Bugs

There is so much we could discuss, practically all of it obvious and troubling.

The president of the United States and the president who preceded him are both demonstrably insane and both belong in jail or the federal prison hospital in Springfield, where they could be kept appropriately sedated. Neither employ or employed any aides who are suitable for anything but field work, and even then only under the lash. I consider their vice presidents as people who fall into this group.

If you step outside in many parts of the country you’ll notice a strange haze and odd odor, beyond the seasonal pollen that makes breathing unpleasant for many of us. That’s smoke from the forest fires in western Canada, which is again blowing down across much of the U.S. (If Canada is laughing, I don’t blame it.)

Ukraine, God bless and keep it, hammered the Russian military over the weekend. In a phone call today Russian dictator Vladimir Putin sucked up to and praised his alleged friend Donald Trump — it doesn’t take much; just effective anti-nausea medicine. Trump of course came out of it with undeserved respect for Putin.

The new pope has done much to rally the faith, but there are liberal partisans trying, as they always do, to dig potholes in his path. The Diocese of Charlotte, a huge and until now growing diocese in western North Carolina, got into the news over the last week when one Michael Martin bishop-slapped the new Holy Father by announcing that the traditional Latin Mass will be effectively banned in the diocese. This forces Pope Leo’s hand. It sows division in the Church. There is much to be said about this.

Last Friday the brakes went out on my car and the shop can’t fix it until next Tuesday. Fortunately, my neighbor Tom goes to the grocery store and the konbini fairly regularly. This morning I awakened to the discovery that I have no running water. Fortunately, it came back — there had been a broken water main, apparently — but the water will need to be boiled before use until this weekend.

Tired of being angry, disgusted, and depressed about all of the above, and unable to do anything about any of it, I’ve decided to think, and write, about something else instead.

Yes, things have reached the point where insects are preferable to the events of the world and my small part of it.

So here is what we used to call a picture page. These are photographs made as I crawled on my belly through the grass to photographically capture one small arthropod as other arthropods sought to devour me or my precious bodily fluids, and usually succeeded. If you look at the captions you’ll learn that I can even identify some of them. We can be comforted, if that’s the word, in knowing that after we’re long gone, individually and as a species, the bugs will still be at it.

That thought is not always as uplifting as it seems at the moment.