The Candle is Burning Low and the Hour is Getting Late

Journal – December 7 2019

I woke up this morning with a peculiar sense of urgency – not the usual “uh oh I better get up” urgency, but the feeling that something was different, or that it was time for something different.  I was dreaming when I woke up.  I was dreaming about a candle burning low and the flame flickering and I could here the spectral voice of “a friend of us all, Mr. Bob Dylan” singing, “So, let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”

While I was busy other places the day has gotten late; very late indeed.  There are probably several reasons why this line of thinking has started.  Not meaning to be maudlin, I am in the later chapters of my life. Turning 67, I have spent more of my life than I have left.  Not maudlin, not sappy, just being real.  Every day is a gift now, and there are many more to come, but, while I may have 10 or maybe even 20 years left, I do not have another 67.  The candle is burning down and the hour is getting late.
My second back surgery is scheduled for next week.  While I have lived well with this bad back for 40 years, I just can’t take it anymore.  I think the pain and weakness is gnawing at me, too, reminding me of my limitations and mortality.  Combining a pending surgery with the reality of the shortness of time is raising hell in my mind.

I have lived an interesting life.  Many people would think that my life has been wasted, squandered, and has meant little, but it has been a most interesting trip.  I failed at several business ventures, lost two wives and a family, don’t own my own house, or have a retirement IRA. My life has been unconventional. I have seen the sun come up over the Canadian prairies, I have seen sunsets in Vermont, walked beneath the smoky winter sky in the Virginia woods, and trailed cows across the vast abandoned strip mines in West Virginia.  I have crisscrossed the country a half a dozen times and wandered around the upper Midwest.  I have danced beneath the Northern Lights and walked along the shores of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern Oceans. 

It has been a strange and amazing journey! And there are so many stories that need to be told.  That may be the biggest drive behind this sense of urgency.  I have to tell the stories while there is still time and while I can still remember them.  The candle is burning low and the hour is getting late.
I have heard that professional writers force themselves to write for a specific period of time every day.  Sometimes they write nothing but words in a row, sometimes they create great art.  It is, I guess, not a guarantee, but it is a discipline.  I have no discipline.  I have established patterns and routines in my life, but I am totally undisciplined.  I wonder if I can become disciplined in order to tell the stories before they are gone?

We shall see.  And, maybe NearCommonSense will be come my way of sharing my efforts with my Faithful Readers.

Watch here and see how I do.

It's Just a Game to the Ruling Class

I have been watching this ongoing “impeachment” non-sense down to Washington with a mixture of disgust, sadness, and growing unease.  The most frightening thing that I see in all of this, is that the professional politicians, those in the “Ruling Class” have trivialized and is making a mockery of, the most important responsibility given to the House of Representatives in the Constitution.  This does not bode well for the future of the Republic.

The Founding Fathers included impeachment, conviction, and removal of a duly elected president, as the ultimate relief valve in the event of a president going criminal in the White House.  The removal of the President, should be, along with declaring war, the most somber, awesome undertaking in the House of Representatives.  It should not be politicized and trivialized.  It is, after all, undoing the expressed will of a majority of voters.  If there is any respect for organized democracy, impeachment, conviction, and removal of a president should be approached only with just cause.

Let me digress, a bit, and discuss the Electoral College.  The Founders were incredibly genius.  They foresaw so many things, and structured the Constitution to be able to address them.  And, they saw things that existed in their day that would always exist.  One of these was concentrated populations.

It was obvious to the Founders that simply electing the President by popular vote would give incredible power to cities and towns and weaken the power of rural areas. The Electoral College allows for popular vote, but protects rural area, and small towns, by assigning electors according to the Congressional districts.  Philadelphia and Pittsburgh voters cannot overwhelm voters in the rest of Pennsylvania.  Votes from Warren, Elk, Cameron and Clarion Counties are just as important.  The Electoral College is a good thing and those who seek to circumvent it are either simply wrong, or simply trying to seize all political power.

