I'm Thinking…No!

Three years ago, I started these ramblings insightful bits of writing.  I can’t believe it’s been going on this long. In this Year of the Pandemic, the coming of autumn is not quite like any other since, well, the last worldwide pandemic. Adding to the mix is widespread unrest and, of course the great fun of a presidential election. With the new season, it seems like an appropriate time to comment on the changes good and not-so-good that nature brings.

In a departure from my usual procrastination, I ordered a pumpkin spice coffee when it started appearing in mid-August.  I know what you’re thinking.  Wait at least until Labor Day.  That makes it special.  Well, guess what – it’s not that special any more, and Labor Day is really late. I grow impatient. The coffee masterminds have contributed to my unrest by making seasonal coffee changes a blur.  The weather hasn’t really turned chilly yet either, but my flannel shirts and fleeces stand ready to ward off temperatures plummeting into the fifties and sixties. 

Fall is still a season for apples.  Londonderry is apple country, but apples too are suffering some overexposure.  Apple spice everything, bravely taking on the big pumpkin lobby.  Every year, I look forward to “apple cider” donuts.  I think it’s the name that carries the mystique.  The donuts themselves never quite reach expectations, because the flavors are, shall we say, muted at best, and they seem to dry out in a matter of hours.  Oh, well.  I buy and eat them anyway, just so I can say I’ve had them.  My daughter and I were out at the orchard store (it’s a huge farm store and bought a bag of local ones.  Truth be told, I not really a “pick your own” kind of person.  I’d have been lost in the “hunter/gatherer” period. My hunting and gathering is best done at Market Basket. Back to local apples, I’m told they’re the best for Apple Crisp and Apple Brown Betty.  I’m not exactly sure how Brown Betty came by her desserts, but she’s done fine work for us all. 

Last year, I wrote in detail about the evolution of the pumpkin.  The experts tell us that pumpkin essentially has no flavor of its own – it’s only when mixed with spices that it shines. I can live with that. At Halloween, we’d carve a face – in all honesty, that’s a pumpkin’s real purpose   At Thanksgiving, it would provide its last, best service and become a pie.  Now everything is pumpkin.  All day, every day, streaming live. Breads, ice cream, muffins, donuts, lattes, candles.  They’re everywhere.  We used to head to the farm stand to buy a couple of good ones for the front steps.  They’d look majestic and bold until the squirrels and chipmunks laid waste to their orange glow and turn their insides into a gooey mess. I was walking by a display of “foam” pumpkins at the dollar store.  I thought it might be rather funny to put a couple of those out just to toy with the wee beasties. Anyway, now you can buy real pumpkins large and small at the grocery store these days. They’re right next to the bales of hay.  Wait – when did that start happening?  The Great Pumpkin would traditionally fail to appear and Linus would again be deeply discouraged.   Of course, we have “great pumpkins” everywhere.  At a local county fair last year, someone brought a 2,500 pumpkin.  It was in the paper, so I kid you not. He won the title of “Pumpkin Master” or “Pumpkin Ruler” or something noble title of that sort  He used, and I didn’t believe it either, a special fertilizer for growing these massive pumpkins.  And I’ve been wasting my time with “organic compost”. What do you even do with a pumpkin that size, that needs a tractor to move?  Put it on display in the front yard, or bake like, a million pies?  The county fair, and possibly giant pumpkins too,  are probably casualties of the coronavirus this year, and the local newspaper will be forced to feature actual news on the front page.

Throughout the summer, we get a variety of fruits and vegetables that come in and out of season – strawberries and blueberries, corn-on-the-cob, tomatoes.  We usually can’t wait for the “native” tomatoes to appear.  They’re always big, intensely red, and you have to check them top and bottom to make sure they didn’t drop and the insects got them.  That’s why I don’t grow my own.  There’s that nanosecond window when they fully ripen but before they fall to the ground and some local animal or swarm of insects invade.  I planted a small peach tree in one of my gardens two years ago.  Last year, I had three bits of fruit about the size of walnuts.  Two fell to the ground, where ants fully enjoyed them. The third I brought inside as a sort of trophy for a few days. This year, I don’t see much on it, possibly victim to the summer drought. But fall brings out the remarkable as the squash family struts grandly onto the produce runway.  There are big blue ones, smaller greens, browns, and oranges and tans.  Some gourds are so colorful and interesting they look almost like something from a factory in Southeast Asia.  Oh, wait – no. There’s a trade tariff on those.

Fall also brings a true burst of color before everything fades to white, dark browns, and eventually grays. The trees here in New England put on a vivid display, which is of course what we pay them for.  It’s the first opportunity for people to over-decorate their houses since Easter.  Stalks of corn, more bales of hay, and chrysanthemums are everywhere.   As a gardener, it saddens me when, in mid-August, I see rows and rows of mums appearing in the nurseries.  I don’t particularly like them, and gravitate more to asters.  Most of the time, asters will come back next year.  Mums look spectacular for about a week, then you have to keep picking off all the dead blossoms to keep them looking even passable.  Unlike other flowering plants, each mum has thousands of blossoms, and they wilt dozens a day.  Who has the time to pick them over?  They also have tender stalks, so repotting them means you lose big chunks of flowers.

