NO UPCOMING EVENTS

YOU HAVE NO UPCOMING EVENTS, REMINDERS, OR ALARMS...

Have you been noticing that responses to your emails arrive more quickly than they used to?  Even the one from that person who never used to write back until you forgot you'd ever sent the email, and then you didn't remember why you wrote it in the first place?  And the text you wrote that just sat there? And now your text exchanges move so quickly you don’t even bother to check the spelling? And how texting has become almost like real, you know, conversation? And then there's FaceBook. Which you never used to bother with and now you check it five times a day?  And you're looking at animal videos? Lots of them. And watching them all the way through? And looking for more?

Yes, this is where we are, some of us, many of us, with nothing better to do than indulging in introspection or cleaning closets.

Or whatever.

Stare up at a tree. Reflect on how short you are.

I am going to be upbeat, and I will not discuss our Prez whose worst impulses are on display.  Daily! I am not going to rage about his incompetent leadership, his anti-science, his lying, his self-serving egotism, his inconsistency, his unwillingness to take responsibility (except when he takes an illegal amount of it), and his merciless disregard of what it means to lead a nation.  I am going to ignore the virus toll, edging up now toward one million, the death toll over 50,000.

We are team USA. We lead the world.

A social distancing bash, Vermont style.

I'll put a photo here of something nice.

Near where I collected ramps*.  Behind the house.  No ramps in this picture.

I’ll tell a nature story.  There is a pair of ducks (drake and hen, respectively) that have been hanging out at the pond, mallards.  I've been keeping an eye on them ever since they took up residence here some time in March.  One day about two weeks ago I saw my dog Skyler chase away a female duck that had wandered close to the house. Odd behavior, I thought. Or brave bird.  It wasn't long before I found out what was going on.  Underneath a spruce, not far from the front door, there was a cozy nest, snuggled into the mulch, and it held ten jumbo-size eggs. Having a duck right near the front door, not to mention potential ducklings parading around, all in Skyler's territory did not seem like a good idea.  The nest needed to be moved.  So son-in-law Chris put on his gloves and moved the eggs, making an almost-as-nice nest near the pond and outside of Skyler's range.

The pond. Without ducks.

Wait, there’s more. About the ducks.  Since the nest move the ducks' lives have become increasingly mysterious to me.  I have many questions. The two seemed to spend half of the day at the pond, another part elsewhere. But where? I don't know.  Maybe they were just out of my sight somewhere nearby.  Did they know about the new nest? One day last week there were two ducks in the pond, drakes, both of them, one chasing the other, persistent.  A rival!  An hour or so later there was only a male, alone.  But which one?  Another day as Chris and Lesley stood by the front door, the male duck flew off.  Only minutes later they walked back down the hill to find the duck (same duck?) sitting on their front porch.  Not a likely spot for a duck, front porches. What was it doing there? And are there new eggs somewhere? The hen with either her new guy or her old guy, may have made another nest. That's my guess, because they're still hanging around.  Since it takes nearly a month (~28 days) before ducklings hatch it may be too early to know one way or another.  Then for two days I saw only the drake on the pond. Is the hen sitting on eggs?  Or have they parted company? There are mysteries.

The original nest.  No eggs.

Should we be surprised that the natural world carries on?  (The virus of course is also a part of the natural world, lest we forget.)  Note: Pollution is down, the use of fossil fuels hitting bottom, animals are roaming where humans usually fill the spaces. This is good.  For once, it’s the humans who are confined.

Animal. Semi-confined.  The one that chased the duck.

Uh, oh, Trump just spoke!  I need to interrupt for viral news. He said,

"Suppose that we hit the body with tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very  powerful light, and I think you said that it hasn't been checked and you're going to test it.  Suppose you can bring the light inside the body.

"Then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in one minute.  Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? ... It would be interesting to check that."

(April 23, Trump, free associating after hearing that Covid-19 virus can be killed on surfaces with ultra-violet light and disinfectant.  Suggesting maybe we should drink bleach and burn ourselves with ultra-violet, get cancer?  Which, by the way–I'm talking cancer–Trump lawyer Giuliani suggested could be contagious: [If we're going to trace the virus,] "We should trace everybody for cancer, heart disease, obesity." )

Sorry, couldn't help that!


The natural world carries on. Thank goodness for that at least.




*Ramps, a delicate mix of scallion and garlic: