life is dynamic

It's been a bit busy around here today.

Mom started having some right hip pain a month ago. The pain was very similar to the pain she had from her degenerated hips before she had them replaced. The pain is on the right side, which was the first hip to be replaced back in 2014.

The question is where is the pain coming from? The most likely source is bone; either femur or acetabulum where the prosthesis is fitted.

The next question is whether there is an incipient fracture in one or both locations, whether there are micro fractures developing, or whether one or both parts of the prosthesis have shifted.

The pain she is having is quite severe when she moves in certain ways, like lifting her right leg, getting up and down, going up and down steps.

She had a fall on Thursday in the chicken yard, and that banged her up a bit but she's recovering from those contusions and the hip pain was present before the fall. She's also got some longstanding right shoulder pain from a combination of arthritis and bursitis.

This morning we went to the clinic and the Doctor had it x-rayed. None of the images showed gross abnormalities or any sign of fracture near bone/prosthesis interface.
The radiologist saw "Findings which could represent a nondisplaced fracture involving the midportion of the right inferior pubic ramus." That's essentially the bottom of the pelvis.

The radiologist and Doctor recommended Mom see an ortho specialist as soon as possible, so tomorrow she'll see the fracture specialist at Fort Collins, about two hours away. He's part of the ortho/spine group that did her hips. So we'll see what's what tomorrow and figure out if there is in fact a fracture and if not what's causing the pain and also figure out a course of treatment for recovery.

So not the best thing to have to go through for Mom, but there are worse things. While we were at the hospital they were treating someone I know for a brain bleed. They were pretty grim about that. I don't suppose folks who haven't worked the ER would pick up on the grimness but I sure did.

That's all I've got for the moment and I'm running late for a thing. I'm gonna send this off to scheduling now. I may or may not update before it goes out.

Hope this doesn't come across as a crisis. It's not. It's just part of living life in a dynamic universe.

Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.

Don't be stupid

I mean seriously. There's no firetrucking way a fat, old, half-crippled, hate-monger, rapist, and victimizer can walk all the way from John o' Groats to Land's End via Dilwyn and Yeovilton. Or verse-visa.

And isn't it strange that blooger/gurgle can't spell most of the vocabulary of the English language. Are all you p.c. and "AI's Rule!" (secret) readers of this blog sure you want those people and algoreythms in charge? Butt I digress.

So having suitcased the probability of my ability to execute the mission and discovered it to be physically and statistically impossible, I gave up.

On worrying about impossibilities.

And continued to slog away physically, to work the impossible problem cognitively, and to keep right on seeking (and always finding) spiritual help with the heavy lifting.

After poking around a bit to try to get a handle on cross-pond travel logistics I had another idea. What about catching a freighter? There are some real possibilities there. It would be far cheaper and quicker to fly. Something about making it a sea voyage seems somehow right though. That's how I got to Blighty in the first place. Probably much less bureaucratic security bullshit too. And I really hate being herded around like firetrucking livestock. Freighter rates look like $100/day, and east coast to Southampton trips range from 9-28 days. Just in the tinkering/thinkering stage of course. Good stuff to ponder.

########## 

Yesterday (today, as I write this) was chill and damp, overcast and wintry, a bit light-snowy and a bit breezy (but not bad breezy!).

Air temps had fallen to 23 overnight and a gusty north wind set in around sunrise. By 1130 when I set out on my little power hike the wind had largely died down. Where it had been gusting to 30 earlier, it had fallen off to 10-12 mph.

The cold breeze wasn't exactly pleasant to charge into, but it was slightly warmer at 26 degrees than dawn's 23 degrees and physical exertion soon had me warmed up.



I only went 3.25 miles but I did go as hard as I could while at the same time trying to balance and manage nerve pain via attention to gait. It worked pretty good. At the end of the little 43 minute jaunt I was pretty okay on nerve pain and had kept my heart rate above 110 for the whole shebang.

Red had her usual good time. Nona didn't go as she's still a touch gimpy from two(ish) days ago.

Saturday's warmth (50+ degrees) and warmish southerly wind served to melt most of the recent snow, leaving behind only the hard-frozen drift-glaciers. The lack of snow makes the prairie look completely different.

