Tag: weather

MADJB

jono55

I was leafing through a small-town newspaper the other day and came across this reference to a group of comics that liked to play music together and eventually got together and formed a band. Because they were all middle-aged dads they called it the Middle Aged Dads Jam Band, or MADJB. Eventually they began playing gigs, developed a YouTube Channel, and are living the dream.

Kind of a hoot, it is.

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Robin and I went driving to see how far up the road to the Black Canyon National Park we could go without being arrested. Just before the gate entrance we encountered a very polite park ranger whose pickup was blocking the road and who instructed us that we had gone far enough, thank you very much. But from that point we could already see a large swath of burned-over rolling hills, our first view of the damages from the fire.

On the way back down the hill from the Black Canyon entrance we found this large herd of elk grazing in Bostwick Park. In the photo you can see that there are two groups of animals, one near and one far away, totaling close to 100.

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Have you ever visited a fish hatchery? If not, here’s a brief description. There are large open concrete “ponds” of various sizes, each filled with small fish of a uniform size.

When you toss in any food, there is a great commotion as all of the fish compete with one another blindly, with so much swirling and splashing that you can no longer make out individual creatures.

That, my friends, is my metaphor for today’s Republican Party. A large group of undistinguished organisms largely inert until Cluck tosses out some random outrage or idiocy into the pond, and then there is pandemonium as they compete for scraps.

Right now, there is only one place for an up and coming member of the GOP to be, and that is with their nose planted firmly between the two rear pockets of the Generalissimo’s XXXL trousers. What they never seem to do is to look back behind themselves at the trail of bloody career corpses he has left in his wake. To Cluck, each of them is little more than a paper towel, to be used once and then thrown away.

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From The New Yorker

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After much reflection, I have come to a conclusion that I am certain many of you have reached before me. And that is the disturbing absence of fennel seeds in what passes for food in Italian restaurants. (And that includes pizza joints, which may or may not have Italian lineage).

To me, any red Italian sauce that doesn’t ‘t include a sprinkling of those delicious licorice-y and crunchy seeds is nearly always disappointing. Tonight I heated up a frozen pizza (confession time, here) and not only were there no fennel seeds but there was no basil or oregano, either. Which indicates that if one lets these commercial vendors get away with one thing that soon they are trying to get away with several.

There’s only one remedy that I can see, and that is legislative. Inclusion of fennel should be mandated, and let’s get it done. I will admit, although I have never heard of a case, that there might be people in this country who are violently allergic to this spice. Without having a choice there might be the rare bad spell for those folks in the new world I am describing. But in society some of us have to make sacrifices for the greater good, and this is one of those times.

Should Mom or Pop or Gramps perish as a result of being poisoned by Foeniculum vulgare we could all send something nice to the funeral and to the charity of their choice.

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Volare, by Domenico Modugno

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From The New Yorker

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Over the next several days we will become a family of ten at table. Amy and Justin and their families are coming for a visit. The adults will be staying at a local motel, while the children will bunk here at Basecamp. The whole thing promises to be messy and fun and is a rare event these days, when that curious creation called family is spread thinly over thousands of miles.

Our own anxieties are pretty much of the “what will we do all day when the temperature promises to be in the 90s and the mountain sun is so unforgiving?” variety. Much food has been prepared in advance, beds are assigned … what could possibly go wrong?

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The Ugly American

jono55

(The Ugly American was a best selling novel of the late fifties. It detailed blundering and arrogance in the US diplomatic service ini Southeast Asia, and its message is completely relevant today)

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David Brooks is just plain smart and a sensible conservative. In Friday’s New York Times he published an op/ed piece entitled: “It Isn’t Just Trump. America’s Whole Reputation Is Shot.”

This is not just a Trump problem; America’s whole reputation is shot. I don’t care if Abraham Lincoln himself walked into the White House in 2029, no foreign leader can responsibly trust a nation that is perpetually four years away from electing another authoritarian nihilist.

David Brooks

The article rings both sad and gut-wrenchingly true. My advice would be not to read it unless you have a strong cup of coffee at hand and your affairs in order. As for me, I have no intention of letting the sonofabitches just walk away with my America and I plan on being as big a pain in their ass as possible.

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From The New Yorker

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Every once in a while I place several versions of the same song on these pages just because I find them interesting. God’s Gonna Cut You Down is one of those. Basically it promises that even though “the long-tongued liar, midnight rider, rambler, gambler, and backbiter” may seem successful today, eventually they are due for a celestial kneecapping.

Since I personally know several people who I feel roundly deserve such attention from God, I find that the song has a comforting message. My hope is that I live long enough to see it happen, on a blue-sky day where I have a front row seat and a big box of popcorn.