We aren’t really seeing the atmosphere of respect and seriousness surrounding the impeachment attempt of President Trump that I think is necessary.  Talking heads and media commentators began speculating about impeaching Mr. Trump immediately following the election.  The Ruling Class and their sycophants simply could not accept that Trump had won the election.

It started during the election campaign.  Media types were harping on Trump and Russian collusion back then, even when there was grounds nor reason too.  Candidate Trump made a joke about Russian computer hacking – “Maybe the Russians can find those 33 thousand emails that Hillary lost.”  It was a joke, but media types insisted that it “proved” that Trump was working with the Russians to “steal” the election. It was a joke.

But, when he won, suddenly the Elites, the Ruling Class, the Privileged Ones needed an explanation as to why their chosen candidate had not won.  Usually when one loses an election, one tries to understand why one’s message didn’t work with voters.  Not so with the Hillary folks!  Mrs. Clinton was SUPPOSED to win!  There was no way a foul-mouthed bully from New York could beat her.

But he did, because he knew what things concerned us, the people, the most.  He spoke of these and he offered common sense solutions that we, the people, could get behind.  Trump won because he spoke plainly.  We, the people, are tired of “political speak” and “political correctness”.  We speak plain and it is time our elected officials speak plain, too.  Trump won because he spoke to us and with us.

The Ruling Class wasted almost 3 years with the Mueller, “Russian Collusion” investigation.  There was nothing there.  Now, they are on this “quid pro quo” with the Ukraine, accusing Trump of withholding military aid to the Ukraine until they “got dirt” on Joe Biden.  All of this now, is based a phone call to the Ukrainian President, the transcript of which the President released which shows absolutely no wrong doing. But the relentless impeachment push goes on.

The investigators continue to investigate in secret, behind closed doors.  They leak just enough cherry-picked information to keep the dogs in the news media straining at their leashes.  Congressional Democrats need to keep the public agitated, stirred up enough to demand action, even if there are no “high crimes and misdemeanors”.  After all, it is the “seriousness of the charges, not the weight of the evidence” that matters.  The end game is simply to drive Mr. Trump from office and therefore, to “win”.  It is just a game to the Ruling Class.

For those of you who don’t remember, the investigations that led to Nixon resigning stemmed from an actual break in at the Democrat Party Headquarters in Washington, DC.  Two of the perpetrators had connections with the Committee to Reelect the President.  Nixon’s aides told him about the break in and he participated in a cover up.  Clean shot, obstruction of justice, whether you were a Nixon guy or not.  Truth is truth.

With Clinton, the investigation into shady business dealings got tangled up with his womanizing.  Clinton, knowingly, gave false testimony under oath.  Clean shot, perjury, whether you were a Clinton fan or not. Truth is truth.

The difference between Nixon – Clinton and Trump, is that there were investigations going on about other things, that discovered impeachable actions.  There was no talk of impeaching Nixon before investigators found the coverup.  There was no talk of impeaching Clinton, until he committed his very public perjury.  In the case of Mr. Trump, the investigators intend to impeach and are investigating until they find anything, that they can convince a simple majority of Congressmen and Senators is serious enough to impeach, convict, and remove.

There is an incredible difference between the two approaches. If you are unable to see that difference, you may very well be part of the problem that is killing our nation.

I am not sure that most Americans will accept a railroad job impeachment of the President.  The people may not stand by and let the Ruling Class force the President out of office.  We, the People, have stood by and let the Ruling Class do many things that we should have stopped, even if it took force to stop them.  Their Oath of Office is to support and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic – many of us question if they are doing that.

For the first time in my life, I am truly worried about the survival of my Country.

Why Bother with Laws?

Why do we have elected law makers?  Why do those elected law makers bother making laws when no one enforces them on a uniform basis?  Why does it seem like folks in the Ruling Class are judged by one set of rules and “us of a lesser breed” are judged by another?  Why does it seem like there is a total state of lawlessness engulfing our nation?

