Happy New Year! We pretty much always have a quiet New Year’s Eve, so did in the library – a calamari dinner with a ruby-pink Lambrusco followed by a zoom with friends in Albuquerque
while indulging in discreet slices of Lulu Beaumont’s homemade panforte, a deadly addition which had fortuitously arrived just that afternoon…in bed before midnight to read an absolutely wonderful essay on sturgeon, “The Creature Beyond the Mountains” in Brian Doyle’s
“Children and Other Wild Animals”. I may have been awake at midnight but maybe not. First act of the new year was, of course, to get up and pee and yet, despite Lambrusco and panforte, 2022 did not start off with a hangover. It did start off rather remarkably pristine…
a condition persisting the Entire First Day.
That night the slide project made it into the current century, last of trailers at Wall Spring with the forte Belvedere* [“forte” thanks to its 440 V8, despite never running quite right],
first summer of House but most importantly Puppy Summer, wherein began our remarkable
journey with Dazzle and her brother Speckle.
January second became O-cast…and even colder with that back bay damp cold we all know so
well so back to the Project, by now up to 2002, with Dave in the Buffalo Hills,
one of my last overnight stays in the Radar studio and, after he was pulled from a varmint trap
on the Owyhee Desert in October, first pictures of Lefty the dancing dog.
Meanwhile over here another year and, if projections are to be believed, a “Happy Flu Year”
which I desperately hope won’t involve sneezing, as it still remains excruciating. 2003…
a Duferrena painting, West 100th Street, Nueva York; Linda’s ’50 F-350
and, inevitably, dogs;
Star Ranch, Idaho. Available now.
[La forte Belvedere, 1994 – 2004, on her way to a new life in Fernley, Nevada]
Wall Spring winter;
Lefty and
…friends.
Huerfano, June 2004
Oregon, later that year…
Carquinez Straits, early this year
Nevada-Idaho Stateline…2004 [?]
and at the old airstrip above 45 Ranch, 2005 [?], still for sale.
The pack…
Ah…well, Happy January Sixth, all you “patriots”. A day that will go down in infamy, or whatever.
In the meantime could someone please enlighten me as to what all these mean-spirited guys have to offer beyond the installation of a Permanent Kleptocracy and perpetuating the unrelenting bullshit of the doofus on those screens?
Thanks for an appropriate mix of old and current images for the New Year, with a healthy dose of dogs.
Let’s hope the only mean and rabid one in the bunch, dRump, can be permanently put down this year.
We hope you’re flu-free this season and fully recover from the serious sternum incident.
A hangover-free New Years was a good way to start!
Glad you’re making headway through the slides. It’s fun to re-find the old favorites.
Wishing you swift healing and a new year with much satisfaction. I agree on Shetland, hoping for the next season soon.
Joining you in trying not to topple, let’s live long, and see the imposter gone.
Not to topple anything but kleptocracies! We, luckier than you, are still only up to season 4 of Shetland, so plenty more before we run out. Those scenic Scottish police procedurals are definitely addictive [even if they aren’t subtitled]…
Star and 45 for sale – the pictures, yours and the ad, are ever so enticing, at least for another trip out there. Happy New Year Mike!
are you all really optimistic that the grump will be gone?
Nope, not at all. And certainly not his Faithful Followers…
That’s a very familiar – but slightly different – Duferrena, Mike. How many like that did you make?
The problem with both parties is the permanent kleptocracy, I had hoped Biden would change that but now I think he just moving the deck chairs around. In the meanwhile, a thousand houses are gone in a grass fire. Still, Marjorie Taylor Greene got kicked off Twitter, so there is that.
By the deck chairs you are of course referring to the Titanic’s…a hard vessel to reorient, oh yeah.
As for Duferrenas, there were many; the aerials began in maybe 1976 with two Hinkey Summits, moved on to three 3×5′ Duffers [one of which you acquired early on] and then iterated semi-endlessly from the Page Street basement [along with a couple of “Doherty Rims”, “Nepalis” and “Pipelines”] until ’79. The diptych in the show in Reno is comprised of the first two in the 5×5′ format…oh there were also a number of very noir “Anderson Crossing” aerial views, too. A fertile time, many of which were painted over later…
just the locusts yet to come…..watch out for 2022. Happy New Year to all. and to all a good night!
km
Loved the nostalgic photos of the dogs and other scenes. R and I are big Shetland fans, and while I have been to mainland Scotland many times, there is a very particular and somewhat inscrutable accent, you are correct.