance this past week. The Cluck followers really are a sad bunch. Lost souls. I fear there is little hope for them.

I know that it’s a bit of a medieval outlook, but this mural from 1260 A.D. about sums up my views on the gaggle that is Cluck/MAGA.

In this painting Satan is devouring a passel of his devotees. Something very similar is happening on our American polítical stage. First their minds, then their souls, and then … .

One has only to listen to anything that comes out of Lindsey Graham’s mouth to see the truth of it.

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BTW, if anyone need a list of why we need to resist our present poisonous government, Margaret Renkl has graciously provided one in today’s NY Times.

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Granddaughter Elsa is staying with us for just under four days, and we are pleased as anything to have her here. There were more frequent visits when she was very young, but as she grew older they became fewer. As often happens.

It’s part of that becoming an adult stuff that parents and grandparents dread and kids can’t wait to have happen. What this all comes down to now is that no visits are taken for granted and no minutes are wasted.

When at long last I finally accepted the truth that change is inevitable and constant I began to treasure these moments more. Although they were always to be one-time occurrences, for the longest time it failed to cross my mind that they wouldn’t be repeated endlessly.

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From The New Yorker

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Out of the ten movies that were nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture this year, only three ever made it to the theater in Paradise. Sigggghhhhhh. I like small town life in so many ways, but it’s tough to be a movie buff when living in a hamlet. One small enough that Hamlet itself will probably never play there.

The powers-that-be in film scheduling for small towns obviously feel that we are mostly into car crashes and comic book heroes, and they feed us a constant stream of digital nonsense as a result. I have no idea if they are right or not, but I wonder if there aren’t more citizens who would appreciate watching an entire movie where nothing explodes than they calculate.

This complaint might come off as just another instance of me being a snob, but it’s really only a plea for fairness, or equal time, or something like that.

Call me a fool, but I love a movie that makes me think. One that holds up the world in its cinematic hand and turns it ever so slightly so that I see it with new eyes.

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Yesterday the air was filled with the noodling and calls of the collared doves that are so plentiful out here. Filled the air for the entire day. Non-stop.

It has to be sex. What else could grab them by their tiny brains and make them sing one passionate aria after another?

For a while the music is charming, but after ten solid hours even the most fervent love song starts to wear thin. Enough to bring on the uncharitable wish they would all just get a room and be done with it.

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Birds, by Neil Young

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Shame

jono55

We’ve had about a week of record breaking warm weather here in Paradise. Knowing what’s going on with the world’s climate makes it hard to fully enjoy a shirtsleeve February day, however. It nags at you.

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It has been described as a set-up. An ambush in the Oval Office. Schoolyard bullies, would-be gangsters playing a tag-team match of the most cowardly sort against a man who is a true hero. A man who is trying to defend his country against aggression, and now finds that a major ally has sided with the criminals who invaded his homeland.

Cluck and Vance chose the time and place for their degraded display, controlled the sound and video and everything about the event. But instead of coming off as tough guys, they revealed themselves as the sleazy con men that they are. Shame on us for allowing them to treat President Zelensky this way.

Shame on us for abandoning him and abandoning our obligations in Europe as well. Shame on us for electing such pitiful men.

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For What It’s Worth, by Buffalo Springfield

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Welcome to the month of March. Month of the struggle between winter and spring that can sometimes be a bloody battle, at least for the plants and trees.

Eight years ago there was an early March warmup, just enough to get the trees excited, and then – whomp – a nasty freeze. Followed by warmth and yet another hard freeze. And then once more. Some trees gave up and died. Some limped along through the summer hoping for better days. Those that had wisely waited for April to bud out could be heard murmuring at twilight: “Told you so … told you so … .”

March is where you can have jonquils and daffodils poking flowers up through the snow. Good month. Reliable in its unreliability. Makes no promises. Takes no prisoners.

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What’s Goin’ On, by Marvin Gaye

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Gene Hackman died recently. He was 95 years old at the time of his death, and hadn’t worked in films for a long time, which was the way he wanted it. There are a bunch of movies that he made that I have stored away in that loose aggregate of half-awake neurons that I call my mind. All of them are excellent. Robin and I watched one of them last night … The French Connection, from 1971. Two hours flew by, as he became “Popeye” Doyle, a cop with some bad habits but tenacity, man, tenacity.

