Tag: winter

Leanin’

jono55

It’s 1946 and my family is decorating the Christmas tree while Perry Como is crooning songs from his new holiday album being played on an ancient 78 rpm record player which had been rescued from a rummage sale.

I am seven years old and this is the first Christmas that I know there is no Santa Claus. I don’t remember who told me, but no matter, I am still as excited as if that dreadful information had never reached my ears. I have chosen to accept both the literal truth (no Santa) and the imaginative truth (Santa) at the same time. Today, December 24, 1946, the imagination is holding perfect sway, and the power of Santa Claus is everywhere.

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Dreaming My Dreams With You, by Cowboy Junkies

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Came across this short film shot entirely with an iPhone.

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What we have all learned together these past years is that capitalism has a bunch of dirty secrets. One of them is that once you reach a certain level of wealth, you are almost immune to the problems that ordinary citizens face every day. And I’m not just talking about how much money they have. I’m talking about access to the levers of the machines that run the country, the stock market, the court system, etc. I’m talking about access to the politicians who are largely your own creatures, picked to do what you want to have done.

Turns out that the majority of people in politics seem unable to resist the smell of currency and the possibility of one day having piles of it around the house.

When Robin and I moved to Montrose, we considered ourselves Democrats, and once everything was unpacked we began to seek out others of our kind. Each year the local Democratic Party would put on a barbecue dinner for the membership, and we found it a very pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. But each year we would look at the attendees and knit our brows.

Those sitting at the tables were very nice people, but almost all of them were white and either senior citizens or on the brink of becoming one. Youth was absent. People of color were largely absent. All in all it looked like a political party on its way to self-extinction.

And the came the year when the casual barbecues of the past were left behind. Now it was to be a 50 dollar a plate dinner at a “better” venue. That was the point we stopped going to these yearly get-togethers. If anyone needed to see why the Democratic membership was such a narrow slice of the electorate you didn’t have to look any further than the ticket price. It was automatic exclusion of anyone for whom that was a significant amount of money.

So the two of us became Independents, and remain so.

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That’s All You Need, by Faces

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Sunday was my birthday and Robin and I decided to celebrate by taking a hike at the Colorado National Monument. The trail we took wasn’t a long one, and we’re still feeling the COVID effects just a bit, but it was a beautiful day and the scenery was grand. We hiked the Serpent’s Trail, named because within a relatively short distance there are sixteen switchbacks.

We may have overdone it, feeling some mild malaise when we had returned home, but ’twas well worth it. And at the end of the day there was cake. Of course there was cake. You may leave off the gifts, the cards, the well-wishing, the parties. But if there isn’t cake a birthday simply does not happen.

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One of the facts of living at altitude 5900 feet is that we can see winter for weeks before it gets to us here in the valley. Because we have those magnificent San Juan Mountains in view. First a tentative whitening on the mountaintops that goes away with the first sunny day, then a snow covering that remains … at around 11,000 feet … then 10,000 feet … 9,000 feet. Then a few flakes on a chilly morning whistling down the streets of Montrose. A very gradual introduction to the winter season.

With all this warning going on, there is really little excuse for being caught short. If you haven’t got the snow shovels out and placed them where you will need them, if you haven’t winterized your lawn sprinkling system, if you haven’t checked the tread on the tires of your car for seasonal suitability … well, I just don’t know.

And yet every year there is something that I don’t get done. Something that didn’t get put away well enough. I like to think that these minor mistakes are part of a built-in DNA package that keeps me from becoming too satisfied with myself. The question becomes: How could I ever think that I was perfect if I did that? It’s what a boob would do.

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When Bill Withers wrote “Lean On Me” in 1972, toying around on a small piano with only the phrase ‘lean on me’ to guide him, he never could have expected the song — about a rural man’s loneliness in the big city — would become an inspirational anthem to those rising up after tragedy, or a celebratory rallying cry of togetherness and resilience in times of trouble.

Rolling Stone Magazine

Re-listening to this tune 53 years after it was first released I am struck by how well it fits our time. It is a song made for those loneliest moments in life. Simple lyrics but man, what comfort (and solid advice) they have to offer.

Lean On Me (Carnegie Hall concert), by Bill Withers

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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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Haiku, Winter

jono55

I have started to write the Great American Novel scores of times. Each effort was eventually scrapped. If I have any talent at all it seems to be in shorter pieces, essays, poems … the sort of meanderings found in this blog, for instance.

Which is why when I first came across haiku and bothered to learn something about it, I knew instantly that I was among friends. It was the economy of it all, the formalities, the natural themes that appealed to me. The Japanese must take all of the blame for starting me on this path. Traditionally haiku are three-lined poems, of 5-7-5 syllables per line. Most of those I selected today but the very last one are by Japanese masters of the art, but that 5-7-5 format did not survive translation.

