Gratitude Monday: just an anomaly

I knew that the environs of The District They Call Columbia was in the path of the smoke from Canadian wildfires, but Friday morning, when I stuck my head out of the back door to toss out birdseed, I’d forgot about that. Because my yard is closed in by trees and shrubs, I couldn’t see the haze, but I reacted to the smell and taste of the air.

“Is-is someone barbecuing at this hour? Burning leaves?”

Then I remembered.

I had to go out a couple of times, once in the morning and once in mid-afternoon. Both times my eyes burned and by late afternoon I felt that painful catch in my lungs as they notified me that they were full of particulates and I should cool it.

Here’s the thing—I grew up in Los Angeles before anyone gave a damn about air quality. I must have spent half my childhood and youth never being able to actually fill my lungs with air because of smog. Only rarely could I see the sky without the pollution blocking the view (usually after rain), and never in the summer months. It got so that schools throughout the Basin couldn’t let kids out for recess or physical education for weeks at a time. It wasn’t until I moved away and then returned after some years of lung-clearing that I realized what I’d been ingesting all that time.

LA cleaned up its act—well, California did. It took decades and caused much squawk from industries—including auto manufacturers—and consumers. But they cleaned the air, and that’s my gratitude for today. It’s been decades since I experienced what I did this past weekend—I’ve taken it so for granted that I forgot all about it. But what a gift to live in a functioning advanced society with clean air!

I say this recognizing that even as the words flow from my keyboard this administration is doing everything it can to send us back to Smog Alertville. That just makes me all the more grateful that something like this weekend is an anomaly, and it should be so. We may have to do it all over again when these kleptocrats are driven from office, but it’s a worthwhile endeavor.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

I'll always be in your way

You know—it’s so exhausting to listen to the Kleptocrat’s non-stop, 24x7x365 lying. His neverending firehose of falsehoods, dementia-driven hallucinations, contradictions, ignorant misstatements and just plain fucking lies.

Add in the fact that everyone in the administration and all card-carrying Republicans in both houses of Congress have to lie to reinforce his delusions, we’re just buried under a gigantic pile of fly-swarmed falsehood shit.

Not even thinking about any of the other five squillion topics he lied about this week, the unbelievable (literally) shite about what’s going on in Iran is enough to make a cat puke. And this is before yesterday evening’s “big announcement”.

So our earworm for today is kind of retro, but accurate: The Sex Pistols singing “Liar”.

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Pausa de hidratación

The other morning I was walking around the former corporate HQ park campus (for the past three years a construction site for 82 four-story townhouses on five acres). I came across this guy, on the wrong side of a fence around one of the ponds.

He might eventually have found his way back to the water, but I decided to help him. Having had experience with Testudines from my time in grad school at William & Mary, when I regularly rescued them from the middle of major highways (and earned the epithet “[Bas Bleu], Redeemer of Reptiles”), I was prepared for him to pee on me. I made sure I was standing well behind him and holding him at full arms’ length.

He in fact let loose a gusher—must have been holding it in for a while—but it missed me. And he had unobstructed passage to the pond to fill up again.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Talk to the paw

A couple of times a month, I take a morning walk with my yoga instructor and her dog, Sasha. She’s got some nice wooded paths in her part of Herndon and we typically clock between a mile and one-and-a-half miles. Everyone’s happy at the end.

But yesterday, Sasha did not approve of one of the turns we didn’t make on our way home. Here he is, silently voicing his disapproval and ignoring us.

Fortunately, it was in one of the shaded areas, and eventually we moved on.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Those wonderful folks who brought us the guillotine

Since today is Bastille Day, la fête nationale, I’m expressing my undying love, appreciation and gratitude to France.

As with the United States (or, TBH, anywhere), there’s plenty that you could crab about the country, but its history, wit, diversity, language, flair and geographic beauty vastly outnumber the flaws. It fills my soul in places where I didn’t even know there were gaps.

I’ve never been disappointed taking a trip to France. From my first one—straight out of college, with no credit cards, riding a bicycle from Paris to Santiago de Compostela and staying in youth hostels, abandoned houses and highway rest stops—to the most recent involving comfortable hotel beds and some very nice meals—each one has enriched my perception of the world.