Mixed with the excitement, there’s also a time of sadness, or longing.  Coffee and my newspaper on the screened porch won’t be a “thing” again until May. The outdoor plants are looking pathetic – straggly, brown around the edges, almost begging for the compost heap.  My predecessors in this house planted Lily of the Valley.  It sprouts nicely in the spring, looks quite presentable until late July.  Then, it turns brown and rather ugly as it dies back in August.  You can’t take it out because it roots like iron, and it spreads. I’m not sure what it hasn’t been deemed “invasive”. Now is the time to put away the porch and deck furniture -umbrellas, benches, chairs.  I delay this as long as possible – in some years, I’m brushing the first snow off everything.  In recent years, I’ve bought winter covers for much of the furniture so I don’t have to lug it down to the basement.  It’s the season for putting out mousetraps in the basement, while flocks of geese are honking overhead on their way south. I’ll have to restock the de-icer, and figure out where I put the windshield scrapers. Many seniors from around here head south to enjoy the last few weeks of hurricane season.  They do a seasonal commute, get sick of packing and move down year-round, get bored with the lack of seasons and move back.

Let’s face it.  Fall is not a time for children, in particular this year.  School, that traditional benchmark of fall, is a vast uncertainty.  “Hybrid” used to refer to cars, but how it’s school schedules.  What days do they go in, and which days can parents not use the computer?  Some parents are struggling to remember trigonometry, and wish they’d paid more attention twenty five years ago. Cases of facemasks arrive. How far apart is six feet? For teachers, it’s a “worst nightmare” scenario. Fall traditionally was tailor-made for us older, retired folks.  The roads are less traveled and we could get into restaurants for breakfast without an hour wait. Now, of course, many of those restaurants aren’t open, or just taking small percent of their normal capacity. There’s still a world of color for us to explore – at 35 miles per hour, our preferred speed, in the Grand Marquis, and gas is cheaper. We could employ our summer deterrent, road construction to encourage social distancing.  We’ll just start repaving every road in New England that wasn’t being mauled by a backhoe over the summer.  And once they’re back in service, we can block off lanes randomly to dig up the shoulders.  It’s really essential that we have heavy equipment dispatched to every highway and byway and keep the orange cone people busy.As the fall embraces us, savor an apple cider donut or enjoy a pumpkin spice latte while we can. Peppermint mocha is bearing down on us like a trailer truck in the onramp.

The postal service has been getting bashed up a lot lately, or in particular, the new Postmaster General.  He deserves it, but I’m not completely sure the Post Office overall does.  That’s a topic for another day.

Over the course of the pandemic, we’ve taken, as have many or most of Americans, to ordering things online. Amazon has been an attractive choice because it’s been typically pretty reliable and it’s fast.  By golly, they’ve rewritten the rule on speedy delivery.  Forget the “7 – 10 business days”, which then run to two weeks.  In the early days of “tracking”, it was such fun!  Ah, pillow cases we ordered are in Des Moines.  Three days later, they’re still there.  Next day, they’re in Denver.  Wait . . . . . they’re going in the wrong direction.  We’d call Customer Service (which is often a misnomer), to find out they were rerouted because of storms in the mid-Atlantic.  OK, makes sense.  I don’t want my pillow cases blown out to sea by a Tropical Storm Umberto.

The fine folks at Amazon Delivery are doing yeoman work.  Each driver is dropping off, like, 8,000 packages a day, so they have to be efficient and work quickly.  They also now have to take pictures of the packages on my front porch to verify that they reached their destination.  So, funny story.  I ordered a book a while back for a friend – we share books regularly.  This was one I thought he’d particularly enjoy. I then, in my advanced stage of forgetfulness, received the email confirmation with the package sitting proudly on his front step.  Only, I looked at it and said to myself, “That’s not my front porch – what’s up with that?’’  The bottom line here is that I had to contact Amazon and apologize profusely for forgetting where I had had the package sent.  I also had to promise that I wouldn’t do it again any time soon and that I’d keep a detailed log of what I send and to whom. That’s only fair.  If I expect superior service from them, they should expect it back from me.

Amazon trucks are flying in and out of our neighborhood like hummingbirds in a rose garden. Where are they going?  Who ordered something?  Did I?  Or on the days that something is expected, each truck must be for me, only it isn’t.  The driver is running into the house across the street.  Dear God, those people are ordering stuff all the time.  They must be made of money.  Then, he’s back with something for me.  Ok, my stuff is essential.  Not something from Publishers Clearing House, because I only ordered it last week.  It won’t be here for at least a month, and then they’ll put it in a package box at the mail house.  Now I have to try to decipher the box number on the key tag because it’s all smudged.  I usually get it the fourth or fifth box I try.  

