The Stranglers

Thursday Blur

The problem with stupidity is that stupid people are too stupid to recognize it. Speaking as a dummy of course. * We changed coffee shops after a new owner, several days of the cook not showing up, shitty coffee and a lot of crappy attitude all of a sudden on the part of the staff. Now we are crammed together at the donut shop but at least the coffee is better and cheaper and the vibes are better. * We were talking about a 21st century problem this morning, what do you do with the people who have died in your phone's contact list? To a man, we keep them, denuding their names would be disloyal to their memories. I started counting, made it to C, lot of folks passed over but still alive on my iPhone. * Howard Lutnick, Trump's campaign transition co-chair, wants to pull vaccines off the market, made all sorts of false claims. not covid, all vaccines. these people are truly dangerous, will cause children to die. What a schmuck. * I watched the Unauthorized American Gladiators documentary on Netflix last night. It was very interesting, talk about ripping off the help and leaving them hurt. Samuel Goldwyn Jr., you were a jerk and a disgrace to your tribe. * When is Mike Tyson going to kick Jake Paul's butt? Can't be too soon. * Aztec Basketball is back. Last night was the first exhibition game, I think it will be another great year even with all the new bodies. * Michael Flynn wants Trump to declare victory before the results are in. Isn't democracy a beautiful thing? * Trump and Johnson once again want to get rid of Obamacare so that insurers can go back to charging ridiculous money to high risk patients or people with pre-existing conditions. Trump had a whole term to do this of course, but could never even get a bill through a Republican Senate. Good luck.* Deport illegal immigrant Musk. * Back to pickin' cotton.

Comments revisited

I have been getting a lot of feedback about people not able to post comments. I took the anonymous function off when the trolls got out of hand and got hateful. My blog, my rules.

It has been a while. I will reset it and see if people are better behaved or now have the courtesy to sign their comments.

If not, I will ixnay it once again.

Guy Clark

Sing out for Linda!

I have an amazing cousin I have never actually met in person. 

Her name is Linda and she sometimes comments on the blog. 

I believe that she is eighty years old. We met through our dna research, she is related on my mom's side, the site says first cousin 1x removed.

Linda lives in Massachusetts, but our family is originally from Rhode Island. She used to own a restaurant in Lenox.

We share a lot of the same passions, one being folk music and the other our politics, which must be baked in genetically.

I believe that she was sort of married once to a guy with a bluegrass band, the Grass Menagerie. It's a long story and I am not going to get into it.

She is so kind that she recently sent me her collected editions of Broadside Magazine, which she has had since 1962.

Broadside is sort of like a bible of folk music.

These songbooks she sent me cover everybody from Woody to Phil Ochs, Zimmy, the whole shebang.

And not content to gifting me these, she sent me a box of vintage Singout magazines as well.  Singout is even older, it started in 1950.

Whenever I hear from Linda I can't help but think of my older sister Liz, who shares much with her cousin. Liz lives in Virginia, I wish they would take the time to get in touch with each other. 

They both had very similar and rather eccentric orbits and are both very smart. Both love country music as did my late mother.

Make it happen, girls!

烧鸭炒饭 Shao Ya Chao Fan - Robert's duck fried rice

I had to pick up a painting in San Diego the other day and decided to have dim sum at Jasmine on the way back. 

Good but expensive. 

I love to get there as soon as it opens, the food is very hot and fresh.

I only got four things but it turned out that I had ordered too much food and brought back roast pork and roast duck to share with Leslie.

Leslie ate the pork but we had a lot of duck left so I decided to make duck fried rice last night.

We loved the duck fried rice we used to get at Thai thai and I thought I would make something similar but a bit more Cantonese in flavor.

I know the dish sounds simple but as a beginning cook it was new to me. 

I made up a recipe that I thought might work.

I don't own a wok so I used my trusty Le Creuset skillet.

I bought an extra duck breast at Major Market and sliced it up after thawing. 