I love the sense of history in France. Yeah, the French are subject to selective amnesia as much as the next nation, but coming from Southern California, chills ran down my spine the first time I stood at the edge of the medieval boundaries of Poitiers, looking across the plain in the twilight below and just faintly hearing the echoes of the Moorish armies that encamped there in 732, before Charles Martel drove them back toward the Pyrenees.

You don’t get that sort of thing on La Cienega Boulevard. Not usually, anyway. And certainly not without chemical enhancers involved.

Moreover—nobody knows how to throw a revolution like the French. Nobody.

Here is the range of France—the Arc de Triomphe:

(The real thing, commemorating real events that evoke deep passion in the people.)

And a road sign in Calvados (zoom in):

Vive la révolution!

 

 ©2026 Bas Bleu

Gratitude Monday: Safe from the storm

After a week of seeing the damage last Sunday’s microburst caused in my neighborhood of The People’s Republic, I’m deeply grateful to have escaped without a scratch, to either person or property.

They’re still clearing away fallen trees (although not at the old house surrounded by my cluster).

And I imagine dealing with insurance companies is just adding more pain to the initial wounds.

I recognize that it’s pure luck that has spared me—there are two very large, old trees in my back yard; either of them could have fallen or been split. But I am grateful that they didn’t.

I’m also grateful that I had the windscreen with the leaky seal replaced on my car several weeks ago. Before the multiple storms we’ve been having.

No swamp in the passenger footwell.

 

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

No power to reason away

You know, every time—every single time—the Kleptocrat gets up on his hind legs on the international stage, he showers himself (and our nation) with embarrassment. Not that he, in his molding cottage cheese brain has any notion of it. But his performance at the NATO summit this week in Ankara was no exception.

Every time he opened his mouth, he spewed incoherent, rambling, inapt, ignorant, bloviating lies and bullshit. I’m not going to detail them, because I do not fancy six hours of documenting his crap. But there was one thing that just captured my attention. He had, of course, slagged off NATO individually and collectively throughout the meetings, but on Wednesday, he hallucinated an incident—in private, of course; behind closed doors where no cameras captured the moment—where the leaders assured him, “’Sir, we love you.’ These are grown people saying that. Isn’t that nice?”

I’m not linking to the video, but what interested me was that when he said, “Sir, we love you,” there was a wistfulness in his voice, as though on some level he knew that of all the things that never happened, this never happened the most, but he so very much wanted it to happen. It was quintessential wishcasting.

So for our earworm today, we’re having The Doobie Brothers singing “What a Fool Believes”.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

You can take that to the bank

I was in Fairfax Radiology, which has basically locked up all radiological procedures outside of an actual hospital in the greater Fairfax County, yesterday. I noticed this sign on both the entrance door and the check-in counter:

What’s interesting to me is the last one. Turns out UnionPay is a state-owned Chinese financial services company, headquartered in Shanghai, that provides cross-border payment services.

First time I’ve ever seen that name, but if Fairfax Radiology accepts it, it’s obviously a thing.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

The wider impact

Took a walk outside my cluster yesterday morning. Quite a bit of damage in the greater ‘hood, beyond my cluster.

The golf course cleaned up the one tree that was on the third hole fairway, but there’s still a lot of major damage in the rough.

W&OD Trail was okay, because Dominion Power razed the sides last year. But Old Reston Avenue looked like a cyclone had passed through.

(Note the smashed wall.)

The Bowman Distillery apparently escaped damage, but both in front and behind both tall and short trees were down or de-limbed.

The AAFMAA property (soon to be a squillion townhouses) got hit:

Temporary Road park had minor issues:

But the basketball court is out of action for a while:

Really, just don't mess with Mother Nature..

  

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Sturm und drang

We had a little storm front come through Sunday evening:

Very grateful that the only damage to my back yard was a whole lotta leaves on the ground yesterday morning.

Others in the cluster, however, were not so lucky:

(This is what's on the other side of the video just above.)

And this guy—who’s been here since before these townhouses were built around him in 1970, and who’s kind of a stickler for slapping PRIVATE PROPERTY signs all around the perimeter—took a couple of direct hits.

(Fire department came out; no one injured, fortunately.)

Folks: ya doesn’t want to mess with Mother Nature. Her bitch slap is a corker.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu