Not Like Him

We've got a lot of work to do if we're gonna change this country. But you know, I have to be frank with you. It's gonna get rough from here on out.

Who is this man? Have you heard his middle name? Do you know about his father? And about his wife's bad attitude. About those shady pals of his from Chicago?

He doesn't see America like we do, he and his terrorist pals. Would you trust someone like him with your happiness? With your safety? With your children? With your future? I fear for our country led by a man like this.

Vote for us. We are not like him.

11:33:42 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

Muttering Man

When we were at the bus stop, he was reading a book quietly, oblivious to the comings and goings around him. He was waiting for the 338. So were we. When it arrived, he stood up slowly and waited for everyone else.

He sat somewhere in the middle. We sat towards the back. He resumed his reading. We wrestled with our backpacks and folding chairs. The guy in front of us had a backpack and chair, too.

At the next stop, a few more people got on. Some were carrying chairs and backpacks. The reading guy jumped up and moved to the back corner of the bus. He mumbled just loudly enough for those of us nearby to hear him, "I hate Austin."

At the next stop, there were about a dozen people more. They had packs and chairs and sunglasses and smiles on their faces like they were on a vacation. They were. We were. We were going to ACL.

At the next stop, a bigger crowd was waiting. They were smiling and laughing and carrying more chairs and had clearly never ridden the bus before. They didn't know how it worked. They thought the bus driver would break a $20.

"Damn ACL," the reading man muttered. He was now surrounded by chairs and backpacks and sunglasses and smiling faces. All the seats in the bus were full. The aisle was full. He started muttering more loudly and then started cussing. "Nice music, dude. I hope you like your music."

"Are you talking to us?" one of the guys next to him asked.

In a different bus things would have turned out differently. On a different bus with different people it wouldn't have been a pretty sight. But the cussing reading muttering man was alone in his corner surrounded by a bus load of smiling, laughing, chair-toting, backpack-wearing people who had other things to do.

It was early in the day, after all. The sky was blue. The air was relatively cool. There was a weekend of music ahead. Why let the muttering of a pathetic mumbling cursing man ruin it?

I wonder what he was reading.

11:15:56 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

On Butterfly Advice

Then the butterflies came.

White ones. Yellow ones. Little mothy-looking ones. Swallowtails. Monarchs. Not in fluttering masses, but in numbers sufficient to warrant a turn of the head and a smile of the mouth.

They stop at the yellow Cowpen Daisies, blossoms at the end of blue-green stems and leaves. They circle the orange Flame Acanthus, accompanied once in a while by a Hummingbird. They consider the Milkweed with its long, slender dark-green leaves.

Consider the butterflies, how they flutter in the field. Your advice was right after all.

10:26:05 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

Amateur That I Am

I tell you what, when you tell me that I'm allowed to build my own financial model of my house's value for use in calculating my real estate taxes, that's when I'll sign off on waiving mark-to-market accounting rules.

Or maybe when they tell me that the models that are to be used in place of the mark-to-market rules will be based on standard models created, validated and certified by an outside agency, that's when I'll sign off on changing the rules.

Until then, amateur that I am, I'll just grumble about the creative accounting, greed and deceit that remolded America of the 20th Century into a plutocracy capable only of generating fictitious wealth on virtual balance sheets based on untested models based on mathematics that no one is quite sure means anything which is appropriate since the assets in question are meaningless anyway.

10:06:59 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

As I Am So Often

It was so silent here an hour ago. I was exhausted as I am so often now with eyes that longed to shut. I collapsed into a heap in the bedroom with the dog curled up against my legs while my mother in law, who rose hours before me this morning, attended to paperwork in a chair in the living room. It was just the two of us and the silence.

I lay there in that heap but did not fall asleep. The dog moved from one position to another. I pulled the blanket up and then threw it off, covered in sweat as I am so often now. I stared at the dark walls with desperate eyes that would not shut.

Here I am in this place 24 hours a day, living the best of all possible worlds, they say. But I never get away. Rarely talk to another soul. Not even the sandwich man down the street anymore. Just stuck here at this keyboard with the fans running and my fingers clicking on this keyboard.

Then the house came alive. The front door opened and the dog ran to greet Trudy coming home from class. And moments later, there was a slam of a car door outside, and then there was Ben saying "Hellooo" and the dog barking and Trudy asking how his birthday day was. As I pulled myself out of that pathetic heap, got clothes on and came back out into the house that I never leave. To smile and make noise with my family.

