Strange Ideas

This was the sky yesterday before dawn.
Why are there so many contrails? I have watched the sunrise for months now, and I’ve never seen this many in the east.

During the day, numerous jets fly overhead on their way to San Francisco and Los Angeles, I think. One day last week, the atmosphere up where they fly was so still that every contrail lasted for a long time, and contrails upon contrails crisscrossed the sky until they actually merged and became high clouds, lowering the temperature here on my part of the earth.

A reader of a weekly newspaper I used to edit here in my small town once sent me an interesting letter to the editor. She believed that contrails were part of a chemical conspiracy to sedate the masses. She asked me to send a reporter to investigate this. That would have made an intriguing story. But my staff was busy on other stories and I had to put that idea in the slush pile to be considered on a slow news day that never came.


There are curious tales wherever you look. I once sent a reporter out to interview the wastewater manager of the city. He’s like the chief of the sewer. My reporter was terrific and came back with a wonderful story about what happens to the water that goes down the drain in your house. My reporter asked the guy, What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever found in the big trap the wastewater flows through on the way to the pond? He said the strangest thing he found was a set of false teeth (they went unclaimed).

Today I’m taking a mental health day. Yesterday I spent all afternoon in an ophthalmologist’s office waiting to consult about my mother’s cataracts. It’s very hard to wait with a person who has dementia. Mom can’t read magazines or hold conversations. She has a very short attention span. At one point, she said lucidly, I’ve had enough of this shit; I want to go home. Cracked me up. I felt exactly the same way.

At any rate, I’m going to get out in the garden today and turn some soil. I’m not going to think about loved ones with Alzheimer’s or brain damage (see my Wednesday post). I’m going to praise God for my working mind and for the advent of Spring.


Spring Has Sprung


Winter cracked
and it broke wide open

out sprang a nectarine tree
in a hot pink tutu

it did a little pirouette
pink petals shivered

then out sprang a plum tree
in a white bridal gown

it did a little shimmy
a snowfall of white petals

drifted down on
the breathless congregation
*****

What strange tales have you heard recently?