SmokeSound

Portland is gray and green. I have no doubt that Oregonians will not agree with me so, as a desert-dry visitor born in Tacoma-- Who is he to talk?-- let me be quick to say that Portland is, at the same time, a most alluring city. The people of Portland have created bakery-warm neighborhoods, deliberately snuggling people together on small, old streets with short blocks, making a thousand neighborhood corners for small shops and wood-fired ovens where proximity means you necessarily engage the people around you. So I dare to say, at the same time, that the sky is gray, and that even a 21st century visitor can say that the waters above the firmament regularly rain down, and that the waters under the firmament tend to lie about before they ooze down and around and back again. And the green of Portland is not simply the green of its evergreen trees, but as much the green of moss sometimes rooted in concrete, taking nourishment from the juices of the rain g...

While at Elliza and Daniel and Elliot's home, the elder members of the triumvirate prepared a particularly fine meal for all of us who had come to greet Elliot.  It was a Mark Bittman recipe for "West African Peanut Soup with Chicken".  I found the recipe on-line, and have the link here: http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1012581-west-african-peanut-soup-with-chicken The color is mainly provided by the sweet potatoes or yams and the peanuts and peanut butter, I think, together with the tomatoes and greens.  It smells, and tastes, delicious!  It is the kind of recipe that invites you to modify it as you will.  Mark Bittman usually nudges over toward the vegetable side of life, but my guess is that both ingredients and amounts can be adjusted.  I intend, for instance, to make it spicier, and to try various greens.  I do wonder whether I would like sweet potatoes or yams better.  Grocers sometimes add to the confusion by labeling sweet potatoe...

We have an almost brand-new grandchild; a girl, engineered by Elliza and Daniel.   We have just returned from Portland, Oregon, where we were summoned for a First Viewing. Her name is Elliot Chen Hubbard, and she is, quite obviously, the best new thing to happen in 2015.  She joins an impressive number of other grandchildren whom, as Garrison Kiellor might modestly have said, "are all above average". She is a teeny little tad, born six pounds-something, coming early and, if not reluctantly, then with difficulty, into the world.  But Elliza might have to tell you about that:  I was not there. As you can see, both Elliza and Elliot are doing quite well, thank you.  Daniel, on the other hand, is clearly showing signs of the stress of childbirth.  He has managed, by working extra shifts in advance, to be able to spend time at home with his daughter and wife, and will be able to do so for a significant time.  It is not that he has adjusted perfe...

Our backyard renovations have been slowed by our brutal winter weather--it often dropping dangerously into the low thirties--but, step-by-step, Jao has been testing each addition. He calls the rondavel, "his house".  Two of the stepping stones have already been worn thin by his uncertainty that they were adequate, but finally gained approval. I go outside.  Jao comes out to join me, and Mari calls from the back door, "Conrad, are you watching him?"  I always say, "Yes".  I think of it as a kind of antiphonal liturgy which, as you know, consists of Call and Response, not necessarily corresponding to ordinary reality.

Several years ago, we left Tucson and moved to Minneapolis/St. Paul. A few years ago, we returned to Tucson. I have tried ever to keep a smile on my face. Sometimes it is easier than at other times. May the forced smile be with you always!

Bruce Hagen, the Mayor of Superior, Wisconsin, thinks President Obama is a Muslim. First, President Obama is not a Muslim.  He says he isn't.  There is no reason to think the President is lying.  If someone were to ask me--and no one has ever done so--whether I am a Sikh, I would say no.  There is no reason to think I am. But what if President Obama were a Muslim, and what if I were a Sikh?  Would that be the end of the world?  I suspect the Foundations of the Universe would shift and groan a bit--not as much as real Muslims and Sikhs would--but, you know, even the universe must, now and then, have to express painful curiosity. Absurd nonsense!  I know how people like Bruce Hagen became Mayor of a city.  He was elected by people who are not entirely unlike Mr. Hagan.  I do not think Mr. Hagen could be re-elected, but even Superior Wisconsin, which is not necessarily superior to its harbor mate, Duluth, Minnesota, has its fair share...

