Tanka - After This Year's Wildfires

The lightning passes;

Summer fires fall into ash.

Autumn smoke blows far,

Leaving emptiness, loss, tears.

Time now for healing, and rain.

Two A.M. Brain

Me: [wakes up and smells nearby skunk]

Two A.M. Brain: There's a skunk. Right. Outside!

Me: [gets up and closes windows]

TAMB: That smells too rank to be outside.

Me: ...

TAMB: It's under the house! That's it! There's an angry rabid skunk under the house, emptying its glands right under my bedroom! 

Me: Uh, shut up?

TAMB: It's spraying and spraying and we're going to smell this for weeks! You have to go down and kill it!

Me: Shut up!

TAMB: Kill it! Kill it! Kill it! 

Me: Shut! The! Bleep! Up! 

TAMB: [noise like a puppy that just got accidentally stepped on]

Me: [awake for another hour]

2020 Smoke

The sunrise was over an hour ago. The combination of coastal fog and wildfire smoke makes the light a strange dark amber color.  The front yard garden looks like the illumination is from those sickly yellow street lights decades ago. 

My world is a bad Instagram filter.

At least it is cooler. The windows were open when I went to bed, and the air was fresh by Summer 2020 standards.  Some time before it woke me up enough to shut windows, the air changed to smoke and black grit blew in. Black grit on windowsills, black grit on the Ivory soap on the bathroom windowsill, black grit on the white porcelain sink.  

Good morning again, 2020. 

Limits

"A good man always knows his limitations."
-- Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan, played by Clint Eastwood, in Magnum Force, 1973

There are two kinds of limits. 

The first is a line beyond which I will not pass.  This far and no farther.  A moral limit. 

The second kind is a conditional case, a line which you may not pass with impunity. In Dirty Harry (1971), Eastwood's character taunts the punk, "Do you feel lucky?" -- daring the punk to cross the line beyond which Harry will respond differently. 

"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes."
-- Ancient military lore

Because maybe George Zimmerman wasn't being particularly wise when he engaged in the kind of behavior that led to the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin. 

Or because you could argue that Kyle Rittenhouse maybe wasn't particularly prudent when he went down to the Antifa / BLM protest, armed or not. 

Or because maybe making yourself identifiable as the Other Side when walking in the enemy territory of Portland, Oregon is not the brightest thing for a Patriot Prayer participant to do these days. 

On the other hand, maybe Trayvon shouldn't have assaulted the guy with the gun.

Maybe trying to attack the kid in Kenosha and take his openly carried rifle is not the best plan. 

And maybe the assassination of somebody just because he's wearing the other team's hat is inexcusable anywhere, anytime. 

Where is the line?

Why shouldn't an American be free to express himself by his T-shirt or hat as being or joking about anything he pleases? And aren't normal people being pushed past their limit of endurance these days?

I don't know. We do have lines we won't cross. But an awful lot of Americans may have lines we don't want others to cross. 

Do you feel lucky? 

Growth is slow

Take the idea of Arbor Day as an example.  For over a hundred years communities have planted trees for future benefits.  In a decade or so the labor of planting a tree yields tangible shade at least.  All over America, but especially in the Midwest, there are vastly more trees now than there were in the late 1800s.  Little by little and year after year the labor is invested and the benefits accrue. The number of forest trees stabilized and has been increasing over the last 100 years. But uncounted millions of trees have been added in the form of woodlots, windbreaks, and suburban plantings -- these don't seem to be as documented as timber forests.

Doing something because it is the right thing to do and because it will produce future benefits is an act of mature and reasonable people. Deferred gratification and all that.

I take it as a sign of hope in our presently destruction-oriented world that the First Lady of the United States has announced an initiative to improve the White House Rose Garden. Good for Melania. Good for America.

“The very act of planting a garden involves hard work and hope in the possibility of a bright future,” said Mrs. Trump, who adds the garden project to a list of other White House renovations, including refurbishing the Red and Blue Rooms and building a tennis pavilion on the South Lawn.
“Preserving the history and beauty of the White House and its grounds is a testament to our nation’s commitment to the care of this landscape and our dedication to American ideals, safeguarding them for our children and their children for generations to come,” she said. [KLOVE, Press Release, Additional link to Official Rose Garden Report]

Second Amendment is inherently anti slavery

So believed abolitionist Lysander Spooner. 

This right "to keep and bear arms," implies the right to use them–as much as a provision securing to the people the right to buy and keep food, would imply their right also to eat it. But this implied right to use arms, is only a right to use them in a manner consistent with natural rights–as, for example, in defense of life, liberty, chastity, &c. . . . If the courts could go beyond the innocent and necessary meaning of the words, and imply or infer from them an authority for anything contrary to natural right, they could imply a constitutional authority in the people to use arms, not merely for the just and innocent purposes of defense, but also . . . robbery, or any other acts of wrong to which arms are capable of being applied. The mere verbal implication would as much authorize the people to use arms for unjust, as for just, purposes. But the legal implication gives only an authority for their innocent use. (Lysander Spooner, Unconstitutionality of Slavery, p. 66 ).

Further:

The right of a man "to keep and bear arms," is a right palpably inconsistent with the idea of his being a slave. (ibid, p. 97)

Oh yeah. That'll help.

Vandalize the statue of the man who freed the slaves.