But they were all tired. Trudy put a few things away. Ben brushed his teeth. My mother in law put down her paperwork for the night. And they went to bed, leaving me in the silence. In this house that I never leave. Still exhausted but with not a hint of sleep in these eyes. Alone at midnight as I am so often now.

11:15:04 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

Cherry Pickers

When the cherry pickers arrived, it was a cause for some excitement -- as excitement goes. Three utility trucks came down the street, the first one snagging on a low hanging cable and yanking the poles something awful with a craaack that made you think Oak Street was doomed to darkness for a month.

They started at the far end of the block, working back our way one pole at a time, one transformer at a time. When they stopped in front of the house, I got four cans of soda from the ice chest and walked out to them, handing a cold can (Dr. Pepper or Pepsi) to each of the four orange-clad men.

One asked how we were coming along. Ok, I said, no power and fallen trees and a lot of debris to clean up, but no water in the house, and the trees had mostly fallen away from Bert's roof, which was saying something.

I asked him where they came from. "Washington," he said. And then he looked at me and said, "You know, Texas is supposed to be desert!" I chuckled. The street was lined on both sides with six foot piles of cut tree trunks and raked and piled limbs that had fallen from what used to be a dense canopy over the neighborhood.

When I left Houston a day later with dusk settling on the city, more utility trucks were arriving. They were coming from all over the country, driving toward Galveston. In the evening light, you could see their twinkling yellow lights from a distance -- a group of three or four, followed a mile or so later by several more, and a mile or so later by yet more, a steady stream of flashing help-on-the-way.

There was plenty of work for them to do.

---
after Ike
Dickinson, TX

10:28:56 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

Leaving for Houston

On the outskirts of Austin, the traffic stopped. Barely outside the city. With hours of driving ahead. For no obvious reason. All three lanes of the highway came to a dead stop.

I prepared to turn back. If all these people were returning to Houston after the storm, then this was not a good idea. Leave aside the time, the gas stations would be mobbed in every town between here and there, and I'd be lucky to get there.

I decided to wait until the tollway, hoping that some of these folks might be going north or south. (Right.) Bert's power in Dickinson was out, and he thought he could use a generator. And he had a lot of trees down and only one barely functional chainsaw, so he needed chainsaws. And he needed batteries. And stuff to drink. And a broom. And rakes. And bleach. And soap. And paper towels. And toilet paper.

I had all these things packed in the car around me. I could barely see out the rear view mirror, and I had to lean forward to see the right side view mirror. The traffic inched along. Cars around me were packed with supplies. Trucks pulling trailers with heavy equipment.

As we got to the tollway, I could see that it was the stoplight at the underpass that caused all this fuss. So I didn't turn around. Instead, I set the cruise control on 60 (to conserve gas) and headed out of town to Houston.

---
taking supplies to Dickinson
after Hurricane Ike

10:08:05 AM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

Hummingbird Feeders After the Storm

It could have been so much worse if the cold front had not come. But come it did after the hurricane had passed, which made the cutting and the raking and the pitching and the piling far less miserable than it would have otherwise been. With each cool breeze, we counted our lucky stars.

At the end of the day, we sat and caught our breath amid the debris next to the fatally wounded Pine and the fallen shade Oak.

The roaring generator on the patio didn't seem to bother the Hummingbirds. They swooped down from the remaining canopy in the golden light, coming and going, fighting over positions at the feeders. Not just one or two, but a dozen or more swarming more like bees than birds in apparent desperation to get to the sugar water.

After a storm like that, there aren't many Trumpet Vine blossoms left.

---
after hurricane Ike
Dickenson, TX

11:09:36 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

Writing About Butterflies

You told me to write about butterflies, something evidently to kick me out of this slump. But I cannot write about butterflies, as not so many come by here.

That's not entirely true, of course. Occasionally there's a yellow or a white one, some cause for celebration. And we saw a Monarch today. One Monarch several blocks from here who managed to find some shade in the evening beside a pond.

But what will happen when the butterflies don't come? When the flowers wilt in the blazing sun and the silent spring that we thought we had avoided shows up in spite of our late twentieth century satisfaction that we had turned that corner. When the ice melts. When the bee hives don't hum. When the mountaintops are gone. And waves lap on deserted shores.

When the last tree falls, no one will be here to hear it.

Dang. Why did I have to write about butterflies, anyway!?

12:19:48 AM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []