Boring on about the Beetles

I realize that letting Mother Nature take care of things is against human nature. Besides, that will lead just as surely to the destruction of our beautiful hardwood trees as 'our' interference. The infested trees need to be removed and destroyed. Before they can infest and destroy healthy trees. Before even the stumps can infest the healthy.

The problem is what about the healthy trees.  This is where the controversy is. The plan was to remove all the healthy trees that bordered on an infested tree. There are other options for healthy trees, but no one wants to implement them. They aren't 100% effective. (What is?) But isn't any percent effective better than wanton destruction?

www.bethelalb.com is a local source of information about this problem. Bethel is the center of the removals at this time. Just look at the pictures. What would you do/think/feel if this was your yard, your home? How would you feel if these were trees that had sheltered your parents, your selves, and your children? Would you be in favor of continuing destruction if it was in your neighborhood?

If you can help, please do. Talk to people about this issue. Spread the word. As small as the world is these days, it WILL be your backyard tomorrow. Not the beetles, the tree cutters.

Because who will stop them if we don't?

borers and beetles bug me

Yesterday, part of the background of my life was destroyed. Heritage trees were harvested, infested with the Asian longhorn beetle.

Three years ago, across the street from me, two beautifully shaped ash trees were removed, to prevent infestation with the emerald ash borer.

All our technology, all our education, and the only way the experts can think of to stop infestations is to destroy the trees themselves.

Near Bethel, my home town, they have already been taking down the maples. They go into peoples yards, fire up their chainsaws, and remove people's shade, remove their windbreaks, remove their family picnic spots, remove their landscapes and continue to change the architecture of the land.

It's unseemly.


www.BethelALB.com

And it's ugly.

The execution of the ash trees in Adams County has given us less beauty and less protection from nature. Trees are windbreaks, and trees prevent erosion of the soil from flooding. Trees provide a natural sound barrier along the unnatural freeways.

Now, the bare spots and the nakedness of the land are set loose in my home places, and everything changes forever.

Some say the trees will grow back. Some say that they won't all be destroyed. There are still elm trees (Dutch Elm Disease) and even an occasional chestnut (blight.)

There are also still gaps where the wind whistles, and houses that have fallen into raging -- creeks.

Infestations are bad, unless you're a borer or a beetle or another bug. They can eat up all the wood, and cause the trees to die standing and then infest the other trees. It's hard to watch trees you've known and loved get sick and die.

But even dead trees can continue to act as windbreaks and dams, something chopped down and chopped up and even uprooted trees can never do.

Did anyone think this through? Why are so many communities endorsing so quickly a 'cure' that's worse than the 'disease? Why not let Mother Nature decide what trees will survive and which ones won't?

She's been doing a pretty dammed good job for a lot longer than we have.

Routine Romance

It's amazing how boring genre romance novels can be after you've been reading outside that field. Thrillers. for instance, can be arson or kidnapping as well as murder  or escape. Family saga or adventure type stuff is as varied as people.

Not that there aren't outstanding romance writers, even those that follow the formula. There are, and most of them grow away from the formulas and let their skills shine. It doesn't matter if the skills are character development, plot, description, or just a convoluted mind. Good story telling is good story telling.

The reason I'm bringing it up is because the genre publishers are really slipping up. Recent romances that I have read are full of typos, grammar errors, and just plain silliness. The problems are almost worth the reading. A recent novel referred to the smart guy and the tough guy pair as the brain and the bronze. Another book from the same publisher informed me that the man's heart raced, and then his pulse did too. (That one struck me as so funny I texted it to many of my writer friends.)

Why read, you might wonder, if the stories and story telling are so bad.
These books, these (incompetent) authors have been published. Like any Unknown Author, I would like to be published. The best advice is always to read what is getting out there.

But do you know what? I believe I'd rather remain an Unknown than to publicly display my idiocy, my editor's inattention, and my publisher's uncaringness for the whole world to see. There's nothing noteworthy in my people's pulse keeping up with their heartbeat, and my brains guy is the one who's bronzed. It might bake his brain, but he's still pretty. and the story is about the brawny guy anyway. He's so much more interesting!

There's an old saying about keeping silent and being thought a fool or opening your mouth and removing all doubt. I think that should apply to being published, too.

In the meantime, I have a list of publishers who are really good for a laugh.

Plunging in

Yesterday I had an adventure with the toilet.

