Samain Thanksgiving Moon
Caution: Living with Lions
from Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office
Recently, neighbors in your area have reported mountain lion sightings or encounters. This can be a dangerous and frightening situation. With the increased cold weather many animals are preparing to survive through the winter. Help us and Colorado Parks and Wildlife by being diligent to protect yourselves, your children and your pets/ livestock.
To reduce the risk of problems with mountain lions on or near your property, we urge you to follow these precautions:
1. Place livestock in enclosed sheds or barns at night. Close doors to all outbuildings since inquisitive lions may go inside for a look.
2. Make lots of noise if you come and go during the times mountain lions are most active: dusk to dawn.
3. Install outside lighting. Light areas where you walk so you could see a lion if one were present.
4. Closely supervise children whenever they play outdoors. Make sure children are inside before dusk and not outside before dawn. Talk with children about lions and teach them what to do if they meet one.
5. Planting non-native shrubs and plants that deer often prefer to eat encourages wildlife to come onto your property. Predators follow prey. Don’t feed any wildlife!
6. Encourage your neighbors to follow these simple precautions. Prevention is far better than a possible lion confrontation.
To read more on living in mountain lion country, or what to do in the case of an attack, please visit the link below:
A fraught topic. It has become a canard of post-election coverage that racism and other identity based prejudices drove Trump’s outsize performance in rural America. And, there is no doubt that racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia and nativism were part of Trump’s very cynical-and ultimately successful-campaign strategy.
How you define is how you solve. “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it,” Albert Einstein said. If you have a desire to resolve the current political abyss separating the peculiar combination of the Pharaoh’s and the white working class from the rest of us, you have to decide what the problem really is.
Violent conflict between and among members of the working class occur over the distribution of economic resources: jobs, home loans, good education, accessible and affordable health care, housing and food available at reasonable prices. This is where racism and xenophobia get reinforced as African-Americans, Latinos and recent immigrants compete with non-college educated whites for a vanishing supply of living wage jobs. There are few such jobs now available to persons with a high school education or less.
If we can become the ones who offer real solutions to this devastating economic reality, then we will gain the political support of those whose lives have been changed by them. This is not cynicism, this is politics at its highest and best purpose, resolving public problems communally.
Pre-op physical yesterday. EKG within normal parameters. Dr. Gidday walked me through the pre-op questions including one which wondered if I had dementia. When I asked her how I would know, she laughed, slapped my hand, “Everybody says something like that.”
I’ve seen two movies in the past couple of weeks, Dr. Strange and Arrival. I saw Dr. Strange in 3-D. Fantasy and science fiction still have my attention after all these years. Dr. Strange was fun, great CGI, a cast that includes Tilda Swinton and Benedict Cumberbatch, and the Dr. Strange origin story.
neither is the heptapod language. Time is more flexible than we think, malleable. No Randy Quaid flying his jet into the mothership, no Luke flying his fighter into the weak spot of the death star. In fact, no onscreen violence at all with the exception of an explosion, a brief one. Though you won’t understand unless you see it, Arrival is about the power of language.
Holiseason. I find myself soothed and enriched by certain traditions. The holidays are among them. When I eased my psyche into holiseason yesterday, I realized that the holidays will help me survive the insults of Trump’s election.
After Thanksgiving, or around it sometimes, the Wheel turns to the festivals of light like Diwali, Hannukah, Christmas. We decorate and illuminate. We sing songs, give and receive gifts, enter into traditions older, much older than our nation.
And, improbably, it will be Thanksgiving next week. There is no hint of over the river and through the woods weather to stimulate that Thanksgiving feeling. We may get a storm on Thursday. That would help.
Cattails. Seen them all my life. Used them as decorations. Never knew that if you press gently on the cats tail, the seeds surge out in a July 4th snake way. It’s amazing. If you haven’t experienced it, try it. Take a cattail, a mature one, and disturb the brown outer covering. You don’t have to use much force, about as much as required to get a fingernail into an orange skin, probably less. Kate discovered this after we harvested cattails for fall decor.
As the sky begins to brighten over Black Mountain, this spinning Earth reminds me that after night comes the day. The gradual ratcheting down of temperature reminds me that spring follows the fallow time. The spiral nature of the days and months as they peel away from yesterday yet follow the path of the Great Wheel as they do, reminds me that mother earth preaches patience. Wait, and the season will change. Wait, and dark will become light. It is the message of the Tao. Follow the watercourse way.
Foci 1 Climate Change
More than any single cause this election laid bare the casual disregard both parties have given to these issues over the last 30 to 40 years. Clinton’s third-way moved the party farther from these bedrock issues. Obama tried, but after his first two years, the GOP became the party of obstruction, the party of no.