This guy can play the harmonica, and this is a real American classic dating back more than 100 years. Stumbled across Charlie McCoy performing “Oh, Shenandoah” on an old Hee Haw (RFD TV). Feel like I should be watching a big, rolling river on a warm summer evening or the sun setting beyond broad pastures, but glad I found this version even on a snowy November night.
We all struggled to understand what couldn’t be understood. Beyond the images of a young president’s vibrant life and sudden death, the framework of our lives had been shaken, our leader taken from us.
Batting on a window on the south side of the house is the first thing I hear as Mountain Standard Time light wakes me at 6 a.m. I get up to investigate. It turns out to be an anxious gray flycatcher, trying to get in. I don’t know why. I turn from the flycatcher to the mountain and notice a shower lifting as clouds redden to the east. I think maybe I’ll return to bed but encounter a rainbow to the north. This is all too interesting to go back to sleep.
Always good to see the sun light the tree after topping the eastern ridge — from the safe quiet of my home. But I am reminded by the news how dangerous every morning is for the folks in law enforcement. Good luck and best wishes to all on this bright Sunday.
I can always stop to listen to this John Williams piece. It’s called “Air and Simple Gifts,” and you will recognize it from the first Obama inauguration. This performance is by Anthony McGill (clarinet), Itzhak Perlman (violin), Yo-Yo Ma (cello) and Gabriela Montero (piano)
For all the boys and girls in Congress, here’s some alternative perspective for today’s negotiations on the shutdown and debt-ceiling stuff.
And while I know many human issues are at stake, I want to point out this story by Journal science writer John Fleck about the effect of the shutdown on migrating Sandhill cranes.
Marla Brose/Journal
In my “monarch of all I survey” mode, I tend to think of myself as the first to hear — after my dog — the cranes coming down river. But apparently I missed them this weekend. Someone Tweeted their flight.
My late Sadie, a St. Bernard and perhaps bird dog mix, was particularly good at alerting me to the cranes coming to the north end of the Sandias to catch a late afternoon thermal for the ride down to the Bosque del Apache. Cooper has been just as good, but, heh, it’s the digital revolution and we’ve been beaten to the punch on Twitter. Just more help in knowing when to look up, I guess.
So far, it’s a day of recovery after another week in the newspaper biz.
Check Twitter for what’s on my radar: that cyclone approaching India, for one thing. And I am still moved by this story about Malala Yousafzai in the Washington Post, particularly her words: “I am proud to be a girl, and I know that girls can change the world.” The White House moved this photograph of her meeting with the Obamas on Oc.t 11.
I’m having trouble paying attention to the rhetorical back-and-forth in Washington. Jay Carney used the word “constructive” after the president and speaker spoke on the phone Friday. That seemed to have resonance for all of a few hours. John Harwood said on a recent Gwen Ifill show on PBS that the brinkmanship and pouting would go on right up to Oct. 17. I guess I’ll take a deep breath today and try to start taking it seriously again tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the iPhone shot in the upper left hand corner is what I’m seeing in my unfocused gaze from home in the hills: nothing but blue.
And now, I think I’ll take some time to read some Alice Munro.
Cooper, after our morning stroll, is already stretched out for a Saturday nap.
— “For years and years I thought that stories were just practice, till I got time to write a novel,” she told The New Yorker in 2012. “Then I found that they were all I could do, and so I faced that ….. I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel.” — Alice Munro in the New York Times upon learning she won the Nobel Prize for literature.
— Mark Oswald reports in the Journal on the big change in public access policy at the Valles Caldera National Preserve
in the Jemez Mountains: “The board that oversees the Valles Caldera voted recently to allow hikers to wander as they like around the spectacular 89,000-acre preserve in the Jemez Mountains – a dramatic break from the restricted and regulated access allowed previously.”
— Sun comes through the northeast window. I stir. Cooper, the former animal shelter guy, hops up onto the bed and extends a white paw, as if to affirm that we still have a deal.
I’m burned out on TV.
America’s Cup, then “Breaking Bad.” The screen can’t take this much of my time.
I want to get my feet back on real ground, focus on a long, blue horizon.
Back to books and babbling to the dog.
I need a break before the World Series and the National Finals Rodeo. I’m not sure I’ll be recovered even by then.
I’m afraid the zealotry of Congress is still going to demand my attention, but I can at least read about it instead of watch.
And I’m afraid Congress is real — not fiction, not sport.
Meanwhile, my friend Larry Calloway has been off on a real road trip, not watching TV, way ahead of me as usual. Here is his report: “The Grass and God in America.”
dream ranch 