I know that's not really enthralling, and probably something no one wants to hear about, but it ended up funny, and I love to share a laugh at myself. How can you get any fairer than that?

The toilet was stopped up. We flushed and plunged, flushed and plunged, flushed and plunged. It seemed endless, but there really are not that many hours in the day. It wasn't as long as it seemed. My husband was hopeless, giving up, mumbling about having to call a plumber or the landlord. (He'd rather call and pay a plumber. One of the reasons we -I- rent is so we can call the landlord.)

So, being an experienced toilet unstopper (teenage daughters at one time, need I say more?), I waited until the mopey mumbler went to sleep and I unearthed my toilet snake from behind the water heater.
I don't know how a toilet snake is different from any other snake, but to work it you put it in and you turn a handle. You turn and turn and turn.

Pretty soon, it felt like I'd been turning as long as we had been flushing earlier!
I kept turning, and push-pulling on the little handle thing. Then I'd turn some more.

Success at last! Gurgle gurgle, all the water that was up went down.

And I had to put the turn into reverse. It wouldn't go!
I had to pull. It wouldn't pull!
I had the snake stuck!
My now unclogged toilet was sitting there with this humongous spring in a couple of metal shafts.  I'd never be able to use the toilet with that thing sticking out of it!

I'd unwind it a bit (the handle would turn after a tug), then pull a bit. It really didn't seem to be getting anywhere. Turn and tug, turn and tug, turn and tug.

In the meantime, while turning and tugging,  I'm imagining calling a plumber or the landlord, and having to explain to them my plumbing emergency. What do you say? "Hello. I'm calling the plumber because I unstopped my toilet myself?"
"Hello, I need the toilet taken up in my house because there's a plumbing snake in it?"
And what would they actually do? Use metal cutters? Break the toilet?
Would anyone actually believe this story if I told it?
What is Rex going to say when he wakes up and has to pee into an observably clogged toilet? He's going to think I was really stupid!

Eventually, the turning and tugging did work, and I got the snake out, and the toilet has been working perfectly since. (The neighbor's toilet is probably working well, too.)

That was a new way of using the bathroom as a place of contemplation and imagination.

While I'm griping: What happened to scIFi?

While I'm griping, I'll move on to my other big gripe this week, or month, or season.

What in the world has happened to Syfy (once Scifi) channel? They once had some of the most interesting programming anywhere. They did a lot of their own movies (Earthsea). They picked up discontinued network shows (Firefly/Serenity) Their regular programming was a mix of reality programming (Destination Truth, Fact or Faked) and odd fiction (Eureka, Haven).

Since before Thanksgiving, they've been a faint echo of Chiller network, rehashing and rerunning, over and over again, horror movies. Did someone in their office forget to change the calendar from October?

Some of it has been fine -- nothing wrong with horror on "Friday the Thirteenth", for example. But most of it -- there's nothing original in the movies they've been constantly replaying. How many times can we watch the three versions/chapters of the Halloween series? How many times is anyone going to sit through Troy? And disasters are fine for 2012 The End of The World. Creatures are coming out of all the cracks this old world is showing as it falls apart and blows away, but can't someone please -- pleasepleaseplease -- get rid of that damned Dinocroc for once and for all?

The only original syfy programming has been Ghost Hunters and Face-Off. Ghost Hunters I watch, Face-Off I don't. Doesn't appeal to me, but it belongs in the line-up.

That is, it did, back in the day when they actually had a line-up.

The network teased us a bit back at Christmas, advertising widely that Haven, Eureka, and Warehouse 13 were all coming back brand new,

They did.

For ONE Christmas themed episode each, that was rebroadcast extensively until the aforementioned Friday the Thirteenth.

I feel cheated. I feel that Syfy has turned its back on the fans that made the network such a great place to watch original programming. Maybe they ran out of ideas. Maybe they've made enough money and just don't care anymore. Maybe they fired all the writers and no one has told them how many unemployed writers there are out there. Maybe the adventurers and skeptics all went home for very long holidays

Because I don't care any more. I'll watch my horror movies on the horror movie channel, and instead of watching TV I'll read a book.
 Or write one.

 Original ideas are out there. Someone just has to look.
It could be an adventure.

What happened to the Cow?

Our local radio station, C-103, home of the cow, used to be a great way of getting local news. They would do anything 'breaking' local, then area news, then state, then national. (Plus obituaries and sports) Now, the only local news they give us is what is picked up by the city stations, which is a disappointment. After all, if I wanted to know what the city has to say, I'd be listening to the city stations, wouldn't I?
There's been a lot of things happening locally. Fires, car accidents, flood, road closures. I really do care more that a student rolled his car and was killed than I do that the Lady Warriors beat the Lady Something-elses three days ago.

