Where’s the reset button?

Now that leaves are opening, it’s easier to see where winter kill has affected some of our trees. There seem to be more blowdowns this year than in any past year I can recall. Both conifers and deciduous are dying, presumably from different causes. I’ve heard of oak wilt and we had several oaks taken down and out last year. Something killed a large, mature white pine that was growing in front of the house and that was taken down along with the oaks. Other, smaller confers have died and been left standing. Now, this spring, it appears that a cluster(?) of aspens has died over the winter. Our woods are smalll enough that any commercial options are very limited I believe and I don’t feel like paying the rates for local crews to come in, cut down trees, go and sell the fire wood, and leave me with another mess of small branches to clean up. Dying tree management and disposal is one of the down sides of country living. Plus, we’re still trying to find someone to fix the flue in our fireplace which broke pre-pandemic.

did these trees die last winter?

Photo by J. Harrington

These, and similar malfunctions, make me yearn for the days of yesteryear when a tv repairman would come to the house to replace a burnt out vacuum tube so I could watch The Lone Ranger. In those times, all bills came in the mail and were paid by mail or in person. I wasn’t being harassed by some damn utility company to sign up for auto payment, thereby exposing not only personal, but banking information via incompetent corporate IT departments, so when hacking occurs, some overpaid CEO can tell those personally affected how “deeply sorry” he is.

It’ could be worse. I could be trying to live in Gaza or Ukraine. It could also be better if, for example, those in authority did a good job of enforcing the laws we have instead of passing more laws that will only inconvenience, and possibly criminalize, innocent folks while being ignored by scofflaws and criminals. How about if parents let their offspring have unsupervised access to loaded firearms, we let the parents keep the firearms and take the child(ren) permanently and place them in responsible foster homes. We seem to be moving more and more to a society that’s soft on criminals, especially ex-presidents, at the expense of everyone else. All of this is making it harder and harder for me to maintain my record of voting Democratic and coulld make it impossiblle for US to maintain a democracy..

While I Wash My Face I Ask Impossible Questions of Myself and Those Who Love Me

Charif Shanahan

Specks of toothpaste fleck the mirror.

A fan spins dust in the hall.

I find this is it impossible to accept

So I wait for a new starting point

As though life will begin there and then.

Do you know what I mean?

Not what I’m saying, what I mean.

Is it possible my function is to hold

All the intricate, interstitial pain

And articulate clarity?

Tie a boat to my wrist, I sprout wings.

Give me a pair of shoes, I grow fins.

Once an hour I trick myself into focus:

I look into the glass as I look through it.

When the new beginning comes, what then?

Does life suddenly reset like an Atari?

Does meaning emerge

Assertively and without invitation?

The task is to live well enough with you.

But how? How do you know what you want

If you don’t tell you? If you don’t hear you?

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Please be kind to each other while you can.