The Bog Elfin Butterfly

[Above photo:  Clouds over the Saco Heath.]

17 April 20W22

There are no lilacs nor young women in sleeveless dresses yet—both took my breath away in college—but the days are long and in the pleasant 50’s. I walked for several hours yesterday, running small errands and checking out a couple of modern condo complexes with ads on Zillow. Both are in the process of being built. The structure of one, minus exterior sheathing, is complete; the other is merely a foundation and studs. But it was great to wander, learn more nooks and crannies in the city, and have lunch at the Pottery Café on Washington. When a piece of chocolate cake with a cup of coffee came to $10, I noted it must be very good cake. “Wait until you see the size of the piece.” the waitress said. Indeed, a Mount Everest of chocolate cake! Half of it is in my refrigerator and I am proud to have managed to eat the other half.

I am feeling discouraged about house-hunting, with nothing I want in the areas that I want. After writing class I had a beer and ribs with two guys from the class. One suggested I think long and hard about buying vs. continuing to rent. I came home, did a spread sheet, and changed my mind, yet again. I have mowed so many lawns and weeded so many gardens, re-painted/re-roofed houses and addressed a myriad of drainage issues that I feel done with it. Skilled help is really difficult to get here, as well, all tell me. I can exercise my green thumb at the island and it is too cold to do it the rest of the year here, anyway. I proposed by email to my landlady that I sign a 5 year renewable lease, replace some of her pictures, furniture, and books with my own, build a shelter in the back yard for my bikes, and install a charging station. Her response was to invite me to Easter supper today. We’ll see.

The idea of continuing what I am doing—teaching, taking classes, writing, hiking/biking, and making new friends—is appealing to me. It is an adjustment to settle into a 2 bedroom apartment rather than a more spacious and elegant house, as all of my friends occupy. I really have everything here I need, however. I’m certain I can find a community woodworking or boatbuilding space/collective if I want. There apparently is a good public photography lab around and I may dabble in that again. It is a little miracle to watch your photo print develop from a blank white sheet. Like an infant or a flower bud, it is potential revealing itself.

I just finished Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee for my modern post-colonial novel group. What a triumph! Now, that is spare prose to which Hemmingway could have aspired. So many layers of uncertainty and richness. I am, again, in awe of the courage of those who can visit extremely shameful moments with depth and candor. It is incredible to me that Midnight’s Children won the Booker Prize, as did this. They are very different in intent and execution, of course, but Disgrace is so human and so well-crafted. The other seems clownish and exhibitionistic, if brilliant. Oh, well.

I’ll go to Easter supper at noon and then again at 5PM at Polly’s daughter’s house. No lamb there; it will be superb Thai food, as Tan is an exceptional cook. It always confused me as a kid, since I somehow had heard that Christ was the Lamb of God, yet we ate roast leg of lamb often, especially on Easter. What did all that mean? Then I think of the Crusades, the Inquisition, Galileo, the Vatican helping Nazi criminals escape, the priests molesting children, and the abhorrent treatment of pregnant girls in Ireland by the nuns, and I think it is all nonsense. Freud’s The Future of An Illusion spelled it out for me: we invented God to give us hope and succor in terrifying times of famine, darkness, scales, teeth, and claws, and uncertainty. I envy, in a way, those who accept the illusion; it’s an extra support in trying times, which we all endure. I, mostly, adhere to Christian values. I love the positive community work that so many church groups do. Taking care of others, being kind—these are wonderful human qualities that often require a shared belief and organization to be realized.  It’s all the anthropomorphizing and personalizing that I find risible. The high school football huddle with a prayer for a touchdown in the next play.  Or the praying for victims of shootings or floods or other catastrophes when substantive help is what is needed.

I walked the Saco Heath, the Fore River Sanctuary, and the Royal River Park this week. There seem to be a million good walks nearby. Imagine, the Bog Elfin Butterfly, about the size of a dime, emerges from the chrysalis of a tiny caterpillar who lives only among the needles of the Black Spruce, munching away. The Black Spruce is found in bogs and heaths. And the largest stand of rare Atlantic White Cedar in Maine is found in the same locale. The Royal River in Yarmouth has 4 partially collapsed dams cum fish ladders. The ponds behind them supported an astounding number of adjacent industries for centuries. Proximate history holds a fascination for me.

Where, I wonder, is the popular will to tax Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and the many, many other multizillionaires who seem to skate past the IRS with scarcely a pause? Could the publishers of the mainstream media be in on the theft? Hm. We really must get a grip on Capitalism.

It is heartening to see studies demonstrating that money given to poor families with children isn’t spent frivolously on drugs, alcohol, and Doritos but contributes to well-being in many unanticipated ways. It is as James Heckman at the University of Chicago has shown: money invested in children’s health care, nutrition, and education has an incredible long-term positive rate of return, much better than any other social investment.

Those brave men [and women and children] in Mariupol, continue to be brutalized by Putin’s storm troopers. Imagine, which I cannot easily, ordering your army to pulverize a city and its non-combatant inhabitants. His army is largely comprised of the sons of loving mothers and fathers.  Many of those boys will die or be maimed for life. Can’t we, with all of our technology, just vaporize him?