It goes without saying that I hope the Deity doesn’t get around to my particular sorts of sins and my own exposed kneecaps, but focusses on those of others.

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God’s Gonna Cut You Down, by Odetta

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Okay, I’m going to ask quite a bit of you in this next section. While wandering in the internet dreamscape (nightmarescape?), I came across a longer video. Against my will I watched it, because my natural inclination is to never watch a video more than 17 seconds long. I find that my personal attention span cannot be stretched further than this without mental pain, and I avoid that like the plague.

But the video purported to discuss some of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work, and he is a hero of mine. Hero because he stood against Naziism when it meant his life, for he was hanged in a Nazi concentration camp. So I endured the discomfort, and mirabile dictu, was rewarded greatly.

The video is about a theory of stupidity, and at the end of it I said smugly to myself: Well, that explains a lot about _________ ! Now I get it!

And then, I thought (again to myself because who wants to get caught thinking about anything deep and thus becoming a terrible bore) – wait – could what I have just learned apply to me as well? Could I … cough … grumble … gasp … possibly … be stupid as well?

Unfortunately all I had to do was to review any week of my life to get the answer to my own question. The most gracious interpretation that I could come up with was it seemed that my own lengthy stupid periods were interrupted, however briefly, by rational thinking. But still …

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(Bonhoeffer said some good stuff. Here’s one that fits well with the present-day)

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.
Not to speak is to speak.
Not to act is to act.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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God’s Gonna Cut You Down, by Johnny Cash

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The past week the weather has been extraordinary. The temperature yesterday peaked at 63 degrees. I stared at my three snow shovels leaning against the inside garage wall, and wondered if I should store them out in the small shed to get them from underfoot. And then I thought: Fool! Dunderhead! You would ignore Life’s Axiom #42?

“Whatsoever thou puttest away in a hard to get at place, verily thou wilt need it immediately thereafter.”

So they are still leaning against the wall, occasionally sliding down to where one could trip on them. Perhaps in July sometime …

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God’s Gonna Cut You Down, by Larkin Poe

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From The New Yorker

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Around 0100 some wet snow falling caught Poco out when he was attending to Nature’s call in the back yard. He returned through the pet door as indignant as an 18 year old cat can be. Which when one has the vocal gifts that Poco can lay claim to, is quite the racket.

I happened to be awake, and sprang into action before the noise he was making woke my bride up. Never a good thing, that. Robin takes such an event personally, and since I am the only other human around to blame … you can see why rapid action is the only course to take. I shushed Poco, rounded up something for him to eat, and brought him into my office, where he calmed down.

Poco is a very vocal animal. He has several mewling and meows that we have come to recognize:

  • Food, I want food!
  • I am not feeling well, and within fifteen seconds I am going to throw right up on this rug
  • I am going to the litter box now (Lord knows why he needs to announce this)
  • There is an interloper (strange cat) on the deck outside the kitchen door, threatening entry
  • You are about to sit on part of my anatomy, usually a foot or my tail. Take care

Sometimes he will converse. He catches your eye and meows something whose content is a mystery. You answer “Sorry, old fellow, I don’t know what you want.” He answers. You say something again. He answers. And on and on, with him always having the last meow.

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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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Coping

jono55

Some good things that come from the cold weather are the coping strategies that we use. A steaming bowl of steel cut oats is a warm and chewy way to start a morning. Aromatic soups both mundane and exotic are just the right thing for supper, and their preparation warms and perfumes the rooms.

Sharing a small blanket with a friend while watching television harkens back to the bundling practices of colonial America. And if you and your friend are of like mind, there are delightful liberties that can be taken under that covering.

Those puffy down jackets and coats are amazing armor against arctic weather. Even my 35 year-old Loden parka, heavy wool that it is, is a barrier no icy blast can penetrate.

And when your bathroom feels like the crisper drawer in a refrigerator as you strip down to take a shower, a small portable heater can create a micro-climate just for you.

I think that our cats feel much the same way. Without the need to constantly patrol the back yard against marauders of various species, they can remain indoors and devote themselves full-time to their true love … napping.

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Father’s Son, by Stephen Wilson Jr.

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We still don’t have much snow here in Paradise, and the nearby ski areas are starting to complain that they would like quite a bit more, if you please. Ski resorts here in the mountains so frequently grumble about how much snow they’ve received that in this they are much like the farmers of the prairie states who absolutely never get the amount of sunshine or rainfall that they want.

In general talking to those farmers during the growing season is tiresome. They will rail against the weather of the present, and when they are done with that they will begin bringing up the meteorological misdeeds of the past several decades.

