ROCK ATTACK!

The rain had slowed down to a dribble so your untrepid Fiorella backed her baby car out of the garage, angled it so it was within a few feet of the pile of rocks that sweet neighbor Kathy had left on the side of the driveway as an Easter present, and loaded about a third of them into her trunk. Those rocks would put Fio several yards further up the north driveway. But more important, they felt good in her hands, especially the heavy ones.

You can say all you want about how hoisting heavy rocks makes Fio feel like she's she's doing something meaningful., or maybe that she's finally found a corner of this chaotic universe that she can control. But the truth is that Fiorella has become addicted. To rocks. That maybe everyone in the neighborhood has. Look around--we all have walls, steps. or patios made of local rock.

But are we using the rock, or is it using us? Could it be trying to control us from a primeval rock brain hidden deep in the bowels of the earth? If so, for what purpose? To rise from its earthly prison and take over Georgetown, then the world, just as it has taken over Fiorella?

The Dark Side

Friend PauIa posed an interesting question: how does one find a balance between the world as it is and the world you want it to be for your children? You want to protect them, but you also want them to be savvy enough to be able to protect themselves.

Fio has always been aware of the dark side, what could happen, because she was born in 1942, when no one knew what the outcome of WWII would be. Her family lived in Akron, Ohio, rubber capitol of the world, a prime target for German bombing, and she remembers the blackouts and the fear in her mother's eyes. She remember the shortages, the all-important victory gardens, her father working overtime, and her mother cutting a Christmas dress for her out of Daddy's old tennis slacks,

It looks like we're entering into another dark side right now. But this time the threat comes from within.

Paranoia Revisited

Fiorella lives in an isolated settlement of rugged individualists whose rocky tracts measure at least five acres.  In her experience, the area's worst threat is the armadillos who tear up our meager lawns, but the area's leadership figures seem to have more vivid imaginations. Remember the outcry a few months ago about non-residents driving into our idyllic enclave?  Apparently the hew and cry came to nothing once the cost of decals, floodlights, and security cameras was toted up, but then a new bandwagon came rumbling down our country road.

A person who lives in a neighboring single-road subdivision has bought land in our subdivision and wanted to build what amounted to a road on it to connect across to our road so he would have another way out when the river crossing his road out front flooded.  (Got all that?)

The neighborhood association officers promptly went ballistic and sent out communications about how the road would  threaten our security, lower our property values, and violate the deed restrictions. The last charge hit pay dirt and a a judge issued a restraining order against the would-be road builder.

What Fio draws from all this is that canny politicians will manufacture causes, often dire threats, to radicalize their troops and solidify their own power--or even just to stir up the ant hill.  Think about it.
i