Mostly Gray But A Touch Of Blue

Red-Shouldered Hawk This Morning

6:56

6:58

8:06

It's 7:40 and I am listening to a new Spotify podcast called Renegades: Born In The USA, a conversation between Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama where they discuss both being outsiders when young. A whiff of Spring in the air, 28º, as the lake begins to puddle in spots even though it's still frozen enough for ice fishermen.  

Early Birds

Yesterday we took a day off from skiing, alas, partly because of the 38º temperature and my doctor's appointment in Jamestown.  So after breakfast, I drove to Jamestown and had a good talk about my health, it's fine and basketball with my doctor, always fun.  Afterward, I stopped at the Labyrinth Coffee shop for a lunch burrito and a cup of java. I also got a few things done, stopping at a self car wash, then the bank to cash a check, finally stopping at Save A Lot to pick up pork steaks, for a new recipe I read about where they will take the place of beef steaks.  I also ran into old friends, Sam and Donna, from Busti, and neighbors Jim and Barb from Woodlawn, a small world. 

Lunch was easy, my Greek burrito with garbanzo beans, hummus, feta cheese, and cucumbers.  It was large enough to share with Evie and I also had a bowl of her mushroom barley soup. I watched my series, then got back to my depressing new book, Four Winds, a story set during the Depression in the Great Plains when drought and dust storms forced millions to trek West to the Promised Land Of California, kind of a modern retelling of Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath. Earlier, we had decided on Turkish tas kebab for dinner, basically a simple meat stew, with tomato paste, Turkish spices and some chopped onions so around 3:30, Evie put it together and let it slow cook in the oven under low heat for a couple of hours.  

Late Afternoon Shadows/Sky

We sat down to a dinner of the tas kebab, mashed potatoes, and a salad at 6:30 and I had a good idea of what I wanted to watch, a film from 2017 by Nomandland's director, Chloe Zhao, called The Rider.  She not only wrote it but directed and produced it.  It's set in the Dakotas and tells the story of a rodeo cowboy who suffers a debilitating head injury and must reimagine his life.  It's based on an actual cowboy and like most of her films, she used non-actors to play most of the roles. It's slow-moving but touching and true, like great films, and we both loved it. Like her other films, she does not complicate the story with romance and avoids the cliches of modern films, gratuitous violence. She shuns the Rocky-type endings and uses landscape as another character.  It's available on Amazon Prime for 3.99. Rent it. Watch it.