taking the usual three hours* from rolling out of bed to rolling out the alley next to Elviarita’s we were nonetheless headed for the valley before 11:30 and after narrowly missing some sort

of  one car ricochet across all five lanes of 80 just before the Suisun weigh station made it

handily to the mtns. where the 20/80 JCT wasn’t nearly as bad as the nonsensical lane closure from Alta to the bottom of the Blue Canyon Grade but, whatever… at Eagle Lakes some of us rolled in the scant remnant snow while others indulged in a most brief lunch and down

the other side to the Wadsworth Store where gas is $1.50/ga less than in Benicia.

Empire was ever the same and Seth and Sonny were still at Wall spring

to help unload, then the sun went down,

came up on Tuesday to dry trimmed fields, tiny hints of green dusting

the willows and what my generous late friend Eddie Groenendyke used to call “populars”.

A peaceable kingdom somewhat, coming back to life after a long if uneventful winter though

even here the beat went on, unrelentingly; “holding to the lie becomes a show of force. This is the fascination of fascism in action: irrationality has a kind of mesmerizing power. It numbs our capacity to respond.” ** Boy does it…

We made the rounds, wondering how much will get done

in an all too brief stay as

Spring continued to encroach…

Well we’ll see…

*Beyond the usual two hours it takes to get out of bed why it should take another just to pack and load two ice chests remains one of those Mysteries of Life.

**Daniel Pinchbeck, aptly; think the “stolen” election of 2020, the recent Supreme Court ruling against – not upholding – habeas corpus and thousands upon thousands of lying falsehoods blitzing in from the Right, which seldom is.  The fact that 45% of the electorate is said to unquestioningly believe those “facts” and any and all others emanating from the Piece of Totally Useless Shit and his minions certainly reinforces the hopelessness.  Oh dear.