Yesterday a Few Paragraphs, Today a Few Photographs

	The Sedona International Film Festival, is our biggest local event. The next one will be held beginning 22 February, 2020.We attend every year. Often, the filmmakers are present and answer questions after their work is presented. The gentleman at the left is one of them. His name, possibly for real, is Velcrow Ripper. How could I resist?
	There are special guests, too. There was a film* about Ed Asner, which I was eager to see because I loved the Mary Tyler Moore show and the Lou Grant character. You couldn't find a better curmudgeon to play Lou than Ed.
	Speaking of Sedona, although the climate is generally clement, we are in the high desert and it can get very cold at night. The water company backflow valve is located above ground, and they provide an insulated bag to cover it to prevent freezing. Unfortunately, the insulated bag is tempting to the local wildlife, and it can get gnawed and lose its effectiveness. It took quite a while to find a large enough mock rock to cover it. Perhaps some day they will offer them in Sedona colors.
	Stopping at Starbucks after the Bowie Alumni Tour concert (see "tomorrow"), we encountered this charming and fashionable associate, or perhaps team member. Her iPhone cover matched her hair.

And a Bit of Crankiness

I am a person of generally placid disposition. I greet good news or other forms of happiness with a general "WooHoo!" and occasionally add a supernumerary "!" if it's really spectacular. And I often dismiss the inevitable irritations of life, depredations by the USDUC**, and vexatious behavior of people with a verbally dismissive "Humans" if I'm speaking, or a "Grrrr" with a varying number of "r"s in print.

While I am properly sympathetic about the many large, newsworthy, and intractable crises of our times, I rarely exhibit vexation over the non-life-threatening problems of others, especially others I don't know and with whom I have no connection.

But I think I exhibited genuine "anger" the other day when I read a news item about a woman who was denied boarding on an international flight because her passport was to expire in four months, and for some reason the government or the airline or both required six months. It's easy, I suppose, for the gate agent to say "Sorry-the rules" but this leads to turmoil, great expense and inconvenience, and possibly a lot worse for the person who can't travel as scheduled. I'm not big on rules.

Why is a passport necessary? (Why not biometrics?) If it's necessary, why does it "expire" before you do? If it expires, why not a grace period for people returning to their home country? And even if there are semi-good reasons for the foregoing, why not just make an exception?

I didn't save the article in which this poor citizen's problem was featured, so I looked for it on the internet. I couldn't find the specific article, but that didn't prevent several other articles from popping up. Same story, different countries, different expiration dates. Grrrr(rr).