I prepped all my vegetables in advance, knew I had to to work fast.

I put a tablespoon of peanut oil in the pan, added chili flakes and gave the duck a quick sear in my very hot pan, then removed it to a plate.

I then added finely minced carrots, celery, sugar snap peas, ginger and lots of sliced garlic to the hot oil and duck fat, then cooked it down for about three or four minutes. 

We do not use onion in our home but we do use onion powder and I gave it a dash. 

Salt and pepper. Squeeze of lemon.

We have some sesame oil from Hong Kong infused with chili, added that and a healthy dose of soy sauce.

I had made rice the night before in preparation and added that along with the dim sum and the new duck breast. 

By the way, you never want to use freshly cooked rice. I used a long grained basmati but jasmine is also good.

I let the rice fry for a few minutes and then made a well in the middle of the dish with my spatula. Many recipes call for two eggs, I whisked up one and poured it into the center of the pan, letting it cook and then spreading it around with a chopstick to scramble.

I mixed everything up and achieved something that looked like this. 

Added another dollop of soy and sesame oil and then chili crisps on top of the serving bowls.

It was delicious, Leslie says even better than the restaurant.  

The duck fat really lends itself to the rice. 

Honestly I wouldn't change a thing with the exception that next time I will let the rice cook a little longer in the cast iron and get even crunchier.

Leslie says that I should cut the sugar snaps in half. 

Will do.

I have a lot of rice left over as well as leftovers. 

I am thinking that I will try crab or pork fried rice next, see what happens.

慢用！

I Still Believe (Great Design)

Complicity

I used to study World War II. 

One of the things many people wonder about is just how Hitler came to power, there were a lot of good Germans who must have never seen it coming, right? 

Adolf had been really clear about what he wanted to see happen when he wrote Mein Kampf but nobody thought that he was actually serious.

I don't think the current GOP candidate is a Nazi necessarily, I just don't think he has a lot of respect for the constitution or the rule of law. He is not even particularly ideological, just enormously vested in his own power.

It feels like 1938 to me, honestly.

And owing to an electoral college scheme that rather than protecting the rights of the minority allows it to rule the majority with impunity, I think chances are very good that Donald Trump will be our next president. And then I see a lot of hell breaking loose. Mass deportations of immigrants, many of whom are here legally working under temporary permits, jailing of political adversaries, what else is he calling for?

Elon Musk wants to cut 2 trillion in debt and he acknowledges that that is going to require a lot of pain and suffering for Americans.

Economists believe that Trump's plans to cut discretionary spending while giving a host of new corporate tax breaks and instituting tariffs will be devastating to our economy and completely alienate our allies.  But the ignorant minions don't have the critical thinking skills to understand the havoc Trump II will create, since they remember that he juiced up their economy in his first reign and forget that he left the country with the most debt it had ever incurred, a debt that will be presumably paid one day by somebody else down the road.

“The idea that one can cut $2 trillion in wasteful and unnecessary programs is absolutely absurd,” said Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a center-right think tank. “There’s a long history of the fantasy that one smart businessman will just identify trillions in waste, but that’s just not how it works.”

More likely, Musk would need to pursue much broader cuts that include what are known as mandatory programs, such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which are funded as a requirement of federal law. To achieve his savings, he would need to propose dramatic, structural changes to these and other benefits, from lessening payment amounts to limiting eligibility, perhaps even raising the retirement age.

I predict that by the time Americans, even those that voted for Trump, figure out that their Social Security and Medicare checks will instead be used to balance the budget they will raise holy hell. But it will be too late at that point of course.

The Teamsters, who refused to endorse Harris, who with Biden managed to save their pensions this term may not be so lucky under the next Trump regime. Remember PATCO and Reagan? Musk likes to fire and denude his work staff at will, you think he has any love for labor?

How many people in Trump's own cabinet have denounced him and said that we should take him at his word about his fascist tendencies and jailing his enemies? 

