There is one positive thing about being surrounded by wildfires in that there are some of the prettiest sunrises and sunsets as the color red comes to the fore in both of them. We’ve had about two weeks now of poor air quality due to smoke. Even the teensy version of asthma that I have has been provoked by it.
Robin and I cancelled on walking with Indivisible in the local parade on the 4th of July. We decided that if we were going to be taking a chance on sunstroke or smoke inhalation or both, ’twas time to bow out. Fair weather rebels, we.
The smoke is heavy enough that you can begin to see a faint haze between you and any object more than twenty feet away. Our friends on oxygen are staying home, eating what’s left in the pantry before they venture to the grocery store. We volunteer to run those errands but they are stubborn folk and insist on doing it themselves.
Just to reassure, Robin and I are in no danger. None of the fires are close enough or in the right location to threaten Montrose.
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The image of the masked “patriots” on the bus tells a story, doesn’t it? A young black woman surrounded by a gaggle of MOLC (Men Of Little Courage) on public transportation.
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The men, of course, are on their way to a white nationalist demonstration, where they will do their best to get that woman to her proper place in the back of the bus once again. These cowardly dipsticks have nowhere to swim but upstream, although it seems that they haven’t the wit to realize it.
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The Way It Is, by Bruce Hornsby and the Range
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The header image today is of the famous painting by Norman Rockwell entitled the The Problem We All Live With. It portrays a six year-old girl named Ruby Bridges being escorted to school by federal marshals in 1960. She was, all by her small self, integrating a New Orleans school.
My imagination falls short each time I hear this story. The courage of that family, to send their child through the hate-filled mob each day. Who has courage like that?
The mob that came together to threaten and hurl imprecations at a six year-old girl. What is wrong with people who could do that to a child?
Here’s a video with some of Ruby’s story.
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Bridge Over Troubled Water, by Simon and Garfunkel
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Today’s button image is worn by a group of citizens who attend and monitor the Montrose City Council meetings. At present the council is 60% MAGA … ’nuff said?
This past week we took a tour of the Old Hundred Mine, located near Silverton CO. At $29 per person, it was by far the most expensive such tour we’d ever encountered. By a factor of at least two. But I think it was worth it. First we were loaded into tram cars and then we were whistled straight into a mountain for three miles, in nearly complete darkness.
When we reached the turning around point, the tram stopped and we disembarked and gathered around the leader/spokesperson. We learned about the history of mining drills and drilling, and the demonstrations of those implements were dramatic and deafening. Next he covered how miners communicated through visual signals, since the environment was often a very noisy one. We also heard about ore handling, the history of lighting in mines, and some differences between hard rock mining and coal mining.
What made this all more meaningful was that this man was a lifelong resident of Silverton, and had worked for two decades at the same job he was telling us about, with its rewards and dangers. The takeaway impressions of our little group were almost unanimous. We were:
fascinated by the information he provided
repelled by some of the tragic stories of injury and death that he shared, of people he had known personally
appreciative of the humor woven throughout his presentation
absolutely grateful that we had never been put into a situation where working as a miner was asked of us, because we would have bolted immediately
One sidebar. At one place outside the mine if you looked up you could see the remains of the famous Old Hundred Boarding House very near the top of the mountain. Since back in the day the trip up to that level was by mule and was both slow and hazardous, a boarding house was built at the top. It was bolted to the mountain itself, and had a front deck that was pretty dramatic.
While trying to sleep in a building that had to be fastened to a mountain to keep it from sliding off into the abyss would have likely been impossible for an acrophobic like myself, I can easily recognize that it saved hours and hours of travel time to and from the ground thousands of feet below. Here’s a small boarding house gallery to give you a better idea of what I’m talking about.
So that $29 ticket price … pretty high but worth it for the realistic scenes and the colorful word painting by our tour guide.
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My personal journey in non-violence greatly intensified the day that John F. Kennedy was shot. Like so many of us I was staggered by that event, going from disbelief to grief to anger and back to disbelief countless times in the succeeding hours and days. We know now that he was far from a perfect man, but at the time he and his wife represented courage and possibility and brought out the vision of a shining America of which we could be proud. So how could a single bullet take all of that away?
That’s the problem with death. There is no reprieve, no walking it back. No second chances or do-overs. In those golden but bloody years when Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and Bobby Kennedy walked the earth and were then murdered my revulsion at political violence only strengthened. It is why even though Cluck is the loathsome creature that he is and even though he is harming our country almost with every in-breath and out-breath, I don’t want some yahoo with a rifle to make him a tawdry martyr.