These orations are so similar to one another that farmers could really save themselves time and energy by transcribing one of them and then printing it as a handout to be passed around in place of conversation.

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I can’t recall if I’ve brought this up before, but my approach to cooking is to learn how to do everyday dishes well, and leave the more exotic and the gourmet to others.

So it’s a tasty roast chicken that might come from my stove, but probably not coq au vin. I don’t worry about the intricacies of working with phyllo dough because I skip over any recipe that contains it.

From time to time a new recipe will work out so well that I take one bite and my jaw drops and my pupils dilate. Although this is not a culinary blog, I am going to start sharing with you those times when something turns out that good that I can’t shut up about it. My first such share is for a chicken noodle soup that rocks, and is in a total ‘nother country.

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Cuckoo, by Stephen Wilson Jr.

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Readers of this blog over time have learned that I attend AA meetings pretty regularly. Even though I haven’t used alcohol for a very long time now, there are at least two reasons that I still go to those meetings.

  • First, one is never “cured” of whatever being an addict is, and so far there has been nothing found that works better than the comradeship and support of people in the same pickle that you are in in maintaining abstinence.
  • Second, if you have found a small boat to have been a lifesaving tool for you, gratitude leads you to personally want to make sure that such a useful watercraft is tied up to the dock and available for the next person who needs it. An AA meeting can be that boat.

Robin and I are watching the British television series Call the Midwife, and in one of its story threads it has subtly laid out the progression that many people who now suffer from alcohol addiction have followed in their lives. A main character in the show first enjoys the camaraderie and sophistication that she feels when having a dram on special occasions. Then it is on non-special occasions. Then nightly. Daily.

Because the series was so successful and lasted so long, this progression took place slowly over several years, as it often does in real life.

Eventually there come the attempts at self-control and their subsequent failures with accompanying guilt and dishonesty. The lucky ones eventually find their way to a therapeutic community, with AA being one example.

All of this has been laid out quite believably in the series. There are no big dramas, no surgeons passing out and pitching forward into the abdominal cavity (oh, the stories we accumulate), but only a good woman doing what other good women were doing but finding that somehow … inexplicably … she developed a problem while they did not.

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[Sometimes it helps to turn to poets to see through the smoke, at those times when life becomes a dance of perplexity and anguish. A friend of mine long gone used to say “Poets are the last truth-tellers.” Of course, he said a lot of things … some of them were true.]

Exquisite Politics

by Denise Duhamel

The perfect voter has a smile but no eyes,

maybe not even a nose or hair on his or her toes,

maybe not even a single sperm cell, ovum, little paramecium.

Politics is a slug copulating in a Poughkeepsie garden.

Politics is a grain of rice stuck in the mouth

of a king. I voted for a clump of cells,

anything to believe in, true as rain, sure as red wheat.

I carried my ballots around like smokes, pondered big questions,

resources and need, stars and planets, prehistoric

languages. I sat on Alice’s mushroom in Central Park,

smoked longingly in the direction of the mayor’s mansion.

Someday I won’t politic anymore, my big heart will stop

loving America and I’ll leave her as easy as a marriage,

splitting our assets, hoping to get the advantage

before the other side yells: Wow! America,

Vespucci’s first name and home of free and brave, Te amo.

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I’m A Song, by Stephen Wilson Jr.

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Words Failing

jono55

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

Everything happens for a reason.

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

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

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

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Grief Is Only Love, by Stephen Wilson Jr.

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

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

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

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Winter, by the Rolling Stones

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From The New Yorker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Winter, by Matt Corby

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

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

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

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

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

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From The New Yorker

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Winter Light, by Linda Ronstadt

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Urbane Cowboy

jono55

The lightest dusting of snow fell during the night. January is being its usual self, cold and gray and not playing well with others.

One of the bleakest sights is that of a winter sun, trying to shine through the frosted atmosphere. A round image with fuzzy borders, nearly white, with little of the sun’s usual gold or red tones, and little or no heat in it.

Just looking at it sets the marrow to tingling. Pass me that cocoa, would you please?

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I confess that I subscribe to the New Yorker to impress the easily impressed with my worldliness and sophistication. Of course, that doesn’t work with you guys who know that underneath my polished and urbane surface I am nothing more than a country cracker and s**tkicker of the first magnitude. But I love having access to the magazine’s cartoon archives, and plunder them mercilessly. When that bill comes due I will be looking to resettle in a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S.

But this week there is an article that amazed even the most jaded part of my psyche. It dealt with the memory facility that some species of birds have in recalling where they buried seeds in storing them for the cold weather months. The title is: The Elephantine Memories of Food-Caching Birds.