Kelly, Esper, Milley, Mattis, Bolton, Tillerson, Hutchison, Newman, Pence, the list is long. The words they use to describe him are startling and these are his own handpicked people.

Donald Trump's regime will not last forever, thankfully. Perhaps there will be a new Trump one day to take his place, if the normal conventions of electing a President exist in four more years and we do not have a Soviet style President for life in our future.

And while I have anger at Trump for putting us through this, my greater animus is directed at the smart people that knew better and watched the whole thing come down and downplayed the danger. John Roberts, who engineered a SCOTUS immunity deal that let Trump skate and made it illegal to question his motives, Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell, who once called Trump for what he really was and then went back to purely tribal sycophancy. Speaker Johnson, the folksy evangelical who put a deal in place so that he could question the votes if they came up  short again.

Yes, Trump is a problem but the greater problem are the people that should have known better or dismissed his threats as rhetoric and kept their mouth shut so that their ideological aims could be enacted, regardless of January 6th or Russia deciding to take over its neighbor or even something so un-american as trying to put your political opponents in jail.

I blame them.

And if the worst nightmares of a second Trump presidency do come true, I hope that there will be someone with a light that can say, "Hey, you knew or you should have known and you still did nothing." I hope that they can own it but you know that they can't and they won't.

Ever.

Fela Kuti/Jack Bruce/Ian Anderson/Eberhard Schoener

Phil Lesh

I was saddened today to hear of Phil Lesh's passing. 

I happen to think that the Grateful Dead member was the greatest and most inventive bass player I have ever heard.

I can remember being in a taxicab in New York in 1969 and telling the cab driver how much I liked Jack Casady's playing and him telling me that I ought to hear a guy named Phil Lesh.

And when I did, I was hooked and I had to admit that he was right. So started a musical journey that has taken up the great majority of my life,

I met Phil several times but the most memorable event was when he wandered into my hotel room after a show in Fresno in January of 1978. We stayed where the band stayed in those days and several girls that were hanging out in my room were friends with Phil. Maybe Carol, Marla or one of the twins, Theresa? 

There was a tall curly haired fellow as well. We were puffing doobs and listening to tapes and discussing the night's music when Phil came in the door. He sat down on the bed and wanted to know what tape we were listening to and took some notes for further perusal. I remember him listening to and evaluating the show quite intensely.

We got him very stoned on North County red hair and I remember him finally laughing and shaking his head and saying, "No more." Might have been drinking a Heineken. 

In any case, the most memorable thing for me was when I recounted to him how I had been falsely arrested and beat up by undercover cops at a dead concert at the Shrine Auditorium the previous year. Cost me a lot of money and  bruises, for just trying to have a good time at a concert.

And I remarked to Phil that he was probably not interested in anything political. And he looked me straight in the eye and said, "Everything we do is political."

I will never forget that.

He was brilliant in every way and a true artist. My next meeting with him, at an airport in Portland did not go nearly as well, me failing to respect his boundaries. I was an idiot that day and he was tired and never one to suffer fools gladly and he let me have it.

Not sure we ever talked again after that, we may have. But it doesn't matter if we did or we didn't. Phil Lesh was an artist and a man of integrity and his contributions to our musical lexicon will never be forgotten. Like all of the dead, I want to thank them for being who they were and providing us so many damn good times.

Come back to old Santa Fe

Evi(L)Core is denying your insurance claims

I know several people who have been facing major end of life issues and been denied tests that their doctors say that they need to provide in order to survive. 

It is heartbreaking and the patients often no longer have the strength to fight. 

And it is not like humans are making these end of life decisions, apparently algorithms are running the show.

This company is helping insurance companies deny life saving coverage, EviCore.

...insurance companies don’t always make these decisions. Instead, they often outsource medical reviews to a largely hidden industry that makes money by turning down doctors’ requests for payments, known as prior authorizations. Call it the denials for dollars business.

