LONE CONE COUNTRY

V.1 No. 1

WELCOME BACK ALMANAC … A sign of the times to see that wonderful regional 4-Corners non-profit paper&ink publication of the ‘90s revive in the new Christian century as a Google Blogger blogsite … Thank you, Ken.

THREE-DOT JOURNALISM … Herb Caen pioneered the concept in the San Francisco dailies of the late ‘30s until 1997, and (a Mission District boy) I’ve carried on the tradition in Telluride (CO) since the early ‘80s, where I’ve been doing various weekly formulations of my Caenfetti columns non-stop (mas o menos), with occasional variant forays into Cortez, Montrose, Grand Junction and Steamboat.

US ELECTIONS -- DIRECT FROM CHINA … Dick Brett, my good buddy from our old Roman Catholic seminary days at St. Joseph’s in Mountain View (CA), when we were six-latiners together, is now a teacher at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu. I shared his first-hand accounts of the devastating earthquake in that region with Telluride readers earlier this year. Here’s his take on the U.S. Elections from inside China … “Some Chinese are interested in our presidential election. Some of them, but not many, would choose Senator McCain. I ask them why. Those who are for him say his age and experience is better than Obama's youth. These Sino-McCain supporters think the Illinois senator too young. Those who like the Democratic candidate like his vision and racial combinations … I will talk to the classes next week about the election. Today I showed them my absentee ballot which I will mail tomorrow to Alameda County. The students were very interested. They were surprised, delighted to find Chinese characters on the instructions part of the ballot envelope … I said that this piece of paper was a ballot. It is a piece of paper. But what a piece of paper! By using it I can pick the President of my country, the representatives at the various levels of government and in California make laws of governance. This piece of paper is a glorious result of an amazing history. The actions it allows, this simple piece of paper, are the result of the minds and hearts and spent blood and many sacrificed deaths of patriots and dreamers and devoted people from all over the world, and these actions are maintained by love of country and that wondrous thought -- the people are sovereign; the people rule … We the people pick our leaders and make our laws. It seems so simple, this piece of paper. But the ballot is both the end result and ongoing adventure of a particular human confidence that we the people have the intelligence and wisdom to rule ourselves against the tyranny of kings, tyrants, aristocracies, against all those who savage us by thinking birth or race or gender makes them better. Indeed, against those, in Lincoln's eloquent words, who say: you toil and work and earn bread and I'll eat it. My simple ballot, the grand, majestic paper of freedom -- how truly precious it is … While talking to the second class about it, I found myself mightily humbled, and profoundly thrilled to be an American.”

WEEKLY QUOTA … "We were lawless people, but we were on pretty good terms with the Great Spirit." -Tatangi Mani, Walking Buffalo (thanks to Lindamarie Luna of Paonia)

CAPTAIN BAREFOOT ...

Top of Norwood Hill
in the Good ol’ U.S. of A.


A beautifully striped skunk
its tail a plume of alabaster & jet
run over

on the highway where
in the country of haves
everything’s smatter & smidgeon.

And spirit?
What to make
of her?