August, we got August, and along with it

cabbage ‘n’ corn with bacon,

rocks, surveillance and, Monday,

another fruitful visit to Desireé in beautiful downtown Gardner while simultaneously fretting

as to whether I’d ruined last year’s Mule Springs Fire painting, later appreciating

rural Pennsylvannia treasures sent by Stephen and watching the Western Slope smokes

come and go…

Wednesday we went to Walsenburg for grocery augmentation, to drop books at MOF and

then continued west to La Veta’s Legends to lunch with recent octogenarian M. Metz, Nancy

Haynes and local longtime friends Adrienne and Mary who introduced us to their very charming puppymill rescue miniature Aussie Bennie after the tacos etc. were duly consumed. We were

on our way home by three where it was all I could do to finish Paul Kitagaki Jr’s excellently

cautionary work, a testament whose warnings seem at this juncture overrun by conditions and prejudices [not to mention egregious lapses in what were formerly assumed to be the laws and protections of our recently dismantled country] far worse than merely packing some thousands of citizens off to what in the current context don’t seem like particularly brutal confinements at all…families stayed together, conditions might have been grim but not gratuitously mean and punitive and, illegality aside, there was undeniably a war on as opposed to manufactured MAGA hysteria and hate.

I wonder, given his current elevation [and all he undoubtedly owes to OLD], whether the Hon. JGR would still honor that sentiment?  Things are not looking good hereabouts, kids.