Sidetracked Charley

  It is raining almost daily. No fires close to me. Vrbo is booking at a good pace. Flowers are blooming in my flower beds. So what is to stress about? Threat of hail. Smoke drifting in from Arizona fires. A bad apple or two with guests. With flowers see the threat of hail. Things I can do nothing about. Or is my stress all about not having time in my schedule to do the usual stress reduction things? Have not allowed myself to sit on my new garden benches and drink coffee as if I had all the time in the world. Or grab my camera and head to the high plains grasslands totally ignoring the flash flood warnings in the burn scar area I would drive through. Or paint chairs. Or reupholster my big chairs. Or print cards. You have a question about the last? It is rather routine: print, cut to size, glue to card stock, affix labels, pair with envelopes and put in clear envelopes. Gandhi, it is said, mediated by spinning fiber into yarn. My friend Carol, who just moved into a new house, is painti

  Probably not. Certainly not critical thinking on any demonstrative level. We are great examples of what we once termed GIGO during the early days of computer programming: Garbage In and Garbage Out. I noticed an uptick in this in the early days of the 2020 Pandemic when I was trying to argue that I did not add a second floor to my house built in 1981. I had the plans to prove it. Yes, I did. And yes, the assessor for the county could just drive out and see the evidence for himself. But no it was the pandemic. We were solidly locked down well and good. I could not take the plans to Raton and pound on his desk. In fact I could not even take the plans to the Chamber of Commerce to be copied on a large format copier so then mail to Raton. So they were going to go with a vague report by some one who disliked me that I had built a second floor on my aging house. And because it was the pandemic and we were well and truly locked down I missed the official period to challenge their decision.

  I found mine in the book Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. No there was not an incident with a dolphin in my youth. But there was a circus. A couple actually and both are rather dark memories. A clown in one which I get close to in Stephen King books like IT, but always shy away from the total truth of. But the one Prince of Tides uncovered was the one in Roswell where a trapeze artist fell to her death. No wait. Everyone tells me I remember that wrong. But all the principals are now dead so I get to have it my way. Mom was not even there. She was home with Gary who has no way of knowing the truth. I was with Dad. Who enlisted me as is conspirator and told me to not tell Mom. The Dolphin, the Tiger, and the Circus in Pat Conroy's fiction are all wrapped up in an elaborate tangle of lies and cover up. The Circus, the rape, and my brother the conspiracy of lies that exploded as a result of reading Prince of Tides. I had been so indoctrinated in the party line (translate that as family

Evening Grosbeak   It has been a bad year for birds. Even with most of the humans out of their way there seems to have been a huge die off in populations. For me, however, there seems to have been an abundance of some species. The Evening Grosbeaks normally in the high pines were in my meadow (with large spruce tree) partaking of the bird seeds I normally reserve for harsh winter days. They were joined by a bevy of Redwing Black Birds normally in the marsh areas. But barely represented were the hummingbirds.  We all put up our feeders and watched patiently for them and carefully monitored the level in our feeders but they didn't come in swarms and the feeders did not need refilled. We refilled them only because we worried about the freshness. Nobody mentioned it on Facebook. When Cheryl mentioned it, just above a whisper, as we sat on my deck and noticed a solitary hummer approach one of my four feeders. Where are they? I mentioned a Wendy's hamburger and was set upon by numero