The biggest player is a company called EviCore by Evernorth, which is hired by major American insurance companies and provides coverage to 100 million consumers — about 1 in 3 insured people. It is owned by the insurance giant Cigna.

A ProPublica and Capitol Forum investigation found that EviCore uses an algorithm backed by artificial intelligence, which some insiders call “the dial,” that it can adjust to lead to higher denials. Some contracts ensure the company makes more money the more it cuts health spending. And it issues medical guidelines that doctors have said delay and deny care for patients.

Hope there is a special room in hell for these bastards.

Hillsborough Antique Show

 

It's your voodoo working

Dong Kingman watercolor - Church in the hills, Mexico

This is the other painting I bought out of New York. It was painted by the great San Francisco watercolorist Dong Moy Chu Kingman (1911-2000) in 1962. Quite large, a full sheet 22 x 30" plus mat and frame. 

Kingman was arguably the greatest of the Bay Area watercolorists and one of the most acclaimed in the world. Here is an abridged bio from Askart:

Born in Oakland, CA on March 31, 1911. When Kingman was five, his family moved to Hong Kong where he grew up and attended Lingnan Grammar School. The headmaster of the school, Szetu Wei, had studied painting in Paris and recognized his budding artistic talent. For several years he trained young Kingman in both oriental and occidental approaches to painting. Returning to San Francisco in 1929, Kingman became active in the local art scene and began painting scenes of the city. His first solo show at the San Francisco Art Center in 1936 brought immediate recognition. During the 1930s he spent five years working on commissions for the Federal Public Works of Art Project. During WWII he created maps and charts for the O.S.S. After the war Kingman settled in NYC and taught at Columbia University. His paintings were used as backdrops for the movie "Flower Drum Song" and his watercolors were reproduced in Life and on the covers of Fortune and Holiday magazines. Kingman died in NYC on May 12, 2000. Member: American WC Society; NA (1951). Exh: SFMA Inaugural, 1935; Vallejo Public Library, 1935; Calif. WC Society, 1935-44; San Francisco Art Association, 1936 (1st prize); GGIE, 1939; San Diego FA Gallery, 1943; De Young Museum, 1945 (solo); County Fair (LA), 1949; Philadelphia WC Club, 1950 (medal); NAD, 1975 (gold medal). In: MM; SFMA; Boston Museum; Delaware Museum; Whitney Museum (NYC); MOMA; CHS; Brooklyn Museum; De Young Museum; San Diego Museum; Mills College (Oakland); AIC; NAD; Butler Art Inst. (Columbus, OH); Wilmington (DE) Society of FA; Toledo (OH) Museum; Dartmouth College; U.S. State Dept; Addison Gallery (Andover, MA); Evansville Museum.

Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
Interview with the artist or his/her family; Who's Who in American Art 1940-70; California Art Research, 20 volumes; The Watercolors of Dong Kingman by Alan Gruskin; SF Chronicle, 5-16-2000 (obituary).

The watercolor also has an interesting story. 

The 1963 receipt for the painting from Wildenstein listed the title as "In the Buddhist Temple, Peking." 

Now I looked at these buildings and said, "No way is that Peking, that is Spanish architecture."

I sent pictures to various watercolor experts that I knew and the most knowledgeable one said that it could be Peking, Kingman tended to paint whatever he wanted to paint, however fanciful. 

And he was there in 1963, the date of the receipt.

Still I had my doubts.

I sent pictures to my friends in San Francisco, asking if there was a temple there with similar structures. 

Looks like it could be San Francisco. Nope, two temples there, nothing like it.

When I received the painting last week I took it out of frame and on the back was inscribed the title, Church in hill (sic), Mexico. L142 with the four scratched out to a three or vice versa.

This added to the mystery. I called the seller back in New York and asked if it was possible that her father had bought two paintings instead of one? She said no, that they had gone to dinner with the artist and only bought the one piece.

I sent a picture to the incredible art sleuth and all around smart guy Richard Pettler in the East Bay. Lawyer, art dealer, very bright guy.

