Month: December 2024

Last leaf on the tree, 2024

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments
“Last Leaf,” by Tom Waits.

I didn’t mark my first New Year until 1955, so 2025 will be an anniversary of sorts as we teeter on the brink of another spin on the annual merry-go-round.

In 1955, the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus — in which the late President Jimmy Carter had a hand — put to sea for the first time, a few days before the Pentagon announced its plans to develop ICBMs equipped with nuclear warheads.

But it would be a Soviet sub that launched the first ballistic missile.

The Warsaw Pact and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization were established.

Emmet Till was lynched. The Vietnam War officially began. Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks were arrested for asserting their civil rights on public transportation. A time bomb blew up United Airlines flight 629 over Longmont, Colo., killing everyone aboard.

The Westboro Baptist Church held its first service in Topeka, Kan.

The Salk polio vaccine was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The first McDonald’s franchise opened, in Des Plaines, Ill., as did Disneyland, in Anaheim, California.

The first atomic-powered electricity to be sold commercially powered Arco, Idaho.

Jim Henson introduced Kermit the Frog v1.0 in the premiere of his puppet show, “Sam and Friends,” on WRC-TV in Washington, D.C.

Little Richard recorded “Tutti Fruitti.”

General Motors became the first U.S. company to make a profit of more than $1 billion in a single year.

Steve Earle, Eddie Van Halen, Michael Pollan, Steve Jobs, Brendan Gleeson, Angus Young, Barbara Kingsolver, Eric Schmidt, Colm Tóibín, Dana Carvey, Mick Jones, Willem Dafoe, Luis Alberto Urrea, Gwen Ifill, Bill Gates, Dave Alvin, and Steven Wright were born, among others.

Charlie Parker, Wallace Stevens, James Dean, Shemp Howard, and Albert Einstein died, among others.

Since before I can remember the world has been coming to an end. And yet, somehow, we persist.

The last leaves on the tree? Maybe. Tom Waits was still hanging on in 2011 when he released “Bad As Me,” with the song I stole for my headline.

I’ll be here through eternity

If you want to know how long

If they cut down this tree

I’ll show up in a song

But I notice he hasn’t given us any new music since. …

A shadow of my former self

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
The shadow knows.

Glancing back through my training log it strikes me that I have spent November and December intercoursing the penguin, as we used to quip at Live Update Guy.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

In the Before-Time, when I was still racing cyclocross, September through December felt like one big pile of miles, perhaps because it was.

In my Golden Years, the glide from summer through autumn into winter seems better suited to a gradual change of pace. Trail runs, hikes, short rides; that sort of thing. Shake the old brain-box like a dice cup, see what comes rattling out, seven, 11, or snake-eyes.

This year the numbers told me I was getting slightly carried away for a geezer who wasn’t training for anything other than staying on the sunny side of the sod. I was grinding out weeks of 100, 120, even 150 miles. Which can be fun. But it burns an awful lot of daylight for a cat wrangler-slash-cook-slash-blogger who Frankensteined his dead podcast back to life around Halloween for no discernible reason. And come November I was starting to feel rode hard and put away wet.

So I backed off. A lot. Maybe too much. Running three or four days a week, doing a leisurely hour here and there on the bike, mostly on trails. At first it was nice to ease off the accelerator, but after a while this old endorphin junkie was jonesin’ for his fix.

This past week I did three short trail runs — but I also managed four rides, including a pair of back-to-back two-hour outings on my Soma Saga touring bikes, which had been dangling dolefully on their hooks for far too long. They’re stout and sturdy, with fenders and rear racks, and I’m not inclined to do anything wild with ’em; just turn the pedals over until I get tired of it.

A ride of two hours or better not only refills the endorphin tank — it puts the Voices in my head to sleep for a spell, same as a car ride does a crying infant. It’s another welcome change of pace to have only the one murmuring to itself in there as the year winds down.

R.I.P., Jimmy Carter

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
President Jimmy Carter. Photo: LBJ Library and Museum

Jimmy Carter went west on Sunday. He was 100.

It seems appropriate for him to pass on the Lord’s day off. I expect the Big Fella wanted to supervise the welcome wagon Himself.

Jimmy had a rough ride in the White House, but he may have been our best ex-president ever. George Washington is right up there for refusing to let a grateful nation king him. But ol’ Jimmy just kept on doing the people’s business, often with his own two hands, well into his 90s. The New York Times has an extensive obituary.

And he hung on long enough to vote against the pestilence-elect. It wasn’t enough, but we must consider it his last full measure of devotion.

I never voted for him. I went for Peter Camejo (Socialist Workers Party) in 1976, though Hunter S. Thompson had pronounced himself impressed by Jimmy in a lengthy screed in Rolling Stone that was republished in his collection “Gonzo Papers Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt.” Four years later, I voted for independent John Anderson in an Arizona newsroom full of young Reagan Republicans, and then fled the joint like a rat out of a garbage fire.

But damme if I don’t wish I had voted for Jimmy, at least once. Peace to him, his family, and friends.

In which noses are cut off to spite faces

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
Ow. Ow. Ow.

Blogger Kevin Drum passes along some dispiriting yet unsurprising news from The Washington Post: Voters in a poor Pennsylvania town cast their ballots for Oney I. Kinfixit “even though they depend on welfare benefits that Republicans have long wanted to cut back.”

Here’s 55-year-old Lori Mosura, one of the townspeople quoted in the piece: “He is more attuned to the needs of everyone instead of just the rich. I think he knows it’s the poor people that got him elected, so I think Trump is going to do more to help us.”

Cue Messrs. Simon & Garfunkel:

I am just a poor boy 

Though my story’s seldom told 

I have squandered my resistance 

For a pocketful of mumbles 

Such are promises 

All lies and jest 

Still a man hears what he wants to hear 

And disregards the rest

Sandy claws

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
Weird-looking Christmas tree. Isn’t even decorated.

Well, our white Christmas finally showed up around 4 p.m. yesterday.

Better than never, I suppose. But 0.04 inch is hardly for the dashing through in a one-horse open sleigh.

Our “white Christmas.”

Ours was a modest celebration at El Rancho Pendejo. We broke fast with coffee, toast, oatmeal, and tea, went out for a short trail run, and lunched on leftover pasta with a mildly lively sauce of tomatoes, sausage, rosemary and olives.

Afterward, while I made the tee-hees here at the blog, Herself whipped up a giant cookie using a shortbread pan she scored from Goodwill. Background music was from The Chieftains, The Pogues, Mozart, Robert Earl Keen, Hozier, Tom Waits … you know, the usual holiday suspects.

Dinner was jambalaya with a green salad. Beverages included Guinness 0.0 and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Gift-giving was restrained. I have this fine new MacBook Pro, and Herself has the green light for a getaway with a friend.

Gotta save our pennies for those tariffs, $50 cartons of eggs, and $20-per-gallon gas. Also, moreover, furthermore, and too, bribes for the guards at the camp. A fella can’t eat rat tartare three meals a day, y’know.