Next I’m going to re-watch Mississippi Burning, then Hoosiers, and then Unforgiven. My memory skills these days are such that if I don’t act on something in this particular moment, there’s a good chance I never will. Just Do It, is my motto. What? Already used? Drat.

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Shame, by the Tedeschi-Trucks Band

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Careless Love

jono55

I’ve been “in crush” many times, but almost none of the women involved ever knew it. I was repeatedly the classic hopeless admirer from afar, pining away in a hut, clad in sackcloth. Names like Margie, Judy, Ferol, and Ingrid still have a place in memory even though there is nothing real to go with them, only what I imagined way back when.

One of my inamorata was Joan Baez. When she walked out on the stage of Northrop Auditorium at the University of Minnesota in 1964, long hair, long dress, barefoot, guitar in hand … well, she had me at first pluck. The madonna of folk music had added yet another disciple to her already long list.

I confess that my infatuation crumbled away when she wed David Harris, and the albums that I still listen to are all from the earlier period of her career. I felt abandoned when she married, I always hoped she’d wait for me.

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Old Blue, by Joan Baez

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Plaisir d’Amour, by Joan Baez

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I mentioned the name “Ingrid”above, and feel the need to flesh that out a bit. In 1943 the movie For Whom The Bell Tolls came out, starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. I was only three years old at the time, so I didn’t get to check it out until much later, when it was shown at a cinema art house near the University of Minnesota. The movie was a fair one, with much Hemingway-esque dialogue and a bridge being blown up and all, but it was Ms. Bergman who captured my adolescent heart.

So much so that I bought and treasured the soundtrack for the film, primarily because the cover art on the album was the close-up at left.

Now at the time I saw the movie I was nineteen, and Ingrid was in her mid-forties. This would have made this February-December romance a bit of a challenge to pull off, and even I had to admit it. Especially since the woman I was infatuated with was Bergman as she had been in 1943. But when you are living in complete unreality … well … all things are possible.

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Farewell, Angelina, by Joan Baez

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DISGRACE

Nicholas Kristof has nailed it in an op/ed piece in the NY Times. The damage that Cluck is doing right now as I type this and later as you read it, is monstrous. When we throw our allies under the bus and get into bed to spoon with Putin the Poisoner, what can people think of us Americans?

I really feel for the Europeans. They have always known they couldn’t trust Putin, a vicious bully, torturer, and murderer. But now our shambling dotard of a president has revealed that they can’t trust us, either. Revealed it both to Europe and also to any American who still remembers the meaning of words like loyalty, honor, and decency.

And who remembers why countries banded together in NATO in the first place. It wasn’t because of the Nazis, they were already beaten. It was because of the threats coming from the former Soviet Union under Stalin and his autocratic successors. Which includes … guess who? … Vladimir Putin.

Where are the Republican patriots? Have they forgotten how to tell friends from enemies? How can they let this debauched troll presently at the head of our government have his way? How can they continue to be Cluck’s enablers in such a sickening betrayal?

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda genius, had one honest moment when he admitted back in yet another terrible time:

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”

Goebbels was talking about the ordinary German citizen. Cluck is counting on ordinary American citizens to believe his lies, and I believe that he will be proven wrong in his assumptions. But at what cost?

A shameful moment in time. Our president has disgraced us.

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The Second Coming

by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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Slouching Toward Bethlehem, by Joni Mitchell

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Cool Water

jono55

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Everyday Is A Winding Road, by Sheryl Crow

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From The New Yorker

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

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

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

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

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

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Give A Little Bit, by the Goo Goo Dolls

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Dark shadow passes

Raven flying in snowfall

True black in true white

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

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

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

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

*Often yours truly, I admit

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From The New Yorker

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Salsas de la Muerte

jono55

At City Market yesterday I was impressed by the proliferation of hot sauces available to use in flavoring our food. As far as this product is concerned we seem to be in a golden age. Every year the number of choices grows, way too fast for me to attempt to sample them all.

Although I didn’t count the offerings at that visit, there must have been more than a hundred of them to pick from. The labels of many boasted about their pepper of origin and how unbearable they were and what havoc they would soon be wreaking on your body. There were jalapeño sauces, habanero sauces, serrano sauces, ghost pepper sauces, Scotch Bonnet sauces, Carolina Reaper sauces, etc.