The drab coloration of winter-dried grasses combined with solidly overcast skies made for less eye-grabbing but nevertheless beautiful vistas. Nature paints a completely different canvas every day, and she always limits herself to the same palette.

Mom fixed me a fabulous lunch. Just what the body ordered!

The rather iffy goal I've accidentally assigned myself is an interesting challenge featuring a complex set of problems to solve. None of that obviates my need to embrace hard physical, mental, and spiritual work today. Or tomorrow, or the next day. Today, despite a lot of exploration, I haven't been able to come up with a veto for the notion.



Jim pointed out in comments that I somewhat resemble the great actor Gerald McRaney. Poor Gerald. He seems to have done well in spite of the handicap. He was also the last guy to be bested by Matt Dillon in a gunfight. In real life Matt Dillon was James Arness, and before that he was plain old James King Aurness, a wounded and decorated American Veteran of the Italian Campaign in World War II. So I'm only separated from Matt Dillon by two degrees. Cool, eh?



Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.

Make it hard

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,

Or what's a heaven for?

As I've mentioned here before I've got friends in Blighty, real English farmers who raise crops and livestock in Herefordshire (which the blooger/gurgle algoreythm believes to be misspelt, along with misspelt!).

As I've also mentioned here before (I think?) I've visited Great Britain several times. I loved it every time. But back then, many decades ago, I was engaged in doing navy stuff first, birding second, and sampling beer third.

On occasion my friends share images and video with me via one of those smartphone app thingies, and I share Nebraska images and video in return.

In very many cases, viewing still and moving pictures of England produces a great sense of longing, a feeling that visiting those places would be a good thing.

This morning, while perusing a few of those digitised (c'mon, blooger/gurgle!) visual treats, my mind was poleaxed with a brilliant idea.

I must admit that in part the idea came from a Top Gear segment where Jeremy Clarkson drove from Land's End in southwest Blighty to John o' Groats, way up at the tippy-top of Scotland.

So what about it then? I want to visit Blighty and do some serious looking about. Why not combine that with actual boots on the ground hiking? Great Britain is often said to be a nation of walkers, and by law private land owners are required to let walkers cross their property (not sure I'd approve of that were I a Brit land owner). How hard could it be?

Of course it would be very hard. Done correctly, the hiking wouldn't be that bad. The distance is 800-ish road miles. Walking path miles would be more like 1,200. That wouldn't be all that hard, especially if buckled down and seriously prepared myself physically, mentally, and spiritually.

The hard part would be the logistics. Shoes, clothing, food, water, shelter, route, crossing the pond twice, communications, and a host of things I've not thought of yet.

So doable? Yes. Am I willing to do it? Not today. Is it a great idea? I think it is. Am I going to explore the possibility? Yes.

As with all campaigns my ability to execute this one successfully will depend on the physical, mental, and spiritual ability of the troops (troop in my case), getting the logistics right, fighting through the inevitable Clausewitzian friction, and not getting sidetracked by the beer and birds.

Is it a stupid idea? Well, how do you define stupid? I reckon that by societal "norms" the idea would be judged stupid. Why do a hard thing if you don't have to, and how would you possibly get the hours and hours of daily propaganda you need to survive? Besides, old codgers are expected to sit down, STFU, and croak out behind the curtain and at a convenient time.

Toss in the madman's giggle here. I've spent six decades destroying the hopes and dreams of those who've wanted to make me their property. Why stop now?

Reality being what it is, this thing might well be impossible(ish) for me. But I won't know until I crunch some numbers and see just how impossible it would be.

Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.

Oh yeah, have you heard that given the ongoing viral death scare Corona Beer recently changed its name to Ebola Beer?

Yeah, I know.

Mor chickenhouse rulz

Eat mor chikn!

It's always something with those birds.



##########

Meanwhile in Blighty, friends of mine are enjoying a Christmas-gifted experience at the five-star Gainsborough Bath Spa. In Bath.

This Abbey in Bath is known for the carved Jacob's Ladder.

Cool, eh?

I found this much more cooler.

But of course I would. I really want to visit the place before I croak. Or after I guess. I'm not picky, as long as I get the visit.