Back to Amazon Delivery.  When we first started ordering that way, there had been an element of whimsy in where they left the packages.  Sometimes the package would sit smugly on the front porch or steps.  Every so often, though, they were left in front of the garage door.  Had one of those in a rain storm.  It turned out to be for my neighbor.  Not only did the delivery guy get the house number wrong, . . . . yup.  Soaked through, and I had to deliver this soggy mess next door.  I was apologizing, and I didn’t even make the mistake.  They’ve misdelivered a number of packages to our back door, so I had one of those adorable slate plaques made that have our name and house number on it.  People have said it looks so nice, and I have to explain that I had it made especially for the delivery people.  

Our house sets down a bit, so we have a small brick terrace out front and stairs going up to the driveway.  If you’ve read my blog on the newspaper delivery person, you’re acquainted with the setup.  He tosses the paper conveniently under the bushes or, if he’s in a hurry, up the hill about 50 yards away.  Recently, the package delivery folks have taken up his approach and are leaving things at the top of the steps.  Perhaps they’re unaware that we share those steps with  three other homes.  They can’t walk a few extra steps to put it by the front door?  Now it’s fair game for whoever happens to walk by first. Not an ideal situation.  

I was listening to a program on public radio a few weeks back.  They were talking about “shadow” delivery trucks whizzing about urban and suburban areas.  Apparently, they are able to track regular delivery trucks, or maybe they just follow them at a safe distance – probably ex-KGB – and these shadows look the same except they don’t have the corporate logos on the side.  They wait until the regular delivery trucks have made their stops, then they swoop in and take the packages.  Apparently, that’s why the Amazon folks are now taking pictures ON the front porch.  Yes, we were actually there, in case you don’t believe me. It’s proof that it really was delivered.  We’ve all heard about the stories of Christmas packages being lifted from entry ways and front doors.  This, I guess, takes theft to the next level and makes it more organized.  How desperate are these thieves that they’ll buy a cargo van to steal my pillow cases?  I can understand the ten rolls of toilet paper, but really.  

The other big mystery is the timing of my deliveries.  Why is it that my neighbors get their packages at like, 10 AM.  Mine never arrive much before 5 PM.  I’m usually on the lookout all day.  Like right now, I’m waiting for a new door latch for the screen door out back.  My daughter saw a chipmunk coming in and out of the back porch, it’s little furry face peaking in through the glass slider, and as she doesn’t interactwell with nature, took exception.  So, I fixed the hole where the screen had come away from the frame, but noticed that the door didn’t really stay shut too tightly either, so I ordered a new latch to keep it closed.  Anything to thwart those plucky little chipmunks that live in the yard. They’re the same ones that eat my tulip bulbs, so I’m not terribly sentimental. Amazon to the rescue because I’m not allowed to go to the hardware store.  When I suggest it, she gives me a look of exasperation and shakes her head. The latch is arriving today some time – probably just before I go to bed. They say they deliver any time up to 9 PM.  Wow, these folks work late, although they’re probably sharing in Amazon’s abundant profits.  Yesterday was Sunday, and I had a delivery due.  By dinnertime, it hadn’t arrived, so I thought, oh, well . . . . . . Checked the tracking and it said “out for delivery”.  And it was.  Somewhere about 7:30, it arrived.  They didn’t ring the bell, but a picture popped up on my phone.  I don’t believe that we’ve yet missed a delivery and on the day it was promised.  I’m thinking, . . . . . . well done!!

Back in May, when COVID-19 looked like it was gradually getting under control, I wrote an insightful and enlightening post about wearing face masks.  I said, in so many words that folks unwilling to wear face masks were too stupid to live.  Ok, not in those so many words, but something less threatening, less harsh, less Trumpy. 

Well, folks – well done, America.  You stopped wearing masks in public, you started gathering in large numbers – at the beach, in bars and nightclubs, you moved back into restaurants and shopping malls.  You got tired of the inconvenience. You wanted a quick return to normal. Nice job.  Fifteen hundred deaths in one southern state alone.  The President telling us confidently, as he did in March, April, May, June and July that he’s fully on top of the problem and that his administration has risen to the occasion.  Meanwhile, the pandemic experts, including his own people, are saying the exact opposite.  

We’re now heading into the start of the new school year.  We could have been preparing for a not-quite but slightly modified soft landing.  Instead, we have Secretary of Education DeVos telling us that all schools can and should be fully returning to classes, because “children don’t get the virus.”  Not sure exactly what planet she’s on.  In an opinion letter to the editor yesterday, a teacher, no less, stressed the importance of students being back in the classroom.  This person teaches in one of Boston’s elite exam high schools, so perhaps it will be safer there than in all of the other public schools in the city.  I doubt it.  Is it more important to save young lives or reach arbitrary academic achievement benchmarks?  If America’s students end up a bit behind, is that irreparably damaging their lives?  Won’t they catch up at some point, or are their lives permanently scarred? I’m of the view that young people are remarkably resilient and they will catch up. As a local representative wrote today, “what happens if one student gets sick?”  There’s the question, isn’t it?  We know how highly contagious this virus is.  One case rapidly becomes dozens, becomes hundreds, spreading like the wildfires of California.  Stopping the spread in our schools once it starts, where even “social distancing” is more dream than reality, will be terribly risky and dangerous, and very difficult to achieve.  No, we should have been spending our time since June improving the quality of internet learning, bringing back only the special learners and those few that can’t survive online.