The station has a website. It used to be updated every other day, at the least. They would put up the local news, and the scores, and offer items from their radio-swap-shop program. Now, of course, they no longer carry local news until it is stale and citified. They update possibly once a week, and the Trash'n'Treasures offerings are few and far between. Even the obits are brief and outdated. And nothing is archived anymore.

I know what happened. Anyone who lives and listens can probably make a good guess. Somebody retired. Somebody died.

The radio station was run by a man -- I think his name was Ted Foster, but I can't even be sure of that. He really turned the station into something special. He got them into the 21st century with the website, he helped to organize the programming, he did the news. He did a LOT. He did the work of three men.

They've hired one young man to take this man's place. Now, Matt is very good. He does a lot of work, a lot of appearances, and is easy on the ears.
But he's one person, and he's still learning.

I hate to see Ted's legacy withering away, and so soon after his departure. The station is sinking into the small-town, small-time category that it was so steadily rising above. The Cow was reasonably competing with the city stations.
Now it has become a mere echo of them, faint and failing.
I wish we in Adams County could have our voice back.

lighting the darktime

For centuries, Christmas lights and candles in the windows and blazing fires have spread the light in the darkest time of winter. That solstice, every year, is the time of briefest light, and mankind has been fighting back from the beginning.
After the season -- whichever of them you celebrate, daylight begins creeping back into this old world. Minute by minute, day by day -- or maybe it's minute by day -- the time of not-dark increases. Our joyous blazing celebrations have brought back light, even if we don't think of it that way.

Recent years, the wooing of the light starts earlier and lasts longer. We begin, now, with ghost lights in October. Orange and white, only the orange has a tendency to look a lirrle red. We leave the spakling clear lights on through November, and then comes the extravaganza of Yuletide.
Carnival, which culminates in Mardi Gras, begins at Epiphany -- the twelfth day of Christmas.
But, between then and now, there are more secular holidays, made for fun and cheer.
Red lights and reshaped wreaths on doors celebrate Valentine's Day, the time of year when the sap rises in our spirits as well as in our yards. Green lights replace the red, and the wreaths are joined together in threes, to celebrate St Patrick and the return of the Green to the northern hemisphere.

And the twinkling lights give way to pastel ornaments and blushing bouquets, awaiting the full touch of sun as they burst into bloom.

From ghost lights to green lights, we keep away the darkness.
Or at least we try.

Super Sunday

Every Sunday is quiet here. People in this community go to church. have family dinners, and spend the afternoons having fun.
Today, the Sunday solemnity is especially deep. People are staying home and staying in. Everyone who was going anywhere left hours ago and have now reached their destination.

A sacred hush has fallen across the land.

It won't last, of course. There will soon be jumping and shouting and cursing heard from many homes. There will be eating and eating and eating. There will be drinking to go with the eating, and more drinking for the cursing. Dishes will be broken, windows will shatter, depending on whose team is winning and who the refs are favoring with willful blindness. There may be broken noses and there will eventually be broken automobiles and broken families.
Who cares, now, what the future holds? Who cares for the rest of the world? Who cares that the day of the Lord (for many) has become the more important day of the football? Who cares that a day of rest has become a day of frenzy? Who cares that the serenity of the evening will be broken and shattered?

It's Super Bowl Sunday, a final day of excess before winter is thrown off and natural light returns to the world.

Tonight, when the Madness has ended, I will begin to believe in Spring.

Prove it, groundhogs.

Another year, another day for the national joke. Will the groundhog see his shadow? Did the groundhog see his shadow? Is it only six more weeks until spring, or do we have six more weeks of winter?

Which groundhog should we believe? Punxsutawney  Phil saw his shadow; the local equivalent did not. Which is right, six weeks til spring, six weeks of winter? The debate, while good-natured, rages on.

Perhaps, just maybe, there is help. Perhaps there is an answer! I will look high and low, and in the most obvious places, and I will find the answer.

From Feb 2 until Mar 21 is between six and seven weeks. From Groundhog Day until the first day of spring is approximately six weeks!

Let's all take a deep breath of relief. We are free to believe both or neither groundhog. It remains winter for six more weeks, when it becomes spring according to the calendar!

Just like every year.