He called me back the night before last with this information and a theory. 

He told me that the painting is actually from Guanajuato, Mexico. 

Kingman did a workshop there in May of 1962. 

The buildings check out, the Basilica of our lady.

Pettler found a painting from the very same vantage from one of Kingman's students, a female artist from Fresno. 

She had attended a workshop with the artist in Guanajuato in 1962.

Here was his theory; the receipt for the painting was May of 1963 but payment was not made until June sometime. The Chinese painting was In the Buddhist temple, an interior and probably not as visually interesting. Guy buys it, goes home, wife hates it, they trade it in for a landscape two months later.

Which sounds good and plausible. But I ran it by the owner's daughter and she said it never happened. So I am stuck with a conundrum or in this case, a Chinese puzzle.

Which means I will probably never figure this one out.

Oh, well...

The Cure

Pictures from you.

Ted in Hawaii sent a note and some cool pictures along.

Last Night was so Beautiful up on Koke'e/Mana Ridge which overlooks the NaPali Coast below and a gorgeous view of Niihau and Lehua. As the sky darkened the comet A3 started to visualize as my eyes adjusted. Can still see it with the naked eye, but the camera is the way to go to capture the essence of this part of our universe. Here are nine pictures in sequence, spanned about an hour and a half. So lucky that the clouds which prevailed by Kekaha side stayed away most of the time. Bright Venus and Comet A3, along with satellites and a few meteors, were a spectacle to see. Twas especially dark up there and I had to really watch my footing as the drop-off was right by my toes. 

Enjoy,

TED 

The top shot seemed familiar. Ted was a tour guide on Kauai and knows all the spots and he took us to some great places far off the normal road including this Nihau overlook. Kauai is my favorite place on earth and we have not been there in far too long. I sent Ted this picture I took way back when and he wrote back and told me that it was the exact same spot. Glad he didn't slip.

*

Mike Reardon and his girlfriend Liz are back from their trip to Botswana and he sends these wonderful photos for your pleasure and perusal.

 

Africa, another place I would like to get back to some day. 

Mike, these shots are too good not to watermark.

Memes the word

 

Move Over

Flim flam welcher

I was a contractor for a long time and one thing I hate is when people don't pay their bills and subs. I have seen too many innocent people broken by these predators. 

When my company was short, I busted my ass both to stay in touch and make sure everybody got paid eventually.

And they did.

One of the Presidential candidates this election is a total welcher who loves to rack up big bills and then use his financial position to squeeze people and renegotiate. 

He has a record of leaving cities across our country high and dry.

You never want to do business with this kind of person and you certainly wouldn't want them running your country.

More info here.

Gary Moore & Albert Collins - Cold Cold Feeling

The late Albert Collins was one of my favorite blues guitarists. It took me a while to get the late Gary Moore but he was truly special as well. Nice to hear them together here.

Ribeye

With a freezer full of a nice assortment of choice and prime rib eye steaks I can afford to experiment a little bit. 

Last night, my wife was going to a party that I had no interest in so the day before yesterday I sort of covertly slipped one into the fridge to thaw in anticipation.

I wanted to try a new method, a slow cook and reverse sear. 

I placed garlic, rosemary sprigs and butter on top of the steak and let it roast.

 While I typically oven cook at 350 to 450 before my sear, pulling the beef out at 113 degrees or so, I cooked this one at 225. 

The recipe said 200 for an hour but my internal probe thermometer let me know I had reached the target temperature of 110 in a mere 18 minutes.

I pulled it out of the oven and onto the very hot cast iron griddle.

I then did a quick sear in butter and garlic for about three minutes total, sending the temp up to about 135 degrees.

I let it rest for about ten minutes before cutting into it.

It was at that point that I heard my wife come through the door. 

Something happened, the party never fired.

I would be sharing my steak, which was honestly a bit on the small side. 

Lucky me.

Now if you notice, there is no salad, no vegetables. 

I'm a guy.