An article in the paper this past week mentioned that a high school age hockey player from Massachusetts participated in a tournament in Connecticut back at the end of July, and thoughtfully brought the virus home with him.  This despite the Massachusetts ban on sporting events across state lines.  Apparently, there were players from New York at the tournament, and that was the tracked source.  To make things better, his team played in two tournaments here in New Hampshire after that.  Just great. Is youth hockey really that important that it’s worth risking lives?  We’re just starting to understand that there may well be other health risks far beyond recovery from the virus, particularly among athletes.  Yet professional baseball players are sneaking out to bars and football players are sneaking companions into their hotel rooms. What does it take for people to understand that this is very, very serious?  

Still another news release detailed how a fundamental church just a few miles down the road from me, resumed services in June and held a youth summer camp in July, and since then has had 16 church and family members test positive for COVID-19.  The state Department of Health is investigating the possible causes, but all of the infected people belong to that church.  I’m not a specialist, but I don’t have much trouble connecting those dots. The senior pastor was puzzled.  Really?  Apparently, God wasn’t protecting his flock quite as thoroughly as he thought.  And isn’t that the point?  So many of ministers, pastors, and churchgoers think that there’s an invisible force field protecting them from all harm, because that’s what God does. Only he doesn’t.  God doesn’t seem to work that way.  I guess these deeply religious people figure that the rest of us are on our own.

Then, of course we see the unmasked face of Herman Cain, sitting surrounded by people with no effort to distance at a Trump rally, just a few weeks before he mysteriously contracted coronavirus and died.  The poor man, but wasn’t he challenging fate just a bit?  And will it change the way a president chooses to campaign?  Probably not.

We in America are at a crossroads.  We hold the record for most cases and most deaths of any single country in this pandemic.  We’re not allowed to travel to most places in the world now, and probably won’t be for some time to come. The Canadian Prime Minister won’t come here. Our healthcare system, which we thought was the envy of the world, is overworked, undersupplied, underfunded, and exhausted.  I’ve come to believe in the t-shirt that says, “Science doesn’t care what you believe.”  Isn’t that the truth?  Infectious diseases in the forms of viruses and bacteria are learning to adapt, grow, and reappear in ways that we’re still trying to understand.  We do know that these diseases don’t pay much attention to religious beliefs or political principles. The Black Plague centuries ago raced from Asia to Europe because people didn’t know about basic hygiene.  Now we know quite a bit more, but we’re still in first grade about this one.  We do know, though, that this one is airborne, and that wearing face masks could prevent hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of infections if we would just pay attention and listen to those that do the research.  Issues of “liberty” and “freedom” don’t even enter into the discussion.  One doesn’t have the freedom to stand in the middle of a shopping mall and yell, “fire”.  It’s not about freedom of speech, but about safety.  One doesn’t have the freedom to drive at whatever speed one wishes on the highway or in a neighborhood without consequences.  Again, not freedom but the safety of those around you.  So too is the mask.  It protects you, and more important, it protects everyone else from you.  So, to the freedom fighters among us, save it for voting rights, access to medical care, rights of immigrants, peaceful assembly.  Just remember to stay safe, wash your hands, and for heaven sake, WEAR A MASK!!

Let’s start with a basic premise that the moment a statue is erected, the moment a civic building, a park, or a freeway is named for someone, that very act will somehow offend someone or some group.  There will be some issue, some aspect of a great person’s life upon which, in the hindsight of history and changing cultural perspectives, is slightly or significantly unacceptable.  That’s the core of being human.  I think of the great German composer, Richard Wagner.  He was a titan of music history who’s influence on the 19^th Century cannot be underestimated.  At the same time, the man was wildly antisemitic and didn’t make a secret of it.  In the last century, he was a favorite of the Third Reich. Yet statues and memorials to him are scattered all over the world in opera houses and concert halls.  His music continues to be a staple of opera companies, orchestras, and singers everywhere.  

Much has been said, discussed, photographed, and written in recent times about statues and symbols that hold historical significance, whether good or not.  We’re seeing monuments to leaders of the Confederate States coming down, along with those of Christopher Columbus and other prominent historical figures.  The central issue, in my mind at least, is where their prominence lies or from which it emanates.  Columbus and Andrew Jackson are reviled for their treatment of Native Americans, and to some degree, they should be.  Those are “minuses” on the balance sheet of history for both of them. There is no doubt that General Robert E. Lee was an honorable man and a distinguished soldier. He unfortunately chose to place his allegiance on the wrong side of history.  Like so many others for whom statues were erected or for whom schools, municipal buildings, streets and military installations were named, it is their essential history, their principal legacy, or their place in it, that should rightly determine whether or not they should be honored rather than remembered.  There will be pictures painted of Lee and Grant meeting at Appomattox Court House, just as there will be pictures of Lord Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown.  This is a part of history, and while we could find a General John Burgoyne Memorial Park, a Benedict Arnold Middle School, or a Thomas Gage Port Authority in North America, it’s highly unlikely.  Benjamin Franklin is revered, while his son William, a royal governor of New Jersey, languishes in obscurity. Were we still flying the Union Jack and singing “God Save The Queen”, then some of those names, along with statues of King George, might be scattered about our nation.

