Occupation of Independence

On yesterday's ride I was amused, at first, by all the stream crossings.  I've never seen so much water on this road, in all the years of visiting it.  And the streams were making the Little Cute One muddy, just a week after I gave her a shower with lavender/rosemary doggie shampoo! But haven't I praised rain and cursed sunlight in Arizona quite enough, over the years?  'Be careful what you wish for' is the moral of the story, I guess.   Eventually the stream-crossings ended, and the road became a stream.  Enough was enough.  I turned around.  On the first stream-crossing coming back, I went down a steep embankment.  When the front wheel of the bike bottomed out in the stream, it sank into soft muck.  So I flew over the handlebar, and did a faceplant in the embankment on the other side. Nothing was damaged.  I just couldn't believe this was Arizona! from singletrackworld.com

'Spring' means rebirth.  But it has another layer of meaning to a traveler, since they can leave the desert wasteland of southwestern Arizona, and migrate to southeastern Arizona.  Goodbye to cholla and rubble.  Hello to soil (!), grasslands, mesquite trees, and: Canyon Live Oak.  The classic tree that appears in Hollywood westerns. The first couple years I went to 4000' elevations in southeastern Arizona in spring, it didn't seem like spring at all.  Everything was brown and dormant.  And harshly so. I am glad I didn't give up on it.  Over the years, it has grown on me.  Appreciation that isn't instant and easy can end up much more satisfying than the tourist stuff. Naturally it would have to have little spikes on the edge, but hey, a green leaf in winter!

Whenever I go to a grocery store these days, I am surprised that entire aisles haven't disappeared.  People are still buying over-priced chips, frozen gourmet foods, imported cheeses in the deli sections, convenient junk foods of all kinds, etc.?     Personally I am stepping towards the diet of a third-world peasant or one of our not-so-distant ancestors: rice and beans, bread, and root vegetables.  (But eggs are still unaffordable.)  Actually this isn't such a bad thing.  I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of consumers who have rigid habits! Now that bank failures are in the news, and memories of 2008 are back, are the "helicopters" starting to warm up at the Federal Reserve?  (For the purpose of dropping money.) All the usual suspects on Wall Street and in Congress want the Federal Reserve to back off of "high" interest rates.  "High" means half to a third of the real inflation rate.  And yet, the American banking system is throwing a tantrum

Despite having little interest in purdy scenery, I am interested in the visual arts.  There really are 'pictures that are worth a thousand words' and there are photographs 'that tell a story.'  Cartoons can sometimes be the best of the visual arts. Some people can think out a good cartoon, but they still can't freehand-draw it.  That is what makes photo editing an interesting visual art. The other day there was news from the usual rogues/state actors about the Nordstream pipeline destruction being carried out by a sailboat in the Baltic Sea.  Then I saw this: I saw this on a Telegram channel, and don't know who gets the credit for it.  But I laughed my head off.  Maybe mockery is the best attitude towards the current regime in the West.