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Olivia picked up the LA and the NY papers off the driveway, replopped, then perused the bombing news while I made the strong coffee she had warned against. We sipped the superxpresso and reviewed largely what we already new from the various previous compass viewpoints, including imagination. I lost track of the order of piled newsprint. I read Frank Rich talking down Dick Cheney from the Sunday before Scooter Libbey got his commutation. Old news, fresh read, even if all Frank had to chew on is how The Vice is immune to law, you know, that President-of-the-Senate-hears-a-different-drummer madness. He didn't even know about Scooter yet. Its all the same war story, according to Frank. The unending horror makes me miserable. Its all about flags, probably always been about the flags. Eleven more will apparently be given away to the unlucky next-of-kin this week.

Three days ago Chain-Chain-Cheney man Libbey's sentence was lifted, an especially warped gift to the nation from the chief defender of our constitution. The hubris is breathtaking. Did you too ever wonder what it might have been like in Germany as the Nazis came to power? Was Scooter bound to rat out The Vice if he didn't get off? The aftermath is exquisitely bizarre. Perjury is no biggie now, the professor from Fordham had somewhat apoplectically noted. Another ineffectual expert says that no judge henceforth can warn with real authority against lying under oath, holding up a threat of imprisonment, because the President just skewed the meaning of the law. Maybe George W. Bush is taking advice from the Attorney General again.

Dick Cheney, Dick Chyena, Sick Cheney. Olivia's son Dylan has placed the ghastly face of the Chyena all over the house, in webbernet photocopies and custom-art screen-spray jobs, the grim visage of our mutual madman broodifies the nooks and informs the crannies. Though I am accustomed to the propaganda, the various vacuous Cheneys smirking always remind, so thoroughly, how improbably wretched this era is. The Chyena has either the largest gonads on earth or functions without a heart. I understand from the literature that he eats puppies, and that his particular form of dementia seems to be contagious. Dylan replicates the Cheney face all over the place, no notation necessary. Dick Cheney, Dick Chyena, dragging down the country with little sharp teeth, from behind like a wounded, weary, wildebeast.

Lord have mercy on the republic for which we stand. I think I have to work so I go, ostensibly to water plants, and to cease watering plants. I load the 8-10 and the short-john in the truck. A neighbor passes by:
"So, that's what you are doing today."
" I hope so."
" No doubt better than this parade."
" No doubt."
I duck through the Arbolada to Meiners. Detoured drivers make a parade of their own around the perfunctory celebration downtown. The flags remind us of one thing so we can easily ignore the rest. The streets are draped with the ultimate red herrings of our era.

After a bit of inspiration with Johnny Gumby, a head-ram from his tyke and pertinent persuasives from Betty Button-Gumby, I mosey on up to the roof to configure their nonfunctional swampcooler. The day will again be far too hot to leave them without relief. Quickly I am done with scant effort but much surprise. Mr. and Mrs. Gumby may chill now. Not my two horsepower produce refrigerator's condenser though, which has finally given up the ghost, and on a holiday as well. I have seen so many three thousand dollar flame-outs around here I am barely fazed. I have heard that clicking sound before, and it is no good.

With the swelter burgeoning and time my own I realize this is the moment to clean the solar panels. I sense my soul is too stunned to shift, I have no chard to pick and observe the sunbeams inefficiently gathered through the grime. The tide, after all, is still too low so I stash the board in the shade so the wax won't melt off. I get the hoses rigged for the roof and retrieve a couple of promising squeegees. Parachute Woman drifts meaningfully up from the Gumby iPod.

The four electric meters down below are reading 3.7 kilowatts each. I have seen them cranking at 5.1, so the filth is really negating all this patriotic hardware. No herring here. Olivia broke a chunk of capital off her house and bought the solar system so she could do something that made sense about the war. The hot little star making us momentarily miserable today subdues the most fundamental questions.

Solar sure beats marching in circles at a protest around the VA building in Los Angeles while the police horses Cheney all over the road. I get the water going on the roof. I discover a mere rinse will not suffice, and that I must drag the squeegee across all of it. All of it is around two thousand square feet, the largest commercial solar array in the Ojai Valley. Cam-Campbell says only Larry Hagman's is bigger. I mean to tell you, my wife love's her country. Mike Byrne drops in as if from a cloud, but he is merely perched on one of my ladders. He wants to help. I am almost done, but I am tired of the squeegee and he is so terribly complimentary about the solar panels that I am happy to have him scrape clean the last twenty or so. For Byrne it is a church moment.

On Independence Day I accidentally reaffirmed the obvious. It was not that cleaning the solar panels would save over three hundred dollars this month. That is just money. There are many things to be done to be truly free, but there is no greater goal than being cured of our oil dependency. I want to believe we could put the federal casket contractors out of business if we covered every roof with solar panels.