31 December 2009 Fog on the mountain, fire in the stove

Slept in until just after 0700 this morning. I intended to get up earlier to call the VA hospital for some medication renewals. The lure of a warm bed and the ever-pleasurable presence of Gloria’s body against mine won out over good intention. Fortunately, the hold time was minimal this morning and that chore was completed before 0800.


The morning trek to recover the newspaper was accomplished in moderate fog. The daylight was softly subdued and the water droplets were cold on my face as I maneuvered the dog on her lead and the trash can up the driveway and across the road. Once we’d dropped off the trash can for pickup by truck we headed for the mailbox and the newspaper. Loki immediately took an interest in something that was or had been in the ditch and wanted to crawl into the culvert that runs next to the road, the old path for Cassi Creek. It took five minutes to dissuade her from her desire to follow it and to disengage her from the various blackberry vines that live on that part of the property.

Getting back into the house, I poke up the stove so that the logs left over from last night feel encouraged to burst into flame and warm the office into shirt-sleeve habitability. A good batch of wood will last from midnight to just about 0700 if bunkered down well. Some mornings it takes only a bit of coaxing, opening the damper and increasing the air flow into the combustion chamber. Other mornings, starting with difficult wood, I wind up rebuilding the fire. A couple of fat wood sticks will make a lot of difference in convincing a fire into life.

Today’s hike with Mike was largely uneventful. We did notice a dearth of dogs along the way. Normally, two –five dogs that live along the route will run out to exchange greetings with Loki. Today’s trip was dog-free.

However, other animals have been here in abundance. Gloria’s bird feeders have seen a steady parade of birds and squirrels eager to partake on a gray, rainy day. The flock has been in attendance at least twice as of 1530.

We’re fairly passive about New Year’s Eve. Neither of us have the urge to run back roads in bad weather. There’s a dance in Asheville tonight that we were invited to attend. But the weather today pretty much ensures some icy roads at higher altitude. Adding that to Gloria’s back and leg pain, dancing is not a good option for us right now. I know she misses being able to dance. She was quite excited to find a contra-dance community here. Hopefully the next repair will provide some relief and allow her to return to dancing. If not, we can always go and listen to the music, take tickets, etc.

We will do a bit more up-scale dinner tonight. I’m marinating two rib eye steaks to grill on the stove top along with two Maine lobster tails to add to the festive feel. I’ll fix a rudimentary Caesar salad and perhaps some greens. That should feed us nicely. We’ve a small bottle of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, my absolute favorite champagne to toast the New Year and each other.

We may download a new movie, we may play Scrabble, we may do both. We’ll probably make a few phone calls and Gloria will try to link up with her brother and his family, including her niece and nephew, in Peru.

One thing is certain. Tomorrow’s schedule does not revolve around any form of football or basketball. I would be quite happy if Comcast offered me a “sports”-free cable package. The allele expression that selects for any interest in team athletic events does not exist in my genetic makeup. I’m quite competitive. I just have no interest in team sports at any level from grade school into professional franchises. I object to our schools using tax monies in order to recruit and train a continual flow of gladiators for the ultra-wealthy franchise owners. To that end, I have no desire to watch such competitions, no falsely stimulated loyalty to any school or franchise team. So it is time to launch another round or letters to Comcast demanding they enable ala-carte packaging for their cable television programming. I recall when the broadcast networks fought cable television vigorously, claiming that the cable format would eliminate commercials and put the networks out of business. Now, we pay for cable instead of snatch it from the ether and the number of commercials per program has expanded exponentially. In point of fact, football games on television are routinely halted so that commercials may air. If I had shelled out for travel, tickets, parking, and food, only to have the players suspend play in order that some advertiser can hawk beer or other products, I’d consider organizing a fan’s strike over the practice.

As for me, I don’t care how often such games are interrupted. I’m not sitting in the stands. My objection to the practice resides in the delay in programming that such commercials, linked with endless other delays in the game, cause for those of us who might wish to watch something scheduled to air later that day. There’s another round of letters to network executives in that practice, too.

It’s been interesting today, reading the year and decade end columns in the newspapers. There is a drive to find a name for the decade beginning in 2000. The best I’ve seen offered is “The wasted decade,” by E.J. Dionne Jr. writing in the Washington Post. Most of the decade was subject to the Bush/Cheney desire to visit warfare upon other nations. They took a justifiable retaliation against the Taliban in Afghanistan, tied it to the legitimate mission to capture or kill bin Laden, and wrecked it by letting the Afghan warlords prevent our troops from actually taking bin Laden at Tora Bora. Then they warped those missions into an absolutely unjustified invasion of Iraq based upon cooked intelligence. The result was a war fought for Halliburton’s profit, for Cheney’s belief that sending others to die for profit excuses his refusal to serve in uniform when it was his turn.

Fog was ever evident during the decade. The Bush propagandists spread fogs of fear at every step. They used anthrax, Islamic fundamentalism, and non-existent weaponry to scare the American people into supporting their plans, or at least not opposing them. The spread a fog of confusion and deception abroad and at home as they deregulated the financial industry and nearly wrecked the world’s economic system while their lobbyists and propagandists blamed it on a political party that was not in power for six of the eight Bush years. Now that the Bush years are over, the GOP is spreading another fog made up of lies about health care, enlisting our American Taliban, the religious right, the tea party mob, and all the other base voters who seem to be sufficiently fogged of their own doing to buy into the GOP fog.

But there remains hope that the coming year will see more of the fog lift.

Happy 2010!