Make no mistake, I want him gone, and if given the opportunity I would happily volunteer to drive the van carrying him to prison, but if humans are going to make lasting progress, violence in all spheres needs to be dialed back to as close to zero as we can get it.
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In 1976 Tom Waits was becoming the kind of alcoholic that I had hoped to become when I grew up. One that wandered smoky bars and midnight avenues in the company of colorful characters. An artist sacrificing his body to follow his muse and then perishing while mourners filled all the barstools but the one held empty in his honor.
Only problem was that while I was capable of bending my elbow with the best (or worst) of them I wasn’t an artist. I was just another doofus who didn’t know when to stop and then found that he couldn’t.
Waits came up with a new album that year, Small Change, and this was the song that led it off.
Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen), by Tom Waits
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Saturday evening the smoke blew in, coming from southwest Colorado and southeastern Utah. Enough to irritate the eyes, trigger a cough of two. The aroma of a campfire was everywhere.
On the map, Montrose would be located just south of Delta.
On last Saturday three firefighters lost their lives near the Colorado-Utah border. A tragic loss. There are times when fires are burning nearer to us that I see members of firefighting crews in town, usually shopping for groceries or grabbing coffees at a Starbuck’s. They are all young and fit and there is such an obvious camaraderie present it is a joy to watch.
They are one more bunch of people in uniforms that keep us safe by doing work that is dangerous and they know it but they still go out there. Such courage is a rare commodity, something never to be wasted.
We are looking forward to watching the repopulation of the plants in the Black Canyon National Park. Readers will recall that last year there was a significant fire that torched much of the park, and has left us with fewer options on our visits. For instance, the campgrounds are closed, having suffered much damage to structures and campsites. The road down to the canyon floor at East Portal remains closed with no re-opening date set as yet. Concerns about rockslides and mudslides on this steep stretch of highway have kept visitors from having access to the Gunnison River.
But it is the plant life that I am interested in. The Gambel oaks and the serviceberries and the grasses and the lupines and the piñons … what are they going to do this coming Spring? Will they all come back? It’s a hard life for a plant up there, with rocky soil and scant water, even in good times. A story is about to unfold and I am ready to learn from it.
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One for My Baby, by Josh White
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The South Rim of the Black Canyon Nation Park has a single road of about seven miles in length that runs the length of the park. During the cold weather months the road is blocked off from the Visitor Center onward and becomes a cross-country ski trail. Each Spring there is a short period between when the narrow two-lane road is completely free of snow and when it is opened to automobile traffic. If you are lucky and can make it up there during that time, it is a wonderful and dramatic bicycle ride, completely un-bothered by cars. You have the road to yourselves.
You can ride your bikes the rest of the year, of course, but there is little in the way of a shoulder for much of the road, and there are few areas where cars can safely pass you, so they tend to pile up behind your bike and make you nervous. This makes for a lot of getting on and off the highway whenever possible just to let those frustrated drivers get on with their trip.
But that golden window is just about upon us when we have the trifecta of good weather, a dry road, and no cars. Can’t wait.
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Jelly, Jelly, by Josh White
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Robin and I have been using electric bicycles for the past four years, and really enjoy them. I don’t want to overplay the geezer card, but these machines really flatten the hills and enable us to take longer rides than we ordinarily would on non-motorized cycles. They only have two major drawbacks. One is that unless you are able to fork over more than about three grand for a luxo model you will be riding a heavier bike that weighs about 60 pounds or more. The second is that if you really want to cover a lot of ground on your ride you are limited to how far your particular bike will go on the battery’s charge. For the machines that Robin and I are using, the range is around 40 miles, depending on terrain.
The Optibike R22 Everest is presently the e-bike with the longest range, boasting a 300-mile capacity (482 km) via a 3,260Wh dual-battery system. To acquire this technological marvel all you have to do is give the dealer something over $18,900.
I did give it just the briefest consideration but eventually decided against buying one, deciding that it was better for Robin and I to be able to eat.
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Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dyin’ Bed, by Josh White
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Josh White has been a favorite of mine since I was sixteen and first heard him sing One For The Road while I was sitting in my car and gnawing on a bag lunch on the University of Minnesota farm campus. At the time I knew nothing about him and his life, just being entranced by the voice and the guitar. Turns out that he had a fascinating life and played several important roles along the way.
White was in many senses a trailblazer: popular country bluesman in the early 1930s, responsible for introducing a mass white audience to folk-blues in the 1940s, and the first black singer-guitarist to star in Hollywood films and on Broadway. On one hand he was famous for his civil rights songs, which made him a favorite of the Roosevelts, and on the other he was known for his sexy stage persona (a first for a black male artist).
