though who worries about salt when our very children may turn out to be...lizards?*

…or a terrier…ist

while our crappier, crappy air [not nearly as bad as in many so many places] persists.

Anyway, off we went to Pueblo in it

and King Soopers, half-masked at best despite these times of increasing concerns about Delta. I then waited to have my teeth cleaned and had my teeth cleaned after which, deranged from the heat of the Vitamin Cottage parking lot, Linda returned and, encouraged by what was in the Cactus Flower‘s parking lot went there for a lunch which proved to be Colorado Mexican

 for geriatric white people.  The unmasked crowds initially disconcerted but service was attentive and the chips and salsa[s] promising…less great was the kitchen’s confused plating and the so-called tamales’ deepfried masa but oh well [and oh how we miss Jorge’s!]

it was lunch and we were soon back into the heat down the road, threading our way through  summer Texas tourists to make it home by 2:30, offloaded by three in time for early dinners

for dogs and, arg, comatose collapse; food too rich, too salty, the day too something…

A quietude of dinner with uncertain visibility ensued but next morning there was a snap of fall

in the air and one could see, albeit vaguely, all the way across the Valley.

Plus it was Friday the thirteenth and no one had to go anywhere…

likewise Saturday all day,

a good night for pork-loving wasps as Afghanistan, abandoned, collapsed beneath

the gold standard of asymmetrical warfare [abetted in no small measure by a timeline helpfully provided by the Great Dealmaker, allowing everyone outside the U.S.-installed “government” to make the necessary accommodations in advance of the promised tail-between-the-legs withdrawal**].  As a result the patient Taliban had lots to do over the weekend,

by Sunday turning up in the Presidential Palace where to all appearances they were much better behaved than the Trumplican yahoos who visited ‘our’ nation’s Capitol last January.

We meanwhile went to Malachite with our near neighbor Nance, pausing at the Gardner P.O.

on our way to a most rewarding dinner at John and Eva’s which began with swell hors d’oeuvres

followed by John’s truly memorable crespelle ricotta e spinaci, Eva’s fresh garden salad and for dessert an astoundingly light pie from her own apples along with copious wine throughout and superb company all the way from Santa Fe – Phillis Ideal and Gene Peach – whom we enjoyed immensely. By the next morning the Huajas had again vanished but it was Bill Haynes’

70th [!] birthday, celebrated that evening by all of Libre and then some…memorable in many ways, not least of which was bringing everyone together for amazing food, each dish designated as to its glutinosity or vegan-ness or whatever-ness in true Portlandia fashion and everything quite delicious, Billy’s green chili being for me the standout…a birthday, 20+ people gathered, out in the air, anyway.  One can only hope…Thus the week began, really,

on Tuesday, a day again of Nothing [no view across the valley, either]

wherein I finally weaned myself from the sentimentality of listening to my 57-year-old “Music of Afghanistan” [if not the news of the ongoing transition] to contemplate the currently struggling

paintings to a soundtrack from Mdou Moctar***, which made everything look much better…

Seemingly.

 

 

*And if you don’t believe in that or any of the attendant fantasies on that end of the truthiness spectrum you’ve most likely been hopelessly brainwashed by the CDC, the USGS**** and the deluded idiots who refuse to accept that Turnip Won.

**An American Decline of influence and confidence which didn’t exactly start last week with yet another all too familiar ignominious withdrawal – really. Try Vietnam, the sixties, the beginnings of the serious wedges driven through an already fractious society by Nefarious Forces [we won’t get into Them] bringing us to Trumplicans, lizard people, etc etc etc…

***Many thanks to the incomparable Beatie Wolfe for passing that on.

****That would be me of course, having relied on and verified USGS mappings on the ground on numerous occasions as well as naively trusting in the lamestream media despite the Fox and Q factors eddying loudly and repetitively around us.