Category Archives: Politics

Health, Poetry, Politics

More medical stuff. Skip if not interested.

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Imbolc and the Valentine Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Septic. Kristie. Nichie. Monty. Pam. Good lab numbers. Mets. No, not those Mets. Metastases. Prolia. For strong bones. Weight loss. Colorado River Compact. Snowpack. Water. So necessary, so scarce here. The West. The Rocky Mountains. Laurentian Shield. The Huronian Supergroup. Cratons. Erleada. Orgovyx. Award Winning Pet Grooming. Vascular Institute. Ultra Sound.

Sparks of joy and awe: Urology Associates. Has my back.

 

Whoa. 82 minutes for my workout yesterday. And, I mean whoa. Wore me out. In a good way.

 

Over to Urology Associates in Littleton for my three month checkup. The Orgovyx/Erleada combination keeps me in the undetectable range. Still aiming for taking me off of them late summer, early fall. So they don’t lose efficacy for me.

That last point may tip the decision about radiating my two active metastases sites. I don’t want to go off the meds with active cancer sites. Going to see Dr. Eigner on the 20th of this month. Will decide then. Kristie suggested I get his input, too, before I made a final decision. She said it’s a tough call. It is. I wouldn’t hesitate if it didn’t involve my spine.

After my medical consult and my every six month shot of Prolia, I went to see Nichie. A Nurse navigator. Glad. Choppy financial waters. Her specialty. She handed me a bottle of Orgovyx and a month’s supply of Erleada. Samples. Then she took my information and started applying for other possible sources of aid. We’ll give you free samples until we find something. OK.

Not sure how this whole thing turned around, but right now I’m paying very little. I think it’s the case that nobody understands the damned system. We’re all flying blind. Why we need a nurse navigator, I guess. Oops, mixed metaphors.

By the time I got back from my appointment, after a brief stop at Tony’s, I’d been rode hard and put away wet. Got home when the phone rang. Nichie telling me she had my application underway. And a lot of other stuff I was too tired to take in, especially since I was also feeding Kep.

After Kep ate, I sat down and felt overwhelmed. Tired and having necessary, but complicated information coming at me. Knew it would all seem less complex after a good night’s sleep. It does.

Later today. Left leg arteries and veins. Keep those doctors gettin’ paid.

 

I’ll close with this by Langston Hughes. Found by buddy Tom:

Southern Mammy Sings

Last week they lynched a colored boy

They hung him to a tree.

That colored boy ain’t said a thing

But us all should be free.

Yes, m’am!

Us all should be free.

Not meanin’ to be sassy

And not meanin’ to be smart.

But sometimes I think that white folks

Just ain’t got no heart.

No, m’am!

Just ain’t got no heart.

Aging, Commentary on the news, Cooking, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Work, Jefferson County, Judaism, Mountains, Plants, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History

It was a lynching

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Winter and the Valentine Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Hot Water. My shower. Marilyn and Irv. Ageism. Aspen Perk. Aspen Park Dental. Darlene, the hygienist. Seeing the Magpies against the Snow as I sat in the dental chair. Clean teeth. Good gum health. No work needed. Yes. Grocery pickup. Home. Brined center cut porkchops. Cooked in the Air fryer. Mixed vegetables. Tangerine. Mary’s photos of her last days in Kobe. Eau Claire. Air travel. Sarah and Annie. The Jeep.

Sparks of joy and awe: Friends and family

 

A note I sent to my county commissioner, Lesley Dahlkemper, about a proposed Mountain bike park on Shadow Mountain Drive:

Hi, Lesley!

Met you at Marilyn Saltzman’s 70th birthday party. Before you became a commissioner. Congratulations!

I live on Black Mtn Drive. Up the hill about 2 miles from the proposed mtn bike park. Aside from the obvious degradation of a mountain side and a beautiful, clear running stream and aside from the obvious traffic nightmare on already difficult to navigate blind curves and narrow no shoulders Shadow Mountain Drive, I’d like to tell you about a 7 AM drive I took that passed by the bike park area.

