Elementary Notes On Bacteria*

Another great post by Russell Bangs.  Agree with it or not, it’s a fascinating article.  I tend to agree.  In fact, I love stuff like this.  Seems to make sense, since I’ve had my encounters with Gaia here and there, on land, at sea, encounters which tended to direct my attention to what I consider the important stuff in life.

Here’s an anecdote that probably doesn’t have, on a superficial level, anything to do with what Bangs is talking about, but which I think demonstrates the necessary haphazard nature of things (if I understood his post).

The guy who supplies us with firewood called this morning saying he was ready to deliver the couple of “stères” (two cubic metres) I had called about, and would I be at home towards the end of the morning.  Perfect, I answered.  I had just come in from gathering walnuts and was sufficiently warmed up for helping him unload his beautiful old Peugeot benne truck.

The wood unloaded, I invited him in for a coffee and we sat on the edge of the back of his truck and started talking about stuff.  The weather, of course, was first up because it’s been really dry this summer, and it’s causing all sorts of problems for all kinds of activities, mostly agricultural, except for the wine producers, who are going to have a bumper crop.  And the weather question lead to climate change and the question of what kind of world our kids were going to live in.  We agreed that the prospects weren’t encouraging.

Because he didn’t have the necessary change with him, he offered to go back home, get the change, and bring it back.  I suggested that I follow him home, and relieve him of another round trip.

To make a long story short, we ended up sitting in his garden in the late morning sunshine, drinking a couple of rounds of pastis accompanied by freshly fallen hazel nuts, and finding that we were basically on the same page regarding where things are heading, then realising that it well past lunch time, and we had stuff to do.

It was the kind of Saturday morning of dreams.

You can’t make this kind of stuff up.  It just happens.  It was an extraordinarily beautiful Autumn morning.  Not a cloud in the sky, a slight breeze from the northwest, the temperature, in the shade, at 15°C.  In the sun, we were shedding our jackets, our shoes and socks and wondering what we were going to eat for lunch.

But what was enlightening about all this was the fact that there are people out there who are wondering, just as we are, about where we are going.  It only takes the haphazard conversation to get things going.

* Note.  I stole the title of this post from Bangs’ post.  Hope he doesn’t mind.

 

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