Oh great it starts with an earthquake . . .
It's the end of the world as we know it,
And I feel fine.
-R.E.M.
For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away.
-Matthew 24: 38-39
A gloomy morning in the Southern Tier, 33 degrees with slate grey skies that only allow a dim, insipid light to reach the surface. My phone says snow is on the way. P was excited until I told her the forecast called for freezing rain and just plain old rain on Christmas Day, which should melt whatever snow manages to stick during this balmy December.
Something's up with the internet this morning. Flipboard, one of my morning news staples, is stone dead, supposedly for maintenance. The site that hosts this blog has crashed on me probably a half-dozen times in the last hour. Now it appears to be back, but I'll type fast just in case.
What little news I saw this morning was rather discouraging; par for the course. The pandemic rages on, Russia continues its war of words as it builds up for a real war in Ukraine. Will we do anything about it, or are we to play the role of Chamberlain to Putin's Fuehrer? Is he bluffing, or is a nuclear war over the Twelve Days of Christmas a real possibility?
This re-posting on Lawyers, Guns, and Money (another favorite blog of mine, for reasons manifest in its title) of a Reddit post by a doctor describing his last day in the medical profession drew my attention:
Omicron may not be the killer everyone feared a couple weeks ago, but it is becoming the last straw for our overstretched medical communities. Small hospitals have begun to file for bankruptcy protection because they can't afford traveling help anymore, and no one wants to be on staff in the midst of a pandemic where, as described in the above blog, one particularly benighted group of people fills your days as a doc or ICU nurse with demoralizing images of wasting death while their families try to crash the door maskless and unvaccinated, then attack in the parking lot because you murdered their numb-nut loved one by not providing horse-dewormer. Hell, I'd quit too.
But enough of that. Sure the world is ending, but that doesn't mean we can't make the best of things, can't bury ourselves in the quotidian mundacities of our daily lives to bathe the whole scene in a glow of order just as the ship begins to capsize or the volcano threatens to bury us in ash (choose your metaphor).
I've started using an app called Ritual, a poor substitute for the actual rituals of the Book of Common Prayer but better than nothing. Peg and I have sort of fallen off the church wagon because the sermons down the hill are just so vapid, and there's nothing going on in this parish outside of the Sunday morning masked gatherings. It leads to a sort of spiritual starvation, so I figured I'd given this app a try.
This morning's offering was ten minutes of Lectio Divina, with a soothing female voice leading a contemplation of the Magnificat, accompanied by ethereal music wafting in the background. It's about what an unchurched person would want and expect of a devotional structured to last as long as the typical bowel movement. I'll keep trying, but I'm thinking I may need to go spend quality time with some actual Jesuits to get back on the horse.
A better vehicle for communing with the divine, at least in my experience, is being still and silent at Wyldswood. Of course, P is constitutionally incapable of being still--"Perpetual Motion Peggy" I call her when I'm trying to veg on the couch watching football and she's hanging curtains or cooking up a roux. Thus, for Christmas I've bought her a means of sitting still, sort of, while we're on the farm:
A real beauty, eh?
I have this vision of supplementing the cattle with a satsuma grove, just a few acres for starters, and Mr. John Deere and P will play a key role in clearing that space and installing the infrastructure for the 145 trees per acre the UF Ag Extension says we should plant. We'll also likely upgrade the fencing around the pond with something a little more coyote-resistant, so we can reintroduce birds and a couple donkeys. Peg's already talking about her need for a tractor auger so she can dig postholes for our new infrastructure.
My other space for hearing the still, small voice--that is, when there's not a yahoo on the guard frequency belching "Let's Go Brandon"--is 12,000 feet up in the air, flying the Mighty Columbia.
I have to admit that I haven't updated the charts for the inflight nav system in weeks, after I crashed the whole panel trying to install an update on the morning we left for Colorado in September. With another big trip slated for New Year's Day to see my folks in Dallas, I'm thinking it's time to try again. At the same time, I don't want to crash the panel on a holiday, then have no one at Van Bortel Aviation to rescue me as they did the last time. My plan, then, is to try an install maybe tomorrow, and fly the plane around the block between Christmas and New Year's to make sure everything works before the long trip to the Lone Star State.
From Dallas we five--P, me, Slane, Dean, and Jo Jo--will fly back to Wyldswood, where I'm planning to add a work truck, which in turn will allow us to bring the roadster back up to New York when P heads back up here toward the end of February. My four a.m. musing this morning was over how to pull this off. Do I send P solo back to Corning, and stay in PC? She hates solo car trips, so I think not. Rather, I'll likely drive with her back up here, then turn right around and take a commercial flight back to Florida and race home before the cats starve to death down there. They won't fit in the Mercedes, after all.
Sometimes this multipolar existence makes my head hurt.
While we're back down south, I'm hoping our friend Steve the contractor will come fix the collapsed ceiling in Laura's Room down the hall from where I'm sitting right now. We've left a key.
A busy day of doing not much today, with lots of drafting and a little talking on the phone, my least favorite activity. Time to get at it.
"I have this vision of supplementing the cattle with a satsuma grove"
So you DO know how to have a good time! I look forward to helping out.