I’ve learned my views are very much out of sync with the majority of the WM [let alone SWM]*

demographic of which I’m a default member but for some reason** still find it impossible to subscribe to its received beliefs…unlike the full-of-himself pony-tailed phony tales Trumper I keep hearing about at the farmer’s market, from whom I’d like to know, since as far as I can tell there’s no actual Plan except overthrow, hey, what’s the attraction…is it maybe salacious thoughts about his idol’s tiny sneering sphincter-like mouth? Or, as Ben Gravy would say, “what’s the claim?”  I mean really, dudes, you got anything to offer besides Nancy Reagan’s***

immortal “Just say no”?  No? Say yuck, buck…anyway after said farmer’s market we had a fine Saturday evening dinner with our neighbor Mary Ann, speaking of things intensely local such as how her garden provides, dogs, families, health and history here and elsewhere…

Sunday morning I woke to word that another old friend had died, not unexpectedly but lamented nonetheless, second one this summer.  Many memories, and here we [still] are,

on our way to Pueblo where on a mid-September Monday they were enjoying hundred-degree days and I found, after deliberating elaborately about takeout, Fritanga’s to be closed so we dined on crackers and hummus, fortunate to find shade in the Wingate-by-Wyndham parking lot while waiting to meet Stephanie who most kindly brought my drawings down from the Ent

 Center, where they’d spent several months as a small contribution to the Space[s] Between exhibition, before our imminent departure south.  We made it home without incident,

save for having to squeeze by the hilarious congregation of people [3], pickups [3], dogs [6?] and wafting weed at the cattle guard just where 626 takes off up the hill to Libre, unloaded

and learned that in faraway California Newsom’s challengers were already braying that the recall election [All elections!  Only [their] God can decide elections!] was fraudulent…even though it hadn’t happened yet. What if they win, I wondered? Oh well, as above, I remain

in the SWdeludedM minority…and so was quite happy to learn, two days later, that the – Fraudulent! – vote overwhelmingly overturned the recall and summarily buried the bogus wannabes beneath it.  A bit of hope for the future in my minor opinion.

We had some weather,

an interesting lunch with John Barr who’s living at Bill and Mu’s while they are in Cali, and otherwise were just here on the hill with dogs making the usual rounds –

quiet, boring, quiet..reading and walking and studio times, model-making in L’s case.

As for readings, thanks most recently to Erin the elder Elder sister for Brian Doyle’s very engaging “Mink River”, but many wonderful books have passed through our hands [and minds,

hopefully] this summer, all the way back to “Atlantis”, “Albert and the Whale”, essays by Geoff Dyer**** …and Jenny Diski…oh yes.

 

*By which we assume, of course, the WM to be AMERICAN .

**The byproduct no doubt of all that propaganda force-fed me by Vast Leftwing Conspiracies…

***And Mitch McConnell’s.

****Not to mention rabbit [or ant lion] holes opened up by Dyer’s essays in particular; Rebecca West, Zoe Strauss, John Berger…as well as, thanks to Bill Fox, who was also responsible for the Pianos, Richard Ford.