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Sidenotes
By Peter Kidd, April 2010
It's March, 50 degrees and sunny today. Last week I was out of electricity for five days, using a wood stove, two candles, and melting snow to flush. Have to love New Hampshire's fickle weather.
Soon, I'll have to actually make my way to my office and go through the winter's messages. Buy myself a Day Calendar, things like that.
There were a few fine articles in the last Newsletter, between President's notes, Phil Caldwell, and the ontological quester, Dr Dirt. It flashed me back to writing my first President's Notes, and counseling other presidents. In the early days as Newsletter Editor, it bothered me so few would contribute articles, a handful really. As years passed and I refigured things, I grew to understand it was not a selfishness, but rather a self-consciousness that kept members from contributing. In general, most people do not want to be held responsible for their words and ideas, have them documented forever. I look at writing as open-ended, not necessarily looking for closure or a summation. It's always been easy for me. I need ten times the will to do a landscape design than to write an article or a poem.
In regards to the right brain/left brain polemic, I would offer that no person without a fully developed left brain/right brain has yet to make a major contribution to humankind or culture. It's a basic requirement to being an eclectic thinker. And I would also like to second the notion that all occurs in the now. It is something I came to realize with every fiber of my being when my son was fighting stage 3b cancer 15 years ago. As a poet I have reduced it from day by day to instant to instant, So, I do think you are onto something John, in terms of reality sandwiches.
What's ahead, lord only knows, business wise. I am hoping enough people have secure incomes, have regrouped from losing their "paper" wealth losses, have stopped spending money as a result, and are now ready to go back and do some projects. One of the downsides of a really slow economy, aside from financial issues, is the lack of proper budgets for what could be interesting and creative landscapes. We are all becoming masters at the $4500 treatment. Ugh!
I have lost most of my ambition. My career, so to speak, is not far from an end. Not to say I am not alive and kicking, rather I almost feel content to see what destiny brings across my desk. In terms of shrinking, hell, I am down to two foreman and one seasonal worker to start this season. I refuse to gobble up my fair lot in the first three months and then twiddle thumbs in August. If the demand presents itself then I shall add people on.
I am recovering from a total hip replacement, my second in five years, so I am an old pro. My neurosis manifests in a way that requires body part replacements. Am starting to feel like one of my older dump trucks, in need of a new suspension system. The pain meds are good enough that I am able to watch much of this movie from afar. Physical Therapy is a form of legal S&M. They get paid well, these sadists, and are considered an integral part of the community. A subculture unto itself.
Wish I was busier trying to sell my novel completed last winter. I need to get on that before work starts up. I have a new book of poems titled Cells of Fancy, a pre-Miltonian image for that which takes in all this chaos of the day and whips it into shape to go on the next day. Anyone interested in buying a copy for $6 can contact me. A shameless plug, I know!
Well, like the sarge that talks to the cops at the start of the shift, "Go out there, heads up, and most of all be safe!" I'm wishing everyone the season they well deserve.