Meanwhile we continued tripping into the darkness of both “The Famished Road” and “Season of the Witch” which, despite David Talbot’s repeatedly referring to a person I’d only ever known as Terrence as “Terry”, was compelling in a whole other way.   All through this the

weather continued to be mainly Wind although unlike Oslo or even Long Island

temperatures were more seasonally wintry which made it easy

to transport frozen water to the burnsite without loss although the initial move turned

the flatbed wheelbarrow’s 40+ year-old tire into a whole other kerfuffle.  At the end of the day, as they say, our usual UPS driver was off and his substitute elected to dump my next book

[which, “Witch” finished, soon took precedence] out at the gate…ah, extra exercise,

and then the night.  The recent arrival, “Running Against the Devil” by Republican strategist

Rick Wilson [sorry to disappoint the Faithful but, spoiler alert, the Devil will not in this case be Crooked Hillary], became instantly and compulsively addictive. Essential, even.

Nonetheless winds in abatement first thing in the morning made it expedient to burn which

went off uneventfully and, despite all precautionary waters remaining solidly frozen in their buckets well into the afternoon,fortuitously.  After watercolors and an NPR cameo by slippery

 Chris Sununu, sufficiently quick-witted to respond to a question about one of Trump’s easily refuted lies with “the President has his own way of expressing himself”**,

there was Lunch on the Porch followed by a last look at last year’s last watercolors*** prior to their final resting place in the plastic garbage bag labeled “73/2019” on a high shelf in the repo

as 2020 is already beginning to make inroads, after which

I finished off the burn and wandered the Vast Estate.

One more morning wherein the first heron sighting of the decade,

not shown, occurred during a circuit of the ponds, a day

otherwise intermittently devoted to packing, watercolors and, of course, lunch.

*Thanks to Jim Bengston I now know snefattig means “snow poor” in Norwegian and as we all know “Nevada” means “snowy” in Nevada, which of late, just like Oslo, it hasn’t been.

**Scary but really slick and smart; come to think of it that may have been a well-rehearsed standard explanation for an endemic situation. It’s going to be a long desperate haul from here to what will hopefully not be the Trump Landslide which, if successfully rigged ‘n’ faked, will lock us in for four more rude and existential threat-denying years after which le deluge, quizás? Another sobering thing Chris said was “In the privacy of the voting booth everyone votes their self-interest” which is what he and his Grand Ole Party count on and not only is he not alone but he’s mainly right for all concerned.  They may not all vote their self-interests but a lot of them will vote for the self-interests of the people who tell them their self-interests coincide with theirs…get it?  So we with other interests had better get out there, rattle the trees, shake the bushes, vote ours and hope to send their halfwit Mussolini down the road.  Actually, my apologies, Benito, you were a much nobler specimen.

***Non-snefattig