BLACKWELL . . . IS . . . BACK!

For those of you who have expressed concern about our Big Black Boy Cat, Blackwell, here's a photo I took on the patio this evening.

As you can see, he's back in the prime of life.  He had us pretty worried for awhile because he was acting just like our beloved Smoke was right before he left us.  But SWMBO began dosing him with some antibiotic the Humane Society had given us back when we had him neutered.  As it happened, he hadn't needed it back then.  But this time, it seemed like it was "what the doctor ordered."  He's back to eating and drinking as normal and has lots of energy.

Welcome back, Blackwell.

AND THAT'S JAZZ!

SWMBO and I went to an outdoor jazz concert the other night.  In the middle of the monsoon!  We had doubts about it but got there early enough to shelter under the roof of the amphitheatre.  It was an occasion because we knew the keyboard player, Joel Robin, from way back in the 70's.  We had never heard his wife, Delphine Cortez, but knew she was one of the premier jazz singers in Phoenix.  And how much can I say about the fabulous Margo Reed.  As I told her at intermission, we had seen her and her sister Francine the first time they sang publicly in Phoenix.  There was a jazz festival going on at a shopping center and these two girls, in their cutoff shorts and t-shirts came up from the audience and just took over the stage.  Margo told me the other night that the band was led by Keith Greko and "he didn't like performing with chick singers!"  But they were fabulous.  Margo later went on tour and became a very well known performer.  Later her sister Francine did the same thing, performing with Lyle Lovett's Large Band and leading her own group, as she was when we saw them in Guadalajara, Mexico during the Cervantes Festival.

At any rate, the concert the other night was a great experience.  Margo was as sassy as ever with all the style of a great singer.  Delphine, as I told Joel, just creates a symphony on stage and she's a great scat singer.

As for the band, Joel is better than I can ever remember him.  He does a number of arrangements as well.  Drummer Cleve Huff kept everything on time and showed some great skill as a soloist.  Saxaphonist Tony Vacca was a new find for us and he was spectacular, whether playing his solo riffs or doing back-and-forth with Delphine.

It was a great evening.  Now, gentle readers, go out and hear some live jazz!

CATS

Something is wrong with our big black boy cat, Blackwell.  He's only eating a bite or two and has cut down on his water intake.  He spends a lot of time under the bed.  We're worried as this was how Smoke behaved before we had to put him down.  But what can you do?

Meantime, I spotted our oldest cat, Muggles, in an uncharacteristic pose today cuddled up for a nap with a ceramic cat.

And a few feet away, Jazz has found yet another box that just  seems to suit her fine.

A CLOUDY DAY IN MONSOON COUNTRY

To the north . . .

To the south . . .

To the west . . .

Hmm, a little rain dripping out of that one.  Well maybe it will dampen down the radiation from that mushroom cloud to the northwest.

Gee.  Right over a fitness center, too.

O.K. Just kidding.  But it does have a somewhat familiar shape.

Meantime, where I live?  Blue skies.  No rain.  Heat.  Bah, humbug!
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Update: About 3:30 this afternoon the rain finally came.  It's been raining steadily now for 15 or 20 minutes.  Hooray!

THE MONSOON

I should have told you this before but the summer heat has given me a bad case of lassitude.  But here it is.  The monsoon has arrived.  As I have written before,  that means a change in the direction of the wind.  And that brings us rain from, of all places, the Gulf of Mexico.  Up here the sky begins to darken and look something like this.

If we're lucky - - and I say lucky because our state has been dealing with a drought for years and years - - we may get some rain.  Here it's been relatively light so far.  Actually a long light rain would be the best because when it comes down really hard and severely it just tends to run off, cause flooding and actually doesn't do the land a lot of good.

So it's the good and the bad.  Or maybe we might stretch things a bit and call it the devil or the angel.




Incidentally, Bobby Vee (Robert Velline) was a young man from Fargo, North Dakota, and the first entertainer I ever saw "up close and personal" right before he became a star.

NICE HABOOBS, EH?

So.  It's Wednesday.  Night.  A lot of people have been blogging about last night's dust storm in Phoenix.  So.  It's a dust storm.  We live in the desert.  In the monsoon season, as I've been trying to tell you guys, the wind changes direction and it blows.  Sometimes it picks up sand and dirt from the few open spaces we have left and it forms a huge cloud which is what we call a haboob.  It's an Arabic word.  But we got it and it's ours now.  So the dust blows in and nobody gets hurt.  Except, maybe, some of those newcomers from Chicago.  Other than that, the swimming pools get full of mud, the dust covers your cars, and it's gone.  In spite of the rather spectacular pictures, it's no big deal.  Life goes on.

O.K.  Enough with the dust storm.

Up here in the mountains, we don't get dust storms.  We get rain.  Sometimes a little.  Sometimes a lot.  Sometimes the dry washes around here get hit with a ton of water and sometimes some dumbass drives into it and gets swept away and, if he's not real lucky, he dies.  But that happens everywhere, folks.  If you're dumb enough to risk your life with weather phenomenons, you can lose your life.

I lived for many years in North Dakota.  They get blizzards there.  Sometimes people would try to drive through them.  (O.K.  Personal note here.  I drove through one for about 300 miles the night my son was born.  When I got there, he was perhaps 6 hours old.  So why did I do it?  Stupidity.)  Anyway, sometimes they get through, sometimes they don't.

I also lived in Indiana for awhile.  Occasionally they had tornadoes there.  I can remember one Easter Sunday when one came within, oh, maybe a mile, maybe a half mile of where we lived.  We got out, took our "stuff" and drove in an opposite direction.  Later, we drove to where the tornado had touched down and witnessed massive destruction.

So what am I trying to say here?  Don't be afraid of weather but don't tempt it either.  You get a big dust storm?  Stay in your house.  Close the windows.  It's only going to last for a short time and then you clean up the mess.  No big deal.

You hear me?  NO.  BIG.  DEAL.

AMERICA

How could I forget this.  Many is the time when I had to work in the t.v. newsroom on the July 4th holiday when suddenly our pal Steve Widmann would put a recording of this on and crank up the sound.  It was sensational.  And it still is.  No one ever did this song better than Brother Ray.  Just listen.  (And turn up the volume!)