It is likely that none of them convey the full fury of the pepper to one’s gastrointestinal tract. The pepper power is usually considerably diluted in making the product you find on those shelves. The full experience of ingesting an untamed Carolina Reaper, for instance, is enjoyed by a very few of the hardiest of souls. And as my grandmother might have said, they may not be quite right in the head.

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Hot Stuff, by Donna Summer

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Robin and I went with friends to see A Complete Unknown, and it was the second time for us. Double awesome. On a Wednesday night in Paradise the theater was nearly filled, with the hair color of most of the attendees being gray. That is testament to the drawing power of Dylan and his music. This was, after all, just a movie about him, and covered only a short handful of years in his career.

BTW. When Bob left the Iron Range of Minnesota and stopped for a while in Minneapolis, he rented a room above Gray’s Drug in the Dinkytown area, just off the university campus. At one brief moment in my otherwise unremarkable life I too, stayed for a few days in a room over Gray’s Drug.

It wasn’t the same room that Dylan had occupied but hey, his was just down the hall. And my occupancy was many years after he had left for New York, but … let’s not quibble … I was that close to greatness.

Even more of this unbelievableness. He and I attended the University of Minnesota at the same time, and you know, he has never once mentioned me in any of his songs or interviews. If you ask him he may use the excuse that there were 35,000 other students attending that school at the same time, but that’s pretty weak, really. I guess when you get to the top you forget about the little people … .

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Our new/old POTUS, in one of his first official acts, pardoned everybody that participated in the January 6 insurrection, which he calls a festival. The sacrifices the capitol police made in protecting members of Congress are ignored or made light of. The Fraternal Order Of Police must be rethinking their support for Cluck in his three runs for the presidency. What the FOP might have easily known, if they had looked just a little deeper, is that loyalty is a one-way street for Cluck.

While I am all in favor of reducing prison populations, I would humbly suggest that first we let out everyone who is completely innocent. This would free up an estimated 4-6% of the prison population right there.

If we were making a list, there are many other groups more deserving of clemency than the traitors of January 6. We could have saved those bozos for last.

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From The New Yorker

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With God On Our Side, by Bob Dylan

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February is now officially within striking distance, with only 5 days of January to go. Not that February is any great shakes as a month, typically being the coldest of the year in these parts. And it only has a single holiday, one devoted to Hallmark Card’s version of romantic love, which has been shown over a very long time to have some serious holes in its implementation. If it were not for the unholy quartet of greeting card sellers, florists, jewelers, and candy makers, Valentine’s Day might have long ago been disposed of in history’s dustbin.

But I digress. The best thing about the month of February is that it has fewer days than all the rest. Because to get to good ol’ windy, rainy, unpredictable March is our goal. March is where the annual battle between weather we really like and the basket of deplorables* that constitutes Winter is fought.

There is a certain odor in the air that defines Autumn for me, and that is the lovely scent of dried and decaying leaves everywhere. Early spring also has its distinctive odor and it is of all the dog poop thawing that has been left behind by our friends at the IRCOA (Irresponsible Canine Owners of America). This is the perfume of March.

*I know you’ve heard this phrase somewhere before … somewhere.

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Robin and I finished a limited series on Netflix last night, and it was a relief to do so. The series was “American Primeval,” and we’re not quite sure why we stuck with it. Here’s a selection from a review in The Guardian.

American Primeval emerges as a study of human nature at its desperate best and unbridled worst, the whole existential mess parching beneath the sun like pegged-out animal skins. The wild west never looked so wild, nor as nasty, broken and desolate. Halfway though, I’m engrossed, but also genuinely shocked. Don’t watch it if you can’t take violence. Just don’t.

Barbara Ellen, The Guardian

And that quote was taken from a positive review, one that gave the show four out of five stars.

The main protagonists are the Utes, the Mormon church, the U.S. Army, and a ragtag bunch of settlers, trappers, and mountain scroungers. None of these groups conduct themselves well. Everybody is freezing, eneryone needs a bath very badly, and everyone is functioning with mostly their lizard brains. The weather ranges from simply bleak and windy to blizzards. The violence is off most charts.

And yet we finished it. Perhaps we saw some truth worth learning there. About what frontier life really might have been. Brutal, dirty, bloody, and often short. Being on the frontier was probably a lot less tidy than what Little House on the Prairie presented.