The other essential question, beyond lasting legacy, is historical custom, and context.  I found it interesting that Jefferson Davis, in his memoirs, seldom refers to the term, “slavery”, but prefers to call it “African Servitude”.  Perhaps in his mind it was a simple extension of the practice of “indenture”.   While it is true that a number of our founding fathers were in fact and practice, slave owners, that doesn’t really define their contributions to our country, or the roles they played in it.  We New Englanders tend to forget that slavery was a part of our culture too, until the practice was outlawed in the late 1700’s.  Do we ignore many historical figures from South, even though many of them insisted on including provisions for slavery into the Constitution?  Does that define the Constitution, or is just one of many facets of a truly impressive governing document, and also one of many facets that has been changed over the centuries as they are no longer functional and appropriate?  Here in New Hampshire, we have one president to claim as our own, Franklin Pierce.  There was discussion of removing his name from prominence here because “he didn’t fight hard enough against slavery”.  His name appears on the University of New Hampshire’s Law School, and discussion is ongoing about removing it.  He appears to have struggled with the slavery issue, being personally opposed to it, but conceding that it was allowed by the constitution, aided and abetted by the fact that he was not one of our more distinguished presidents.  While not of the highest stature or a name that springs to the top of anyone’s “greatest presidents” list, he had a commitment to keeping the Union together in the face if tremendous division and hostility.  His name appears on the University of New Hampshire’s Law School, and discussion is ongoing about removing it.  A faculty resolution recommends a change, but there is a significant amount of sentimental attachment to the name.  Is that what it is in the South too?  A sentimental attachment to “Stonewall” Jackson because of his military skills that are separate and distinct from the side for which he fought, or because of it?  For that matter, is the Confederate flag too a sentimental memory of the Old South?

All historical figures, past, present, and future have been, are, or will be flawed and, in some respects, victims of their time.  The great ones come with their barnacles attached.  It’s important for all of us to weigh those flaws, those barnacles, against the measure of their successes and their greatness.  What really is more important?  Each individual will pass through a test of history and be judged on his or her accomplishments.  Those that speak to a cause behind which we can all rally will indeed have a “leg up” in the memorial consideration debate.  It seems logical, then, that we rightly should continue to honor many of our historical leaders and builders, those whose contributions to our country and our way of life are positive and enduring. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson come to mind. They owned plantations, and owned slaves.  They weren’t defined by them, nor did they fight to preserve the right to own them.  There is clear evidence that George Washington struggled with the institution of slavery, and in his 1799, freed all of his remaining slaves.  

While I seldom find myself agreeing with the voices on the right, I do have a problem with acts of vandalism.  Tearing down statures, defacing public art, vandalizing those for whom our personal respect may be diminished or diminishing I find unacceptable.  Peaceful marches, thoughtful protest, and the careful and deliberate removal of memorials command respect.  Mobs tearing down public property, even where patience wears thin, does nothing to advance the public discourse or reflection on ideas and ideals.  

America lost an icon recently.  A man that preached of equality, of acceptance, of non-violence, of never seeking to go back to the ugliest reminders of the past, but to use and look past those reminders in search of a better society for all of us.  Yes, indeed.  John Lewis is truly a man to be honored on statues, parks, schools, and monuments everywhere.  

I’m not really sure what the Chinese New Year is, but it should be the year of the chipmunk.  Dear Lord, they’re prolific and running rampant this year.  I bought a bunch of bulbs in the spring on line – yes, ok, I’ll admit it – Publishers Clearing House had a sale.  They have probably been so busy delivering plant material that they haven’t been able to drop off my big check yet, but I digress.  I planted the bulbs in a conspicuous place (so I’d remember where they are) and nothing.  Not so much as a tender shoot has punctured the soil.  I blame the chipmunks.  

As I’ve mentioned before, my late grandfather had a philosophy about cars.  He said that if you put gas in the tank and air in the tires, it should run forever.  That’s all a car should need.  I feel that same way about plants.  If I water them regularly and give them fertilizer every so often along with a passing compliment while Mother Nature does her thing with occasional bursts of sunlight and showers, they should reward me with copious blossoms.  Many do, but some give up early, like the irises and poppies I’ve tried two or three times now.  Although the poppies did come back this year – maybe they’re the biennial variety?  I, of course, with my usual calm dignity, take it as a personal affront.  If I’ve taken the time and effort to plant them, their role is pretty straightforward. There are the mystery plants too.  They look very nice the first year, getting my hopes up.  You guys are perennials.  That means, you come back every year.  Don’t give me, “The winter was too cold. My roots froze.”   The landscapers with their blowers in the spring chewed it up my irises, and apparently the physical and emotional scars were just too much for them.  Anyone know a landscape therapist?  Or the ornamental shrubs and trees that I put in, forgetting that they would grow larger.  That cute little Austrian pine I put in to cover the gas lines in back into the house is now more than two stories tall.  It looks great from the second story window, and of course we get a bird’s eye view of the gas connections.

