The Blueberries Were Late This Year

Back when my parents were still alive, they planted several blueberry bushes around their home in Coosa County. Mama and Daddy are gone, but their blueberry bushes continue to bear fruit. Every year in late June and early July, the berries start to ripen. Some years there is a big crop, some years not so many. Regardless of the crop size, for every year since the bushes originally started bearing, the berries have always seemed to ripen on the same schedule. First the big bush up near the house by the chinaberry would start to ripen. Then the bushes at the edge of the front yard and by the garage and finally the ones in the back near the green house. Most years by my birthday on July 11th they were about gone. As soon as the last of the crop ripens, the song birds, crows and turkeys move in and pretty well clean the bushes up.

Yesterday, July 16th I went down there with my daughter and my oldest grandson to pick berries. There were still plenty of ripe berries and a few pink ones. From the looks of it, there will be some berries for at least another week. It seems to me that the entire season has shifted forward this year by 10 to 14 days. Maybe not, maybe I am just getting old and have started remembering things differently but my sister insists that all the berries were gone last year by the weekend following the 4th. Maybe she is getting old too.

Zoning

When I worked at the power company, I had a supervisor that was also an attorney. Nice guy and very intelligent. I always liked him alot and agreed with him on most everything. One thing we did disagree on was zoning. I am totally and absolutely against zoning. I feel that if a person owns a piece of property, they should be allowed to do with it as they please. Of course there are some things that would not be allowed because they are against the law, like running a cathouse, or making moonshine whiskey, but if it ain't illegal, then it should be allowed. He always countered my argument that owners need protection. One time I remember him offering up the example of what if someone built a nice home and then someone moved in next door and built a hog farm. At the time, I did not have a good answer, now many years later I realize that the answer to that is if you fear what your neighbor might do, move into a subdivision that has suitable covenants and restrictions and a HOA that will enforce them. Or, if you really want to be safe, buy enough property so that your nearest neighbor will be so far away that they could crap in their front yard and you still would not care.

Most folks would agree with my former supervisor. They say what can it hurt to have a zoning board to look out for the interests of the people. If you agree, take a look at this article from al.com . That is what happens when you have a zoning board. You give some people a little power and they go batshit crazing if anyone challenges it. Over the years I have had some friends in Gardendale but I don't know anybody that lives there now. If I did, I would ask them if all of the city's business was taken care of in such good shape that they had the spare money laying around to pay the legal fees required to fight a zoning battle all the way to the Alabama Supreme Court. All of this over 21 inches in variances and on top of all that they lost. Nope, my old supervisors argument may sound good, but in the real world, zoning equals trouble.

Emotional Topics

Every body knows that there are certain topics that should be avoided when you are talking to a diverse group of people. They are politics, religion, sex, abortion and guns. There are probably others but those 5 are the ones that I have been taught to avoid like the plague. The reason of course is that these are emotional topics. You can almost never have a reasonable conversation with someone of an opposing view point on an emotional topic. You both have a strong opinion and react emotionally when ever you sense that it is being challenged. For that reason, when you are talking to or with a large , diverse group, you avoid those topics.

The internet is a diverse group. In fact it may comprise the single largest diverse group in the entire world. Even it's small subgroups and forums can be large and diverse. I am a member of one yahoo group that claims it has over 6000 members. Only about 2 dozen people post to it regularly but there are apparently a lot of us lurkers out there. Because these groups are so large and diverse, most of them have a ground rule that prohibits discussions that involve the aforementioned emotional topics. The obvious exceptions are groups where one or more of the emotional topics are the stated subject of interest of the group itself.

Lately, I have noticed that there is a new subject that is being discussed more and more and every time it comes up, it is just like a discussion of one of the 5 emotional topics I mentioned previously. That topic is anthropogenic global warming (AGW). You would think that something with roots in data that can be observed scientifically like AGW could be discussed logically without emotion to a point where some general concensus could be reached, but believe me, it ain't happening. If you dare to question any of the claims made by Mr Gore in his book, you will be swarmed on like someone who kicked a yellowjacket nest. After seeing this happen repeatedly, I thought about suggesting to group moderators to include AGW as a 6th emotional topic to be prohibited, but the more that I think about it, I don't think we need to add a 6th topic. We just need to realize that for some people, AGW has become a religion and as such is already prohibited from discussion.