Our review: Interesting story but awfully grim in the telling. No comic relief in sight. Not a guffaw or a pratfall in the entire series.

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Where did this guy come from? I totally did not see him coming. Country grunge with thoughtful lyrics, great guitar playing, passé thrift shop clothing and scraggly hair? In this song he is reminiscing about a milestone year in his adolescence. I can relate to much of it without half-trying.

(I learned that he was/is a Nirvana fan and there is a tiny musical quote in this video at 012-018 from Nirvana’s recording of All Apologies.)

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Ole was hired to paint the yellow stripe down the highway. His first day, his boss handed him a brush and a can of paint and Ole painted ten miles. The second day he only painted five.

His boss, thinking that he was getting slower because he had started off too hard on the first day, decided to give him a day off to rest. But when Ole came back to work the next day, he only painted half a mile.

So his boss asked, “Excuse me, but why have you been painting less and less each day, even after I gave you a day off?”

“Well, ” Ole answered. “I’m getting further from the can!”

(It’s been a long time since I’ve subjected anyone to an Ole and Lena joke. Figured it was catch-up time.)

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Happy Thoughts

jono55

I had a happy thought this morning. In just three weeks the hours of daylight will start increasing. More sunlight, less gloom … what’s not to like? Of course it’s a bit like getting a brighter bulb when you’re still living in the refrigerator, but hey – it’s a start.

I am reminded of the oft-uttered phrases:

  • It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.
  • It isn’t that it’s cold, it’s a damp cold.

In both cases it is water vapor that is being blamed for all our troubles, rather than the obvious fact that the temperature levels may not be compatible with (comfortable) life.

Over the years I have made an exhaustive study of just what the optimal environmental temperature is for human beings. I will admit that my study sample is rather small, being limited to … me. But I believe my findings are still worthy of your consideration.

Summary of findings: the optimal room temperature is exactly 73 degrees Fahrenheit.

Anything above this and a human may suffer antiperspirant breakthrough. Anything below 73 and you’re wondering: where did I put that afghan, anyway?

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The Parting Glass, by boygenius

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From The New Yorker

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Flights of Sandhill cranes going by off and on all afternoon. Often so high you have to squint to see them, but that unique cronking sound is unmistakable. They are tidily and sensibly arranged in vee formations heading south.

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If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Lewis Carroll

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Day after day the bad odor of the yet-to-be-unleashed Cluck administration increases as it is almost entirely based on slavish loyalty and nepotism. I would describe the scent as fetid swamp mixed with hints of decay and limburger cheese.

And just when I was about to enter the state of high dudgeon over these awful Republican choices the leader of the Democratic party breaks his promise to us all and pardons his son.

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Mr. Biden and Mr. Cluck are showing us as clearly as they can that the problem with electing humans to office is to be continually disappointed. Where now is all of the posturing of either party about no person being above the law? If it weren’t for the fact that my computer sometimes behaves completely irresponsibly and illogically I would cry out: Bring on AI and the robots!

Ultimately it’s up to us, isn’t it? And we would so love to give that job to someone else while we plant our gardens and play a few more rounds of golf.* It isn’t distracted driving that’s the biggest problem out there, it’s distracted living.

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*Full disclosure here. I garden little and never played golf. I could have said go kayaking or hiking but then it would have applied to me, which I did not want it to do at all. I’m above all that. Really.

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Happy Christmas (War Is Over), by John Lennon

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From The New Yorker

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We’re getting on with the task of Christmas-izing the little space we call home. I would say we peaked in about the year 2000 or so with the amount of holiday decorations we placed about a much larger dwelling, and we have been divesting ever since. For example we’ve gone from something like thirty or forty Snow Village pieces to a modest five. From eight-foot decorated evergreen trees to 4 1/2 foot trees. We move the Buddha from his place on the berm and install statues of Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus.

And presto! We’re done! To us the feeling is the same. Turns out that for us it’s not the size of the observance, but the observance itself that matters. Our plan is to be at home this year, and if there are others among our friends and neighbors who are doing the same we will see if we can’t get together for an evening or two.

So – three weeks till Christmas. I give myself carte blanche to bring out the holiday music each day until Robin exclaims: STOP WITH THE MUSIC ALREADY IT IS DRIVING ME MAD! At one time in our history together I had only purchased Christmas tunes to play, but now between Apple Music and Pandora I have access to enough new and old, profane and sacred, tacky and treasured Christmas music to choke the proverbial horse. Or, as in our case, to drive someone utterly mad.