There in that meadow were thirty cow Elks and one magnificent bull, a fourteen pointer. A mist was rising from Shadow Brook. Now that may not be a logical argument against the bike park, but it’s damn sure a good one to me.

 

Tyre Nichols. Still think the role of police in our culture doesn’t need drastic and dramatic change? Tainted by the power given to them by a frightened white majority the police live out the violent fantasies of those at home watching TV. Their color does not matter. What matters is their intent, their willingness to step well beyond the bounds of decency. Remember Derek Chauvin’s knee? One of the officers who stood by was Hmong. The others who stood and watched? Rodney King?

Tom Crane found an interesting interview with Rev. Dante Stewart. His words on lynching are worth sharing:

“That was more than police brutality. That was a lynching. They wanted to kill him because, in some sense, lynching is about the spectacle. It’s about what someone with power does to another human being to ride and rid them of every ounce of their dignity and put it in the public to show this is what we think about this person.

“When those in the past put Black people up on noose, it was a message to them: This is our estimation of your life, and much more, this is our hatred of your life. And when Tyre Nichols was beaten and the just immense disregard to him, it showed us in public once again the estimation of Black life, white racism and white supremacy.”  WBUR

This sort of action by the police reimagines the whip of the plantation slave master. Sanctioned violence to keep the enslaved in place. We still fear the emboldened and empowered other. What might they do to us? What to do? Do it to them first.

 

On a better note, also from Tom. On Kernza Grain. “I just came across this perennial grain developed by the Land Institute. I also ordered some from a site which sells it as a cereal much like oatmeal. I’ll let you know how it is.”

The Land Institute is a solution finder. Glad Tom found this product, the first commercial fruits of the Institute’s work. I’ll let you know what he thinks.

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Colorado, Commentary on the news, Mountains, Politics, Weather +Climate

Mountain Lion and other stuff

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Winter and the Valentine Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Origins of North America. Canada. Oh, Canada. Mid-Continent Rift. Keweenaw Peninsula. The U.P. Porcupine Mountains. Copper mined by indigenous folk. Isle Royale. The Upper Midwest. My home turf. Rocky Mountains. My home. Sun through the Lodgepoles. Snow hanging around. Solar Snow shovel failing us right now. More cold to come.

Sparks of joy and awe: Cold

 

Cold air feels pure to me. As if all the sneeze causing stuff has been cleared away. As if its source were a temple mountain to the Goddess of all things clear and refined. Compare it to the muggy, insect and dust laden heat of a Midwestern summer. Cold air brings sleep. Hot air robs sleep. Part of my ongoing love affair with living at altitude, in Minnesota. Traveling in Canada.

Kate and I both loved the cold. Were happiest in the winter months. Except for the chance to garden that only heat and Sun brings. Oh those gardening days. Halcyon. At least in memory. No wonder Elysian fields, Paradise (a walled garden). Where we humans and the Earth are openly, even gleefully in symbiosis. No wonder farmers don’t want to quit.

 

Learning about synclines and anticlines, Cratons, native Copper, room and pillar mining, truck thumpers that produce seismic waves for investigation of the geological. The sheer joy of a person who loves his subject matter. What fun. Also, I don’t have to do anything except listen. Look. Think. What I needed at this point.

 

You’ve probably noticed I’ve stopped posting photographs and images. Took too much extra time and exposed me to the occasional wrong footing of using an image under copyright. Having said that I’m going to post this picture anyhow:

 

The hunter in this picture is a former Bronco’s defensive linesman. (a big guy in other words) This Mountain Lion got tagged by Colorado Wildlife officials for killing dogs. Lots and lots of commentary on this. Mostly negative. But. It was a legal hunt done under state auspices. Last week.

Not around Shadow Mountain but not far from here either. I wanted you to see the size of this animal. Not something to be trifled with. A wild neighbor, probably weakened in some way by injury or disease so focused on easy to catch prey.

 

Can you see the debt ceiling from where you are? It’s pretty high up. The economics of nation states is a mystery to me. I know it’s not at all the same as your budget or mine, an error made by conservatives quite often. For one thing nation states can print money. I can’t. On the other hand like Everett Dirksen famously said, I’m paraphrasing here: A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

Current national debt is somewhere north of thirty-two trillion dollars. Here’s a site that explains it.