The tree in our yard As big as the house Blew over, as tall sideways As it had been standing In what should have been The prime of its life Having drunk too easily From what the garden required Not properly rooted Living on the surface of life Old now myself--older far Than the mesquite blown down-- I have been recalling other trees, old trees at the end of their lives, which refused to fall, balanced Root and rock-set as they had lived "Careful!", we were told "Someday it will fall As we all do, but it is standing tall" So we walked with an eye On tall old trees with deep roots That etched themselves into our minds Surely gone now, except As we remember How to stand tall Deep-rooted in rock Conrad Royksund December 2015

It is essential, if you are a politician-- and who is not running for the presidency these days?-- to remember some basic rules.  For instance, Always compare the best of your religion with the worst of other religions! There!  You have one hurdle out of the way! You can ignore the worst of your own religion and the best of others. It is quite likely that none of the candidates for the presidency have ever heard of the Thirty Years War. It was a bloody mess between Christian factions, from 1618-1648. One way to think of it was that, at the time, there were two major factions in the Christian religion: the Shia and the Sunnis. There were smaller sects, too, of course, and it came to this: it seemed best that they kill each other in the name of God, and truth, and pastureland. If you need a comparison, you might think of Protestant and Catholic Muslims. (Before you correct me, let me plead that the names and details are not important, because death and ...

Our friends in Woodland, North Carolina, have rejected plans for a solar farm because they are afraid it will "suck up all the available sunlight", and that there will not be enough left over for plants and things. Here is a date to mark on your calendar:  March 15, 2016.  On that date, North Carolinians will vote for whom they think should be the next President of the United States, thereby sucking up all the intelligence from people in neighboring states, who will probably do something dumb. These things have unintended consequences, these foolish things which remind me of. . . .

There are almost 200 nations in the world, as we count them, right now. The 200 nations in the world have begun to recognize that the way we cut and slash and burn our economies is turning the world into a hothouse, which threatens all of us.  We have almost no idea how to survive in a hothouse. Almost 200 nations have just met in France to try to agree on what to do to about global warming.  In global politics, that is an a capella choral response. The GOP (Grande Olde Partie:  American Republican Party) wants nothing to do with global warming frivolity.  They are too busy stemming the movement of human beings from one place to another.  "Go back to where you came from!"  That sort of thing. Most of the warming seems to be due to our use of fossil fuels:  coal, oil, gas.  Most experts agree that we have to cut our use of those hydrocarbon fuels, and shift as much as we can to other energy sources. Here in southern Arizona, a significa...

Dear Friends and Delightful Visitors to Smokesound: I have tried but I cannot escape the fact that politicians and gunmen are dominating the news at the end of 2015. The former are laughing stock that make us cry, and the latter are tempting us to become as savage as they.   The political buffoons— and have you ever seen such a surplus of them?— want us to select a leader from among them, to lead us in baying at the moon. The six-shooting cowboy fantasies of our childhood  have become para-military executions in our classrooms, tempting us to respond in guerrilla combat. I am trying to find a way to let neither the buffoons nor the savages  shape the way I round the year’s end. I want neither to elect a lout or a fool to office, nor to line up on the other side of the classroom with my own attack weapon, or turn my house into an arsenal:  a potential killing field. Something they have in common: whether you go ...

With the kind of certainty that The Trump shows every time he insults someone--that is to say, whenever he talks--I am sure that you have been following the saga of the mesquite tree that tipped over in our backyard. The tree is gone, now, to its eternal reward, consigned to a monstrous wood chipper at a facility owned by the green-trucked people who own all the trash in the western world.  It will become truckloads of new "soil", tenderly cultivated by road graders and tanker trucks spraying instant decay. Since the fence around our back yard was destroyed, anyway, the yard has been enlarged into the desert, hillside lot, and for want of a purpose in life, I decided to build a rondavel.  A rondavel is a traditional African building with a thatched roof and a dung floor.  I am taking some artistic liberties with the details.  "Ron-DA-vel" is pronounced something like "rendezvous", with the accent on "DA".  It will have a conical roof. Th...

Another lunatic with rage and guns went to work in San Bernardino, California. Congress went to work, too.  It offered prayers and condolences for the victims.  Nothing else.  More lunatics. Does Congress, do the American people, have any idea why there is a Congress, or what it should do? Do they really think that prayers will make it rain, or stop raining, or provide health care for people?  Do they really think that all we need to do is send troops to Syria or San Bernardino?  They can't even say that plainly and directly:  they talk about "boots on the ground". Has anyone ever seen a wackier lineup of presidential wannabes than we are witnessing this year?  The pyramids are full of grain!  We should build a big, beautiful wall and Mexico will pay for it!  Round up the immigrants and send them back to Norway and Ireland and Italy and Germany and England and China and Japan and Guatemala:  let them walk across the land bridge ...