"Savage Man..."*

Well, it looks like I no longer have an excuse to sit and look at my seed catalogs and read Rousseau. A friend has fixed my truck for me, and the snow is trying to melt... a little bit. I had figured on starting some plants for the hoop house, but the last snow caved in the one side. Now that the truck is fixed I can at least go get materials for a makeshift repair.

Katie has taken Crios**, one of her roosters, from her bedroom and put him back in the coop. He was up there during the latest cold snap. Yeah, I know, but I'm too old to argue anymore. None of her siblings would have gotten away with bringing him in, but "dad, he's cold and dehydrated" was really all the argument she needed.

Anyway, since she was little, she has had a ridiculous number of animals that she has nursed back to health. Not always successfully to be sure, but she has been successful with many that I would have not attempted. We have had the expected lambs, and kids, and of course chicks galore. But she has also at different times had red squirrels and bunnies-- which I really didn't need saved. She has had sparrows and nuthatches and cardinals, once even a crow she saw hit by a car. She has caught possums in empty water troughs, snakes (don't tell Mom), crawdads, and clams from the river, box turtles, even two different snapping turtles which she delighted in chasing friends and family with. She has raised Monarch butterflies, she has hatched and hand fed Praying Mantises collecting the egg cases for our orchard. She has collected lightning bugs and even crickets that escaped and sang most of the summer from under the back stairs.

I don't know where I was going with this tale... I didn't actually set out this direction, but I guess I was trying to find "news" when really we don't do a lot that is exciting and newsworthy. I get the bulk of my news from my neighbors while at the post office picking up my mail (at long intervals). In fact, until Monday, I had been blissfully unaware that there had been a football game, with the usual drummed up controversy.

I wonder, would there be much controversy if there was no TV to tell everyone what to think? I am not a particularly schooled man, but I have tried to educate myself as I have gone along. Sometimes I reconsider our cultural habits and rituals, as the outsider I reckon I have always been. I played a little ball in high school, and was interested in the successes and failures, win and losses, of friends or folks I knew. I guess I don't know the folks who are playing now, or if the stakes are as high as their honor down at the local hamburger joint. I don't know if there is something else driving them.

Now, I hear folks are arguing about the latest halftime show, and I find it hard to have an opinion. To me, a halftime show is a band of kids that worked hard to learn their instruments and pretty local girls that worked hard to learn their routines and moves. A local pride based on doing, not based on whatever side you may have chosen. I guess I live under a rock. But I wonder if the argument is the point. While we are arguing we are divided. and divided we are not being our best.

Or maybe my brain is still frozen.

Thanks for Listening,

Dave

*"Savage man, once he has eaten, is at peace with all of nature, and the friend of all his fellow humans." - Jean Jacques Rousseau (Jean Jacques is a particular favorite of mine. His later works sometimes contradict his earlier writings and statements. He has been criticized for this, but I see this as a man maturing, reconsidering, learning and softening. He also said, "I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices."

**I'm not sure why Crios got the name. Katie was young when she named him. She was always somewhat obsessed with Greek Mythology. The story is kinda disturbing though, and I hope has no connection here...