It starts in the Oval Office when Presidents refuse to enforce immigration and refugee laws that Congress passed.  It continues when Congressmen and Senators encourage people to break laws that they don’t like.  Then, states and localities simply ignoring federal laws. Where does it end?  What happens if you or me simply refused to obey laws?  We’d have the black, jacked boots of the bastards right down on our throats.  Maybe it is Ruling Class over Country Class.  Maybe it is that “they” see themselves as our “betters”.

I don’t want to buy into the Marxian trap of blaming “the oppressor class” for the ills of the “oppressed”.  Marxism is such a stupid over simplification of things.  But that is why Marxists and other Progressives like it – it is so simple; poor = good, rich = bad, white = bad, black or brown = good. There is no need for thought and thinking is hard for Progressives, Socialists, and other Liberals.

But I digress.  Why do we bother with laws, regulations, codes and other such implements of social structure when no bothers to enforce them?  We, Gennie and I, live in a subsidized rent apartment building for retired persons.  Back in May, we discovered that there was water leaking through the ceiling of our shower.  Obvious to most of us, there was a leak somewhere in the bathroom above ours.  Every time that I heard the “plink” of a drop of water hitting the floor of our shower, I would wonder from whence that drop of water originated.

It took from the 20^th of May until the 17^th of July before the building management company got around to ripping out the rotted ceiling and insulation from above our bathroom.  The ceiling tiles and insulation were full of mold. (I purchased a mold test kit earlier in July and cultured at least 5 different types of mold, one of which looked like black mold to me.) 

It seems funny to me that I had been fighting with my allergies ever since we moved back to the Redbank Valley.  Even taking allergy shots, I was down for three or four days a month with sinus infections and such.  I have not had a bad sinus day since July 17 when the plumbers dragged the moldy crap out of our apartment.  As a matter of fact, I have been able to go from weekly shots to every other week. 

Musta’ been sumpin’ in the air, there!

I did not use the phrase “dragged out” in the previous paragraph by chance.  That was how the plumber removed the mold infested materials.  No cautions, no masks, no ventilation, no removing residents, just rip it out and drag it out.  There are pages and pages and pages of building codes and regulations and laws regarding the removal of mold.  Nope. The building management company just ripped and dragged.  I mean, why spend all the money on legislators’ salaries and then not care if people don’t abide by the laws, codes, and regulations?

But the water kept dripping. Seriously.

Along about the 24^th of August, the management company finally ordered a replacement shower for our apartment and a new tub for the apartment above ours.  The lady above us needed a walk-in shower, so Gennie and I told the plumber to use the shower planned for us for her and just order another walk in for us. No good deed goes unpunished and it took over a month for the building manager to order another shower stall for our apartment.  To add insult to injury, when the shower stall arrived, the two end walls were cracked. 

It took another month for the next one to arrive.

So, here we are into the third week in October, 5 months after we reported the problem and our shower is still not installed properly.  The poor plumber is trying to get it done, but he has no real idea of what he is doing.  Yesterday, he replaced the ceiling insulation and put up dry wall without sealing the wood that had been exposed to the mold.  The shower, which is supposed to be handicapped accessible, is not.  The moldy wall is still there, the moldy linoleum is still on the floor.

There are volumes of laws, codes, regulations regarding landlord responsibilities to tenets.  There are pages of code and law about mold removal and treatment. And, fundamentally, there is the simple thing of just doing the right thing and treating people with respect and dignity. The company that manages our building does not seem to give a rip about laws, codes, regulations, or treating people kindly.

It’s not that we haven’t tried to get the authorities involved, because we have.  The USDA funded the construction of the building.  They have done nothing.  We have contacted several state agencies that oversee elderly programs, none of them have gotten involved.  We have tried to report elderly abuse, no one seems to care. 

It will take some kind of tragedy to get the attention of the authorities and then they will just pass more laws that no one will enforce. Why bother with laws at all?

