Getting around

This week I am coming to you from Sedona, Arizona. Technically, Cottonwood, but people know Sedona, so that’s my story.

While here I have use of someone else’s car, a 2021 Subaru Forrester. This is quite a change from my 2001 Saab 9-3 coupe. For one thing, it’s enormous; I feel like I should have a battle fleet around me. For another, it’s automatic transmission.

I thought I was going to have to consult YouTube just to get the thing started. Not the keyless part, that I know. But you have to simultaneously depress the brake and press the Engine Start button. I can’t tell you how many minutes I tried to get it going before I managed the magic combination.

Then there was the seat adjustment—on my Saab, it’s a lever under the seat; in the Subaru, there are knobs and switches on the side. I had to get out and examine all the things before finally getting it moved. I don't know for sure, but I think it's a hybrid. I mean—I hope it is; when I stop for longer than maybe 10 seconds, the RPMs drop to zero and there's no engine sound. Then when I press the accelerator (or, to be more precise, take my foot off the brake), everything's tickety-boo.

Gonna be an interesting week.

 

 

Gratitude Monday: weathering the storm

This year made quite the entrance here in The District They Call Columbia. Two winter storms dumping about eight inches of snow in the space of four days, all of which stayed relentlessly in the sub-32F range. After Sunday I did not hit more than 5K steps for one single day, because it’s too treacherous to try to walk on sidewalks that haven’t been scraped.

However, I’m grateful that my neighborhood did not lose power during either storm, my house was warm, I had enough milk to make my morning lattes and I was able to get out Saturday to return two books to the library so I don’t have to pay fines.

Also, it was remarkably pretty.

 

Blossom on a tree

What, oh what to play for the first earworm of the new year?

Why, I think it’s Nina Simone, singing “Feeling Good”. After reliving all the horrors of a year ago, I believe we all need some of this voice and this sentiment.

 

Yahrzeit

Let me just say that I resent the absolute fuck out of the Kleptocrat and his knuckle-dragging, gap-toothed, mouth-breathing, moronic cultists—and all their Republican enablers—for turning the Feast of the Epiphany, the culminating event of Christmas, into one of the worst days in American history.

They literally smeared shit on the walls of the Capitol and bragged about it. They mauled the outnumbered US Capitol Police who were defending the peaceful transfer of power and strutted through the streets of DC like putschists. They carried Nazi and Confederate flags into the seat of government and howled for the blood of other Americans.

For the past week or so, news media have been running retrospectives on that ghastly event; you can’t escape it unless you unplug from everything. Which I can’t do, as my job kinda requires it.

But today I’m going to do my best to set the MEAL Team 6 fuckwits aside and think of Orthodox Christmas, el día de los tres reyes, presents, feasting and the best that humanity can do. I know that, in my lifetime, 6 January is always going to bring up this vomit of White rage. But I don’t have to let it cover me. It's Epiphany.

 

 

Out on a limb

I posted some pix yesterday of the whiplash winter storm we got; I say “whiplash” because Sunday it was over 60F and yesterday it barely hit 30F.

I’m fortunate that my neighborhood experienced no power outages, but the snow weighed down and broke a lot of tree limbs.

There was—for the first time since I’ve been here—an arborist out in the afternoon, cutting branches that were either cracking or dangerously low. Viz:

 

Whiplash

Welp, 2022 is…a thing. Viz:

I shot these pix on Saturday.

Sunday it was 55F when I went out for my walk; got up into the 60s in the afternoon.

And here was yesterday, at 29F.

 Sun came out in the afternoon and everything turned magical. (Except for no ploughing in my cluster.) Still 29F, but magical.

Sun came out in the afternoon and everything turned magical. (Except for no ploughing in my cluster.)

 

Gratitude Monday: They shot it into a tree

 Sadly, we’re going to have to try to make it through 2022 without Betty White, who died Friday just three weeks shy of her hundredth birthday. This will be a strain on a world already exhausted by virus and RWNJs, but we owe it to her to try our best.

We are, however, lucky—and I am grateful for it—to have a multi-decade body of her work. Today I give you “The Great Herring War”, which White apparently improvised. Watch as Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan break up as White just keeps on keeping on.

I don’t make many resolutions, but here’s one: I’m going to try to work “After that, no other herring would do it” into at least one meeting a week in this year.

Thank you, Betty.

 

A cup o' kindness

Welp, here we are at the butt end of 2021. Gawd.

If you’re reading this, it means you’re still alive and I say, bravo! Well done to make it through this annus horribilis, starting with the GQP-sponsored insurrection and carrying on with the GQP-encouraged anti-mask anti-vax anti-reason mouth-breathers, the first instance in US history of an unpeaceful transfer of power (thanks, GQP), the miasma of Big Lies (courtesy of the GQP) and the onslaught of the Delta and Omicron variants overwhelming our already-precarious for-profit healthcare system (not directly attributed to the GQP, but man, did they ever exacerbate it).

And I, for one, am glad to be looking at it in my rearview mirror.

This evening I’m clearing the decks for 2022 with my usual ritual of burning El Año Viejo—writing out a list of the pain, sorrow, chagrin, anger, fear, pain, frustration and other negative things that happened this year…and then setting it on fire.

The New Year then becomes a tabula rasa upon which I can create love, kindness, generosity, joy and hope.

So I’m closing out this final Friday with “Auld Lang Syne”. In this case sung by Rod Stewart at Stirling Castle. Because why not?

 

More than leaves

Let’s have another backyard visitor, shall we?

I was sitting in my livingroom, talking with a friend on the phone a few weeks ago. My gaze out the patio door rested on the top of my neighbor’s bird feeder pole and I thought, “Oh. A clump of leaves sitting on that pole.”

But the longer I looked at it, the more it came together along my optic nerve.

“Owl! I have to get a picture! There’s an owl out there. I’ll call you back! Have to get a photo. I’ll call you back!”

My friends are used to this kind of thing, so she acquiesced. I mean—I was already hitting the End Call button and grabbing the Nikon.

Anyway—here it is:

Just gorgeous.

(I did call my friend back and we continued the conversation. As one does. But I’m glad I got the shot. Some people walking by out back scared it away and I haven’t seen it since. But I’ll be on the lookout.)

 

 

Thug life

Since I’m catching you up on the neighbors, here are some clips from a month ago. I heard some noises on the patio late at night, so I went down and discovered an entire gang of trash pandas were engaged in nefarious activities.