Hardly any lilac in Park City this year!

Park City lilacs usually bloom during the month of June. It may vary from the early part to the end of the month, but this year it simply didn’t happen. 

Where we live, perhaps no more than five percent of the lilacs bore flowers. There could be plenty of reasons for that, like poor pruning technique, lack of sun, poor soil conditions, bad fertilizing, drought-related stress and of course, frost. 

May was so cold that unseasonable and frequent late frosts prevented flowering. We had so many frosty mornings in the past two months that the flowers failed to come out; the blooms turned just brown and couldn’t display any flowers. 

This might seem counter-intuitive as lilacs are very cold hardy, but the emerging blooms can be critically sensitive to the cold and frost harm the shrubs ability to bloom. 

Well, there’s always next year!

Courage in a banana republic

The surprise-sixth January 6 hearing showed us yesterday what I would call a lot of courage that I don’t quite know I’d be able to produce.

I’m talking of Ms. Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to President Donald J. Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who gave what might be a game-changing testimony. 

In what I call “Trump pre-trial hearings” that we all watched from beginning to end, we are chocked by Trump’s mafioso behavior and by the GOP’s “omerta.” Thanks to the rigor, ethics and honesty of some government employees to expose Trump’s monstrosity, we might see the man donning an orange jumpsuit. 

I just hope that this courageous young lady gets the physical protection she deserves, because in view of Trump’s total disregard for the rule of law and the like-minded thugs supporting him, I am scared for her.

Lost and isolated by technology

A few nights ago, as we were out on our evening stroll, we ran into two elderly neighbors that we hadn’t seen for a long time. She is 82, he is 88. They are doing the best they can to get out but are visibly much less alert than the last time we saw them and are now moving very slowly. 

We began chatting and they told us that the new Sony TV they bought for their family room isn’t working at all. They said they bought it at Best Buy four months ago and the installers didn’t bother to make sure it worked after they were done hooking it up on the wall. 

I offered to help them and soon found myself inside their home trying without success to get it to work. To make a long story short I asked them “Where’s the cable box?” as I couldn’t locate it. I then called Xfinity and explained the situation. After 34 minutes on hold, I finally got a female agent that I briefed on the situation. 

She asked me to check the two other TVs in the house and locate their respective boxes, which I found easily, and when it came to the new TV there was indeed none and no HDMI plug attached to the TV. Then, the couple explained to me that they gave the old TV to some charity or junk removal service, that must have also removed the box that was there, hooked on the TV.

Over the four-month period, the couple had multiple visits from their kids and grand kids who tried unsuccessfully to get that particular TV to work but no one took the initiative to do something or call the cable company and get the problem resolved. A pretty pathetic tale on how kids treat their elders!

A new neighbor…

Our garden is home to all kinds of wildlife, big and small, from the occasional moose, the frequent deer and cottontail rabbit, to our permanent residents the squirrels, magpies, robins, birds of all kinds and more rarely, gopher snakes. 

Last Friday, however, we welcomed a new one, a Uinta ground squirrel (Urocitellus armatus), a members of the squirrel family of rodents, related to the marmot, that lives in the ground. Locally, we call them “pot-guts” after their rounded belly.

Cute and full of personality, they’re primarily herbivorous, and mostly eat grass, seeds, and leaves, along with a small amount of earthworms and discarded human food. These guys don’t work too hard, as they’re only active for a few months each year. 

These diurnal animals wake from hibernation around March-April and return to their burrows to hibernate as early as late July and mid August. When they come out of hibernation, they mate underground, each male mating with several females. Gestation lasts 23 to 26 days, and results in an average litter of five young early May. 

They can live for up to seven years in the wild and could also be your neighbors if you lived in Park City!

The Big Lie and the Biggest Lie

Trump is the Liar-in-Chief of the United States. The modern incarnation of Pinocchio not only legalized lying, but made it part of all of his conversations. The man literally lies as he breathes. His biggest legacy of course, would have been to lie and keep the lie that he won the 2022 election alive to this day and believed by a huge minority of gullible Americans. 

Right wing politicians too say they believe that too, but they are hypocrites. This in America is known as the “Big Lie”. Yet, as powerful Trump and his cronies think it is, it gets beaten by the “Biggest Lie” which has been around for thousands of years and is used very effectively by all kinds of organized religions to control and, in most cases, oppress human beings the world over. 

What that Biggest Lie is about is totally unproven, improbable and yet it reign supreme over continents countries, separating entire populations from their hard-earned money and telling them what to do under the menace of ostracism and worse. 

In some countries, like Iran or Israel, religion also governs and in America, this idea of theocracy is seeping through society and this past Friday has now invaded the US Supreme Court. We always have had a big theocracy in Utah, where the Mormons control the state legislature, so we’re already used to this kind of Biggest Lie, but if Americans don’t wake up, Christian Mullahs will soon roam their bedrooms and suck their blood. 

My fellow American, think about this when you cast your vote this November!

Inside the head of Trump supporters

Sometimes I wonder what happens inside the head of Trump supporters. It must be as barren as a desert with very little exciting going on there. At the minimum gullibility, at the extreme primeval anger. 

This time tough, I’d like to focus on Republican members of congress that have, and still are supporting Trump, and that in the context of the January 6 hearing for which I watched the fifth installment yesterday. From these politicians 

I'd ask one simple question: “Now, that you’ve learned enough about Trump’s criminal intent, are you ready to take a stand against him and what he represents?” 

Then I'd continue by probing them further: “If you are, it’s good to realize that you’re finally seeing the light and that you were idiots, hypocrites or a combination of the two, which is your perfect right as citizens.” 

I'd conclude by saying: “If you are still supportive of Trump’s Big Lie after you should also be guilty by association, isn’t that right?” This is my communication to them.

A daily opportunity to solve problems

I see problem-solving as a salutary task that keeps us thinking, forces us to observe, make deductions, find creative solutions and cultivate patience. To me, it’s nothing but continuing education. 

At first, like anyone, I resented each time a problem landed on my laps, but after years of ups and down, of good and bad experiences and of taming more problems than being vanquished by them, I have accumulated so much wisdom and experience, that I welcome problems. 

 I know they’ll teach me something as I begin working at solving them. In fact, the more time I spend resolving a riddle the better I feel, so I must be enjoying the process and it’s simply because I’m adding precious knowledge that might serve me might serve me in the future and adds to the heap of know-how I already have collected. 

This is why problem-solving has become my new passion and I know that in that department there’s so much raw material available that the rest of my life will never experience boredom.