Okay, the hydrangeas are preparing to hunker down for winter and take a much-deserved rest. And even now, they’re gorgeous. I don’t know if there’s anything that gives you all-season beauty value for effort like a hydrangea.
So my gratitude today is for all the ones on my walking
routes. They always have something to give me whenever I see them.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Ah, we are finally in Autumn. Humidity has crashed and mornings are crisp but not frosty. And, finally, leaves in my part of the People’s Republic have begun to turn.
It’s interesting to me that they seem to be changing color
only in patches on trees, not swathes. I don’t recall this pattern in years
past, but I find the reds and golds blooming amongst the vibrant green of a
tree beautiful.
And that’s today’s gratitude.
©2026 Bas Bleu
A small gratitude today.
A small gratitude named Champagne.
I’ve been having some issues with inflammation across what
I refer to as the hip delivery system; diagnosed as arthritis and bursitis, it’s
literally a pain in the ass. It turns out that any movement you want to make
with any part of your body passes somehow through the hips/butt, and you don’t
notice it until it’s painful. Also—your body starts to conform to misalignment
in order to reduce pain, and trying to reconfigure the muscles to where you
should be is also painful.
So I’ve struggled with my morning walks. Saturday was the
first time in a few days that I did the circuit, and I was worried that—even after
a couple of weeks of PT—I’d have repercussions. I was just about 75%
through it when I spotted this guy dancing through the parking lot of a
micropark:
Yes, that’s Champagne. Seems like some dogs wear Halloween
costumes; Champagne lives the costume.
But he also has the personality behind the coloration—bright,
happy, friendly. There were many scritches and a few kisses, which made the
entire walk worthwhile. No walk, no Champagne.
And that’s today’s gratitude.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Early voting for this year’s midterm elections started in Virginia on the 18th. That in itself is a source of gratitude for me because up until about 20 years ago, the Old Dominion was absolutely dug in on the hill of Vote Only on Election Day. If you wanted an absentee ballot, or to vote early, you had to hawk up a valid reason why you could not show up on Election Day and wait a few hours in a line extending into the neighborhood like the Baptist God intended.
But ever since I moved back from The Valley They Call
Silicon (where I used to walk half a block to the fire station and didn’t have
to show ID; they just marked my name off a paper register), I’ve been so
grateful that we’ve moved into the late 20th Century.
Having flexibility in how and when you cast your ballot literally
means more people can exercise their constitutional right to vote. Many
citizens work at places that don’t give you time off to vote; fulfilling your
civic obligation can literally cost you money if you have to take time off from
work. Even at places that do, the two hours might not be enough when your precinct
has heavy turnout and the line is long.
(Interestingly, when I worked at an association in D.C.
that did allow two hours on Election Day, one year the head of HR sent round an
email advising employees—we had a greater concentration of Ph.D. scientists than
some mid-sized universities—that the organization knew that polls in
Maryland, D.C. and Virginia opened at 0700 and stayed open until 1900, so they
would view it as taking the piss (I paraphrase) if people availed themselves of
the time off as stated in the manual. That went over well.)
This year voting is especially fraught. Republicans all up
and down the line are frantically trying to restrict who votes. State
legislatures are gerrymandering districts to skew right. Where that doesn’t go
far enough, they’re closing polling stations in Democratic districts and
removing ballot drop boxes to make it more difficult for people there to vote. Many
states (mostly South of the Mason-Dixon Line) have made it illegal to provide
food or water for people waiting in line to vote in hopes that will discourage
the elderly and infirm from showing up.
The Kleptocrat has demanded that states turn over voting
rolls (so far every one has been quashed in the courts) and that the USPS dick
with ballots sent out and returned by mail. (So far it seems like that also has
been stymied by the courts.) He’s proclaimed that he’s going to send federal
troops and ICE to (Democratic) polling stations on Election Day to “police”
them. Meaning: intimidate and even abduct anyone who doesn’t look white enough.
There are even reports that he’s going to declare martial
law in an attempt to cancel the elections altogether. This, of course, would be
met with a tsunami of law suits and provoke a constitutional crisis. (For one
thing, the 119th Congress expires on 3 January 2027 and without
duly-elected Representatives, there’s no House. Now, some might say that such a
thing would be an improvement, or at least that no one would notice any
difference in productivity, but this would still be a crisis.)
