A More Humane Path? Let's Go There in Everyday Ramblings

A group of volunteers from our Parks Department came out on Saturday and roped these cool tree identification signs to a variety of trees over in our local park. I admit I had never heard of an Austrian Black Pine (there is one very near my place) or a Littleleaf Linden. I do like the alliteration there. That one is on the other side of the park.

Also, apparently there is a Sugar Maple over there. I saw that sign from a distance and thought, oh yeah, maple, I know maples, but then the next day I walked by the front of the park where they had a sign for kids saying…can you find each of these trees? And I am like, wait, I know Red Maples, but I don’t know the difference.

Now I need to go back and find the Sugar Maple.

I did try looking for it yesterday, you never know, in the face of surviving the apocalypse, knowing where the sugar maple is might come in handy. I also found out that there is another Shagbark Hickory over there. It must be the successful progeny of the giant historic heritage Shagbark on the corner of the park that is so beautiful in the fall.

You might wonder why I referenced the apocalypse up there. If you were here, or in California you would know. In the middle of a viral pandemic we are all suffering through we have 45 wildfires burning. And here they are burning in areas where they don’t normally burn, south and to the east as well.

The sky, you would think it was dusk, it so dark and a horrible yellow color and it has been this way since yesterday afternoon. Kes and Most Honorable are closer and their sky has been this ominous red and they have damaging toxic ash fall.

Unlike with the pandemic, the fires are affecting the wildlife too.

The terrible weird gusty winds of the last two days have subsided, and it is eerily quiet out there. So far, we have been spared the rolling power outages that so many folks have been experiencing for the last few weeks in California, Colorado and here. Hey, at least they finally got snow in Colorado at the higher elevations.

It is too dark to read by natural light here at 8AM!

Gosh, this makes my heart hurt.

When I talked to the cheerful insurance agent in Idaho yesterday to get my renter’s insurance set up, he asked me about the fires. At first, I thought it was a casual question but later on in the call he read me a list of about 18 postal codes that were exclusion zones where I would not have been able to purchase the insurance. My sister’s postal code was one of them.

Oh, and speaking of family members, Miss E., our beloved great niece, is home in the Seattle area from college in Maryland taking courses online at her mother’s place with her boyfriend.

She turned 20 yesterday!

How could this possibly be? A pretty good tipoff is that we very rarely hear from her. We got texts yesterday thanking us for the cash we sent to help with the extra electronics she needs and a few treats and some ripe pears, apples and cheese I was thrilled to be able to afford to send now that I finally have a lock on what my retirement income is.

They, thankfully, are not in the path of any fires.

Little did we know four years ago on the eve of the Presidential election then that we would have a cruel con man gone mad in the White House and so many chickens home to roost from almost 300 years of exploitation of the land and its peoples and greed both here and abroad.

May we be resilient, may we be kind, may we find a more humane path forward.

Last updated September 11, 2020