My real confrontation with small animals started several years ago in a former house, and has escalated when a neighbor started feeding baby gophers “because they’re so cute.”  Indeed they are.  Every bit as cute as the baby woodchuck my niece “adopted” years ago.  The cuteness wore off when it chewed and scratched the couch to bits looking for material to build a nest.  Gophers get low marks from me on the “adorable” scale. Not all of nature considers them unattractive – apparently the foxes find them tasty. They destroyed zinnias, several large containers, in fact anything with blossoms.  The neighbor’s cat discouraged them in her yard, so they moved comfortably over to mine.  Next came a plump woodchuck (that’s a groundhog to non-New Englanders), who feasted on my false sunflowers and peonies before moving on to the coreopsis.  I’d go out in the morning to find something missing – a garden bald spot that had opened up overnight.  As a college acquaintance of many years back used to say, “there they were, gone!”  There are a couple of cats in the neighborhood that make some effort to keep the critters at bay.  That’s a help, although there’s one – a tabby – that is attacking the other cats.  I don’t know to whom it belongs, but if it treats its owners like it treats its neighbors, that must be a fun household. 

Her Ladyship and I took a ride over to one of my favorite nurseries about 20 miles away.  It was a delightful day, but the problem is that I want to buy everything.  I’d like to add a rose garden because much of the back lawn isn’t doing well.  I usually get permission to do pretty much whatever I like because we’re down at the end of the street and nobody else can see us.  One of my real “happy” places is over on the New Hampshire coast.  We’d make a yearly pilgrimage, although we didn’t trust doing it this year. It’s part of what was a magnificent estate.  There are rose gardens, a Japanese wooded garden complete with stream and bridges, and a replica of an English estate garden with high hedges standing in for stone walls.  It also has greenhouses filled with exotic plants, and some truly spectacular beds of zinnias and dahlias.  Many of their plantings are been developed right at the gardens, so you won’t see many of them anywhere else. This has given me the inspiration for putting in a small garden of roses.  I’ve put in some sweetheart roses – the little ones, and they’ve done well, so that’s what makes me think that tea roses might prosper there too.  

We’ve gone “organic”, except that we really haven’t because there are no organic folks large enough to take care of our large association. So, what began as an experiment in using less chemical warfare has now devolved into benign neglect. Because of the way our home is situated, there is no “front” lawn – only a grassy area in the back.  So, I’m taking matters into my own hands, poking holes and spreading grass seed and fertilizer. After a week of rain a while back, it’s looking better already.

You’d think that something so intimately connected to the natural world would be trouble-free and continual upward movement.  Not at all true.  Gardening is like the wars between England and France – they seesaw back and forth, each at some moment claiming victory.  There are side skirmishes with the chipmunks and squirrels, who continually feast on spring bulbs.  One chipmunk, that I call Herman, though he doesn’t respond, even came up onto my back deck and dug his way into a couple of containers.  Herman and a couple of buddies (or consorts) have been digging tunnels and uprooting bulbs at a prodigious rate for some time now. I’m convinced he’s networking with the squirrels.  “You guys dig up the big bulbs.  We’ll take care of the little ones.” 

We usually have a small flock of hummingbirds coming by each year.  I’m not sure what the term for plural or group of hummingbirds is.  I’d say “gaggle”, but they don’t make any noise, so that’s probably not it. However, they do come in groupings.  In fact, I was sitting on the deck reading a few weeks back and one flew right up to the container not two feet from me.  We didn’t interact much, although I could tell he or she was pleased and rewarded for their efforts.  

The great gardening adventure goes on with morning watering routines, clipping and deadheading, trips to the nursery, and planning new projects.  It slows down as we head into the hot days of summer, often because money and my energy are running low.  The overall plan is set things up in May and June, maintain in July, and then hit cruise control into August and September – watering and prayer mostly. I can’t get out to do as much as I should in the hot weather. The daughter mentioned that she was bored and needed some activity a few days ago.  Of course, her idea of activity is a run to Starbucks. I suggested that she might mulch the front gardens.  As this is a family blog, with few rating benchmarks, I won’t tell you her response.  Let’s just say, it wasn’t something I can put in print here, along the lines of “I’m thinking . . . . . NO!   

Every so often a topic comes up that requires some serious reflection.  Most of the time, these are issues that jump out from the news or from our daily contacts with others.  One such item on the front page of a recent newspaper caught my eye.

A man that grew up in this area but is now living on the West Coast with his wife and two young daughters, has been recently diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease.  He was a star football player at a local high school some years ago, so he’s now in his late 40’s.  Here’s what caught my eye.  His medical expenses are extraordinary, including the cost of transportation to and from the facility where he’s being treated.  A family friend has set up a GoFundMe account to help defray some of these medical costs, which are mounting at a rapid rate.  So let us, as Americans, ask ourselves, why is such an account needed in the 21^st century, in a nation with the most resources on earth?  