##########

Lovely and warm today, albeit breezy. I did 4.5 miles in an hour and a bit this morning, fighting steep slopes and wind the whole way. The wind was irritating and I allowed it to make me grumpy, and because I was being petulant I didn't make a video or image record. At the same time I enjoyed the workout immensely. Thirty-one workout miles so far in February. That's my 3-day average last June, but I'm making good progress. With any luck and the right application of effort I'll get back to those 10 mile days.

Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.

The chickenhouse rulz and other assorted bee ess

I find the chickens to be endlessly fascinating. Pretty sure that says something uncomplimentary about me. Butt so what.



##########

Today's hike was fun and challenging. I took both Nona and Red and they seemed to have a good time. They did a lot of scampering and playing. They usually both go with Mom on her walks and do the same scampering and playing. In the past when I've taken them on my quicker and harder jaunts they've tended to fight rather than play. Maybe they're growing out of that, or maybe they're just keeping me guessing.



I went four miles in 55 minutes. Today's route featured a few okay slopes and a lot of challenging terrain. The prairie can be smooth and flat in places, but for the most part it's very bumpy and uneven. Hiking across that kind of ground is a lot of work, and a lot of work means a lot of effort, which means enhanced fitness at the end of the day.



A very big bonus today was a markedly delayed onset of nerve pain. Didn't start feeling it until the three mile mark, and even then it was comparatively mild. That was a nice surprise. We'll have to see how things play out over time but it's possible that my body is healing itself better than I thought it could. As I said, we'll see.

The wind wasn't as savage today but it was still pesky; 15 sustained gusting 25-30. Air temps were only about 32. The sun was bright and warm, which was nice, but in the beginning of the hike the wind was quite an uncomfortable thing. The route I selected was such that all of the uncomfortable into the wind stuff came first. Once I got warmed up and hit a good stride it wasn't bad at all. When I turned my back to the wind at the 1.5 mile mark the rest of the route was either downwind or in the lee of windbreaks. That part was a real delight.

I almost pussied out and decided to take a day off from hiking. In fact I did decide that and only changed my mind when Mom asked if I was going hiking. To which I quickly replied yes. Therefore I was obligated. The "take it hard" part of my mind can be a tricky sumbatch.

Glad I went. It was the right move.

##########

I've talked about this before. Several times. The Golden Rule says that you should treat others as you would be treated yourself.

The name "Golden Rule" and its formulation is seen by many as religious dogma, and to a certain extent this is true.

For those who can't stomach religion, there's always  Kant's Categorical Imperative. Despite being rather a religious person himself, Immanuel Kant nevertheless came up with a secular formulation of the basic idea, and made a very good philosophical argument for living that rule regardless of an individual's religious affiliation or lack thereof.

One might ask why anyone would need to follow this notion of reciprocity in ape-lizard relationships. It's a good question.

At a basic and fundamentally egocentric level, it kind of makes sense, doesn't it? In general, if one treats others well, one might reasonably expect to be treated well in return.

But of course there's a very large difference between treating others well and treating them as you would be treated yourself.

Treating others well by your own personal definition of well in an attempt to secure reciprocal good treatment is manipulative. It's not evil, and it often has good effects, but it's nevertheless fundamentally manipulative. In this approach it's very hard to argue that a manipulator actually believes that those he chooses to treat well are seen as real and equal human beings.

And isn't this notion of human equality the underpinning of civilization? The Founding Fathers thought so, and they took their lead from the Bloody British.

When a person decides that other ape-lizards are equally and fundamentally human just as they are, the notion of the Golden Rule becomes something so different than treating others well that it's simply not the same thing at all.

When one treats others as they would be treated, or when one treats themselves and others always as an end and never as an means to an end, one is acting as a civilized human being rather than a feral ape-lizard.

Simple in concept, difficult in execution.

Examples.

One. A family member took me to task today after accidentally stumbling upon one of my u2b videos which featured a spectacular fall. The precise details don't matter. The admonition was, "You need to be careful because you're old and will therefore get hurt." The actual argument was quite different. *If you get hurt I might have to put down my beer and actually do something, which would victimize me, so stop all the working out and other shit and do only what I want you to do. Oh, and do it the way I want it done, too.*

Small potatoes by any measure, but also a valuable experience. People who lean toward victim-hood are often quick to drop their "treat others well" mask. And why wouldn't they be? It's not like they're dealing with an actual human being or anything.