For the record, the United States of America has held
elections through every crisis in our history, including two world wars and a
civil war when armed enemy territory began at the Potomac River, a couple of
miles from the US Capitol. Having a corrupt dementia-rotted sitting president,
a spineless Congress and an ideology-driven SCOTUS is indeed disastrous, but
that’s no reason to cancel elections.
In fact, elections are the start of the solution to this dumpster
fire. Which every Republican understands; that’s why they’re so desperate to
restrict and repress voting.
Anyway—I voted last week. As I cast my ballot (not a whole
lot of choice, really; the Democratic incumbents for Senator and Representative
essentially have a sinecure in my district, which is better than saying the
same for Republicans, but I’d still prefer that they have a lean and hungry
look), I thought about the millions of people around the world who would marvel
at such a thing. Walked up, handed over my ID (which I understand from
Republicans I have to do when I buy groceries?), got my ballot and registered
my opinion on candidates and state and county measures.
That, dear reader, is a miracle that generations of our forebears have wrought with their blood and treasure. That it is under threat from the highest office holders in the land is despicable. But I’m grateful for the privilege.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Saturday night was one of those not-going-to-get-any-sleep affairs; I eventually nodded off at 0400; woke up at 0500; got back to sleep; eventually just got up at 0845. Naturally, that means that yesterday morning pretty much started out crap.
I got dressed for walking and
realized that the windows
had fogged over, which portended my walk would be complete soup. (Android said
that it was 74F and felt like 74F, but it lied; it felt ghastly. For one thing, my glasses fogged up as I stepped outside.) But I decided
I’d at least walk over to the one remaining pie-plate-sized
hibiscus shrub to take a picture for a neighbor.
And look what I found on my
way:
I saw them because I took a different
route than my normal walk, so I don’t know how long they’ve been there. But
they were stunning, beautiful and exuberant. And they lifted my day into
bearable. For that I am grateful.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Today being Labor Day, I’m expressing my gratitude for the benefits that organized labor has brought to the workplace. Yes, I’m talking labor unions. Without them, there’d be a whole lot more miserable employment conditions than exist even now.
There are basically only two
reasons why you and I are not working in sweatshops with dangerous electrical
wiring, hot and cold running vermin and no toilets—unions
and litigation. (I would also have added “80-hour weeks” as one of the
not-any-mores, but that’s pretty much so last century.)
Business management in
companies both large and small do not provide more or less
sanitary and safe conditions, ventilation and some standard
of minimum wage out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it
because over the past 150 years unions have fought with
blood and treasure for the concept that labor is part of the
value-add of both products and services; and because they’re
terrified that if they screw up and get sued, juries
will strip their corporate assets in punitive damages like a plague of
locusts ranging across Iowa.
I’m not saying that unions
haven’t at times been part of the problem—many of them are every bit as
bloated and arrogant and greedy as corporate
boards, and in fact you’d have trouble distinguishing one stance
from the other across the negotiating table. And I’m also not saying that
America’s propensity toward litigiousness doesn’t suck up resources, like some
cosmic Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, that couldn’t have been better spent on something
like, oh, curing cancer.
But it takes the kind of
jackhammer represented by Big Labor and Big Lawsuits to get
the attention of the heirs of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. If you
doubt this, I refer you to the history of the textile industry in America: the
corporations first moved their factories from states with unions to the South
(God bless right-to-work), and then—when even minimum
wage became too much for them—to Mexico, India, China and other
countries where there’s no concern about pesky things like sweatshop
conditions, unsafe factory buildings or child labor.
And it’s not limited to
schmattas, either. Thirty-six years ago during my sojourn in the great, cough,
state of North Carolina (which is probably still electing Jesse Helms to the US
Senate, corpse though he be), there was a fire
in a chicken processing plant that killed 25
workers and injured 54 others. Exit doors from the factory floor had
been locked, trapping the men and women in the inferno (because NO
BREAKS!). Exactly like the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in 1911.
I’m not going to talk about
the wages paid or the conditions in the factory, but the plant had never
suffered a single safety inspection, so the managers weren’t troubled by having
to fork out for any, you know, protections. North Carolina is a right-to-work
state, and it don’t hold with no unions.
