Thursday, April 5, 2007

Necessity

Reality can be a stinker- but we're pretty much stuck with it. It's a little more obvious when you're on your own in the woods-

Right this moment, my reality includes a winter coldsnap; following 80° weather- and a chainsaw that has chosen this moment to die on me. We need it right now both for firewood (running short) and spring chores. This means a trip to town, and begging the repair guy to take a look rightawayquick.

And, the cold snap means the sod road in to the greenhouse is frozen hard- for a few hours. Have to take advantage of that right now, too; need to carry a pallet load of soil in, trash out- and we won't be able to do it when the ground thaws. Thaw turns our sod into swamp for a week, every time it goes through the cycle. Recently, we've had more hard freeze-thaw cycles than the old timers here think is "normal". And I hate mud.

But ignoring reality will cost me bigtime later; so I try not to.

It's a microcosm for the planet- we're still ignoring reality- the world cannot afford to just waste so much energy; so many resources. But we're still busy pretending the world has no limits; just buy what you want.

The New York Times has a splendid example today:

Wild West Water

And so, I'm afraid, does the BBC-

Already Changing

Reality - people are already dying from global warming, and from our idiotic attempts to pretend we won't have to change anything substantial. By which I mean the USA fermenting our food into gasoline- for our SUVs and snowmobiles and jetskis - which has already caused food riots in Mexico; where the price of tortillas, the mainstay of the poor, has doubled.

Apparently I'm feeling grumpy today. Probably because I tried cutting firewood with a good sharp ax, since my chainsaw is busted- and discovered I'm totally not in shape to do that. And may never be again; the hard impact of the ax may be more jarring than my aging bones can really adapt to. Dang reality, anyway.

1 comment:

L.L. Barkat said...

I just hopped over from No Impact Man.

This is off topic (nothing to do with chopping wood)... I just love your sidebar explanation of what happens to naughty comments. Very amusing.