Holy Cow, Batman, it was 65 degrees outside on Sunday. Robin and I went down to the river for our walk and there were people all over the place, acting as if they had as much right to be there as we did. Two small girls whizzed past us on electrified Razor scooters. These were not silent devices, sounding much as a hiveful of metal bees would buzzing inside a tin pail, which was a good thing since the girls’ control of the scooters was marginal and the noise at least gave one a chance to get out of the way.
Right in the middle of the park, surrounded by hundreds of unquiet folk, was a lone fly fisherman. He looked very serious about the whole thing, even though with all the clamor and movement above the water there was only a nano-chance that any trout would bother his fly at all. Any fish with half a brain would be hiding behind rocks and in watery crevices until we all left the area.
There was a small group of women on the softball diamond just tossing the ball around and hitting fungoes. They left and were immediately replaced by a dozen children going slightly nuts with all that room to maneuver in. There is something about an empty first base line that inspires people of all ages to run amok.
We found that over the winter a chunk of our hiking path along the riverside bluff had simply fallen away. Perhaps fifteen feet of the path along the edge of the cliff no longer existed. Had we been walking on it when it fell off, we would likely not have perished, but would have come to a stop a hundred feet down with more scratches and bruises than a person could ever want. The good news is that we were nowhere near the place when it happened.
Remember this aphorism, even if it doesn’t apply to you today: When you are a senior citizen you bruise faster and heal slower. Keeping this in mind will prevent scores of grunts and moans in the future.
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An article in The New Yorker caught my eye this morning. It was discussing the possibility of a Civilian Climate Corps, modeled after the CCC of the Great Depression era. I think it sounds like a great idea, and this time it would not be just for men, but for women as well.
The Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior, according to a paragraph buried in Joe Biden’s long executive order on climate change, had been directed to make plans for a Civilian Climate Corps, modelled on the Civilian Conservation Corps—the C.C.C.—of the nineteen-thirties. It would put underemployed Americans to work on projects intended “to conserve and restore public lands and waters, bolster community resilience, increase reforestation, increase carbon sequestration in the agricultural sector, protect biodiversity, improve access to recreation, and address the changing climate.”
The New Yorker, March 2021.
One of the reasons that the Republicans of another time hated Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal so much is that it was an example of big government that worked, and there were several great ideas that came out of this administration. One of them was the CCC.
The C.C.C. left a legacy of trees, trails, shelters, footbridges, picnic areas, and campgrounds in local, state, and national parks across the country. It had equally notable effects on the health and outlook of the men who served. Most were undernourished as well as unemployed when they signed up. They came home with muscles, tans, and, according to a letter sent to corps headquarters, in Washington, by a resident of Romeo, Colorado, an “erect carriage” that made them easy to pick out from the rest of the young male population.
The New Yorker, March 2021.
So when it comes time to sign up, I plan on being at the head of the line. That is, unless there is some sort of age-ist agenda in the proposals. While it is true that I can no longer shovel with the speed of a twenty year-old, once I have scooped up my ten pounds of dirt I am much smarter about where to put it. (An untested hypothesis, I admit)
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From The New Yorker
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I don’t know exactly when I began to harbor racist thoughts, but it was some time after I was nine years old. Because recently I was reminiscing about my ninth summer, when I would try to emulate my baseball heroes, and three of those heroes were Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, and Don Newcombe. I even had comic books starring those guys.
Of course I knew that they were black men, since I was not blind, but I didn’t care. The only important thing was that they played baseball and they were pros. Nothing else mattered. The racist societal poisons hadn’t filtered down to me as yet, to interfere with my dream of being able to grow up to pitch like Satchel Paige.
[BTW, I never did get that far. It turned out that I had an arm like a rubber noodle, my time running to first base was several seconds longer than it needed to be, and my best hits were generally foul balls. I also stayed resolutely white. One more set of dreams dashed … sighhhhhh.]
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Little Home In The Valley 