SmokeSound

'Twere a busy day. First, our kitchen sink invented a guyser. Well, truth be told, that were last night. The plumber could not be here until this morning. Nonethemore, we had already planned to take Jao to the top of Mt. Lemmon, against which Tucson is snuggled, just to remind him what life is like 6,000 feet higher up, when the valley floor is throbbing at 100 plus temperatures. So that is what we did. Temperatures like this--more common now that the climate, generally, is demonstrating that global warming is quite probably caused, not only by CO2 emissions, but more likely by political hot air denying it. There is a little community of people living very near the top of Mt. Lemmon who only partially escaped the inevitable forest fires that attend hot, dry conditions, just a few years ago.  Even today, early in summer, we could see a great pillar of smoke to our east, where logic was working, again. Once before, before Jao, Mari and I and Michael and Daniel, ...

Donald Trump is an embarrassment. I understand that quite a lot of people are angry at politicians, at their own lot in life, at the prospects for their kids, at the price of health care, at Hillary Clinton for being a Clinton and a woman, at Barack Obama for being a decent human being, and at having to pick up after the dog, and that they wanted big changes, but Donald Trump is shameless and shameful. "Morning Joe" is a TV news program.  Morning Joe himself is a Republican whose criticism of Mr. Trump rankles the President.  Joe Scarborough's partner on the show is Mika Brzezinski, and she does not pretend to be happy about Mr. Trump, either. Donald "Twitter" Trump, twittering, referred to them as "low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe".  More, he said that Ms. Brzezinski "was bleeding badly from a face lift". That is our President.  That is the man whom our kids and grandkids are going to remember as President of the United ...

Once upon a time, not so long ago, people thought that it would be a benefit to us all if we educated all the children. I was one of those children, and that is why I was rounded up, corralled, and sent to Weyerhaeuser Grade School No. 303, where it was held that it was good for everyone if everyone learned how to read, rite, and rithmetic. It wasn't a perfect system: if you could spell "Weyerhaeuser" you eventually got to Eatonville High School, and four years of Eatonville High School was usually enough to whet the appetite for something beyond Eatonville. I think we still believe that everyone who can be educated should be educated for the benefit of us all because a nation of ignoramuses is a bad idea. Isn't it? We are not quite so sure that a public education is a good idea:  some people prefer a good, solid immersion in religion, instead, with just a touch of creation by fiat, and a load of public money; some think to teach the ...

thedogtrainingsecret.com Among the other, more recognized uses of the word, "nip", is the meaning to snatch away suddenly, or to steal or pilfer. The Copper Queen Museum in Bisbee, Arizona, used to exhibit a modified ore car--those miniaturized train cars that hauled ore through the deep tunnels.  It had a steel tank with a seat on top. The person who hauled the blacksmith version of a portable toilet from miner to miner was called "The Shit Nipper". Someone nipped the exhibit.  It is gone, by someone with a stout truck and boom, I surmise. *   *   * We adopted, Cooper, a small dog, a few months ago.  This week, it was time for him to receive a battery of shots for real or imagined health risks.  In addition, the vet asked me to collect a fresh sample of . . . "scat", I suppose one might say.  Oh, glory!  Oh, dedication!  Oh, well. Cooper did his duty.  I did mine (so to speak), and brought the bottle to the vet's offic...

While Congress, or at least that part of Congress that has been annointed to work on ridding us of a health care bill that might provide health care, I have been thinking about the little beasties that come to our bird feeder hoping for a little something. These things do hang together, you see. We have a bird bath, in our back yard, but that is of use only to birds that can sail over the fence.  Gambel's Quail, now attending to the little feather balls they call kids, can fly, but mostly they walk, and the kids always walk.  Maybe they need water, too, I surmised. That is what led to the feed store, and the little galvanized pan.  You cannot see it, but I shaped a chicken wire insert to give the little tads a way to struggle back up, and out, should they find themselves in deep water.  And there is a rock, holding the wire insert down, and providing a perch should they simply want to pick up a little tan. So far, all of this is nothing but liberal do-good...

Big deal!  Amazon bought Whole Foods. Grocery stores are going to go the way of buggy whips and harnesses and strip malls. Does anyone remember Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs?  Staying at home to do the shopping instead of going to the store is something that Sears and Monkey Wards knew all about long before Walmart started selling almost everything online. One could buy houses from Sears. The internet is faster than the postal service:  that is all. Amazon has more money than either Sears or God, so if it is possible to buy groceries online, Amazon will find a way to do it. Shopping from home isn't new:  substituting electronics for postage stamps is new. Maybe Amazon's model, which will develop as time goes on, will not really work well, but that electronics will supplant postage stamps and the Wells Fargo wagon is certain. The sooner we recognize that we are in the midst of an electronic revolution, the sooner we can begin to rethink...