Two. A pair of soldiers fighting for opposite sides meet in hand-to-hand combat and kill each other. Neither has any doubt that the other is fundamentally and equally human. Illusions about the enemy are shattered in the face of the reality of combat. Each man believes his side's cause is just and right. Neither want to die, but each is a soldier with a soldier's job to do. When they fight, there is no lack of fear and anger and pain. At a fundamental level, though, each treats the other exactly as they would be treated in their mortal collision.

Does that last seem far fetched? Worth thinking it all the way through.

It seems to me that few ape-lizards would find no benefit from exploring the meaning of the Golden Rule.

We ape-lizards are not nearly as advanced as we like to think. We've only been "civilized" for at most several thousand years. We have not evolved even a tiny bit from the ape-lizards who watched the glaciers retreat 15,000 years ago. We are exactly the same.

If we have a future to evolve into, the core principal of that evolution will be the Golden Rule.

##########

Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty (and evolution!).

Fiddly bits

Been out of the loop for a couple of days handling some of life's fiddly bits. Nothing major, just a constant flow of pop-up targets needing to be hit the old fashioned way, with fused bombs on target on time.

After an initial strike got turned back by AAA, a follow-on strike made it through this afternoon and struck a heavily defended bureaucratic health insurance site. Post-strike BDA revealed very heavy damage and all strikers returned to the boat safely. Of course we'll have to get boots on the ground to capture and hang some of the genocidal maniacs bureaucrats, but it's looking like that'll happen in the near future.

##########

Mom's birthday today. Her sister, my Auntie N., sent her the best firetrucking coffee cup of all time.

##########

Temps tumbled to below zero yesterday in the wake of an attempted winter storm and the successful infiltration of CCCA -- communist canadian cold air.

Today it's much warmer (30's) but again quite breezy. My hiking workouts are less comfortable in such conditions but no less enjoyable and beneficial. I'm relishing the challenge and the work.

Sharp-tailed grouse were everywhere! (Grouses? Grease?)



The howling wind sucks but that's part of what makes it so great.



Glaciers have become especially tricky to traverse.



This is one from two days ago which didn't get posted up correctly.



Magnificent is a good word to describe nature's reality in this part of the world today.



Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.

Contrast

Sunday was lovely and warm. The overnight low only fell to 38 degrees, and then only for a 20 minute period sandwiched between 42 degrees and 42 degrees. By 9 a.m. it was 50 degrees; by 10 a.m. it was 62 degrees. Between noon and 5 p.m. it was 70 or above, with the high for the day reaching 74.

Warm days in February don't last forever. Down from the north charged Arctic air from the Canadas. Between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. the temperature fell 40 degrees.

Yesterday was cold and overcast with an easterly breeze gusting 25-30 mph. It was damp out and being outside was a bit miserable. I didn't enjoy the sensation but I did enjoy the contrast. Particularly as I have a choice about being outside and I can shelter inside in warm fireside comfort whenever I like.

Air temps fell and the snow began not long after dark. It was a very light snow and we only got about an inch or so through the night. It's colder this morning -- about 12 degrees -- but it's quite still. There's a scud layer flowing overhead which continues to snow off and on. The sun keeps blasting through, and the contrast of scud, snow, and sunshine is breathtakingly beautiful. At least to me.

On a day like today the beauty of life and the beauty of nature couldn't give a firetruck about self-imposed ape-lizard angst. Life and nature will be here and be suitably unimpressed by whining long after the day's steaming turds are forgotten.



Started the day with shoveling snow. I made a video but I won't torture you with it. Then it was time to head south.



And water chickens. Riveting video.



Hit the slopes!



Pretty up on top.



How slippery is the Isandlwana backside glacier this morning?



Don't get cocky!



Good morning, good workout.



The forecast is calling for continued cold and more snow. If the guessers are correct it's stay wintry around here for a week or ten days, which is kind of what February usually is.

And now it's time for me to get some work done.

Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.

Groundhawg Day 2020: Here comes the snow again

I see that the rat saw no shadow this morning atop Gobblers Knob near far away Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. The ape-lizard interpretation of this non-event holds that spring will be early. The fun fact is that there's no correlation between Groundhog Day predictions and the arrival of seasonal spring. But it's fun to play the game.