The author starts out with his own problems with a lost beard trimmer and a misplaced pair of pants. He then moves on to the almost unbelievable feats of memory that these birds perform every winter to accomplish that most important piece of business … staying alive.

But his personal trials pale before those that Robin and I deal with every day. Most of our conversations now start with the words: Do you know where I put my ______? This query is then answered by the phrase: Don’t worry, it’ll turn up. While that used to occasionally be the case, it is no longer tue. When I can’t find something after a five minute search, I know that I will never see it again. It is gone. Vanished. Scotty has beamed it up and it resides in some other galaxy. Its molecules have left the building.

Several times each day Robin and I pass one another as we wander through the house with identical furrowed brows and frustrated facial expressions, she on her latest quest and I on mine. We don’t have time to commiserate what with all the opening of drawers and looking under sofas. When we empty the vacuum cleaner into the trash we now pick through the contents of the dust-bag and often find things that we didn’t even know we’d lost yet.

So it is yet another case where other animal species have skills and talents that homo sapiens can only dream of. I do admit that when I begin to regard woodpeckers as paragons, I just don’t know where it is all going.

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From The New Yorker

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Waggoner’s Lad, by Bud and Travis

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Even though I reside in The state of Colorado, which is filled with mountains and ranches, I am neither mountaineer nor cowboy. I am a transplanted flatlander from the Midwest and will never be able to shake the prairie dust from my shoes and soul. I’m not even trying.

Being a newcomer, though, has its benefits. I am continually gaping in awe at the beauty of the surrounding countryside. Whenever the moment allows I am poking my nose around mesas and over passes to see what is on the other side. My curiosity leadeth me.

What I have found is that often after I have lived in a new location for a few years I often know more about the immediate surrounding territory than some lifelong residents do. It’s almost as if when one grows up in Paradise, one takes for granted that Paradise will always be there to explore whenever they want to do so, so why not wait until next week or the week after that? Whereas the newcomer may realize that life is a collection of transient moments, and that they had better take advantage of opportunities as they come along.

That’s my take on it, any way. The most striking example I’ve run up against personally is when I moved to the village of Hancock, Michigan. That town only had a population of 4700 or so, and one could easily drive across it in two minutes.

Trying to find a part-time childsitter for our kids, I was interviewing an elderly woman who ultimately declined to take the job. When asked why, she simply stated that she’d never been that far north and was uncomfortable thinking about it. From where the good woman lived on the south side of Hancock it was only a distance of a mile or so to our home. I was dumbfounded, but accepted that one mile or a hundred, she wasn’t budging in our direction. Apparently there is such a thing as too much north.

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From The New Yorker

[Lord, I do love this cartoon.]

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In a previous post I sneaked in a folk artist who may have been new to you, at least he was to me, although he has recorded five albums and apparently has a strong following.

We have a local radio station, KVNF, which plays all sorts of excellent music, and several times a year introduces me to artists that I never heard of but instantly adopt. Such was the case when I learned about the existence of Jake Xerxes Fussell.

Unflashy, unpretentious, without a moonwalk to his name. He is the genuine article.

Here’s one more track.

When I’m Called

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A few decades ago I realized that in some aspects I was a mobile tabula rasa. Whenever I reside in a new area, even if it is for a relatively short time, I find myself speaking with local accents. If I make a new friend from a different part of the country, let’s say Alabama, the same thing happens. This happens without any intent on my part, as if I were little more than a tape recorder.

Lately, and to my dismay, I have begun imitating myself. Not my speaking voice, but the written one. I will be talking to a friend and realize that I am dictating paragraphs rather than using casual speech. I am verbally blogging instead of conversing. Any day now and I suppose that I will begin saying things like What a nice day it is comma do you have any plans for this afternoon question mark?

I begin to suspect that there is a diagnosis here, but I don’t know what it is. Parrot syndrome? Magpie disease? Dictaphrenia?

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Returning to the ongoing and seemingly never-ending story of vaccine disinformation, there is an op/ed in Saturday’s NYTimes entitled I’m the Governor of Hawaii. I’ve Seen What Vaccine Skepticism Can Do that I can recommend heartily. Well written, heartbreaking, anger-producing. Makes me want to find a pointed stick and begin some serious poking .

Pair this with one from last November entitled I’ll Never Forget What Kennedy Did During Samoa’s Measles Outbreak and I can just about guarantee that your blood pressure will rise ten points, so remember to take your meds and sit in a comfortable chair before reading them. If you can find someone to rub your neck … even better.

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No Expectations, by the Black Crowes

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