SmokeSound

People are madder than hell about government, by which they mean they do not like what is happening to them. We happen to live in the middle of a revolution. No!  No!  Not one of those Communists under the bed and in every Sewer Department Committee revolutions, but in the middle of enormous changes in human life. There have been earlier, other such revolutions: when humans came out of the woods, and in from the savannas, and learned how to plant seeds and tame animals was such a time. That was called the Agricultural Revolution. People learned how to settle down and live in one place. They built villages, stored grains, trained oxen how to pull plows, and built little dams across the stream, and canals for water. All of that happened, in many places, but not all, four or five or ten thousand years ago. People had been hunters and gatherers for millions of years, so the first grain and garden growers, and house builders, must have puzzled and confounded almost e

This fish knew exactly how I felt. By the time I had gotten to the Sonora Desert Museum, I was ready to lie me down on a limb and order a cup of ice cream so I did.   Mari belongs to one of those book clubs-- you know what I mean--in which you read a book but then have to go and talk about it as if you were trying to avoid the pleasure of  living in the author's imagination instead of your own pedestrian plodding.   I had decided to live in the pleasure of my own plodding, so after lunch with Mari, I fueled the pickup and did what Horace Greeley had suggested, and went west, north of Saguaro West, and staged a surprise attack on it from the northwest side of it, where no one in the civilized world realized human beings had ever gone before. A pinto prisoner did see me come by, and you can see by his astonishment that he wondered why I was not wearing Spanish regalia, or buckskins. He, or she, or it, was for show, I

This being a Sunday, and the Good Lord not having provided either a gathering of like-minded nod-offs in the vicinity or a hall with inscrutable symbols and smells appropriate to our non-golfing system of beliefs, Mari and I decided to drive south past Green Valley, where the saved have saved a Titan missile silo, to the village of Tubac.  For lunch. It is almost the end of the Snowbird seasonal migration southwestward where, after circling about salsa in search of catsup, the snow melting on the south forty back home beckons them northeast again armed with tales of eighty degree days and turquoise bracelets and amulets. Tubac comes alive in the brutal forty degree winter nights of the Sonora, and thins out when the SUVs and Mercedes, armed with oil changes and refrigerant and thick jackets turn east onto I-10. Putting our shabby, thin veneer of sarcasm aside, what is not to like about Shelby's Bistro on the deck next to the dry wash, shaded from April s

I have just had my second hip joint replacement:  it is part of my desire to live a balanced life;  pain on both sides. After looking at images of the contraptions they concoct to replace the contraptions I was born with, I am impressed with how much they look like bathtub handles or shower heads.  And now the upper parts of me are joined to my legs, on both sides, with bolts and bottle caps! Sawed apart last Wednesday, the doctor taped and stapled me back together, more or less in the shape of a biped-without-feathers, with orders to pretend everything was OK, and that someday he would take the bandages and staples off and out, and see what he and god had wrought from what they had to work with. While we were still in Minnesota, I had my right hip replaced with plastic and titanium.  I had asked the doctor's assistant how they were going to operate, fumbling for terms I did not know, and she more-or-less snorted that they would be "coming in from the side".  She

Looking back Thinking back I wish I had tried To take a picture of A giant redwood tree      not a giant      among its peers      but where it was Next to a divinity school Evolution grown large On an urban leash I suppose When the wind was still It had to listen To arguments for intelligent design And how it was      always      ever      from the foundations      of the earth Intended to grace      refurbished Nineteenth century Theology      or a chain saw      maybe stretch wires      down a street           but There was no sense Of design Just accidental life But there it was Standing in its own history Glad for the sun Dancing in the wind Gloriously beautiful Unintendedly

There are at least a dozen cities named "Portland" in the US, and three of them are in Maine (if you allow New and South to prefix it), but the largest and finest of them all is in Oregon, because that is where our newest grand-daughter lives. Dan and Ellie could have named her Portland, but that would either require them to move, should another child happen along, or do as George Foreman did and name all of his children George, and Ellie and Dan did not want to name their children George. She is Elliot. She is four months old and--this being tax season--she is being listed on their tax forms as "Head of Household", and her income as "Milk".   Everyone knows that it always rains in Portland, but God, in his Infinite Perversity, caused the sun to shine in Portland, unfaceted by falling rain, the whole two or three days we were there, and we were astounded again by how rich and wild Portland is with flowers and greenery in Springtime. What somet

The javelinas finally went away last night, over the hill to the east where, I assume, there is a kind-hearted old woman who tosses scraps to the wildlife in exchange for threats against her life. This morning they were back at our house, where there is a kind-hearted old man who just wants to put out a quail block for the birds who think they are angler fish. There were seven of them; wily critters, pretending only to be interested in the seeds that the birds kick out of the hanging feeder because they are picky. The javelinas pretended that nothing interested them more than teeny-weeny seeds with a coat of dirt. The truth is, they were assessing how deeply into the ground I had driven the poles that support the quail block platform.  They are intrepid miners, those javelinas, fully capable of toppling a simple skyscraper. But, while I may not know quite as much about engineering as they, I am an enthusiastic shouter and arm-waver, and my heart is of gold, unlike thei

I used to hope that I was smarter than a pig. I am not. We have a bird feeder outside out kitchen window where we feed small birds from a hanging feeder. Fortunately, we seldom have pigeons, because I know I am not smarter than a pigeon, but even a few of the doves find ways to raid the feeder. I wanted to encourage the Gambel's quail who stroll around looking for fallen seeds so I bought a quail block and built a platform: not too high, but high enough so that the javelinas could not reach it. I was wrong. No.  I was not as smart as a pig. I know that javelinas are not pigs, but being too precise would not allow me to say what I want to say.  The rotten little buggers got up on their hind legs and nosed the quail block over the side of the platform, where they attacked it and each other with equal zeal until they had eaten every sticky, scrumptious seed. I had not wanted to make the platform too  high because Gambel's quail seem to prefer a

Its real name, of course, is Sweetwater Wetlands.  In a runoff contest between Sweetwater Wetlands and Sweetwater Drylands, they chose Wet. Our city parents collect our waste, purport to treat it, and then drain it into pits and ponds where it becomes sweet.  You might notice, in the photo below, that you cannot see any part of the duck that is below the plimsoll line.  I rather imagine that, for any plant that requires wet feet and food, that heaven is a spot just west of I-10 north of Prince Road. Diving tortoises and ducks disappear from view within microns.  Frogs fumble about trying to locate where the sun might be, and having stumbled onto it, walk across the ponds to the reeds at shoreline. But we live in the Sonora, and any semblance of water is sweet (we say to ourselves, hoping that we do not fall in). Our struggle, here in Tucson, and in much of Arizona, is to treasure the water we have, almost all of which now is below ground.  Developers of housing tracts want a