In Spite of Us, the Globe Keeps Revolving

Each morning, I give The New York Times website a quick read for an update of the world’s state. Today, March 17, it is grim, to say the least. The radiation threat in Japan has the world holding its collective breath. Fighting in the Middle East has the price of gasoline teetering on $4 a gallon. Virtually every state government is broke, and so is the federal government, but it just keeps the printing presses running overtime to churn out more currency.
Society has nodded its approval to a variety of actions that, in the past, would have been cause for great shame, but then, shame is a word on the endangered list, like “thank you” and “please.” Teens who feel the necessity to snap images of their private parts then send them over the airwaves to acquaintances telephones and computers, will not be treated as spreading child pornography, but will be reprimanded and told not to do it again.
My mind feels as if it’s in a huge eggbeater, and it would be so easy to throw up my hands and give up, but that won’t happen.
I enjoy freedom. I believe I’ve earned the right to say that, in my earlier days I donned the uniform of a sailor did Uncle Sam’s calling, saw how massive the Pacific Ocean really is, and was spared through big waves and rough seas.
Looking past the present sham and drudgery, it’s glorious to see rows of daffodils blossoming in yards. While I confess I hated to set the clock ahead an hour on March 13, it’s great to eat supper and still have enough light outside to either go out and enjoy, or at least not feel cloistered in darkness.
My daughter and I went on a bicycle ride last Saturday. Much against my standards of never pedaling into the wind, on the way home, we trekked the newest part of Middle Township’s bike path, from Dias Creek Road to Shell Bay Avenue. It was like pushing into a wind tunnel. I felt muscles move that had not worked in at least several weeks.
I felt like saying, “Go ahead, I’ll catch up later,” but I pushed along. Physical exercise is good for the desk-bound, and that’s a reason I cherish that cruiser whose tires really need replacing, since the tread is going smooth on them.
On another part of the path, just past the Atlantic Electric’s transformer yard off Goshen Road, (that always reminds me of a space station, and I fully expect to see space creatures roaming about the high voltage lines in outfits like in “2001, A Space Odyssey.”), we heard that most glorious sound in all of spring’s creation: “the frogs.”
Not actually frogs, of course, but tiny peepers whose collective voices drown out almost every other sound. An annual rite, I don’t know how it started, when either my son or I heard the first frogs of spring, we let each other know. “I heard the frogs.” It is a sound more glorious to our ears than “Happy New Year,” because that rustic rattling in the night air sends a signal to this tired world that rebirth is occurring.
Another harbinger of the season is those day lilies sprouting up all over the flower garden.
In what will seem only a few moons, they will bloom anew each day in glorious shades of orange, one a day until their power is fully expended. A benefit of moving an hour ahead means going out to fetch the morning paper under a canopy of stars. Each morning,
I look to see which are visible that day. Is that Venus over in the east, or is it Jupiter? I wonder how ancient sheepherders knew which was which, and then I think, “Wow, those are the same stars the ancients saw.” It’s the same moon the Vikings used to light their way across the dark oceans of antiquity. It’s those same stars that early navigators used to guide them to the new world.
Here we are, today, in a world that seems to be falling apart, shaking itself like a wet dog, trudging along a seeming path to destruction. That’s when we need to look away from this place, into that place more glorious, over which we have not one iota of control. The moon and stars do not need our assistance. Those tiny frogs don’t need us to alert them to the fact spring is here. I’m not the one who sounds an alarm to those lilies, or to the trees, which have already sprouted reddish buds, a precursor of summer’s greenery.
Read the news, but don’t let the doom and gloom depress you. There is a great and marvelous world just outside the door functioning independent of our meddling.
Our footprints in the sand will last for just a moment, and then a wave, controlled by a greater force than ourselves, will wash them away. Those we leave behind will be left the wonders of this world and all that is in it. In our brief day, let us help them to appreciate the things they cannot control that remain eternal.