Gosh that’s a lot. Eh?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cooking, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Hermitage, Politics, Shadow Mountain

A bit of an organ recital. Another gun rant.

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Winter and the Valentine Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Robin and Michelle. Space Wranglers. Coming today. Kep, the sleeper. Award Winning Pet Grooming. His next big adventure. Cool temps. 8. The Rockies in Winter. Alan and his moving angst. Computers. Zoom. Smart phones. Cancer meds. Imani Perry. A good nights sleep. Mark. Mary. Diane. Tom. Ancient Brothers. Vince. Furball Housekeeping. Ana.

Sparks of joy and awe: Clean house. Thanks, Ana and friend. Makes my daily life better. This time they loaded the dishwasher and ran it, too. Feels good to have a clean house.

 

While they work, I worked out. Getting in 70 minutes of quality time with my old friend the treadmill. For some reason I’ve been resisting resistance work. (see what I did there?) Know I need it. Or sarcopenia will keep getting worse. Just. Not. Doing. It. Right now.

Might need an Ode solution. Go to some faraway Beach and walk in the Sand and the Sun.

 

Used my air dryer for the first time last night. It cooked my tator tots while I fried my Alaskan Rock Fish on the stove and cooked peas in the microwave. Using all my electrical appliances in a coordinated fashion. A kitchen symphony. Most excellent.

Been doing my own cooking almost exclusively over the last couple of weeks. Liking it. Lost some weight in the process. As my doc thinks is important for me to do. Four, five pounds.

 

On paying for my cancer meds. OMG. So I asked about the billing of my orgovyx at $135 instead of $896. The McKesson finance department in response sent me every bill they’ve ever made with my name on it. Thankfully online. With the last one which reads $135. WTF. And on the Erleada. Would I like to have help with my copay? Sure, but if it’s the manufacturer’s plan I don’t qualify for it. Oh, no. This is a foundation. Not the Assistance Fund? No, something different. Well, hell yeah. We’ll see if I qualify.

But, in the interim. No Erleada. Fortunately I have some free samples and a bit more from my last delivery. Otherwise. This helping would be creating over a two week lag in my meds. Sigh. Still, better to have folks trying. As long I have some meds. I mean, they are for my cancer after all.

Between this and the moving target that is my thyroid stimulating hormone, some changes to my blood pressure meds and statins. Getting complex. Along with upcoming appointments to a vascular surgeon and a new pulmonologist. Dentist. And I feel fine. Except for this damned fatigue. Worst in the afternoons.

Thus endeth the organ recital.

 

7 more in California. Half Moon Bay.

“In the first few weeks of 2023, at least 69 people have been killed in mass shootings across the country, including two shootings within days of each other in California.” ‘Tragedy Upon Tragedy’: January Brings Dozens of Mass Shootings So Far

And the folks who sponsored this epidemic of gun ownership and their violent use on other humans want to take over the government.

My heart does not like this. How much sadness can we stand until we do something effective?

 

 

 

Dogs, Memories, Plants, Politics, Travel, US History

Stolen Work, Stolen Land

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Winter and the Wolf Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Kate Strickland and Michael Banker. Seeing them on Sunday. Dushanbe Tea House in Boulder. Diane this morning. Tom tomorrow. Tom Tomorrow! Alan on Saturday. Mussar today. Fresh white Snow. Kep, the sleeper. His sleeping sounds. Sudbury Impact Crater. Ejecta all the way to Gunflint Lake in Minnesota. Subduction. Nickel. Copper. Platinum. Paladium. Zircon. Uranium. Colorado Plateau. Placer deposits of uranium. Manitoulin Island. The Georgian Bay. The Chi-cheemaun.

Thursday gratefuls: Life in all is wonder

 

Getting a distinct Canada jones. This Origins of North America course has rekindled memories of Stratford, Ontario, taking the Chi-cheemaun ferry to Manitoulin Island. Also my trips circumnavigating Lake Superior. I’ve always loved Canada. Every since our first family trip there and I saw those road signs with the crown on them. And those Fords that looked like Fords but had a different name: Meteor. That moment on Lake Huron in Ipperwash Provincial Park. One with the Lake and the Sunseen.