They are helpful but not a requirement when men are eating alone. 

She usually makes a comment, last night I was spared for some reason.

By the way, I don't think this is the optimal way to cook a rib eye. 

Steak tastes a little too "roasty." 

Not as red as I like. 

Even though it tasted really good, I am going to go back to the old ways.

*

Next up: Pork chile verde.

Coronado Bathroom Window

I bought a cool painting out of New York.  An acrylic on canvas. A bathroom interior with a book and the counter with a bomb blast cover. 

The artist is Kathleen Marshall (b. 1950). She is known for diminutive interior scenes, usually painted in gouache. I have sold one other of her pieces, which was very small and got good money for it. 

You can see it here on my gallery website. I obtained it from Dixon. You can see more of her work here at Christopher Clark gallery in San Francisco, who now represent her. Her approach has changed somewhat over time. More here. Here is her bio from the site:

As one of only a few contemporary painters who work exclusively in gouache—an opaque, water soluble pigment that is notoriously difficult to master—Kathleen Marshall is somewhat of an anachronism in today’s art world. Often confused with tempera, gouache-like paints originated in ancient Egypt and Greece, and the medium’s rich history includes modern adherents like Henri Matisse, Jean Dubuffet, and Georges Rouault. Over time, gouache on illustration board became the industry standard for illustrators, designers, and comic book artists who valued its velvety finish, density, and saturated color. Present day use continues to be specialized.

Subject-wise, Marshall is best known for intimately scaled, meticulously rendered depictions of dimly lit, sparsely furnished room interiors commonly found in old European flats or homes. Often, the primary light source is a window or French doors flanked by heavy draperies. In her Cherche Midi series, verdant courtyards are visible through the glass. Though less common than her room interiors, Marshall also creates still lifes and figurative works.

Marshall earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history from the University of Santa Barbara, a Master’s degree in painting and drawing from San Diego State University, and, in 1982, a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California, San Diego. By accident, in 1976, she discovered gouache paints at the venerable Bon Marché department store in Paris and spent years teaching herself to use them. The artist’s interest in somber, European-style room interiors, however, stems from childhood when she frequently visited her grandmother, an artist who managed an estate in Los Angeles. Marshall’s darkly evocative compositions are more than skilled renderings of rooms. “They are metaphors for life,” she says. “I paint interiors that I’m surrounded by and that speak to me.” Empty chairs, for example, are stand-ins for people, doors imply a vanished human presence, and views through windows suggest engagement with the outside world. In 1989 Marshall moved to France permanently, but frequently returns to her hometown of La Jolla.

(Mark Lugo, from 100 Artists, 100 Years:  A Century of Creativity in San Diego)

I don't know a lot about the artist but do know that she was connected to the Athenaeum in La Jolla for a good period of time and then moved to Avignon in France, where she continues to paint. Perhaps she lived in Coronado for a spell as well. Somehow I tracked her email down years ago and we had a brief correspondence.

In any case, a women in her eighties in New York contacted me recently and asked me if I would be interested in buying her piece, which she had bought from the Hank Baum Gallery at the New York Art Expo in 1981. I said that I would and we came to terms and I made arrangements for shipping.

But I could not believe the size of the thing. 

This artist is known for postcard size work. This measures 48 x 60". Not sure how to price it?

The work is signed and dated 1981 verso. Started in June of 1980 and finished in October the following year.

There was a little drama as the day it was to be picked up I received a note from the artist that she believed it actually was a small work and that someone must have copied it and made a print or put it on canvas.

Based on that knowledge I cancelled the sale at 4:30 a.m..

But an hour later I got another note from Kathleen, she had found a slide and her notes confirmed that the 4 x 5' size was accurate and that the signature version was indeed hers.

Yippee, I hurriedly put the deal back together, the shipper picked it up the following day and now I have it in my shop.

And I really like it, it is more vague than the later stuff and that appeals to me. She sent me another note:

Wow that is a big one.  I started out working really big but have no idea where any of those paintings are now.  So seeing this one was quite a surprise.

