This is not the season for teaching deep insights just now. It’s more the season for preparation using what we already know.
Today it was cool enough that I could dive into the undergrowth and begin harvesting firewood (the pile has begun in the image on the right). My brother is rather tied to an old drafty house that has a fireplace. There isn’t a lot of firewood in his suburb of Crown Heights there just a couple of miles north of Downtown OKC. Where I live there is tons of it all around and I don’t even have to cut live trees to get it. So every year when it starts to cool off and he starts needing it, I am able to get out and cut it. When I had my Jeep, it was easy to deliver it, but my wife isn’t too fond of the idea of packing our Volvo with that stuff. Still, we have managed to move some other ways so far.
This year I’m no longer restricted to hand tools. Someone made a donation last month just in time for me to take advantage of clearing out old merchandise. I got a really nice 16″ electric chainsaw on sale; the reviews gave it high marks and it was pretty low priced as a discontinued item. It cuts very well if I can drag the logs up close to the house. I bought it with an eye to my poor cottonwood in the front yard, showing signs of a looming demise. I’m trying to coordinate with someone who has a tall enough ladder to help me start up closer to the top — this thing is huge (those are healthy oaks in the background to the right). You’ll notice that it leans out over mine and the neighbor’s house. What you cannot see is that it is rotting on the other side and there are cracks visible through bark and deep into the wood. I’m worried it will fall on either of us and do some serious damage.
I called my Dad but he was kind of out of it from physical therapy. That he is taking such therapy is a good sign in itself, because it means they are trying to make his legs work. There’s hope.
Isn’t it good to know you don’t have to rely on mere intellect to make sense of the world? The Internet by its nature cannot filter out lies from facts. We have to protect as much as possible everything that people want to send over the Net because that’s the only way it can work. Computers can detect harmful software to some degree, but moral harm to the soul is not within their capability. That’s what your heart is for, so learn to trust it.