Now I see this is land stolen from the Chippewa Band of Kettle and Stony Point. This story about the sniper killing of band member Dudley George in 1995. Maybe the spirit of the Anishinabe inhabited me that day.

And so back to Imani (faith) Perry and her South to America. In her chapter on the Soul of the South she talks a lot about the Black Belt, a geological region that runs through Alabama, Mississippi, parts of other Southern states which was especially good for growing cotton. The term also has a broader definition: “Political analysts and historians continue to use the term Black Belt to designate some 200 counties in the South from Virginia to Texas that have a history of majority African American population and cotton production.” wiki

The Black Belt and the Chippewa’s struggle over Ipperwash are of a piece. They are land used by White governmental and economic structures enforcing white supremacy over those deemed lesser. This is why Perry says to understand the U.S. we have to go to the South. Because slavery informed the founding documents of our nation and because the wealth of the early United States had its base in cotton production and trade. These two facts go together. The wealth of the Southern states allowed them to have an outsized voice in the negotiations creating our nation.

That would mean that originalism is ipso facto racist. It says we have to interpret only the words of the constitution and use the plain meaning of those words as laid down by the founders. Well, hey. The three-fifths clause. The electoral college. Senators two from each state. That means the Extremes are not only hard right conservatives but also standard bearers for white supremacy. Wonder how Clarence feels about that.

February is Black history month. Would be a good time to read some DuBois, maybe some Richard Wright, Imani Perry, Frederick Douglas. Margaret Walker. Toni Morrison. Maya Angelou. James Baldwin. Langston Hughes.

Back to that Canada thing though. Think I’m gonna plan a trip. True North Shore of Lake Superior, over to the Georgian Bay, cross the bay going South, Head to Stratford for some good theater. Anybody wanna come?

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Literature, Politics, US History, World History

Books and the dumb side of Politics

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Winter and the Wolf Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Kate and our IRA. Enough money to keep me alive. Another new knee. Warren. Ode. Now Stefan. Age and its attendant insults. Medicine and its remedies for them. Rich’s new class. Looks fun. The Muddy Buck. Old Evergreen. The Evergreen Hotel, long gone.  Evergreen. A mighty fine Mountain town. Living in the Mountains. The silence of a Shadow Mountain Night. Sleeping. Kep, the dogged. Solving problems. Accepting reality.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Silent Night, Holy Night. Every Night

 

All that. Money stuff. Doctor and pharmaceutical stuff. Put to bed for now. Moving on. Occupied me for two days straight. Gotta have stuff to do when you old.

 

Reading two new books. Stunners. The first South To America by Imani Perry. A professor of African Studies at Princeton. A delicate, hard fisted, beautiful intelligent travelogue of her journey to her home state of Alabama. She begins at Harpers Ferry with thoughts on John Brown, Confederate reenactors, an unexpected conversation with one who volunteers at a store that’s part of the historic Harpers Ferry.

She writes about race and racism in a way that enfolds and  unfolds its complexity. An example. Her feelings of tenderness toward the exploited coal miners of Appalachia. All of them. Then an observation about how even in the mines Blacks had the filthiest most dangerous jobs. Lived on the fringes of white poverty.

I’m still early in the book. Virginia. Trenchant and profound observations about Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry. Both owned slaves. Both believed it was wrong. But lust overcame Jefferson and ambition overcame Patrick Henry. They kept their slaves.

 

The second. The Good Life. By Robert Waldinger and Marc Shultz. Director and Assistant Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. Longest running longitudinal study of human development in the world. Its message. Develop and keep good relationships. Intimate ones. Friendship. Family. Even strangers. Well written, clear. Helpful. Reinforcing.

In that spirit I have breakfast with Alan this morning at the Parkside Cafe in Evergreen. The newer part of Evergreen. For locals. Tourists sneak in on occasion, too. Near the Bread Lounge. Often has folks I know.