##########

Shockingly beautiful here today. The air temp is 72 as I write this at 1330 local. It's breezy but otherwise fantastically beautiful. Lots of sunshine, lots of warm, clouds on the horizon threatening to move in but not here yet.

Red and I did 4.58 miles this morning in a buck-eleven and change over the difficult terrain of gully bottoms. Where there was snow/ice it was mushy, a bit like beach sand. Where there was no snow/ice it was wet, soggy, muddy, slippery, clingy, and generally tough going.

It was the kind of power hike where the sum of energy expenditure was far more than the whole of the distance would have led me to believe. In other words, it was a good one.

The physical challenge was a good one but I had more than enough cardiovascular juice and muscle strength. It wasn't easy -- it was hard work -- but it was well within my capabilities.

The harder part was fighting through nerve pain. Today it was no more and no less difficult than it's been since I started working out again. Not fun, but a satisfying challenge to meet and overcome.

When/if the time for surgery arrives, the more physically fit I am the better the outcome is likely to be and the speedier the recovery. There will be and are things which are out of my control, but I get to control my level of fitness, and that's no small thing.

##########

If the nws forecast holds up, here at Kimball we're supposed to see 70 degrees on a mostly sunny day today.

I don't personally like to see sustained warmth in winter, and this is why. Stand by for numbers!

Back in 2012 we had a very toasty winter and I loved every minute of it. I reveled in seldom having to chop ice and in walking around in shirtsleeves more often than not. Who needs all that cold weather? Who needs bundled-up misery just for misery's sake? Pfui!

In January 2012 the daily high air temperature was 46.8 degrees, the daily low 16.9 degrees, and the daily average 31.85 degrees. The 100+ year averages were 40.3, 13.4, and 26.9 respectively. About 5 degrees above average. While air temperatures were above normal in January, precipitation was below average. We had 0.023 inches of liquid moisture from 2.5 inches of snow. January's long-term average is 0.37 inches of liquid precip from 5 inches of snow.

February and March of 2012 were similarly warm and dry, and the remainder of the year was hot and dry. It was a severe drought year. We received only 8.3 inches of precip for the year, compared to the long term average of more than 16 inches.

This year has started in a similar fashion.

In January 2020 the daily high air temperature was 44.58 degrees, the daily low 19.97 degrees, and the daily average 32.37 degrees. Again, about 5 degrees above average. And once again, precipitation was below average. We had 0.05 inches of liquid moisture from 2.0 inches of snow.

And how does this compare to the previous drought in 2002, which was the most severe since records began to be kept in 1893?

In January 2002 the daily high air temperature was 45.1 degrees, the daily low 12.1 degrees, and the daily average 28.8 degrees. The 100+ year averages were 39.7, 14.3, and 27.0 respectively. About 1.8 degrees above average. Precip was reported as a trace of liquid and a trace of snow. In 2002 the long-term average was 0.37 inches of liquid precip from 5 inches of snow. For the year precipitation totaled 6.67 inches.

So we're clearly going to have a severe drought, right?

Hang on.

The second most severe drought on record was 1894 when precipitation totaled a paltry 6.75 inches for the year. What did January 1894 look like?

In January 1894 the daily high air temperature was 40.0 degrees, the daily low 11.6 degrees, and the daily average 25.8 degrees. Compared to the same 100+ year temperature averages it was 1.8 degrees below average. Precip was 1.1 inches of liquid from 11 inches of snow, significantly above average.

The fifth most severe drought on record was 1911 when precipitation totaled 9.46 inches for the year.

In January 1911 it was 4.8 degrees warmer than average but also wetter, with 0.91 inches of liquid from 10 inches of snow.

The sixth most severe drought on record was 1912 with 9.51 inches for the year.

In January 1912 it was 2.1 degrees cooler than average and again wetter, with 0.60 inches of liquid from 4.0 inches of snow and a day with 0.2 inches of rain sans snow.

So actually, January temperatures and precipitation aren't indicators of drought. Drought is a climate condition which plays out over nature's seasonal cycle, which is not the same as a calendar year. As a rancher who relies on precipitation to grow grass, and then derive income by grazing that grass, I'm always sensitive to the possibility of drought. Drought means reduced or no grazing in order to preserve the grassland ecosystem without harm, and that means reduced or no grazing income. Which is tough. So I'm always on the lookout for indicators of drought.