If this were a stand-alone item of interest, then I’d say ok – these rarities happen.  But it’s not.  Our local newspaper regularly features articles like this – a family with a young child battling a rare disease, a couple where one is awaiting a suitable donor for transplant, and by the way, there is a GoFundMe account set up to help them.  A couple of years ago, a friend of ours moved back to her native New Hampshire from New York City to be with family in the final stages of cancer.  Once again, there was a need for one of these charitable accounts to pay for her medical costs. So, let me ask once again, why are catastrophic illness so regularly covered only by the generous donations of friends and strangers?   

When the term “Medicare For All” becomes part of the public discussion, big chunks of our society have conniptions, talking about “socialism”, as if taking care of each other  is a bad thing.  Communities of the past understood and valued the concept of “it takes a village”.  As society advances, particularly in a pandemic, that should be expanded into “it takes a village, sometimes a state and a nation.”  “Every person for himself or herself” didn’t even make it out of the Middle Ages.  What happened?  An anonymous opinion piece in today’s paper talked about the “persecution of evangelical Christians”.  Where are these so-called Christians when there is clamoring to close the borders to stop immigrants or send them “home”,  families at the borders are being separated and children put in cages, cutting Food Stamps and other relief programs while at the same time, we’re seeing long lines at food distribution centers.  Support for the unborn is prolific and loud, but after birth, apparently, life isn’t quite so important, or at least “it’s not my problem.”

A nationally known humorist wrote, a few years back, that should a liberal come across a stranger wounded in a ditch, as in the story of the Good Samaritan, he or she would treat their wounds and take them to the nearest inn, paying for their food and lodging.  A conservative would shake their hand, wish them well, and offer to say a prayer for their recovery.  Just this past week, our President was pictured on a golf course at a resort he owns in Virginia.  Meanwhile, as the country is spiraling backward in the pandemic, his administration was sponsoring litigation in yet another attempt to nullify the Affordable Care Act.  How is that for timing?  As millions are unemployed or losing their employment and thus their health insurance, let’s remove health coverage for an estimated 23-plus million more Americans.  Their next of kin can always set up a GoFundMe account if they get sick.

Before the subprime mortgage disaster, medical bills were by far the leading cause of personal bankruptcy. The days of the town doctor taking care of everyone, sometimes being paid in chickens, eggs, or vegetables, are long gone.  The costs of medical care, particularly medicines for chronic conditions, skyrocketed in the last few decades of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, making adequate medical insurance a necessity, not an option or a luxury. One or two conditions can now reasonably run in the thousands of dollars per month to treat.  In 2018, the median per capita income for Americans was $33,000.  Does that make illness affordable?  I’m thinking . . . . . . no.  

Some view health care as simply another business.  But there’s a difference.  We can choose to purchase a new car or television.  We can choose the foods we eat.  We can decide how much gasoline we’ll use by controlling the amount of driving we do.  That’s what economists call, “elastic demand”. Health care, on the other hand, has an “inelastic demand”.  That means, we don’t really have control over the medical conditions, the illnesses, or the setbacks that happen to us, and therefore the choices are limited to: we treat or we don’t.  How sad it is when we read about senior citizens living on slender retirement incomes having to choose between food and medications.  That happens more often than we want to admit.  We – Her Ladyship and I,  are some of the lucky ones because we can afford medical insurance that covers almost all of our needs.  We receive our medications like clockwork, and we pay a token amount. We don’t worry about medical appointments, we just go. We pay significant monthly premiums, but we can afford to.  We can also afford the copays and those few items not covered by insurance.  Again, we’re lucky.  We’ve earned them, but I still think we’re lucky.  While we worry about getting older, we don’t have to think too much, or worry too much about the cost 

While no system is without flaws, most of the top tier, industrialized countries of the world seem to do significantly better at taking care of their citizens than we do.  Whether those countries, including most of Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, Canada, and so many others provide higher benchmarks for medical care, contain costs, or simply take “profit” out of the equation is open to debate.  The fact remains, though, that Americans receive a significantly lower standard of care overall than in other countries.  It’s a choice we’ve made, and not a particularly good or noble one.  