The title would have been something like “Coronado Bathroom window” because I almost always use descriptive titles.

 I remember doing a smaller version of that painting without the nuclear blast. 

Thank you for sending the photo….fun to see.

Kathleen

So everything works out beautifully.  The seller is happy, the artist is happy and I am happy. And someone will hopefully buy it one day and be happy too.

The fun never stops

As John Donne so aptly put it way back in 1624, the bell eventually tolls for all of us. 

This clod that you are reading will bee washed away by the sea one day too, like everybody else. 

You get to a point in your life where the calendar pages fly by and suddenly you are old one day and have to ask yourself, how the hell did that happen?

I measure weeks by Mondays, the day the trash cans come out to be picked up and then come back again, it seems like there is practically no in between any more, what is happening to the rest of the week?

In any case, with age, comes entropy and mechanical failure. I have two friends that got new hips in the last week or so, both by Dr. Knudson. 

Hopefully they will feel better soon and it will relieve them of the hitch in their giddy up.

My arthritis is certainly on the wax. My wife has to open certain jar tops for me. 

We sit on the floor and play cards at night, My feet go numb and after a long session, I creak and stutter getting up like the tin man on a rusty bender. Knees, hips, feet, it is quite the sight.

Of course I will be sixty seven in about sixteen days or so and such discomfort is supposed to come with the territory. Once I am up and moving and get some grease back in the joints, things start to feel a lot better.

*

My automobiles are feeling the same sorts of grief as my body, only in dog years. Both my Mazda and the ProMaster are 2019's. Five years old and mechanical things like to start breaking. I took my van in for a service and they told me that I had a radiator leak.

They pressure tested it and it was not a hose, it was a seam split, where the plastic meets the metal. An unnatural marriage if there ever was one. I had been smelling something amiss for some time but it was staying cool and I paid it no further attention.

But I have a trip to Palm Springs and then one to San Francisco scheduled and I really didn't need the thing blowing at an inconvenient time. So I spent the gelt this week and had it fixed.

Now my mechanic told me that it was not an easy job, at least four hours. Truth was, he told me it took all day. They had to take the entire bumper off to get to it and it was sort of a bitch, even after watching the YouTube how to do it video.

He called me about three and told me that the hose attachments to the radiator are plastic and have a klugey German seal and spring inside and that they tend to break and that I might as well change those out too or risk going through the whole business again. Ram followed the German Sprinter model on this. 

I told him to go ahead, it's only money that I am short of right now, another $275 for new hoses. Whole thing ran about $1475 with tax.

It's been a pretty trouble free van, shouldn't bitch too much. Same thing happened to Bill with his ProMaster, they build these parts to fail nowadays.

I got an art delivery from Shlomo, my New York shipper on Friday. He has the fancy Mercedes model witht he custom cab. Said he had the same radiator problem and didn't change the hoses and they broke three times in quick succession before he got wise and threatened the dealer with a lawsuit. They fixed it. 

I was going to put new brakes on the Madza, he thinks he can save the rotors if we do it soon. Needs two more tires too. But the van takes precedence for now with shows coming up.

*

Take care of yourselves and each other. This election thing will pass, somebody will be pissed off and we will all find a way to survive. May the best woman win.

Goodby Ginger

Yesterday evening, Leslie and I attended a lovely Irish wake for Ginger, a friend and neighbor who has been ailing for some time.

We toasted her at sunset and it was a beautiful sunset at that.

There was good food and a wonderful musician named Paul, who played a variety of instruments and has played with both the Chieftains and Flogging Molly, not quite sure of his name. Castellanos?

Ron and Ginger's adobe ranch was beautiful, filled with relatives and close friends.

This wake was done right. I had a sip of red wine, Leslie had an ice cold Guinness, said that it tasted terrific.

Quite a family those Allison's, top to bottom.

Pentangle

Evening snapshots from the ranch