I have been so creeped out by reptilian politicians, red Christmas trees and other stuff that I haven’t been able to write. All this despite deeply encouraging changes in the U.S. House. So, for now, I offer an iPhone picture I called “Where the Jemez meets the Rio Grande.”
Shallow politicians are easy targets for my broader life complaints. I note that the late President George H. W. Bush is not among them. To him I say rest in peace. I was fond of him and grateful. Eulogizers are right in citing lessons his biography provides in contrast to the ways of Donald J. Trump. Bush’s story is like the ones of great men I read while growing up. Sure, there is the white patrician privilege, and I still have have questions about Clarence Thomas, Geronimo’s bones, Roger Ailes, Lee Atwater and the Willie Horton ad, (although Peter Baker of the New York Times reminded me in a post after this writing that Al Gore was the first to try the Horton smear). But there is a sense of decency that I used to know. I think a lot about the last of the World War II generation, the one that ushered me into my own relatively safe and privileged world, polio vaccine, pasteurized milk and all.
I am sure my depression is temporary. But all I can offer from my desk right now is a photo of cloud formations meeting over the place where the Jemez River joins the Rio Grande — over the volcanic plug Cabezon and the dusty Rio Puerco valley, over the end of Santa Ana Mesa and the Pajarito Plateau, all seen with my iPhone, looking down the valley of Las Huertas Creek, running into the big river almost opposite the little Jemez.
There are things I keep seeing in the meeting of colors and clouds.
dream ranch 