Now They Want to Tell Us How to Run Our Air Conditioners

There are times when I really wonder how the “Ruling Class” looks at the rest of us in the “Country Class”.  When I think about the ridiculous number of regulations that have been imposed upon the American people by our governing agents, I sense a genuine lack of respect for the people by the rulers.  Or, in plain English, they must think that we are dumber than a box of rocks.  Maybe I am old-fashioned, or just being contrary, but I really don’t think that how much water my toilet uses per flush needs to be regulated by state and federal agencies.  I’m just saying . . .

The most recent example of government over reach was reported recently by Channel 5 News in Los Angeles, out in “the land of fruits and nuts.”   According to the news report, “Energy Star”, a program administered by the US Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, that is supposed to advise us dummies of how to save energy, save money and improve the environment.  (Read “Save the Planet!”)

Am I the only one who finds a magnificent irony in ANY federal agency providing information on saving money???  Am I the only one who thinks it is absurd that the US Department of Energy has never produce a single joule of energy for the American people?  Does anyone else ever wonder about how much authority we have given unelected bureaucrats in the EPA?

But I digress.  Now, this latest suggestion from our “betters” is that we should set our air conditioning thermostats at 78 degrees when we are at home and to turn them up to 85 degrees when we leave the house and set them at 82 degrees when we go to bed at night. Okay. Yeah, right.

There was a time when my house was 78 degrees when I was in the house.  It was before we had air conditioning.  I lived in very few houses that were comfortable in the summer without air conditioning.  We’d have a fan or two in every room, but all they did was move hot air.  Being in the house only offered relief from being out in the sun.  I don’t really want to live that way again.

And, the thought of sleeping in a room that is 80 degrees is almost more than I care to imagine.  I sleep better in cooler air.  It has been that way all of my life.  I remember sleeping out in the yard as a kid because it was too hot to sleep in the house.  I’m too old to sleep on the ground now and packing a cot in and out of the house every night and morning does not sound inviting either.  And, I am sure that my neighbors would not appreciate me sleeping the yard.  Along the street.  In South Bethlehem.  Just sayin’.

As miserably uncomfortable as many of us would find these temperatures, do we really think that the wonks at Energy Star keep their houses this hot in the summer?  I am pretty sure that the people who made these recommendations don’t follow them.  After all, they are our “betters”, aren’t they?

There’s a couple of things about this news article that bother me.  First, why in the name of bright, sunny days is our federal government wasting money on “Energy Star” when we are $25 trillion dollars in debt?  Where in the Constitution is authorization for this Energy Star program?  Why is this money being wasted?

It also annoys me that anybody would have the audacity to tell anyone else how warm or how cool to keep their house.  Where in the world do people get the idea that they have the right to tell other people how to live?  Why would anyone want to tell someone else how to live?  I simply don’t understand that – I have no point of reference for wanting to order another free, sovereign adult around.  It amazes me that anyone would want to.

I think what annoys me the most about this, is that our government has programs designed for people to tell other people how to live their lives.  I mean, seriously.  How have we gotten so far off track that we have government wonks running around telling how high we should set our air conditioners, how long it is “safe” to leave our Thanksgiving turkeys out on the counter, and zillion other regulations, rules, suggestions, and guidelines.  All of this on top of the “billions and billions and billions” that we spend on public education.

Maybe I am asking too much, but I would like to think that by the time our kids are ready to go out on their own, they know that how much they run their air conditioners in the summer and how hot they keep their places in the winter will impact how much heating and cooling costs.  Do we really need public service announcements and tv news casts every holiday about leaving our turkeys out too long?  (I wonder how blown away some of these folks would be if they knew that farm families years ago might leave the turkey out in a cool room until it was picked clean, and lived to tell about it!!)

There was a time in our country when we lived and let live.  There was a time when we minded our own business and let other people mind theirs.  There was a time when we understood that individual liberty was just that; the right to live your life as you wanted as long as you didn’t hurt anyone else.  I’d like to see those days return.  I’d like to see our people be free again and to respect the freedoms of others.

I hope it’s not too much to ask for and not too late to ask.

