Greetings my friends …
And welcome to this Sunday’s Baja Arizona Kos Open Thread. Click through if you’re interested in some news and views from beautiful Baja Arizona.
Swelter no more ...
What a difference 5 degrees makes. It was a lovely sunrise this morning; a cool 76. It hasn’t been over 100 for two days straight and the rains are back. We’ve had rain here every night for the past three nights and I wouldn’t be surprised if it rained here again tonight. About time.
Here’s a tune …
Remember that one ? The snappy snare work on that album is by Bill Kreutzmann whose memoirs, Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams and Drugs with the Grateful Dead, I have just finished reading. It was a pretty good read, I must say. I read Phil Lesh's book too and I liked this one better. What, you might wonder, has this to do with Baja AZ ? Well, after Garcia died in August of ‘95 and the long, strange trip was finally at an end, Kreutzmann checked himself into rehab. He did five weeks of treatment right here at Sierra Tucson. I chose Mama Tried because I’m a big fan of Merle Haggard’s too. Bill says in his book that the “cowboy songs” were never his favorites. He considered them novelty songs. His favorite songs were the jams; The Other One, The Eleven, Dark Star and, later, Drums -> Space.
Now the news ...
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has recommended the the Rosemont mine be denied its Clean Water Act permit.
Jane Sanders, who hasn’t lost her sparkle at all, has an interview in Rolling Stone where we read this:
Can you tell me about some of the hardest moments for you on the campaign trail?
Learning what I didn't know was hard. To see people suffering unnecessarily was just unfathomable. Why? Why is this being allowed? Going to the Native American reservations: Pine Ridge, Oak Flat, where they sold the copper mine deposits to a Russian company and it was on sacred ground. Why? Hearing all of the stories of people being treated unfairly by people in power, no matter what way, whether it's in their state governments, in their local government, in the federal government. Looking at Native Americans and looking at how they don't have education equity there, they don't have good health care, they don't have economic development, they don't have housing. I'm married to someone who is all about the people. He hears about a problem, and he wants to fix it; he does everything humanly possible to do that. It's just so foreign to me. So that was the hardest part.
The Sanders campaign reached out to the tribes more than any campaign that I can remember. I’m not sure about the copper from Oak Flat being sold to a Russian company but Resolution Copper is bad enough. I hope that project gets cancelled too.
Victoria Steele had an op-ed in the Star last week, An Optimist's View of the Border. It looks like she’s trying to draw a contrast with Martha, who’s been running around Cochise County campaigning on “border security.” Victoria is asking for a few more donations before tonight’s July 31 deadline. Here website is HERE if you’ve got a couple of extra bucks lying around.
Also on “border security,” this is pretty god-damned disgusting. This woman deserves every penny of her settlement and more.
Another tune ?
This one has been on my mind of late too. We’ve been binge-watching a Russian TV mini-series based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita. You can watch that HERE if you’re interested; ten episodes, about 50 minutes each. We’ll finish it tonight if I’m not too busy responding to the hundreds of comments these diaries usually generate. It’s one of my favorite novels. Here’s a quote:
At the end of the line flew Azazello, gleaming with the steel of his armor. The moon had altered his face as well. The absurd, revolting fang has disappeared without a trace, and his blindness turned out to have been false. Both of his eyes were the same, empty and black, and his face was white and cold. Now Azazello was flying in his true shape, the demon of the waterless desert, the killer-demon.
Mick Jagger was inspired by it also.
The beautiful Hella smiled, turning her greenish eyes to Margarita as she went on dipping into the salve and rubbing it into Woland’s knee.
“I guess that is all,” Woland concluded, wincing when Hella pressed his knee too hard. “As you see, it is a small, mixed, and simple company.” He fell silent and began to turn the globe before him. It was so cunningly constructed that the blue oceans on it stirred and the ice cap on the pole seemed to be truly made of ice and snow. “I see that you are intrigued by my globe?”
“Oh, I have never seen one like it.”
“It’s a clever little artifact. Frankly speaking, I don’t like to listen to news reports on the radio. They are usually delivered by young women who don’t articulate place names clearly. Besides, every third one stutters, as if they were chosen with this particular qualification in mind. My globe is much more convenient, especially since I must have exact information on events. Take, for example, this piece of land, lapped by the ocean on one side. Look, how it begins to glow. A war has started there. If you look closely, you will see the details as well.”
Margarita bent over the globe and the square of land expanded, became infused with many colors and turned into something like a relief map. Then she saw a strip of river and a village beside it. The house, which at first had been the size of a pea, grew and became as big as a matchbox. Suddenly, its roof flew up into the air without a sound, together with a puff of black smoke, and the walls collapsed, so that nothing was left of the two-story box except a little pile with black smoke pouring from it. Bringing her eyes still nearer, Margarita saw a tiny female figure lying on the ground, and near her, in a pool of blood, a baby with outflung arms.
“That’s all,” Woland said with a smile. “He had had no time to sin. Abaddon’s work is flawless.”
So here’s the video. The footage is from the infamous Altamont concert to which Kreutzmann, quite naturally, devotes a few pages. After having planned the show in conjunction with the Stones, the Dead refused to go on.
Alright then …
That’s all I got for this week. How ‘bout y’all, you getting any rain ? Talk to me.