Tag: ukraine

Timing

jono55

Our ash trees have given up all their leaves and it’s time for the human effort to begin in earnest. That, for the most part, means me. I start on the south side of our property and blow everything up against the board fence on the north side. That’s the fun part. Now it only remains to get those zillions of leaves over the fence to where they can do their careful work of producing something approaching a rich soil along the banks of the irrigation canal.

I do armfuls, shovelfuls, rakefuls, and eventually the pile is over the fence and out of sight. I’m not quite sure what they are, but when you work with dry and dusty leaves here in Paradise you get invisible prickly things in your hands and arms that continue to dog you for days afterward.

Eighty years ago in Minneapolis, my father would rake the elm leaves to the curb out in front of our home and then set fire to them. As would every other homeowner on our street, and on all of the other streets in our part of town.

The air would be filled with that fragrant smoke for about a week. The effect was of one great campfire. I know … sounds dreadful now, doesn’t it? But back in the 40s and 50s there was not the sense of polluting and doing environmental damage that there is today. There would always be enough clean air for everybody seemed to be the working hypothesis. And the effect of all that smoke on those with lung disease? Not to worry.

Somehow we didn’t burn our houses down every Fall. I know not why. Sometimes the gods reward the foolish.

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Time After Time, by Cyndi Lauper

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Can we talk about AI for a moment? I used it to create the above drawing of a Minneapolis street. I spoke a command into Willow Voice and ChatGPT made the sketch. If I hadn’t done that, I would have needed to search for someone else’s image on the internet and then use it. Why not draw my own? Because I have zero talents in that direction. Zero. In fact, I am probably the antichrist of artists. My illustrative skills peaked at the second-grade level, and have deteriorated since then.

So it is always a choice for me between using no images and using one of the other modalities. For years I chose what I regarded as gentle thievery of the work of others, now I am more and more choosing AI. But know that if you ever see any artwork on my posts, it was drawn by somebody or something else.

There, that’s my confession and my disclaimer. Think of me as congenitally missing an artistic limb, and needing to borrow a prosthesis to be able to walk about.

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Some leftover sliced beets whose container was pushed so far back in the refrigerator that I could not hear their cries for help.

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I had a birthday this week, number 87. Robin, granddaughter Elsa, and I went out to do a lovely dinner to celebrate it. That’s about as much as I like to do with birthdays. When I was very small and a birthday rolled around, I would feel as if the world had changed on that signal day. I was now taller, smarter, more powerful in every way than I had been the day before. That intensity of feeling no longer arises, and hasn’t for some time.

When I was six years old my attitude toward birthdays was “Give me more of these.” Now it’s a bit more like “How many do I have left?” Not meant to be a downer, mind you, just making an observation.

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Wish You Were Here, by Pink Floyd

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A friend asked me recently what I had done with a blog character, a Viking warrior named Ragnar, with whom I used to have imaginary conversations. I gave a poor sort of answer to that friend, I’m afraid. Truth is that Ragnar has always been an embodiment of an angry side of my personality, one a bit too violent for decent company. The past several years as I watched injustice climb, racism promoted, corruption flourishing, and in general America taking definite steps toward Hell, I never felt safe bringing Ragnar back, and still don’t. I fear that what would emerge would be little more than boring, semi-literate, and odious vituperations best kept to myself.

Perhaps, on one altogether fine and sunny day in the future …

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There are songs that when you hear them you know that just about everybody will love them and be humming them by the end of the month. They are that good, the hook is that ingenious, and it is all very easy to attach a memory to them. They are winners all around.

And then there are songs that have attached themselves to me and I don’t get how that happened. This one, one from their album Green, is one of the latter. The durn thing doesn’t even have a title. How lame is that? But I never listen to this tune without playing it through to the end. Watch out if you choose to click on it, it might do the same thing to you.

I looked for the story behind the song, and came up with this:

The track itself was written by Michael Stipe as a goodbye message to his parents, seeking to reassure them while he was out touring, a frequent necessity for R.E.M.

When I listen I create my own meanings and story for the song, and they are not always the same, but in each case it is wishing well for someone not present. Kind of a Buddhist thing, actually.

Untitled, by R.E.M.

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I am getting a chuckle out of the tale of two Dan Sullivans. The Republican candidate for a Senate seat from Alaska is Dan Sullivan. His opponent, Mary Peltola, has some staff members who thought it a great idea to find another Dan Sullivan somewhere and register him as an Independent candidate. The hope was that there would be a large number of dimwitted Alaskans who wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them, and thus split the anti-Peltola vote.

Of course it was a clumsy thing to do, and of course the ruse was discovered almost immediately. What I have found so amusing is the official Republican responses, which suggest that this is the most horrible and despicable thing they’ve ever witnessed in politics.

Really? Such indignation from a party that has become a megaphone for Cluck’s worst impulses? A party that has deliberately stalled investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s list of associates in the child trafficking business? A party that didn’t make a peep when we broke our promises to our ally Ukraine and started giving aid and assistance to their (and our) enemies?

I believe that the Republican Party may have lost its sense of humor as well as its mind.

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Screenshot
Screenshot

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The beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti modified Kahlil Gibran’s poem of the same name in 2007. It is right on the mark for today.

PITY THE NATION

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
And whose bigots haunt the airwaves

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerors
And acclaim the bully as hero
And aims to rule the world
By force and by torture

Pity the nation that knows
No other language but its own
And no other culture but its own

Pity the nation whose breath is money
And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed

Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away

My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!

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Damn You, Richard Gere

jono55

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

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

Canon in D Major, arr. by John Williams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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What Are Their Names, by David Crosby

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

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

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

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

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

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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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