My call is important to them
By Robert LaFrance
As I write these beautifully crafted words on December 9th, snow is gently falling on my orchard, the orchard whose 175 trees yielded about twenty apples last summer. The bears, who counted on my windfalls for September/October snacks (leaving the digested meals on the ground) were not impressed with me I’ll tell you.
New Corona Virus Covid 19 can be blamed for many things, but not this dearth of apples. No, it was two nights of deep frost in late May. It froze the apple blossoms and sometimes even the bees who were attempting to take some nectar back to their hives.
Why am I talking about all this? I am just pointing out to myself that I – and all of us humans – are as helpless as babies when Mother Nature decides to be a bitch.
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Speaking of that virus, I have now come up with a new profession for those who want or have law degrees and much, much patience. The Study of Covid Law could be part of our university curricula, assuming students would be allowed to attend university,
The downside would be that by the time the student attained this law degree, the pandemic would be over. We would all be vaccinated and waiting expectantly for the next pandemic. Yes, that would be a problem, wouldn’t it?
The reason I think such a course of study should be started is that no one I know has much of a clue as to what the rules are now. They change every day. Where is “the Fredericton Zone” anyway?
Our zone, that Fredericton zone, is now an orange one, recently changed from yellow. Or is it that the orange zone has changed to yellow? I know when I go into a store I am obliged to wear a face mask and I do, but what else do I have to do? Wash my hands 27 times a day, and I do, and don’t sneeze even into my own elbow?
And that’s another thing. I can’t sneeze into my elbow either because I am heavily muscled (not likely!) or because my arm is too short. So do I sneeze into a handkerchief, into my face mask, or into a nearby hydro pole and take a chance on slivers in my nose?
I just looked up the latest Covid information for New Brunswick and I will report it to you. This is not a joke. “There are 111 Covid cases in New Brunswick,” shrieked one headline, and I almost fell off my barstool. There was no information as to whether this referred to new cases today (as I had first thought) or it was the total number of cases in Bangladesh or what.
I scrolled down the page to find the next report that said there were eight new cases in New Brunswick. This was the same number as yesterday. Then, farther down the page, was the information that there were only two new cases today, and it said “Saturday”. It actually gave me some specific information.
Continuing to hope, I peruse every piece of information, but have decided to stay home and eat Kraft Dinner (I have 27 cases of the stuff.) until this is over. Lots of water in the brook, but I will wear my mask when I go to collect it.
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Changing the subject and not mentioning the ever-despicable Donald Trump, I was recently pondering the vast number of changes we have welcomed (and sometimes merely endured) over the past few decades.
This line of thought derives from a 1960s comedy routine by the late George Carlin, who in one of his routines mentioned that there are words and clauses that cannot go together. An example was “Hand me that piano” which couldn’t happen back then because a piano weighed hundreds of pounds. Nowadays we can carry a piano under our arms.
Note: I would sign an affidavit that no one could hand someone else a piano back then, because when we bought an upright piano in the early 1980s, it took two of us muscular brutes to move it from my pickup truck to our living room, meanwhile gouging the softwood floor in places. My wife’s nephew Curtis and I used every bit of our strength to move it. If someone had set a toothpick or a straw on that piano we would have had to admit defeat.
More on the things that have changed over the years: I remember conversations with my late Aunt Ella Adams, who was born in 1905, the same year that Albert Einstein published his first papers on the Theory of Relativity.
I doubt if Auntie thought much about this at that time in Tilley, but there have been a few inventions or developments since then that might have affected the rest of us.
Car seat warmers – when I get into my Corolla, a little switch turns on a heater underneath my rear end. On a cold day, and we’ll soon see lots of them, it is a great thing. On the other hand, that same car’s windshield doesn’t get its ice melted until I drive about five kilometres. So which would I prefer? A warm bum or a clear windshield so I can see a vehicle driving along Kintore Road, perhaps a transport with a load of logs?
Voice mail – It is rather frustrating to call, or try to call, a government department, a bank, an insurance company, NB Power, a drugstore or anything else with voice mail and be told that, although my call is important to them (vital in fact), they refuse to talk to me until it’s convenient to them, if ever.
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