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Take The Train To Nowhere.......... ..........

I moved with my parents to this farm dad owned when I was a baby. We kind of grew together. I have some memories when little, but more are what mom and dad told me. For some odd reason, I have no memories until I was 6 and started school in one of the last one room schools. Even then memories are scant. Bits here and there. I talk to others and they remember lots even to toddler ages.
I look at photos taken of the farm and that is how I see the changes.
When we moved here, this was a new house on the hill in the barren cow pasture. All the rest of the compound was down the hill past the barn. The only trees standing here were the old apple orchard and four big oak trees. Mom said they were going to name the farm Four Oaks.
Now there are 3 rotted stumps and one tree hanging on as hollow as I think my head is sometimes. But, too make up for it, those 4 seeded 20 million acorns over the decades. Now I walk around the yard and yank sprouted oaks everywhere. Do the squirrels EVER remember where they buried their winter stash?
When I was a child, we could look down hill across our fields to the neighbors. Now I can't see across the driveway. My parents fell for the idiots in the Conservation department.
Plant pines and have a retirement income. So with two knolls of blow sand, dad said yes to the concept. He bought thousands of seedlings, got the use of a planter from the department and away they went. Dad hooked it up to the tractor, mom sat in the planter and stuck trees in in nice rows. The centers of the two plantations to be were Jack pines. Not great trees , but fast growing to hold the knolls til the Red pines and spruces grew bigger.
The neighbor was happy and got into it too. He planted in the river bottoms. Guess floods lately killed most of his. He thought us blocking wind was good. One year he thanked dad for the oat crop. Too bad it was our oats that blew into his corn.
Some of those pines they planted on both sides of the long driveway and along the cliff overlooking the river by the new house. A couple went here and there. Mom said after they got some in, she told dad, need to move them farther out. They don't stay a foot high forever. Should have moved them a few more feet really. The ones on the cliff, and drive, mom pruned into hedges til she lost it. She told me that she would tell dad, unstick me. Seems the pine sap would glue her to the pruners. Now those pines all stand 30 feet tall.
In the plantations, Jack pines are all dying and falling over. The Red pines are a self pruning tree so many are more like poles than pines. They are dying along the driveway too. I am moving small spruce and planting to try to re-new the rows.
Anyway, now the old orchard is gone. The new house is now just the main house. And it is hiding in a jungle of trees, grape vines, weeds and whatever seeks to take over.
I try to keep a yard. Hack, chop, spray, pull, mow and wait for winter to kill it off or put it into hibernation. Maybe next spring I will win the fight. Tell myself that EVERY summer.
The old orchard was bulldozed by mom's orders. It was back into field. And inch by inch it became a meadow taken over by dewberry vines. What isn't mowed now has woods between the drive and meadow.
I sit and look and wonder. When did this all change? Guess years passed and I just went along for the ride. I remember mom telling me that dad and her used to go down in the river woods and prune trees. Finally mom asked dad, how does Germany do the Black Forest like a park. He said on weekends everyone went out to take care of it. She said well guess what,I quit. TWO people can't do this all. They should see what I call oak island now down there. Those oaks grew straight and thick and clean. So they did accomplish something.
I will settle for getting out the door without chopping my way out!

Discrimination by race and sex or, rather, denial of its existence: the ole’ good subject; evergreen.

Then don’t forget bashing emigrants and ex-spouses. Someone has to be blamed for our failures.

Now the new entertainment – the pandemic: wet dream for home-woven conspiracists all around the world.

And politics! Don’t forget politics!



So many hills to die on. So many crusades to fight.

Why are there so many crusaders among the single?

The past wouldn't be possible without the existence of the present, and the present wouldn't be possible without the existence of the future! But often, the future is better because of the mistakes of the past! So, let the mistakes of the past guide you on the path to a better future! (And remember that bad things can be used in two ways...1 destructively, if you let them bring you down, or constructively, if you use them to your advantage.)

A teen ram-raider is suffering early onset arthritis and faces a hip replacement in his 20s, with another likely when he’s older, after falling badly while fleeing police

Mostly seen in the US and ooouuut there in Canada, eh? Two of my favorites here in the North Country are: 'Woman wanted---must be able to skin, gut and put up a deer, trout fish, have a noisy big PU truck, and a large dog. Send photos of truck, dog and fishing gear.' And,--- 'Save the black fly'. Clues to the driver's mind set.