Rebecca Martin should be back from India and we can resume our breakfasts. Luke and I have our lunches. Diane and Tom. The Ancient Brothers. MVP. Mussar on Thursday. Staying connected. Rich again in two weeks. Knowing and being known. Seeing and being seen. The human, the primate, way. Love in its many forms.

 

How about those classified files at the Bidens? Ooops. There goes a second term. So. Damned. Stupid. And right now? He’s overperformed. Rich and I agreed. Then stepped right on his well you know. And hard. Without necessity. Come on, man!

Takes the stage away from that lying George Santos. The Long Island prevaricator.

How bout those Bolsanorans? I mean. Guys. He fled the country. To Florida. On an A-1 visa reserved for heads of state. He left Brazil before he left office. Trump went to Florida, too. Lots of parallels, eh? Trump and his like are cancers in the body politic of many countries. As 1st graders used to say, He’s copying!

All for now.

 

 

 

 

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Health, Hermitage, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Mussar, Plants, Politics, Shadow Mountain, The Move, Writing

Dutiful

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Winter and the Wolf Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Breakfast with Jen, Ruth, Gabe, Barb. Driving back up the hill. F1. The MIA. The Walker. The docent program. My many years there with good friends and art. Acting class. Creativity class. Origins of North America. Finding the volume of a Mountain. Korean. Pruning moving forward. Interior painting, early February. Probate. Still moving. slow. ly. The Good Life. Scott and Helen Nearing. Eudaimonia. Kristen Gonzalez. Psoriasis. Mark and the USPS. Mary in Kobe. Ancient Brothers.

Sparks of joy and awe: Eudaimonia

 

Human flourishing. Eudaimonia. Satisfaction. More important than happiness. Duty is just another word for cultural norms received and accepted. Obligations. On the other hand. Imposed. Why do we do what we do?

Assessing the life that is neither heroic nor mediocre. Since that’s where most of us end up. No need to measure ourselves against the ends of the bell curve. No need to measure ourselves. But can we be at peace with a life without comparisons?

As for me, I choose eudaimonia. Flourishing. Satisfaction. And, yes. Duty plays a role. Family. Sacrifice. Friends too. Being there. Wherever love is, there is duty. To be honest. Sincere. Kind. Helpful. To support the best for the other. Right down to the end. And by implication to support the best for yourself. Also, duty. The unexamined life is not worth living. Yes. A duty to yourself to know thyself. And to thy own known Self be true.

 

What’s interesting for me right now is how much a sense of duty has played in my life. Oh, no! The original oppositional defiant guy admitting to a sense of duty. I who even rebel against my superego. You can’t make me!!! Yes, duty.

A minor yet significant example. As a convinced feminist of the Betty Friedan/Simone de Beauvoir second wave. At the age of 26. In seminary. Went to the Rice Street Clinic late on a Winter afternoon. A scalpel I felt on the first cut slashed my vas deferens on both sides. Shutting down sperm from my testicles. Being responsible for my own contraception.

Another. One I’ve mentioned before. Fits here. No. I don’t want a Johns-Manville full scholarship to college. Managing people in a large corporation is not me. Will never be me. High school.

Once convinced of Vietnam’s sturdiness as a nation, one that had held back China for over 3,000 years. No. I will not fight, nor support that war.

After reading a convincing study about the future job prospects for Ph.D.’s. No to graduate school.

Family. Staying in the fire with Jon. Ruth. Gabe. Kate in later life. Mark. Yet also. Cut your hair or leave! Leaving.

These may not at first reading seem like duty. But they are. A duty to myself, to my own understanding of how to be present in the world.

When I realized Ruth and Gabe needed us in Colorado. Broaching the idea of a move. Kate on board. Following through.

Those two and a half acres in Andover. Leaving them better than when we bought them. How? Working it out with Kate over the years. Together. Staying the course with the full cycle of responsibilities throughout the year. Each year.

And, dogs. Living into their lives. With them from puppyhood to death. Oh. Sweet duty. Painful duty. Life realized in full.