I might even share some tunes here on this journal. BTW, I have never liked the term “blog.” Just saying the word makes me sound like I’m about to cough up something gross. Anyway, if the music starts to make you crazy, please indicate and I may or may not retreat.

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Oíche Chiúin, by Enya

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Special Edition

jono55

[I have taken a great liberty here, but Robert Reich’s piece in The Guardian today speaks to perhaps millions of Americans who are standing around wondering what our next move should be. Here is the piece, along with a link to it in its original location.]

A Peaceful But Determined Resistance to Trump Must Start Now

by Robert Reich, from The Guardian

I won’t try to hide it. I’m heartbroken.  Heartbroken and scared, to tell you the truth. I’m sure many of you are, too. Donald Trump has decisively won the presidency, the Senate, and possibly the House of Representatives and the popular vote, too.

I still have faith in America. But right now, that’s little comfort to the people who are most at risk.

Millions of people must now live in fear of being swept up by Trump’s cruel mass deportation plan – documented immigrants, as he has threatened before, as well as undocumented, and millions of American citizens with undocumented parents or spouses.

Women and girls must now fear that they’ll be forced to give birth or be denied life-saving care during an ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage.

America has become less safe for trans people – including trans kids – who were already at risk of violence and discrimination.

Anyone who has already faced prejudice and marginalization is now in greater danger than before.

Also in danger are people who have stood up to Trump, who has promised to seek revenge against his political opponents.

Countless people are now endangered on a scale and intensity almost unheard of in modern America.

Our first responsibility is to protect all those who are in harm’s way.

We will do that by resisting Trump’s attempts to suppress women’s freedoms. We will fight for the rights of women and girls to determine when and whether they have children. No one will force a woman to give birth.

We will block Trump’s cruel efforts at mass deportation. We will fight to give sanctuary to productive, law-abiding members of our communities, including young people who arrived here as babies or children.

We will not allow mass arrests and mass detention of anyone in America. We will not permit families to be separated. We will not allow the military to be used to intimidate and subjugate anyone in this country.

We will protect trans people and everyone else who is scapegoated because of how they look or what they believe. No one should have to be ashamed of who they are.

We will stop Trump’s efforts to retaliate against his perceived enemies. A free nation protects political dissent. A democracy needs people willing to stand up to tyranny.

How will we conduct this resistance?

By organizing our communities. By fighting through the courts. By arguing our cause through the media.

We will ask other Americans to join us – left and right, progressive and conservative, white people and people of color. It will be the largest and most powerful resistance since the American revolution.

But it will be peaceful. We will not succumb to violence, which would only give Trump and his regime an excuse to use organized violence against us.

We will keep alive the flames of freedom and the common good, and we will preserve our democracy. We will fight for the same things Americans have fought for since the founding of our nation – rights enshrined in the constitution and Bill of Rights.

The preamble to the constitution of the United States opens with the phrase “We the people”, conveying a sense of shared interest and a desire “to promote the general welfare”, as the preamble goes on to say.

We the people will fight for the general welfare.

We the people will resist tyranny. We will preserve the common good. We will protect our democracy.

This will not be easy, but if the American experiment in self-government is to continue, it is essential.

I know you’re scared and stressed. So am I.

If you are grieving or frightened, you are not alone. Tens of millions of Americans feel the way you do.

All I can say to reassure you is that time and again, Americans have opted for the common good. Time and again, we have come to each other’s aid. We have resisted cruelty.

We supported one another during the Great Depression. We were victorious over Hitler’s fascism and Soviet communism. We survived Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunts, Richard Nixon’s crimes, Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam war, the horrors of 9/11, and George W Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We will resist Donald Trump’s tyranny.

Although peaceful and non-violent, the resistance will nonetheless be committed and determined.

It will encompass every community in America. It will endure as long as necessary.

We will never give up on America.

The resistance starts now.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

Floaters

jono55

The barbarity and perversity of the human enterprise known as war was again displayed openly on Saturday last when there were two news items published on CNN online. The first was a video purportedly of three Ukrainian soldiers being executed after they had surrendered. The second was an announcement that the Ukrainians are using drones to rain thermite, which is molten metal, on Russian positions as shown in this photograph.

