Late winter is my “difficult” season. Maybe it’s Seasonal Affective Disorder. Maybe it’s the combination of allergies and holiday letdown. This year, it’s also the ongoing can’t-look-away train wreck that is our electoral process. Either way, I’ve been depressed and unmotivated for the past couple of months.
Plus, as it’s March, I now have to deal with all sorts of passive-aggressive reminders—in ads, on billboards, and from the end-of-broadcast human-interest fluff pieces on the news—that, here in Seattle, I should be out there jogging, kayaking, hiking, biking, and tossing balls for the dog. It’s my civic duty, the expectation of a nation, that here in this region of stunning natural beauty I will be out, in it, enjoying every second of it that I possibly can.
Feh. (more…)
On clear, cold afternoons, when the sky is a robin’s egg blue and the sun has just melted the frost off the shaggy lawns, I hear the machinery of modern yard maintenance fire up. Mowers, blowers, strimmers, and edgers set up a whirring, sputtering rumble that blankets the neighborhood as homeowners take advantage of a rainless November day.
We’re six weeks into this experiment, and things are continuing well above expectations.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 