He was the first black singer to give a White House command performance (1941), to perform in previously segregated hotels (1942), to get a million-selling record (“One Meatball”, 1944), and the first to make a solo concert tour of America (1945). He was also the first folk and blues artist to perform in a nightclub, the first to tour internationally, and (along with LeadBelly and Woody Guthrie) the first to be honored with a US postage stamp.
There is a struggle going on right now between humans trying to do their best and humans doing their worst. The good in us will triumph, I am certain of that, but there will be hardships enough along the way to satisfy the most masochistic. And when those standing for compassion and justice and tolerance once again take the reins those virtues will have their moment for as long as we are willing to fight for them. For as long as we can remember that they are maintained only by constant struggle.
I recall when I first read The Lord of the Rings that at the end there were still bad guys out there, and definite suggestions that they would come out of their hidey-holes one day down the road and mess things up once again. It was part of Tolkien’s genius to see that comfort could be the enemy of vigilance, which always gave evil renewed opportunities.
He didn’t give me the unmitigated hopeful ending that I wanted. It pissed me off. Never mind that this good/evil cycle had already been repeated during my own time on the planet, I wanted the happy ever after. Eventually … but grudgingly … I forgave him for telling me the truth.
Our guests of the past weekend came and went. Our home is returning to normal as everything that was shifted has been moved back to its rightful spot in the cosmic scheme of things. The refrigerator is half-filled with leftovers of good foods that somehow were overstocked at meals and were too tasty to throw out.
No matter. Prudence and parsimony require that those leftover baked beans must be consumed right down to the last gaseous molecule. The old gag line: “We had a thousand things for supper … all of ’em beans” was never more true than at supper the last two nights. By Friday we should be able to look once more ahead rather than backwards in our menu planning.
Even though the teenagers largely ignored the adults, it was good to see those kids at play and to hear all that enthusiastic giggling. And as I went through the paces of cleaning my bathroom, which had been turned over to them, I was reminded of a constant thread that runs through all the generations that we are so fond of naming. Teenagers might be meticulous in their appearance, but they are positively slobs at the makeup mirror. Thorough cleaning required my use of a firehose and a strong right arm.
Good to know that some things remain the same.
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It has become so depressing to read the news. We have become a nation where the only thing that other nations can trust about is that we can’t be trusted. We are the bad guys in all corners of the world. Perhaps not the only bad guys, but … damn. I find myself cheering for Canada every time they stick it to us in yet one more way. When British Columbia threatens to shut down the trans-Canada highway to Alaska, which is our lone land connection to the 49th state, some little interior voice says DOITDOIT!
Of course this regime will eventually fall apart, it is too villainous and selfish to last, but when will that downfall occur, and what amount of damage will have been done in the interim? What a shame. How many lives wasted, torn apart, spent in pain and sorrow that is completely unnecessary? It is truly our age of dishonor.
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Hurdy-Gurdy Man, by Donovan
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Well, that’s it. I’m tired of global warming and there’s no going around it. This endless succession of 90° days is making it impossible for me to grow my one tomato per year, and have become very tiresome.
I’m sure there must be some way of turning it off, and I would like the government to get about it as soon as possible. This just won’t do.
Right now, of course, our government is consumed with trying to decide whether the president is a pedophile or not. The insiders in his regime have decided that of course he’s not and is instead quite a wonderful person. Never mind that the rest of the world knows that he is almost entirely abominable.
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Runaway Train, by Soul Asylum
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Colorado is in the midst of a looooong drought. It has made things very crispy out here in Paradise, and one result was that bundle of wildfires that started a month ago during a dry thunderstorm. But we are not the only ones dealing with this natural but uncomfortable phenomenon. Right now the Lee wildfire near Meeker has consumed more than 110,000 acres, and there are many smaller ones scattered about. Here is a map of their locations as of yesterday.
The Lee wildfire, the fifth largest in Colorado’s history, has caused many people to have to leave their homes, and an entire prison needed to be evacuated and the population moved to one far away from fire activity. Schools are closed, parks are closed, some highways are unsafe to travel … it’s all a large and dangerous mess.
The only real bright spot is that to date no lives have been lost, neither of residents nor firefighters. Each year I marvel of the courage of those battling to contain the blazes. Whenever a fire is nearby, I will see these young people in the grocery store, shopping for supplies in small groups of very fit-looking men and women wearing a variety of uniforms. They are a cadre, proud and resourceful.
Little Home In The Valley 