Her Ladyship and I went for a drive today, and I can tell you all that it’s official.  Every highway, secondary road, back road, country trail, and a good percentage of driveways are now under construction.  Road crews are busy as bees digging up or smoothing out every road in New Hampshire, and most of Massachusetts too.  There are some solid reasons for this.  The pandemic has kept many people off the roads, so it’s holding up fewer people – although the DPW doesn’t want to advertise this.  They want us to think they’re holding up thousands. Also, and some of you may not know this, but Juno, for which the month of June was named, was the Roman Goddess of Road Construction.  Oh, yes.  Rumor and folklore have it that she personally oversaw the resurfacing of the Appian Way, limiting chariots to one lane. Continue reading ““End of Road Work” – My Happy Sign”

What I’ve written here, or said out loud in the past, here now, or sometime in the future will probably offend someone.  So, in the interests of keeping the peace and preventing gatherings outside my front door, I apologize. In fact, my front door mat says, “Go Away”.  I’m sorry for those of you that come to the front door and take umbrage at the sentiment. I just thought it was definitely a message for our time (and totally hilarious). Continue reading “I’m Sorry”

So, what happened to all the toilet paper some months back?  There was a time when we could hit the supermarket and buy toilet paper in moderation – I typically would buy a package or two of four-roll, two-ply because I’m very sensitive, which would last us a week or more.  All of a sudden, pandemic hit and there was not a roll to be found.  Empty shelves as far as the eye could see. Hand sanitizer too, along with paper towel.  For months, you could always tell where these sanitary items were in the store. Chips and snacks, sodas, greeting cards and then, nothing. Empty shelves as far as the eye could see. So, what happened?  Other than those brothers in Tennessee that were stockpiling in their garages to resell online at a huge profit until the long arm of the law shut them down, who does that?  It does say something about a person’s character when they see a profit to be made in panic. Symptoms of the coronavirus were fever, cough and respiratory problems.  I didn’t remember reading anything about loose bowels or diarrhea. Continue reading “Shopper Hoarding”

Only in America can wearing a face mask during a pandemic when going out be a divisive and political issue.  Everyone else in the civilized world realizes the importance of not exhaling germs though breath.  We see them in South Korea to Italy and Spain.  It’s a necessity that prevents the spread of the most vicious virus in a century.  The Chinese are doing it, perhaps because they tend to follow directions better.  Around the world, as the infection spreads, we all need to take precautions.  Not in America.  Here we storm state houses with assault weapons to protect the right to not protect ourselves.  Ministers are ranting and raving about reopening their churches, even though they know full well it could cost lives.  One pastor this morning on the news was screaming that church is “essential”.  I’d like to have been on a communication wave that allowed me to respond, “Not if you’ve done your job properly in the past.  Then your flock will know what to do.”  Yes, indeed. Apparently “pro-life” can be flexible or selective.

In one tweet reported this week, a solid citizen wrote in response to a reopening plan, that she needn’t wear a face mask because, as she put it, she had a constitutional right to control her own body.  First, it’s not her body we’re worried about – it’s the unlucky souls that happen to venture into her sphere of contamination.  And second, she was probably waving signs protesting at a Planned Parenthood facility some time back because she feels that other women don’t or shouldn’t have that same right of control.

Why is it that some Americans have a poor grasp of safety precautions or even recommendations?  We pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, while the virus is spreading out-of-control in more than two dozen states.  The experts tell us we’re not even close to containment, while other countries, including China, the epicenter, are controlling the spread and seriously reducing the numbers of infected people and deaths. But we’ll follow our fearless leader, out on the golf course this weekend.  There’s the image of Nero and his fiddle. Some of us, not a majority but enough to keep the ball rolling, persist in our general lack of common sense.  When told that cruise ships are having serious issues and are unsafe, there they are, bounding up the gangplank.  They’re also the ones not long after sobbing into the computer screen where they’re confined, asking why they can’t be allowed to go home. Just today, two news items about new clusters of disease.  One was a teenage pool party attended by 100 young people, and boom, up goes another mushroom cloud of COVID-19.  In a related article, two hairdressers had symptoms yet still felt compelled to go in to work, and infected 150 of their customers that could be tracked, so there may well more. They’re the ones in the grocery story without masks, heading up the aisles the wrong way, or pile into the person ahead of them in line and start unloading their groceries without regard to safe distancing.  I heard a lady in the store the other day and, although she had mask, talking on her cell phone all the way around the store.  Her voice was quite raspy and thus distinctive, and she’s a better than even odds a carrier.  Fortunately for me, she was in a cashier aisle a distance from me, but I noticed that once she put the phone away, she started an animated conversation with those around her.

A recent survey showed that 8% will refuse to wear a mask at any time or place.  It’s that bold, as my grandfather used to say, “My mind is made up – don’t confuse me with facts.” mentality that will continue to cause surges in the coronavirus in certain parts of the country.  The medical experts are coming up with more and more useful information.  We now know that the virus travels not just on surfaces we touch, but in the air we breathe and the droplets of moisture we exhale. Disease doesn’t particularly care if you are conservative, liberal, or moderate.  It’s not curtailing your personal freedom to keep others around you safe.

We’d all like life to return to “normal”, or what it was before the pandemic.  Yes, I’d like to be popping over to the hardware store for a quart of deck stain, rather than ordering it online, paying a $35 delivery fee, and hoping it matches the old stain.  Yes, this is the time of year that I’m zipping to the nursery for plants and gardens I’ve been dreaming about and planning all winter.  But whatever comes up from previous years will just have to do for now.  Everything is rather stark, but, oh well.  When you look at the staggering numbers of obituaries in the newspapers every day, it’s a sobering reminder that the risk is just too great to be going out all the time.  Home is just safer.

Be well, my faithful readers.