To me, they are like photographs, whereas a novel might represent a movie. It’s not too hard to put myself or my experiences into the picture with haiku, which is part of its charm.

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When the winter chrysanthemums go,
There’s nothing to write about
But radishes.

Basho

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Song For A Winter’s Night, by Gordon Lightfoot

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Here,
I’m here—
The snow falling

Issa

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Going home,
The horse stumbles
In the winter wind.

Buson

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Colder Than Winter, by Vince Gill

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Cover my head
Or my feet?
The winter quilt.

Buson

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Winter solitude—
In a world of one color
The sound of wind.

Basho

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Winter, by Tori Amos

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Miles of frost –
On the lake
The moon’s my own.

Buson

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The snowstorm howling,
A cautious man treads upon
Bare and frozen earth

Anonymous

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Winter, by Peter Kater

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Some comments on the music –

Song for a winter’s night: there’s a cabin, a crackling fire, and a big ol’ down quilt to get under. We just have to find where Gordon put them all.

Colder than winter: I have experienced winters of the heart, and since I know that I am not unique, perhaps you have as well. Vince Gill never sounded better or more plaintive.

Winter: from Tori Amos’ first album, an exceptionally brave and talented young artist just getting her career underway.

Winter: yes, yes, of course Peter Kater is New Age-y as he can be, but it’s still a rather nice way to pass a few minutes. Remember how way back in those dim dark days (almost) beyond recall when your teacher in “music appreciation class” would put on a piece of music and ask that you imagine that it was snowing or raining or that the oboe’s voice was a duck quacking? Well … have at it.

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Alarum!

jono55

There are way too many alarmists working in the weather service. We were told to expect 1-2 feet of snow in the mountains above 8000 feet along with sub-zero temperatures. None of this sounded good to Robin and I as we tried to plan our Thanksgiving journey to Durango. We hunched over the weather app on my phone on Wednesday, waiting and watching, finally calling the pet sitter at mid-day to tell her “Game On.”

Predicted driving conditions

Our wills were in order, we had food for two days survival, enough warm clothing, and a reliable vehicle. We said our prayers and climbed into the Outback, looking tenderly at our little home for perhaps the last time. Off we went, anticipating treacherous patches of glare ice, hard drifts across the highway that could make you lose control, and trucks skating sideways right at us coming down a mountain two-lane road.

What we found was no snow at all on 99.4 % of the road, and temperatures in the thirties. The countryside was beautiful under a couple of inches of new and trackless snow. It was a breeze.

Actual driving conditions

I tried to imagine the home life of those prognosticators, how each flutter of a leaf or errant drop of moisture must send them into fearful spasms where they rush their families into basements or attics, handing out stored hardtack when their little ones cried out from hunger.

Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once.

William Shakespeare: Julius Caesar

I’m looking for a hive of valiant meteorologists. Growing less interested in what the Chicken Little variety has to say.

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Elon Musk is naming people that he might recommend to be fired when the new administration takes over. Naming people might be thought of as reckless of life (by uncharitable folks like me) when he and his new orange BFF have a large following of blackshirts and brownshirts who like nothing better than than to be given an excuse to hit people.

The richest man in the world publicly picking on ordinary citizens … anybody see a problem here?

Where’s my dictionary … let’s look under “bully” … ahhh … there we are. Perhaps that should be the name of his Musk’s new quasi-official-department: The Office of Cravens.

He fits right in with his new pal, President-elect Bonespurs.

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(Ran across a line from this poem, and just had to look it up.)

When Great Trees Fall

by Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory,suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die
and our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed and informed by their
radiance, fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of
dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

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There are those who speak our language, this English we trample on and murder daily, in such a way as to ennoble it. Or perhaps to show how innately noble our mother tongue really is. Maya Angelou had one of those voices. Each syllable ringing clearly as any bell. No mumbling. No idiosyncratic elisions. Poetry.

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If We Make It Through December, by Phoebe Bridgers

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So it is December. I must now join the consumer herd in search of some small remembrance for a handful of people. It is a dangerous thing, this entering a large and crazed group of people which has already been in motion for at least a month now. The herd slavers as it passes, every pupil dilated, every nostril flared, every breath labored. They have only just left one of the seemingly endless Black Fridays behind, and are looking desperately over their shoulders at signs reading: Only (X) shopping days till Christmas.

I will do my duty. I am no shirker. If overconsumption is required of me, overconsume I will. I am a full-blooded American, after all, and once I am galloping with the rest of the swarm it pays onlookers to be cautious of those sharp hooves and horns!

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