Our Little Town Floods Yet Again

Leisure Run Flooding Keck Ave & Rt 28 New Bethlehem, PA July 19, 2019
(Photo Courtesy Tech Ready Professionals & RedbankValley.org)

Twenty-three years ago, July 19, 1996,  after weeks of rainy weather, the skies opened up and dumped more than a foot of rain on the Redbank Valley. The creek system, from Brookville to New Bethlehem, was inundated with floodwaters of Biblical, catastrophic proportions.  Twenty-three years later, on July 19, 2019, after weeks of rainy weather, the skies opened up and dumped heavy rains of the northern tributaries of the Redbank Creek, once again, flooding parts of New Bethlehem and the Redbank Valley.

For those of us who were here, back then in the summer of 1996, last night's flooding brought back a whirling mass of memories.  We each have our own memories, the stuff of our individual nightmares.  Whether it be of buildings being swept off their foundations, or trees and stumps racing down the deluge, or all of the “debris” - that only hours before had been homes and businesses – piled up against the Rt 28/66 bridge.  Each of us took away our own personal perspective of the flood.

The thing that stands out the most in my mind, after all these years, is the fact that when the sun came up the next morning, people in New Bethlehem started cleaning up the mess and rebuilding their town and their lives.  There was no standing around waiting for Harrisburg or Washington to tell them what to do and how to do it.  There was no crying for FEMA, or the National Guard, or waiting for some body to swoop in and make things right.  Our neighbors just went back to work and Life went on.

Housebound right now after back surgery, I didn't see the damage from Friday night's flooding until I went to church on Sunday.  There was no FEMA, no Pennsylvania Emergency Management, no government involvement in cleaning up the mess and putting things back to rights.  It's still a mess out there where the creeks washed through town, but the sun keeps coming up, and folks in the Redbank Valley clean up, rebuild and go on.

There are a lot of things that I have come to love and respect about folks here in the Redbank Valley and their strength and resiliency and their ability to come back from adversity may be the characteristics that I have come to respect and admire the most.  These lovely hills have a rugged, bony skeleton; a hardness and a harshness, a wildness beneath their rolling green surfaces.  Our neighbors here in Redbank Valley have a hardness and strength to match the hardness of this land that we call home.

Folks in New Bethlehem will clean up after this flood like they have cleaned up after the others.  The creeks will continue to flow downstream, seasons will come and seasons will go.  We will continue our lives and in some tomorrow there will be another flood.  Our neighbors will come forth after that flood too, and clean up and rebuild.  It is what we do.

God bless and keep everyone who is dealing with this particular flood and cleanup.

Thoughts on the Fourth of July

The echoes of the explosions have faded away, the smell of cordite has drifted down the hollows and over the hills, and many of us will go on to enjoy a long, summer weekend.  Fourth of July, Independence Day – what is it really that we really celebrating, and why do some of us think it is really important?

Before the formation of the United States, every nation-state in the history of Mankind had been formed by groups of people, often sharing the same or similar languages and customs.  Kings and kingdoms grew from leaders who arose in times of crisis and maintained enough strength of arms to remain in control when the crisis abated.  The United States was the first nation in the history of the world that was formed to protect God-given, human rights and liberties.  In fact, the United States was the first nation to acknowledge that human being had Rights and Liberties and that they come from God.  This, in and of itself, may have been the most revolutionary of all of the revolutionary ideas.

Read the words of the Founders:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”.

These words and the ideas they express were the most revolutionary political ideas ever presented and even now,  243 years later, they remain the best, most justifiable reasons for the existence of any government.  Herein, is the foundation of American Exceptionalism.

Think about the ideas in that paragraph, taken from the Declaration of Independence.  “That all men are created equal . . . that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, . . . that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .”

Just and legitimate governments can only exist through the consent of the people that are governed.  This is one of the most radical ideas in politics in human history!  With this statement, the Founders of the United States defined for the whole world, for all time, the definition of a legitimate government.  No government that comes to power, or remains in power, through coercion, violence, or use of arms against the population can ever be considered legitimate - American Exceptionalism.

