A day after Christmas day’s sunshine

had even more sunshine but then the weather turned, sending us to Pueblo the day after that

in near-whiteout conditions which dialed back into light snow near the liquor store and then merely damp streets for most of the rest of our errands in town, though “town” could seem grim, a place where promises kept are maybe not the promises many people might have

wished for even if the effigy, which I assume is supposed to be Our Great Leader, is misleadingly trim and lacks the bloated scowl always seen on the actual face even when Live on Fox…so what’s up with that?  Maybe it’s really the signifier hisself in Trumpian drag?

We returned from Petsmart [Large Puppy Foods not shown] duly disconcerted by that as well as a large illuminated sign on the highway advising “I-25 closed at MM 94” which, once investigated while awaiting food at Jorge’s, proved to be true for the entire ninety-four miles down to the New Mexico border due to multiple wrecks and weather and whatever.

Fortunately once Linda finished her tacos de camarones and I my pork and avocado burritos

[with hot green] the wrecks had been cleared, the weather lifted and interstate traffic magically

restored save for the usual construction backup at the endlessly ongoing Huerfano River bridge replacement [over a year and counting].  This allowed us to be home and unloaded in time for

the puppies to receive their first lesson in Where Snow Comes From while in the house the

Minimal Christmas was belatedly enhanced with colored LEDs; Target’s post-holiday clearance.

With more than a little effort the Expensive Ashley was persuaded to stay lit, rendering life

indoors warm and productive, or at least hopeful that something edible would drop.

The storm raged, quietly, all the next day, delivering what was predicted to be “less than an inch” of snow, by which they may actually have meant “less than an inch an hour”…all day.

All of which made it appropriate to shelter in place and listen to Morton Feldman even if the studio, thirty degrees above outside ambience, never exceeded 54 degrees…

Sunday required no heat at all as the sun shone on new snow brilliantly,

brilliantly warming the house despite rather chilly temps

which we braved in the afternoon to finally

[with dogpack]

walk up

to Dean and Sibylla’s for a visit.

Dean had, of course, been painting and Sibylla

told me tales of fascinating ancestry as well as how when the chair of the local Democratic Party

asked if she could draw any parallels between the current administration’s leader and tactics and those of those in power at the time she was born in Germany two years before WWll ended she had to considerably edit her impressions to fit the fifteen minutes allotted. The parallels are more than obvious to anyone with a sense of history, let alone someone who had been forced

to live through it and the consequences.  In all the years I’ve known her we’ve never had such a moving conversation about family and life as a child in post-Nazi Germany…anyway, an amazing and illuminating couple of hours and quite sobering in the light of whatever “promises” are being kept in the Heartland of the Homeland to facilitate the perpetuation of the Orange Menace.  Mussolini [Remember him? Remember how he ended up?] was famous for getting the trains running on time, too, although not for invading Poland.     “Feel Safer Now?”

So home

we went, last Sunday of 2019.

Lots to ponder on the way to a New Year…