Thursday, May 31, 2007

Got shotgun, shells?

I don’t know what this is, maybe it’s a heron or a crane, but I took about 30 pictures of it and only got one good one. It kept looking at me head on, and that’s not a photogenic look for most birds. Maybe it was purposefully not cooperating because it was sick of Spoleto Arts Festival tourists who descended upon Charleston last weekend. I didn’t attend Spoleto events, but I did hear some restaurant workers comment about the crowd it brought into area eateries. Sven, my friend Claudine’s husband, went on at length about an elderly customer who had a hairdo that was a beehive on top and a pompadour in front. He said it looked like she’d rubbed Aim toothpaste into her eyebrows, too.

I’ve had a few days off here lately. I looked forward to this and made elaborate plans for what I would do with my days, but so far I’ve just been wasting my time being hideously blue.

Yesterday I was surfing different online seed catalogs, and I ordered a bunch of seeds I don’t have space to plant anywhere. I’m still excited about it, though. I also printed out the plans for a solar greenhouse. I filed them away with the rest of my someday garden stuff. Damn, I’m getting on in years. By the time I get around to having a yard, I’ll be too arthritic to get around in it. Or I’ll be working two jobs to pay the mortgage and won’t have time to garden. Sigh. The negativity fairy is keeping me company today.

I wish that instead of going to graduate school, I had lived for a couple of years in an intentional community. I could have learned about a lot of the things I wish I knew more about now, like cooking, self-sufficiency, getting along with other people in decision making situations. On the other hand, if I hadn’t gone to graduate school, I’d never have met Claudine, who has been a great friend. Wyatt and I stayed with Claudine and her family in Charleston last weekend.

One night after a few beers and gin and gingers, (okay wait, here I need to endorse Blenheim’s “hot” ginger ale – it really ramps up the normal gin and ginger drink), we started talking about the fate of the world. Claudine said her dad has been nagging her because she doesn’t have a shotgun or enough ammo for the gun she does have. He’s retired military, and he’s convinced that a day is coming when people won’t be able to get things they want and need and the lawless looting and terrorizing will commence. He wants Claudine to have a better plan for how to deal with that day when it arrives.

So in my alcohol addled mind during this conversation, I was trying to sort some things out. Does the fact that Claudine’s dad is a former military man make him a more or less credible source on the subject of the fall of civilization? Hmm. Things have been pretty stable for a long time; it’s hard to imagine that changing. But then again, think about how hard 9/11 was on the country and the economy. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to destabilize society after all. An earthquake on the New Madrid fault happening at the same time as a big hurricane hitting shore could cripple the country for a while. Or what about that blackout in New York a few years ago? I bet that could happen again without anybody even trying.

I guess it’s impossible to tell what’s going to happen or gauge the best way to prepare for it. And it’s probably the case that a lot of people obsess about the coming fall because they’re just sick of the way things are and they’re hoping that their own fortunes might change if there were a shakeup. Others would just absolutely love having the excuse to shoot people under the pretense of protecting a stash of canned goods.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great Blue Heron

And they are always hard to photograph.