In 1975, doing what I had to do to supplement my modest salary as a small college teacher, I often found jobs remodeling someone's kitchen, or garage, or entryway; sometimes just a window or a piece of furniture. It was the grandest sort of relief to be doing something with my hands, where I could see results, after talking to students for months about ideas which sometimes seemed to evaporate between saying them and listening to them. I had already coaxed a fine, old Queen Anne house into something delightful, for ourselves and our friends. Dean called one spring day and asked if I would like to rebuild an original Iowa log house for him, just outside of town.  I said I didn't know anything about log houses, but he persisted, and I agreed. In the course of doing that, the owner of the land who had sold Dean his plot of land and settler's cabin, suggested that I should have my own cabin, and that if I wished,  he would sell me an acre of land.  That is how it s...

The days of the coal-powered flashlight are over. It seems inevitable that small storage batteries will replace the furnace-powered backpacks and head lamps. A Bloomberg report suggests that while coal powered economies will still be aggressive for another decade or so, that within twenty years alternative energies will drive our economies. And therein lies what everybody really knows and does not want to admit: the old industrial revolution, powered by coal and steam and gas and diesel oil, is gagging on its own emissions. Mari and I recently drove from Tucson to the Upper Midwest to attend Spencer's graduation, and to see grand friends. The number of wind turbines lacing the skylines and ridges was astounding. Iowa, where Mari was born, where she rode a pony to a tiny wooden schoolhouse-- evidence that even the industrial revolution was not so long-ago aborning-- is no longer just diesel tractor and corn- and beanland. It is wind turbine territory, and ev...

 Nasty little bugger! The sun shines bright on our Pima County ball park home, and the Vermillion Flycatcher (I think it is) flirts with us by sitting on the shady side of the tree before zipping down to the outfield brass for a buggy breakfast, then back to the shade again before I can focus, or even find him with the lens. One of the Old Timers tells of playing the outfield when a hawk exploded into his view, a few feet away, to pick up a snake in the grass.  (Even though that was not an election year.) Other hawks used to sit on the high light poles, watching the game, wondering why anyone would be interested in catching a stuffed, bone-dry horsehide. I am not a birder, having little of the interest and focus needed to identify what Plato might have called a biped with feathers.  (Plato said that a human being was a biped without feathers:  Diogenes plucked a chicken, tossed it out into the discussion, and said, "There goes a human being, Plato!") ...

Lake Nokomis--no-KO-mis--is one of the chain of lakes in the Minneapolis Park System; a most remarkable and beautiful series of lakes enhancing the city.  I once calculated that I had walked around that lake, nearly every morning, for a total of about 3000 miles.  I continued walking. Mari and I have just returned from about a 3000 mile trip with our little camper, actually back to that little lake, and down and around to friends and relatives living in the region.  Spencer graduated from high school, you see, and if he is lucky--if all of us are lucky--he will only do that once. maritime-connector.com I have been thinking about time and space, not as Einstein did, because I can't, but in the most prosaic, ordinary ways. I can walk 3000 miles, but it will take a long time, and I do not think I have the time, anymore.  My own remaining time is part of what I have been thinking of, not in any desperate way, but in a most ordinary way. Locavores--how is t...

I have begun taking pictures of the Tucson Old Timers, again, and they are being posted at: www.TucsonOldTimers.blogspot.com

We were traveling on Memorial Day, and came home to discover that someone in our neighborhood had put a small flag on our mailbox, as part of a general community salute to those who have died in the service of our country.   Amen! That little flag has caused lots of things to percolate in my mind.   Once, during the Vietnam War years, my anger at our own government was so deep for insisting that we make that country's determination to escape (mostly) French colonialism an issue for us, and that all the war accomplished was a national shame, resulting in our ignominious withdrawal and absurd declaration of victory, that I refused to fly our country's flag, or to say the Pledge of Allegiance:  I stood, but I could not say it, not because I was not committed to America, but because I was.  We had to be better than that! And thinking of the Pledge, I have been uneasy about it ever since, during the Eisenhower years, at the height of the Cold War, the words, "u...

A Pinterest photo Frederick March played U. S. President Jordan Lyman in the 1964 movie, "Seven Days in May".  President March wanted to bring the Cold War to an end by signing a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets, and the generals in the Pentagon did not like the idea.  Bert Lancaster played General James Scott, and General Lancaster plotted to overthrow Frederick March in seven days.  Jiggs Casey, played by Kirk Douglas, and aide to Lancaster, alerted Frederick March.   Don't l et the names or the plot bewilder you, which was my intention.  The plot has almost nothing to do with this blog article, or with "The Russi an Thing" in Washington, D.C. right now, except that our most recent excursion with our Casita took place during the last fourteen days of May, and the first first three in June.   Our grandson, Spencer Weis, was graduating from high school in Decorah, Iowa, so we added a few days to our itinerary to loop up into Minnesota...