Let me also bring to your
attention the decades of work by the United Farm Workers to bring
decent wages, as well as working and living conditions, to the men, women and
children who tend and harvest the food we eat. I know that I personally find it
easier to swallow fruits and vegetables when I know they aren't the product of
slavery-in-all-but-name. (It would help if there were some sort of—oh, I dunno—independent
inspection of food products to detect and cull out things like salmonella, e.
coli, cyclospora and screwworm so that we don’t sicken and die from them, but I
may just be indulging in a pipe dream.)
Labor Day was made a national
holiday in 1894, in the wake of the Pullman strike, which ended after President
Grover Cleveland sent in federal troops to suppress the strikers. As a sop to
thousands of workers who’d lost their jobs and their homes, Cleveland created a
national holiday to “recognize” labor.
I find that a monumental act
of condescension—declaring a holiday "for the workers", kind of like
Flag Day, without any meaning behind it. It wasn’t even a paid holiday. And it
was set for September to distinguish it from the international socialist/communist
labor day of 1 May. But it played well with Cleveland’s corporate constituents.
(Someone may tell the
Kleptocrat about Cleveland and we’ll see SECDEF assigning the military not only
to firing on strikers, but also to taking up jobs in factories and the farms
after all the deportations. As it is, he's nixed labor unions for several federal
agencies and would happily ensure that working stiffs be reduced to indentured
servitude. Or—what’s wrong with slavery?)
So it’s incumbent upon us, in
times where enormous inroads have been made in the gains unions won for us (I
laugh at the notion of a 40-hour week, because no tech employer for the past 15
years has expected anything less than 60 hours per week from its salaried
staff), to consider where we’d be if they hadn’t existed.
It’s nowhere I’d care to be, I
assure you. So I am grateful today for the battles that labor unions fought.
They didn’t always win, but they did move us forward.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Yes, of course—my gratitude for today (and the year) is for the life of Dolly Parton. The singer-songwriter-actress-philanthropist-entrepreneur-humanitarian died last week at age 80, but her legacy—no, legacies—of love, generosity, acceptance, joy, fairness and (of course) music are going to live for the ages.
I titled this post “Cup of
ambition” (from her hit “9 to 5”) because Dolly was supremely ambitious. She left
her home and family the day after she graduated from high school, taking the
bus to Nashville because she was determined to turn her musical talent into a
successful career. IMO she was definitely not running away—hers was a
loving and happy family, albeit abjectly poor—but running to something: stardom. She knew she
had it in her at age 17.
Four years later, she joined country
star Porter Wagoner’s television show, where that quality became evident to
everyone who saw her, even the people who resented her replacing a beloved
fixture of the show. She stayed through her five year contract with Wagoner, and
two years beyond; then left to go out on her own.
Wagoner, who’d come to resent the
attention Dolly was getting nonetheless sued her (in 1979) for breach of
contract, demanding $3M and 15% of royalties from the songs she wrote and
performed. Eventually Dolly settled for $1M, which took her years to pay off.
But she never said anything negative about Wagoner.
And no one ever got a
percentage of her royalties. When Elvis Presley inquired about recording “I
Will Always Love You” he demanded 50% of the publishing rights (as was his
custom). Dolly said no—in the nicest possible way. It was a difficult decision,
because: Elvis. But that cup of ambition came with very clear ideas about
boundaries, acknowledgement and fiscal canniness.
It also came with a firm sense
of self. Early on, she developed the persona of the big-haired blonde who put
her makeup on with a trowel, could make music with her acrylic nails and let
her chest precede her into any room. She liked that image, so she kept it her
entire life. Anyone who tried to take her down discovered that she was way
ahead of them with the jokes. One of my favorite lines was “It costs a lot of
money to look this cheap.”
She may have looked cheap, but
she was all class.
Along with accepting herself,
she took others as they came. Race, religion, country of origin, sexual
orientation, gender, level of education—we’re all God’s children, she said. If
God was happy with his creation, she wasn’t the person to quibble. She particularly
enjoyed drag queens, many of whom model themselves after her; she sent gifts of
support to at least one of them who ran afoul of Texas law.