Aging, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History, Woolly Mammoths, World History

Aging and its good news

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Samain and the Holimonth Moon

Monday gratefuls: BJ and Sarah. Kep at 4:30 am. David Olson. Jon, a memory. Kate, always Kate. Gabe’s Hanukah wish list. Ruth in her dad’s sweater. The Ancient Brothers on the assets of aging. Morocco and Croatia. The World Cup. Ruby and her AWD failure notice. Clearing the way for some moving. Sleeping in. Hard reset on my hearing aid worked. Phonak. SpaceX to the Moon. Elon Musk. Sort of. The clear, clean days of Winter.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Moon as it changes

 

Yesterday after the Ancient Brothers identified the assets of aging I took a rest day. Saturday was too much driving. Although Kep seemed to like it. Read, watched TV.

In the early evening I talked with BJ and Sarah. What different lives we all have. Sarah and Jerry and their self-built gardens and buildings in rural North Carolina. BJ and Schecky who biked 5 miles to New York Cake and back from their home in the Hotel Beacon on Broadway. Me on Shadow Mountain with the Elk and the Mule Deer.

 

The assets of aging. Too often aging = kvetching. Aching bones. Tired from driving. (see above) This knee, that hip or shoulder. Maybe replaced. Friends and family members dying. The stock market. The bowels. Care taking. Cancer. Arthritis. And the list goes on, seeming to grow a bit with each added year. BTW: not diminishing the reality of any of these. Or the disruptions they create in daily life. But. It is easy to get lost in the obligations and ailments. Forget the wonderful gift still daily available. Life.

So Tom asked the question. What have we gained as older folks? What are our assets now? Knowledge accumulated through the days and months. Having seen things fail and things succeed. The ability from that to put life events, even dire ones, in perspective. Including death.

The bonds of friendship. As one of us pointed out, it does take forty years to have a forty year friendship. Or, with family it take decades to enjoy grown children and have them enjoy you.

We often have some money squirreled away and with it the ability to help in modest ways when necessary. A real joy.

Love. Its necessity and its travails. Its various focii. From partners to brothers and sisters to friends and pets to Mountains and Trees and moments in time, special places. That it can be lost and regained. Its mystery and its beauty. Long experience with how love can enter and transform lives can give us old folks a certain softness, a way of being with another more easily so love can seep into the cracks. This is a great and wonderful gift.

Loss. We’ve seen death up close. Know its horrors and its mystery. It is no longer far off. We also know the death of loved ones can be survived, even when everything within says they can’t. We also know the death of a pet is the loss of a companion, a friend of many years. Not to be diminished.

Though there are many other assets I’ll only mention one more. We have seen our culture change from the closed in, materialistic immediate post-war years to the thousand flowers blooming of a counter-culture and a reaction against it that has not yet run its course. Here Philip Slater’s little book, The Chrysalis Effect, suggests that the integrative, democratic culture of the anti-war, back to the land, civil rights era remains ascendant in the face of stubborn and even violent responses to it. Women have still gained power. African-Americans and Latinos have more power. First Nations people have begun to feel their influence grow. The LGBTI+ community has blossomed. Globalism has won the day as trade interleaves nations with other nations.

We remain to support the rise of integrative, democratic culture in whatever ways we can. Loving our GenZ grandchildren. Donating money. Acting politically. Giving our validation to these changes. Pressing back against what Slater calls the Controller Culture. Being imaginal cells for the changes birthing themselves as I write.

Assets indeed.

Acting, Great Wheel, Hawai'i, Hermitage, Politics, Shadow Mountain, The Move, US History, Weather +Climate, World History, Writing

A fascinating time to be alive

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Samain and the Holimonth Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Dinner with Tom at the Willows last night. Long time friends. Diane. A Mountain Wind. Snow knocked off the Lodgepoles. Snow and Ice on Black Mountain Drive. Advent. Sussex. The Jacquie Lawson advent calendar. Going to bed. Waking up. The Chrysalis Effect by Phillip Slater. CJ Box. Kep, the old dog. US vs. Netherlands. How to become a pagan. Acting class. Nitya. Teaching the Ancient Brothers.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Holimonth

 

Acting class has been hit by illness. Tal, the teacher, has the flu or something like it. Nitya, a class member, spent several days in the ICU and is still recovering in the hospital. Not sure what will happen. Tal wants to hold a class on Friday, but I’m reluctant to go given the recency of his bout with the flu. A tough wind down for what has been an interesting and challenging experience.