Winter is the wrong place to look though. Winter temps and precipitation are only coincidentally correlated with drought. The proof of drought is lack of precipitation during the growing season, and in particular during April-May-June.

It would be fair to say that I fear drought, but only because it means a hard year financially. Nature takes care of the grassland ecosystem perfectly well during drought by maintaining or entering dormancy. So long as I don't savage the ecosystem by grazing during drought, nature's prairie is preserved, and therefore the major asset of the ranch is preserved. After the drought, rains will return and grass will once again grow and need to be grazed.

If a person like me -- who spends every day outside in nature and who has years of experience watching nature respond to climate conditions -- can have fear over small deviations from seasonal norms, I can only imagine how those who don't have the same or similar experiences can feel when told by self-proclaimed "experts and honest brokers of news and information" that "evil people are killing the planet and January's temperature and precipitation data prove this beyond any possibility of a doubt."

It's important to be able to turn away from propaganda and look the the scale, context, and perspective of reality.

Of course we're supposed to get winter-whacked beginning tonite...

##########

As sunset approached it was a very pretty painting nature splashed across this part of the world.



Pretty and also rather interesting.

She's not telling.

Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.

Consequences

There are no actions we can take as we journey through the whole life thing which aren't attended by consequences. Only rarely are consequences singularly positive or negative. Navigating actions and consequences is a lifelong learning process, and the skill we ultimately develop is an ability to foresee consequences based on previous experience and then execute a cost-benefit analysis to decide whether negative will outweigh positive and therefore whether we should essay the action we contemplate.

Being ape-lizards and somewhat less than omniscient, it's not uncommon for us to discover at a later date that our action carried unforeseen consequences. Some of those are good, some are bad. It's an ongoing journey of discovery. Which is a pretty good definition of life for the ape-lizard.

Some years ago, back in the early 2000's, my Mom and Dad decided to refurbish the old ranch house and turn it into their dream retirement domicile. At the time they lived in town. The ranch house became an available target for renovation following the death of my Grandma Helen.

So they embarked upon this journey, and hired a local contractor to do the work. I'm not entirely certain why they picked this particular contractor, for he was known far and wide for doing shit work.

At the end of the process Mom and Dad moved into a renovated ranch house which kinda-sorta looked marginally nice. That was a positive consequence. Under the paint and siding and shingles however, the work was shit. That was a negative consequence.

Some of the negative consequences have now been bequeathed to the next generation. It's just what it is. It's simply the reality of the ranch house, and living with the shit work is all part of the deal. It's neither good nor bad, it's just the way it is.

A few days ago Mom started having problems with the door knob on the back door, which as on many ranch houses in this neck of the woods is the de facto main entrance. The door knob had become loose over time and Mom was having trouble locking and unlocking it as well as opening and closing it.

This morning I picked up a new lock set for the door which features a fancy euro-lever rather than a knob. I think it'll be easier for Mom to manipulate.

When I took the old knob off it became apparent that the shitheel who installed the door gooned the job when he drilled out the opening for the lock set. He placed the hole too far inboard and then spent rather a long time applying a shit fix to make it kinda work. The shit fix finally collapsed, and so here we are.

I got the new lock set installed and working, but I'm going to have to go back and fix it right before long, because I had to make it work within the framework of the original shit job, adding my own shit work to the previous shit work.

As I noted, it's just what it is. Having to deal with the shit job is simply a negative consequence. The positive consequence -- and there is one -- is that I now have a challenge to accept and an opportunity to learn a new skill. The reality of the situation is that it's neither good nor bad. If I choose to whine and cry and suit up as a professional victim, then that's my own personal negative consequence, and not the fault of the shit contractor at all. If I accept the challenge and learn to do the ultimate repair correctly, that's a positive consequence owned entirely by me.

##########

Following yesterday's psychotic post where I twisted Browning's words into a snarled exposition on what might be charitably called a way of ape-lizard being, John Blackshoe commented that he hadn't realized that John Moses Browning had done poetry in addition to his other legendary work.