Governments are created by people – therefore, governments are the property of the people, the people are not the property of the government.  For all of human history, the "people" belonged to the Crown, except in the United States – again, American Exceptionalism.

The purpose of government is to secure the unalienable Rights that accrue to Mankind from God.  Any function that a government does, that does not serve to secure human rights and individual liberties is an illegitimate, or at least questionable,  function.  Another example of American Exceptionalism.

All men are created equal and given certain Rights, by God, that cannot be taken away.  There are those among us who will curse and condemn this nation because there was slavery at the time of the founding, because our Founders did not acknowledge "women's rights", or "protect" the Native Americans.  Anyone who condemns our founding or our Founders because of these issues is arrogantly ignorant, intolerant, and ill-education.  Slavery existed, in one form or another, in almost every country, every culture, every society since the dawn of Time.  Nowhere in the world were women included in the body politic.  Hells Bells!  In most places in the world in 1776, only a few nobles had any rights or freedoms at all.  We, America, have gone through amazing struggles to end slavery and to finally incorporate all citizens into the body politic.  Not another nation in modern history has struggled and succeeded to the extent that we have.  The interpretation of "all men being equal" is likely to continue to evolve, and maybe American Exceptionalism is an ongoing, evolutionary phenomenon.

To condemn the Founders for the things that they left out, things that no one had ever considered in their time or place, is simply ignorant.  To discredit, to throw out, to walk away from the phenomenal, exceptional ideas of the American Founding because it wasn't somehow "perfect" smacks of a nearly limitless arrogance.  To assume that one can take a hodgepodge of liberal ideas floated from college campi over the last 50 years and make a better system than our Founders did speaks volumes to the stupidity of modern progressives.

The merits of the Founding is well recorded in History.  During the first 150 years of our Nation, American Exceptionalism unleashed the greatest period of economic and technological growth in the history of the World.  During that century and a half, when our Nation held true to its Founding, America and Americans led the world from conditions that had changed little since the time of Christ into the age of heavier than air flight.  At the time of the Founding, the fastest method of travel was horseback.  One hundred fifty years later, man was flying in airplanes.

During those 150 years, there was a steady flow of (legal) immigrants arriving on our shores.  Like those before them, these (legal) migrants came seeking religious and political freedom and economic opportunity.  They left their original nationality behind and willingly became Americans – adding the richness of their cultures to what is the distinct American Culture.  They came to grow, to thrive, to try, to be all that God wanted them to be.  These people, these Americans, opened a continent, adapted to extreme cold and extreme heat, adapted to forests, mountains, prairies, and deserts and in their adaptation, the created a nation, a dream, a vision that still draws those who want to be free.

I contend that the freedoms guaranteed in our Founding were the energy and drive behind this creativity.  I do not think that anyone can prove me wrong. 

And that, Faithful Readers, is what we celebrate on July 4th;

“That all men are created equal . . . that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, . . . that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .” , and the American Exceptionalism that grew from these ideas.

April in the Old Coal Mining Country (with apologies to Jack Kerouac)

March roared into our mountain world like one wild, super mean, hungry lion this year.  She pounced upon us with a viciousness that, in my humble opinion, was hardly called for.  The first two weeks of March were bitterly cold. In some ways, much more painful than the long cold spell that we survived in January.  The last two weeks were wet and windy and mean, even if they were not as cold.   Years ago, I read a description of March that has stayed with me across the long years: “ March is an old witch with big silver eyes and frozen rain in her wild hair.”  And so she is.  And March 2019, was no exception here in the old, coal mining country.

Mostly the mountains and ridges here in our country carried the fading gray of winter through March.  There were occasional skiffs of snow that brightened the hills, if only for a day or two, but the hills pretty much stayed that winter gray that we all know so well.  During the last few days of the witchy month, the woods began to quicken.  If you looked quick and sharp, by the last windy days, you could start to some of the earliest maples beginning to bud red, and the willows starting to turn bright yellow, and some of the greenbriars starting to show color.  But, you had to look quick and sharp, the gray still overwhelms the hills and hollows where the old men dug the coal.