Speaking of which—it was kind
of divinely ironic that on the day of Dolly’s death, 25 August, a federal judge
in Texas struck down a 2023 law banning “sexually oriented performances”. In
his ruling, U.S. District Judge David Hittner cited Dolly’s exuberant persona
and told the pearl clutchers that if they were offended by this kind of thing, “just
don’t go.”
Dolly’s career was enormously
successful. Her financial assets were estimated in the hundreds of millions. And
she used that money to do so much good. She built Dollywood, a theme park in Pigeon
Forge, Tenn., the largest employer in that county. All employees—full-time and
part—are eligible for full tuition at Tennessee universities and receive health
insurance, paid time off and child care.
When Whitney Houston’s cover
of “I Will Always Love You” rebooted millions in royalties, Dolly invested that
money in a Black neighborhood in Nashville, turning a down-at-the-heels area
into her recording studio and kick-starting further investment.
Her friendship with a medical
researcher at Vanderbilt University led to her contributing $1M for research
into the mRNA vaccine that was developed by Moderna into the Covid vaccine
received by tens of millions of people around the world during the pandemic.
She also had a video made of her receiving the vaccine early on, encouraging
people to do the same by repurposing her early hit “Jolene”.
More than 30 years ago, she
started Imagination Library, a program that sent a book a month, from birth to
entry into kindergarten, to children in Sevier County, Tenn. Eventually, she expanded
the program to all of Tennessee, then the US, and now Canada, Britain and
Australia. For blind children, the books are in Braille.
Imagination Library does rely
on partnerships with government, and Republicans in Indiana and Missouri
recently cut a combined $10 in funds to the program, even as they all tweeted
their condolences at her death. That is, after all, how they roll.
Which reminds me: I was
expecting something typically crass and self-aggrandizing from the Kleptocrat.
(Remember how he responded to Aretha Franklin’s death? “She used to work for
me.”) I was surprised at the measured reaction, although I didn’t rule out the
probability that someone whomped him with a stun gun and prized the phone from
La Harp’s claws to send that tweet. And, of course, a couple of days later he
tweeted out an AI slop image of Dolly and him at the White House. I’m not
linking to it, but it shows him with his tiny hands in his coat pockets and
Dolly reaching through to hold his arm, as though 1)she’d ever be seen in his
company; or 2)she’d be the supplicant. Asshole.
(Not that Dolly would ever
call him that. She was pretty scrupulous in her non-partisanship. She just did
what was right and kept moving.)
Dolly showed us that a fundamentalist can live the spirit of Christ, and that you can be highly ambitious without also being a prick.
As you can tell—I’ve been
letting the spirit of Dolly Parton infuse my thoughts this past week. She set
such an example of strength, focus, happiness and welcoming; it makes me smile
even as I type these words. That woman was born with a joyful heart and she was
a goddamn national treasure.
I’ll leave you with a clip
from Designing Women, the late-20th Century sitcom set in an
interior design company in Atlanta. Charlene, about to give birth to her first
child, is overjoyed to find that Dolly Parton has entered her dream. Dolly
insists that she's not an angel, but spoiler alert: later in the episode, she
returns as an angel to escort an elderly Black woman, played by Bea Richards,
to heaven.
Well, we knew she was an angel
all along, didn’t we?
©2026 Bas Bleu
A friend of mine organizes a novena to Saint Bartholomew via Facebook each August. I’m glad to be included, because for nine days, I have to carve out—oh—five to 15 minutes to say the prayers, examine the art works accompanying the posts and contemplate the significance of that day’s devotion.
Yeah, some days, even five
minutes is monumental, as you get wound up in this and that. But I do my best,
even if I end up doubling up some days.
(For those unfamiliar with the
novena, it’s a ritual of intercessory prayers across nine days, typically
culminating on the day a particular saint is recognized in the liturgical
calendar. It can be performed alone, or in the company of others. There’s an
introduction, a novena prayer constant to all nine days and a prayer specific
to each day. Then there are concluding prayers.)
Every year a phrase of the
Saint Bart novena catches me up: “May [the saint’s] prayers obtain for us every
grace and blessing we need in our lives, and we thank you for the graces you
have already granted us through his intercession, especially those
which have come unasked and unlooked for.” [Emphasis mine.]
Graces and blessings that
come unasked and unlooked for. Huh.
