Above is a hoary pine tree that overshadows a corner of the cemetery where my mother is buried. Someone, I don’t remember who, said that when the church burned back in the 1920’s many of the wooden markers burned. I wonder if this cedar tree was a survivor of that fire. It’s branches are twisted into macabre shapes and that might be a result of living through that fire.
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Is it edible? Looks like chanterelle mushroom which is edible. However, most mushrooms have poisonous lookalikes. From reading about chanterelles, May should be too early, but considering climate change and the weather lately…chanterelles’ growing season may be changing. Rain, hot temperatures, and their preferred habitat under evergreen trees. The conditions are in place. I have a good many and I have never noticed them before, but the weather this year could not have been predicted from the weather usual to this area.
Google search…looks like a false parasol mushroom. Won’t kill you if you eat it; you’ll just wish you were dead! Found it growing in the pot with the fig tree.
I planted bush bean, cucumbers, corn, and okra. I doubt if the corn will germinate as the seeds are old. I think I have bell peppers growing in my compost pile.
I have a cousin who lives in Texas. Probably, more than twenty years ago at a family reunion, he gave me some flowers growing in his garden. He didn’t know the name of the flowers. Well, Google says their name is Peruvian Lily. I’ve found them to be a finicky flower. Some years, they’re lush; some years, a few blooms like this year; other years…not a bloom. They’re there…resting, I suppose. Last year, they got weed-eated, so, of course, no blooms. I had a barrier around them, but the yard guy decided that they needed to be weed-eated! His boss and I had a little talk about my flower beds. This year, I put down more edging and showed him around the yard. I think he might have been a tad offended as he knew where my flower beds were.
From 2021-2025, there was a series by the name of Leverage: Redemption. The writers picked up on the themes of white nationalism, end-stage capitalism, computer generated technology, environmental disasters, the general zeitgeist of greed, narcissism, ignorance, toxic individualism, and the endemic predation (individual and corporate) that we are experiencing in real life. The show was not heavy-handed, but somewhat comedic. However, the current conditions afflicting this country were so predictable that the writers told us what was coming. The writers were trying to express a possible future in a medium that could be understood by the masses. Maybe, like the writers of A Brave New World and 1984 and A Handmaid’s Tale, the Parable series and We and probably many more apocalyptic books, we were being warned and, of course, we did not heed the warning.
I have a penny test. If I find random pennies/change in parking lots, etc., people feel pretty good about their ability to pay for needs and wants. When there are no pennies/change to be found, people are getting desperate. If they drop some change, they hunt for it until they find it. For the last six months or so, the parking lots have been bare.
I wrote the above and then went for my walk. Late…heavy rain all morning. Down the street, the people living there are adding an addition. On the street where the workers park, I found a penny minted in 1978. Got me to thinking where was I in 1978 and what was going on in the United States and the world. Especially, what was I aware of at the time.
I was in school. There were no jobs, so I stayed in school. I was aware the Shah of Iran was ousted, but I did not know any details. I actually read some articles about the Camp David Peace Accords. I read a lot about the Jonestown massacre. I couldn’t believe that Black people could be that gullible. Some years later, I read about Nichelle Nichols’s brother(?) who was also a believer in an end times cult and who killed himself along with other cult members. But, in 1978, we had been in this country long enough to know in our bones that there was no such thing as a white savior…a white executioner, yes; but savior…no. No God…loving God…would send a white person to “save” the Black people in this Country. (Let’s be realistic, the God of this Country is a cruel, sadistic, revengeful, angry, mercurial, and divinely selfish trickster.) I remember the blizzard. One of the roads we usually travelled on was so impassable that a temporary road was made by many cars through adjacent fields. I remember the joy of disco dancing. Where one actually had a partner and we matched each others moves. Clubbing was fun…date rape drugs were at the edge of our awareness; AIDS was in the future; and school was a necessary bore.
Lots of other stuff happened in 1978, but when one is in school, the outside world is not one’s primary concern.
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As time moves on the line will blur. It will no longer seem to be the simplicity of good versus evil, but good versus fools who think they are good. Criss Jami
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