I’ve never quite understood how they came up with some of the accepted practices of war. One moment ago you and your opponents are doing your level best to kill one another. But once a group of enemy combatants surrenders, you are directed to feed and house those people without using violence toward them of any kind. But let them try to escape and you are once again encouraged to shoot at them. The whole business is horrible. Having rules governing how we can legally slaughter one another is insane. Raining molten metal on other humans is evil.

We’ve already agreed not to use chemical weapons in war, why not go through the entire arsenal and keep on banning one item after another? There have been nuclear treaties to reduce the likelihood of one particular type of calamity. Much progress has been made in ridding the world of antipersonnel land mines, a project which most countries in the world are signed onto. Let’s not stop there, but keep shrinking the tools and means to make war until we get to war itself.

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Masters of War, by Odetta

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I’m not a fan of the Cheney family of Wyoming, especially Darth Dick, but I absolutely agree with Liz this one time, when she produced a quote worth remembering. Cheney made a statement on July 21, 2022, during her closing remarks at a public hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. As the vice chair of the committee, Cheney addressed those Republicans who continued to defend former President Donald Trump despite evidence presented regarding his role in the events leading up to and during the attack.

Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.

Liz Cheney

Amen, Sister!

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I saw this cartoon in the New Yorker, and an old memory popped into my head immediately. You will soon learn why.

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When I was about eight years old, I organized an urban fishing adventure and led a trio of boys of the same age into misbehavior. Yes, I admit it, I was the kid that your parents told you not to hang around with. Instead of going to the Saturday movie matinee as we did nearly every week, we planned instead to take a side trip to a nearby lake in Minneapolis. Of course we would not tell our parents of the change in plans, since we knew that they would not approve. Deception and mendacity were skills we had obviously learned early in life.

I rounded up the following materials that I thought we would need on the journey.

  • about ten feet of stout braided fishing line (we would not have a fishing rod because there was no way we could see to conceal it)
  • two lead sinkers
  • one bobber
  • several hooks of suitable size
  • a pocket knife
  • some matches
  • several earthworms
  • an empty butternut coffee can

Off we went, first taking the direction we would ordinarily use to go to the theater, but then doubling back and heading out to Lake Harriet, which was a mile or two away.

After some time we reached the lake, and after rigging our single line and tossing it into the water, we waited for the action to begin. When a half an hour had passed and nothing was happening, our spirits began to flag somewhat. After an hour we were becoming desperate. To have planned all this, to have taken the risks involved, and now to be denied the fruits of our disobedience seemed unfair.

And then we saw it. A small yellow perch, floating dead in the water. To us it still looked a pretty shade of bright green, not faded as fish will do when dead in the water for a long time. So after some discussion and by mutual agreement, we scooped up the fish, scaled and cleaned it with our knife. A small fire was built of available twigs, and when it seemed hot enough, we began to fry the deceased creature in the coffee can.

Turns out that we were about as proficient as cooks as we had been as fishermen. We learned that frying a perch in a coffee can without a lubricant of any kind can only lead to disappointments. The fish stuck to the hot metal, everywhere. Trying to turn it using more sticks was a minor disaster.

But the lesson here is never to underestimate the grit and determination of eight year-old boys who have already lied to their parents, walked a couple of miles, failed to catch a legitimate fish, and needed to leave in ten minutes to get home on time and avoid discovery. At some point we declared that our meal was cooked, distributed the set of fish fragments that had resulted from the cooking process, and ate them.

After stuffing ourselves on our diminutive “catch,” we returned home at what was our planned ETA. Looking back if I was to score our adventure honestly I would do it this way: Fishing = F, Cooking = F, being conniving little delinquents = A+.

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Fishing, by Widespread Panic

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Last night’s presidential debate was a balm to my psyche. As sweet as the wine of the gods. VP Harris was in charge the entire evening, as she prodded what’s his name into one furious falsehood after another. She looked confident and comfortable up there, smiling or laughing a good deal of the time. He squinted, fumed, ranted, lied profusely and continuously, and looked ancient.

I admit to being highly prejudiced but I would score it this way: Harris = presidential material, Cluck = malignant fool. I grant that the MAGA universe has the right to vote as they wish, but I do not respect anyone who will vote to turn this country over to the “leadership” of such a man.

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