How many of these surround us,
filling our lives with joy and comfort? Graces and blessings we didn’t think to
ask for, which surprise us every day in ways large and small? What would our
lives be like without them? An unexpected call from a friend, watching a puppy
squirm and wriggle in a pile of leaves, the first sip of a perfect latte,
arriving safely home through urban traffic—I typically don’t think to ask for
these things, and while I do try to acknowledge them when I encounter them, I
don’t think I could be said to look for them.
I wonder how many of them have
slipped past me in my worrisome fugue every day?
Every year this prayer reminds
me that I am in fact engulfed by graces and blessings, whether I’ve asked for
them or even notice them. Every year I’m stopped cold by this reminder.
But this year I was also
struck by a phrase from the prayer for day nine, Saint Bartholomew’s Day (which
is today, as it happens): “O Glorious Saint Bartholomew, when you met Jesus you
recognized him as the Son of God and the King of Israel. Pray for us that we
may always recognize Jesus when we meet him.” [Emphasis mine.]
Well.
Um.
Now—this is only my
interpretation, mind, and YMMV—but, I’m thinking that the Jesus we might meet
these days could appear in, well, any form, really. If we limit ourselves to
just humans, given how he manifested the last time—an itinerant Jew who relied on
the kindness of strangers to provide him with food and shelter and did not
build mega-churches, get around Galilee on the biblical equivalent of limos and
private jets or exchange blessings for credit card details—it seems logical to
me that 2026—Jesus might look dark-skinned as well as light; could shine
through a woman’s face; may perhaps be found in a refugee camp seeking children
forcibly pulled away from parents; might have been hauled out of a car on the
city streets by ICE agents; possibly suffers from a pre-existing medical
condition.
In short—we can’t rely upon
the Almighty to publicize the arrival of Jesus (or even on Saint B to give us
guidance in this), so we ought to be on the lookout for him or her or
non-binary them…well, everywhere, really. In the supermarket, on Metro, at work
(although—and this is just me being me—probably not in the boardroom or the
executive suite; I could be wrong), in school, along the bike lane, out in the
woods. We should be alert and receptive to him/her/them and maybe not get
pissed off when they’re in the express lane with more than 15 items, or
panhandling at an intersection, or wearing shabby clothes or don’t seem to be
able to control their kids—which I recognize is not necessarily easy. At least,
it isn’t for me.
However, by looking for Jesus
everywhere, by seeking out the good and the godly and inviting these graces and
blessings into our lives, I believe we can become a conduit for them to those
around us; we can help bring them—unasked and unlooked for—to those around us. Idea: we could be the grace.
And this is my grace—my
gratitude—for today.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Some days your gratitude is macro; some days micro. Today’s the latter, but I think it’s also the former.
One recent morning on my walk,
I was struck by the elegant arrangement of three roses on their bush. So of
course I shot a photo.
There’s something about the
formation of the pink flowers against the green shrubbery and the subtle curve
to the right that just hums. I'm so grateful to have this kind of thing all around me.
You don’t have to stop to smell
the roses, but it’s worth your time to pause to appreciate what they’re giving
you.
©2026 Bas Bleu
I probably heard about The Peach Truck on Reddit in June. I immediately went to the site and ordered a 12lb box for pickup in nearby Sterling on 3 July, their first distribution of the season. I’d already signed up for a fruit CSA, which has delivered mixed results; their peaches in particular were disappointing, so I took the leap of faith.
Naturally, 3 July here was
three-digit hot, and also the Federal holiday. My air conditioning was on full
blast for the entire 10 miles out and still never really made a dent. And the
traffic—even making the turn into the exit lane for Lowes (which shares a
parking space with a Walmart and a Sam’s Club) was unbelievable. I was
heartened to see a gigantic orange semi labeled THE PEACH TRUCK, but disheartened
to see a line waiting for the distribution.
I did mention the heat, right?
However, the line moved
quickly and my QR code got me a smallish orange box.
(There were people there with
wagons, hauling away multiple 40lb cartons. They were clearly veteran
peachers.)
It took me about 15 minutes to
get out of the parking lot—seems like the world and his wife were all either picking
up peaches, getting some DIY stuff or stocking up on retail goods stacked high
and sold cheap.