My family of origin is of peasant stock, so from an early age, all were exposed to physical work. So much so, that higher education was somewhat frowned upon. Perhaps a little like "ackin' White", in some Negro cultures. So my Black relatives aver.
But this tendency to know one's place is present in many working class cultures. I recall my time in Norway, Hei Da !, where I learned of a similar cultural attitude, there called Janteloven, or the law of Jante. Not a stranger to bragadoccio, I quickly learned of how such isn't exactly a favored personal style there. Morfar called me the equivalent of " a damn fool". And my Slovak relatives talk of something similar, much more present still in the backwaters of the old country, about Bratislava, but still visible in many elderly, and even a hottie niece or two, in Pennsyltucky.
So when I asked for an estimate for removing the toxic, non PC, VERY non PC , tar on my drive and walkways, here at the Vierk-Gnome mansion, I was shocked to learn that these ran into the thousands of dollars. Only to have to retar things in a decade or so, with this frost heaving Northern climate?
I learned quite early the triple value of self sufficiency. Pride of workmanship, learning from mistakes, and saving money. So I took up, ---pick, shovel and wheel barrel,--- all the tar "black top", using it to shore up a failing berm, far from the veggie garden, later to be covered with loam and flowers. It's all looking great, as instead of toxic, petroleum based tar, I'm putting down God's own dirt, and planting turf, with a few flat stones to walk on, across the new piece of lawn..
My neighbors seem to be of two thoughts on this. The New York/Jersey summer crowd, struggle to hide their deep disdain. There goes the neighborhood again! But the DIY Mainers applaud the efforts. Now I'm faced with the decision to do something similar with the driveway, from which we removed the tar for berms when we built the new garage/rentals. There's only gravel there now, and it'll likely require my learning how to rent and use a small back hoe to level things out and to spread the dirt about. Hand sowing of grass seed is simple enough.
One more benefit is the loss of a pound or two, if working for a few hours in the sun, likely so called immeasurable water loss by the physiologists of the world.
But who doubts all this has more to do with being a cheap piker, than anything else?
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We hupersons have always commented on death. In ancient classical times, here in the West, the philosophers had at it. During the Middle Ages, it was largely the church. Later, as in the Great War, the poets did so, but kept a certain distance from the nitty gritty. Hell, even the cave persons had their cave wall art, with themes of fertility, animal prey, and yes, oh you CS bozos on our great bus, the Grim Reaper.
Heard a new medical sadistic. It would seem that, for the first time, folks choosing to die at home, exceeded the numbers (%?), wanting to die in hospital. Hospice programs are chock full. And in many parts of the world, access to modern treatments, such as these are, is hardly equal.
We all have ideas on this. As with Ebola, and other such Viruses, contamination typically made victims die alone, away from loved ones, although clinicians often tried their best to fill in. In some nursing (care) homes, family gathered about windows.
Of course, as with most families, the good old fashioned love-hate Jones intervenes. Nuff said.
But these numbers are telling. Hospital care can help save some, but treatments aren't exactly state of the art, and can certainly not be a cake walk.
Lots to ponder. Another benefit of the Virus? Any finger/hand painting of intensive care units on the walls and ceilings?

...Just ruled against President Trump's reversal of the illegal and unfair B Hussein O's order to allow illegal children of illegal residents to remain on the US taxpayers' teat.
Do you like conservative SCOTUS ruling apples? How's them for apples>

tag.} uniform... Foxtrot....Oscar..

Psalm 9*/ trouble
...2nd law / muse.
The paradox / 7 spires...) Ball point radio ©©®.
...15.*) The nations have sunk down in the pit they made; in the NET which they hid..[ darpanet. Inter-net. $kynet..] ..their own foot is caught.
...Psalm 2 / blur
...once upon a Time in the West / white buffalo.
Critical mass pt.3 / Threshold.
....16.)..Yahuah is known by the Judgment He executes. The wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. Meditation. Selah.

a. Police Truck / dead Kennedys
..b...see NO evil. / Television.
c...CORONA / minutemen..} Id est, their Crowning achievement.
....S¥N.} ..thru the Looking Glass / symphony X.
A R ] way out of here / porcupine Tree.
..the Great Escape / 7th Wonder.