I was ready. I’d gotten both monologues memorized and somewhat polished. I knew all the lines in my two scenes. Not wasted work. Good work. Helps the brain. Adds some literature to the bank.

Tomorrow morning I present in the Creativity class. Think I’m going to do my How to become a pagan piece. Wrote it yesterday. Gotta see how long it is when spoken. Going to lean into writing and art over the winter as I said yesterday. This was a start.

 

High Wind warning today. The Lodgepoles have begun to sway. Dancing with each other as Sunlight makes their tops glow. I haven’t written about it but the Mountains and their Trees and Wild Neighbors? I would have missed them. A lot. Couldn’t imagine being in a city environment where no Pine Trees framed the Nighttime Stars. Will not trade this beauty for a place with less. Hawai’i matches the Mountains with its Oceans and old Volcanic Mountains, its rich fauna. Someday. But right now. This wonderful place is home.

 

The world. Russia looking like a blind Bear in the Ukraine. Wrecking the place, striking out wildly. China finding that suppression and repression have their limits. Even with a newly anointed dear leader. The US struggling with divisions at home and new fractures among European allies. Not a great time to be a world power.

 

It is however a fascinating time to be alive. Talks of a moon base. Be still my John Carter, Flash Gordon little boy heart. The James Webb showing us more and more of the universe in which we live and move and have our becoming. A world shifting its long term basic rules. Climate change accelerating. Women growing in power. China and Russia and the upstart USA. All in flux.

Glad to have these years as my last ones.

Mountains, Park County, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Sport, The West

Beauty Nearby

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Samain and the Holimonth Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Snow. Cold. No pee on the rug. Kep, my official nudger. Osher Lifelong Learning. Herme. The Hermitage. Warm for the Winter. Dr. Astrov. A Chekhovian humanist. National Forests. Arapaho. Pike. Chippewa. Grand Mesa. Rio Grande. Superior. Mauna Loa. Erupting. Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. Haleakala. Mt. Etna. Black Mountain. Bear Creek. Cub Creek. That six point Mule Deer Buck. Rabbit tracks in the Snow. Phonak.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mauna Loa

 

Colorado Cold. 10 degrees. Sparkling white Snow. The Snowpack. Lagging a bit here but good in the Colorado River Basin. An old fashioned Winter shaping up for Shadow Mountain.

 

Over to the Happy Camper yesterday after working out. The lady at the cash register surprised me by saying after I gave her my birthday. That was my husband’s, too. I missed a chance to make a solid connection with her. Too focused on my purchase. Another 8 packs of Indica Cheeba Chews. Edibles. A word that has morphed its meaning over the last ten years.

The drive to Bailey featured a Snow capped Continental Divide and Mt. Blue Sky (formerly Mt. Evans). Always a beautiful drive. If you drive beyond the Happy Camper into Bailey, you come to the 7% grade known as Crow Hill. It levels out into the Platte Valley where the small town of Bailey begins.

The Platte Valley has steep Mountains on both sides and a roiling North Fork of the South Platte River. This is Park County, no longer Jefferson in which I live. Bailey is the only town with a downtown in the Valley and it’s a modest one. Shawnee and Grant have names, but no there there.

As Hwy 285 rises toward Kenosha Pass, the 11,000 foot pass separating the Platte Valley from South Park, the Valley ends. About half way up this incline is Park County 61 which leads to Burning Bear Creek Trail and a beautiful camping area in the Pike National Forest. I posted pictures of a large Beaver dam and Beaver felled Trees earlier this summer.

I write this to illustrate how much beauty there is within an hour or less of Shadow Mountain. Including Shadow Mountain, Black Mountain, Conifer Mountain. The drive down to Evergreen on Black Mountain/Brook Forest Drive.

 

Gee, guys. Headline in the New York Times: Jewish Allies Call Trump’s Dinner With Antisemites a Breaking Point. You think?

 

Today at 2pm MT the US Men’s soccer team plays Iran. And it’s a must win for the US if they hope to advance.