To tell you the truth, I was
concerned, because when I got home, the peaches were hard and they had no
scent. No different from what you get down to the Giant. But almost immediately
an email arrived, with instructions. Set them out, stem-side-down on the
counter for a couple of days. They will come to fruition.
Well, I did.
And so did they.
The first one I bit into was
firm but so juicy I had to wash my face after eating it. I could not wait to
make fresh peach pie.
It’s been at least 20 years
since I’ve made fresh peach pie, because you have to have absolutely fully
ripe, luscious peaches to make it. So I was a little rusty. My first effort was
a little less than aesthetically pleasing:
But it tasted fine.
Let me just say this: once you’ve
peeled a peach, it is unbelievably slippery. You have to keep a nimble but firm
grip on it if you want to slice it.
I then made tarts, which are
easier to give away.
Pro tip: although the recipe says to “mash” some fruit to go into the glaze, you really have to purée it to eliminate little bits. (Well—maybe if you strained it?) And I discovered that my old Cuisinart food processor still didn’t get the job done, but the NutriBullet I won at a company health day nine years ago was perfect. (That was on the third round.)
Also—for tarts, cutting the peaches into chunks instead of slices makes it easier for the glaze to permeate the surface.
After I gave a couple of tarts to a friend, she and I went halves on the second (and final) peach distribution, which I picked up at the end of July.
Another round of tarts and an
attempt at peach ice cream. That was less successful, for one technical reason
(pro tip: do a trial run setting up the ice cream maker before you really need
it) and also because it just didn’t taste peachy.
I might try it again using
frozen peaches. Or I might just write it off.
Anyhow—I used up the last of
the peaches yesterday. The season is over.
And here’s my gratitude: wonderful, delectable, juicy, luscious peaches once again. The season is short (which helps me focus; another point of gratitude), but Lordy, is it amazing.
©2026 Bas Bleu
A week ago Friday, around 1645, I ran the garbage disposer; it regurgitated water back up into the sink, which drained only very slowly. Naturally this was on the cusp of the weekend, where calling out any tradesman would involve an out-of-hours surcharge.
I consulted the Duck
(Duck-duck-go) and performed some of the recommendations. Following the use of
a plunger, the drainage seemed to improve. But on Sunday, when I ran the
dishwasher, it didn’t drain properly.
I first tried calling my
appliance repair guy, primarily because I know him and I don’t know any
plumbers, and also because I didn’t want it to be what it was, which was a
clogged drain. On Tuesday, Alan confirmed that. He knew no plumbers to
recommend, but he did have the name of a drain clearing service, so I called
them.
The technician came out
Wednesday morning. By that time I was bugging pretty badly. Not so much about
the slow drain or the garbage disposer (which I rarely use, since vegetable
scraps get composted, non-poultry bones go to the fox and everything else gets
binned); it was not having the use of the dishwasher that drove me up the wall.
I’d be standing in the kitchen with a dirty dish in my hand at an absolute loss
as to what to do with it. (Listen—I spent three years in the UK without a
dishwasher and thought myself very ill used the whole time.)
It took two snakings to clear
the drain, but clear it he did. As he was checking various things (no backup in
the utility room, yay!) he let the water run for a good five minutes. Drained
like a pro. Absolutely worth the $$$.
(Bonus: I asked him what the
weirdest clog he ever cleared was. That stopped him, but then he said, “Rats in
the drain. But that’s only in Arlington.”)
So my gratitude today is for having a kitchen drain that runs free, a garbage disposer that doesn’t spit water back at me and a working, draining dishwasher. Viz:
©2026 Bas Bleu
Seems like I post annually about how much I love crape myrtles. Because they are truly something I rejoice in; have done ever since I was a child.
So today my gratitude is for this beauty that looks like it’s swaddled by a shrub. Just popping out of the sea of green like a breaching orca in an excess of joy.
©2026 Bas Bleu
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
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
My gratitude for two days after our nation’s 250th anniversary is meteorological: the stinkin’ hot weather has finally broken, and it’s only seasonally ghastly. Thursday, Friday and Saturday brought triple-digit highs, along with humidity levels kicking the heat index up to the teens.
Then a storm system came
through Saturday evening. Messed up the cult activities on the National Mall,
but it also knocked the corners off the heat, so ill wind and all that.