Then April blew into the mountains here on the last of the March witch's winds.  But April is not March, and the winds blew warm and dried out the ground and picked up the last of last year's leaves and swept them across the land in whirlwinds, arabesques, and comically, wild dances.  Still not springtime, but there seems to be laughter and smiles in the April air.  Like the life rising in the trees around us, I think that Hope rises in our souls in the spring, too.  We have suffered and survived the winter, bound by the cold and dark, but Life returns to the land with the sun and we come back to Life as well.

Life returns to our mountain world with the rising of April.  It is subtle at first – a few trees begin to bud; red, yellow, and white buds begin to color the gray woods.  The first spring flowers begin to show, the daffodils, the forsythia, and the tulips.  Suddenly, the lawns and fields are full of robins, hunting flocking, mating, nesting.  The silent air of winter is gone, replaced with the chirping and tweeting and singing of flocks and flocks of birds that are back for the summer.  If you sleep with your bedroom windows open, the odds are that you have been awakened once or twice already by the pre-dawn symphony.  That is one of the few things that I don't mind interrupting my morning sleep.  There is pure harmony and joy in the bird's pre-dawn singing.

How can we speak of the capriciousness of April without commenting on the oft poetically referred to “April showers”?  Although March, in almost any place that I have lived, tends to be wet, somehow we have come to relate rain “showers” with April.  I was thinking about “April Showers” as I spent the day driving through torrential rainstorms and near hurricane force winds yesterday.  There was nothing nurturing, nor loving, nor whimsical about yesterday's April shower.  It was nasty, cold and brutal.  Yesterday's April rain was as miserable as anything January can dish out.  Even with that wintry rain, the trees pushed leaves out all day, giving a much different look to the woods by evening.   But, then I remembered the shower last week that left that marvelous smell of warm, summer thundershowers; the smell of warm, wet asphalt, spring soil, and the sweet, sweet smell of growing things.  April is capricious, wild, and wildly unpredictable.

If March is an old witch with big silver eyes and frozen rain in her wild hair, then April is a giggly, teenaged girl, who can't decide on what she wants to wear to the party.  She has windblown blonde hair and wears flowers in her hair.  Her peaches and cream complexion belie her flashing wild eyes.  She takes us from the last gasps of winter, through a wild ride of changing weather, while Life, and warm weather, return to the hills and hollows, the mountains and valleys of the old, coal mining country.  April is a wild ride with a giddy woman-child whose mercurial whimsy keeps us guessing as the sun climbs higher into the sky over the abandoned tunnels and lonely, empty strip jobs.

Those empty strip jobs rare their hunched backs into the vast dome of the sky over our mountains.  Some of them just beginning to grow the wild grasses, some of them covered with rich, carpets of grass that have developed over the long, sweep of years.  On some of the old domes, the brush has begun encroaching on the grasslands as the inevitable, endless, perfect cycle of reforestation works its way through time.  Some of the older stip jobs are forested now, that many years have swept through this land where the old men dug the coal.

And true to keeping with her wild-child, capricious, giddy adolescent persona,  April delivered a marvelously beautiful spring day today.  The morning sun lifted above the eastern hills, riding up in the clear and glorious sky.  A few puffy white clouds rode the soft wind and the air was as clear as crystal.  All across the neighborhood, the rhythmic hum of lawn mowers drowned out the flocks of birds, if only for a while.  The afternoon smelled of newly mown grass.  Not a person in the world could have ordered a more perfect day!

Darkness covers our mountain world again, tonight, as April wanders inexorably toward May.  The air is soft and warm, with just a bit of chill in it – perfect for the last few days of April.  March is a witch kitty everyplace where I have ever lived, and April drives you crazy 'cause it's not quite springtime.  This land where the old men dug the coal is no different.  Hold on to Hope, summer is just over the horizon.