Thank you, Mio.  I try and stay as far away from DC as I can.  County politics are much more bizarre.
  I realize it's the end of May and my compatriots and I haven't put anything in here.  It's probably because of my advanced age.  When I was much more important, in my twenties and thirties, I felt I had something to say, so I said it, regardless of its wisdom.  Now, with my thirties a few miles behind me, I have something to say, but I limit it because I've gotten tired of those who feel they have something to say.
  The 31st of May is cloudy and threatens rain.  Skip, our sheep herding dog, is hiding at my knee, afraid of thunder, and I've gotten in ten 50# bags of cracked corn, eight bags of chicken scratch, and a total of ten other bags for feeding the pigs and poultry their rations, all from Pikes Peak Co-op, in Calhan, down below the County line; a trip I take as little as possible.  It involves firing up our '93 Ford 150Xt and spending lotsa money on gas.  Besides that, there's no radio.  I compensated with my daughter's boombox, which takes eight C batteries—that's a lot of batteries—and kept fading in and out of station range.  NPR gave out a mile out of Kiowa, then I found a rather enchanting station that played a bunch of swing—mainly Les Brown and Glenn Miller—then a CW station that waxed enthusiastic about a birthday concert, then back to swing.
  As I listened, going down a road that essentially hasn't changed since it was graded for automobile traffic in the 30's, I thought of what I'd read recently: The Idaho Hemingway, by Tillie Arnold,   who met him in 1939 at Sun Valley and was a close friend until he died.  I hadn't realized he'd written such a monumental work as For Whom The Bell Tolls while he was there, but I guess it makes sense, because he wasn't surrounded by "phonies," just working rural people, whose gaze, blandly and openly given inside and outside the Co-op, measures the man and his intentions, not his fame.
  I took the way back past the Calf Branders' hideout on Road 104, still listening to a combination of country-western and swing music, just observing how honest everything looks in the dust and the almost brown of the high desert.
  Neither of my compatriots has had time for blogging.  Dierdre Moon, who is moving to Bellingham, Washington, got an offer on her yurt above the valley and has 45 days to get out.  I suspect my truck and I will be major players if she's moving anything bigger than a case of scotch.  Epona Maris, needing some inspiration, went to the United Kingdom.  Mrs. Rural has joined her there, and Raul and Rachel are along as well.
Roger Rural 

 

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