Moreover—grateful for air
conditioning in home and car, and for ceiling fans. I had to drive out at
midday on both Friday and Saturday for appointments. Even with my 25-year-old
Saab’s AC working at max all the way, it didn’t do more than take a bite out of
the heat. Still—I cannot imagine the experience without it.
Willis Carrier—you da man!
©2026 Bas Bleu
With all the crappiness surrounding us these days—mostly man-made—I was filled with joy and gratitude to peek through the trees around the (man-made) ponds on the former corporate HQ campus and current construction site of absolutely hideous townhouses selling for $1.2M and discover my old friends the sacred lotus blooming.
Those ponds were completely
drained a couple of years ago, and I was so worried about the flora and fauna
that were part of their ecosystem. The snapping turtles were rescued and
relocated somewhere; I haven’t seen the blue herons. But the lotus gives me
hope.
A definite reason for
gratitude.
©2026 Bas Bleu
We had three gardenia bushes in the house where I grew up in Southern California. We also had no air conditioning, so on summer nights my bedroom windows were open. Even though I was at the front of the house, I could still catch the scent of the gardenias. It was heavenly.
About seven or eight years
ago, I bought a little gardenia shrub and planted it in a pot in my back yard.
It’s not an ideal situation for it—that area gets only scattered bouts of
direct sun seven months out of the year, due to all the trees around me. But
that little trouper has hung on, even though it took a bit of a hit during the
snowcrete days we had earlier this year.
Although it doesn’t give me weeks of scented evenings, I’m still grateful for the flowers it produces for me. Gardenias mean summer to me.
©2026 Bas Bleu
My gratitude for today is that the Kleptocrat’s name has been removed from the Kennedy Center—including from the wall of the building itself.
A federal judge, Christopher Cooper, ruled last month, in a
suit brought by ex-officio Kennedy Center board member, Rep. Joyce Beatty
(D-OH), that the center was given its name by Congress and only Congress can
change the name. (It was his handpicked stooge board that renamed the center in
December. A day later, he declared himself surprised, even as workers installed
the clearly planned letters on the wall.) He set 2359 on Friday as the deadline
for the name being off everything—the website, marketing materials, employee email
signature blocks and the building. The Kleptocrat’s KC stooges dithered around
for a couple of weeks, then filed a motion to stay, which the judge denied.
So I joined tens of thousands of online viewers Friday, (as well as scores on site) watching as workers erected scaffolding for the deed.
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| Credit: Rahmat Gul, AP |
There
was a break late afternoon as a storm moved through the city, right around the
time the stooges filed an appeal, claiming for the first time that amended
center bylaws now state that the center only receives funds if the Kleptocrat’s
name remains; if it’s ever removed, the money stops.
Well, that didn’t hold, but they still missed the midnight
deadline. So they filed another motion requesting a 24-hour stay, because the
dog ate their homework. The judge granted them until noon on Saturday to get ‘er
done.
Around 0330, the workers completed the scaffolding, but then spent time pulling up gigantic tarps to completely shield them from view.
 |
| Credit: Tasos Katopodis, Getty |
Word
on the street is that the delay to the wee small hours, and the tarps, were
solely to spare the Kleptocrat the humiliation of having the world rejoice at
seeing his name come off, letter by letter. But Cliff Owen of AP got this shot
of the P popping out:
And Joyce Beatty stayed throughout the night to witness.
 |
| Credit: Cliff Owen, AP |
The tarps are still up. It’s more than possible that the
Kleptocrat is hoping for more court filings to overturn the decision—that it’ll
go to SCOTUS, and they may find some way to twist “Congress gave it the name,
only Congress can change the name” into “yeah, it’s okay.” And, of course,
there was the birthday circus yesterday at the Building Formerly Known as The
White House.
 |
| Credit: Alex Wrobiewski, AFP via Getty |
UPDATE: Per @MusicologyDuck on Bluesky, those door-like indentations have been formalized:
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| Credit: Musicology Duck |
But for now, I’m grateful for Rep. Beatty, for Judge Cooper, for those workers (who I hope got overtime for working through the night), for everyone involved in this exquisite rebuke to the Kleptocrat’s imperial ambitions. And on his birthday weekend.
Many happy returns.
©2026 Bas Bleu