Of course I was referencing Robert Browning, which John knew quite well. His comment was quite amusing in a delightfully ironic way.

My first thought, however, was that John Moses executed his own brilliant brand of poetry in the perhaps more useful medium of steel.

Boy howdy! He did indeed.

Legend holds (and whackopaedia repeats) that John Moses died at his workbench in Liège, Belgium in 1926 while inventing his final poem, the Fabrique Nationale (FN) GP35. The design was finished by Dieudonne Saive, released for production in 1935, and became the world-renowned Browning Hi-Power.

I've owned many Hi-Powers and loved them all. The one I presently own is in .40 S&W, rather than the original 9x19/9mm Luger/9mm Parabellum.

At the end of the day I'd have to say that while Bobby Browning was a dab hand at wordsmithing, John Moses Browning was altogether a much more useful and successful poet.

##########

Today the weather conditions are quite warm and windy. Tomorrow it's forecast to be warmer and far less windy. If the prediction holds up, tomorrow could be a remarkably lovely day.

It was also February 1 this morning. Brexit happened last night. The year of 2020 is speeding by smartly.



The sunset was quite pretty this evening.

Monday is forecast to be sharply colder as a big winter weather system begins wending its way across the area. I'm all for that. I don't kike a lot of warm weather in winter, and that's what we've had since Christmas. So bring on the cold and snow I say!

Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.

Reach and grasp

Yesterday I added some torso rotation to my mobility stretching. I should say added back rather than just added.

Wrong move. It really flared up the nerve impingement and pain. By 9 p.m. I was hurting quite a lot, and I was afraid it would be a sleepless night.

A bedtime cocktail of alka-seltzer (bubbly aspirin) and meloxicam (a prescription anti-inflammatory) came to the rescue though, and assisted as my body got to work fixing itself. It wasn't a comfortable night, but it wasn't sleepless either. Coupled with the amazing demonstration of self healing, I got out of bed feeling very much better than I expected.

I was still sore but not in pain this morning. I did a relaxed hike, walking on flat(ish) ground, a flat(ish) glacier, and up and down some small but challenging slopes.

Along the way I couldn't help but notice how beautiful the day was despite an uncomfortably cool and gusty wind.

As I navigate this nerve thing and the rebuilding of my overall fitness I find the path to be an exercise in exploring reach and grasp. It's a good thing for me to be doing. I'm discovering things I didn't know I was looking for. Even as I bump up against vexing limitations I find other places where the horizons are far away and there's seemingly endless room to explore. It's a physical and metaphysical thing. Body mind and spirit are all in play. It's living, and it's a choice. The burdens I've chosen to carry are hard to bear, but they are not too hard to bear. It all feels exactly right.

Outside it's January on the High Plains. We're six weeks into winter and nearly halfway to Vernal Equinox. It's cold and blustery out but the sun is marching higher in the sky and kissing the ground and everything upon the ground with tantalizing warmth. There's a promise there I can believe in, and the certain knowledge that enduring the day's bluster will make the warm embrace of true spring all the sweeter.

Just as there are things my body cannot do, there are things my heart and soul cannot do. But here too there are other paths to explore. Boundless paths, really, and likely more rewarding and even more valid than the pathways of my immediate desire.

New paths add perspective and vital depth to scale and context. If I truly believe the things I say, then questing for growth, and testing reach and grasp, are more vital now than ever. Some things I cannot do, and I am chained by those realities. In the things I can do, however, I am unbound, and limited only by my choice. Do. Or do not.

Browning lamented that we seem to be free but are actually fettered. My experience and my sense tell me that I am fettered and free. The two are simply opposite sides of the same coin.

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Every time I read Browning I get new stuff. It's always a slog. I never quite break through to understanding. Perhaps that's the point. Fortunately for me, I can take his work for what it is and what it says to me, and I never have to do the anglush perfesser thing and force the words to fit into a communally held psychotic view of a world I've never bothered to visit. Except...

Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.

There burns a truer light of God in them,

In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,

Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt

This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.

Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,

Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,

Enter and take their place there sure enough,

Though they come back and cannot tell the world.

Is it true that I'm lacking in omniscience? Seriously? Me?

Um, it sure looks like it. Good thing to keep in mind I think.

Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,

Or what's a heaven for?

Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.