Good morning blogsters:

Nice rain falling the morning.  At least for about ten minutes it was a nice rain, parenthesized on both ends by a sweet mist.

I managed to not get to town recently enough to re-stock my Rez-cheapo smoke supply, so ended up rolling a Bugler to harmonize with the java while I sat on the front porch savoring that moisture gift.  But the growing season's coming to an end.  This bit of rain won't do much for the handful of jalapeno, habeneros and tomatoes still on the plants. 

It was a  tough year to be a growing thing in these parts (unless you happened to be a growing coyote).  I'd pruned back the apricot trees last winter, along with the apples and plums, so none of them bore much.  A few scraggly 75 year old grape vines I'd been nursing back gave off a few purples, but I have high hopes for all of them for next year, provided this long drought's really at an end.

We rarely see vultures in this part of the country, but yesterday I saw a large bird land in the pecan trees out back.  At first I took it to be an eagle, which we see more of than we'd like, but as it rustled around in the branches a raven attacked it and harried it out so I got a better look.  Turkey vulture.

The raven chased it off as ravens will do, which is why we don't get many.  But half-an-hour later I heard the limbs rustling again.  This time that pecan tree was full of them.  I counted a dozen when they flew off a while later.

Got me thinking there's a large animal dead somewhere nearby.  I haven't begun the coyote reduction program, or it would have had me out checking my snares.

Maybe some of the local patriots caught a war protestor.  I dunno. 

There's been a lot of throwing around of the word 'traitors' during the recent whizbang threatening peace rally.  Maybe the citizenry is beginning to believe its own BS, decided to take matters into their own hands.

 

That's one of the problems with throwing around words like 'traitor', and Communist.  They carry a lot of baggage.

Half a century of warfare waged without due process has made a casualty of the concept of a loyal opposition.  For you younger readers, loyal opposition used to be the term that acknowledged most issues have two sides, and that it's possible for someone to disagree with a particular direction the nation's taking while still being as pristine in his patriotism as the other side.

Civil discourse went away with a lot of other things we used to take for granted.

Each side demonizes and assigns sinister motives to the other on a more-or-less daily basis.  Doesn't stretch the imagination too far to imagine the uncivil discourse reaching out of the mind and into real-world activity and touching someone where it hurts.

Poor America.

Jack