Maybe better than we did
Sylvia Shawcross
Now, Godot the raccoon, now aptly named Myrtle-Godot arrived plump and tired and fuzzy at dawn for what would be her morning feed. She laid her cool fingers on my hand and touched me with her cold nose and then she sprawled on her side to eat which I had not seen her do before.
Languidly laying there she reached out and scooped up the kibble at leisure with her little paws. I soon realized why. She was exhausted. There, behind her, five little wee faces. And I thought… I’m in trouble now.
I had been plotting how I was going to have to stop this nonsense or at least curtail it because really, it is a kind of madness to think you can feed six raccoons (now 11?) every single night and not expect the woodpile to be thrown about and the flowerpots up tipped and the howl of raccoon arguments all night.
I thought perhaps I’d feed them out on the ground and keep them away from the deck where the spiders spin and the moths flutter and the cats watch. A place where there was at least at some point in time a sense of rhyme and reason in the night. Unlike now.
And so, having decided to curtail all this, five little faces show up. Wee little baby faces. And the female hormones you’d think you’d eliminated at menopause for all their nonsensical repercussions race back and you are a mother to the gol’darned wilderness again. Heart swelling protective.
And yes, it is a terrible mistake to anthropomorphize wild creatures who are wild by definition (and hence perhaps much better than humans). But still, the heart is foolish.
Because they are wee. They are fuzzy. They are fragile innocent smuggly-bugully creatures whose lifespan in the wild is about five years but in captivity can be 20 or more. Because life out there is hard. And those five wee faces with innocent eyes and curious fingers are fated to hard times. And I cannot protect them. No more than Myrtle-Godot can.
She will raise them and send them on their way. Because that is the way of nature.
And sometimes, when I’m out there in the world, which is not very often and not for very long, I will see the young children here and there and feel that same feeling—the heart swell protective that wants them to have a gentle easy life with all the good the world can give them.
And I, who had no children, say a silent prayer for other’s children. But even more so for the parents who must find a way to raise them for the hard times that are here and coming. How can they do that? In this world?
There are those who say, “Oh heavens we raised a bunch of entitled snowflakes.” The children who cry if they have to work and they have a preponderance of hurt feelings. And they don’t know how to do anything practical at all. I wouldn’t say that though. I would say they have been born for a world we have not yet made and it will be their life challenge to create it.
They may be the generation that will not compromise. They will not be debt slaves. They will not act out repressed emotions. They will stop wars. They will value feelings and nurture nature. They will value music and art far beyond the idea of money. They will re-remember history and the lessons learned. They will put reason and logic where reason and logic belong. They will treasure compassion and hope and children. They will never tolerate deliberate divisiveness again and they will demand leaders of the highest integrity. Because they are, snowflakes or not, very very smart. Smarter than we are or ever hoped to be.
They just have to get there from here and it ain’t gonna be a pretty ride. Right now they are in a harsh learning phase. But they will learn quickly. They are going to face some of the hardest challenges a generation can face but I have no doubt they will find solutions we never even entertained. As if the vast universe of knowledge available to them will suddenly coalesce into humanity’s greatest achievements, rising up from the groundswell.
They will be fine. Eventually.
When they sort through what we’ve tried to give them and polished it all up with their dreams of a better world. It will be dazzling. In the meantime, the best that we can do is show them the things we never did figure out… such as wars and greed and suffering and class differences and totalitarianism.
We can show them history and how “this” will inevitably lead to “that” and what will they do? How will they find their way through? We can show them Faith and Hope. They might just figure it out. Better than we did.
Today’s earworm:
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FYI – we are experiencing another DDoS attack so Cloudflare is currently operating to keep the site online
I am getting that too. Maybe because I tried to post (not here) the real reason, that almost all Tories have resigned including Gove…
https://x.com/robinmonotti/status/1793568491456668057?mx=2
Don’t be fooled. Once thrown onto a router tonyopmoc’s underwear can appear as a global DDoS attack.
Racoons are lovely but exotic little brain-critters that I have only ever seen behind a dumpster, ofc we do not have them in my neck of the woods, Instead we feast with magpies and the great Eurasian badger(which is much more handsome than the North American counterpart), I am not here to babble about that, butt however to tell you Sylvia, that you must purchase Nokia dumphbones for these adorable beasts and not let them follow in your footsteps when it comes to matters such as digital telephony and spy devices, even though your writings are always fun to read and very poetic(said with no sarcasm) , time has told us that you still cannot be trusted to give the Raccons proper phone judgment as you still sit there android-cutting board in hand swiping! For shame!
I don’t believe today’s kids will fare or do any better than any other generation. How can they when the world is still allowed to be run (overrun?) by homicidal maniacs who would gladly slaughter millions for a pretty bauble buried deep underground? Resource rich = people poor. The richest lands on Earth are peopled by the poorest people.
(BTW, thanks for the earworm – even if it establishes me as a gauche gadfly. I downloaded this song many years ago from the radio; then uploaded it into a playlist on my pc. Not knowing what a gem I had, I labeled it simply “Unknown with Flute.” To add insult to injury, I had to turn to my James Last collection to find its real name.)
Friends of mine have Badgers visit them every night they’ve now brought there baby’s.
another has a Fox knocking on there backdoor window awaiting food.
Once food or what ever it is your offering stops they may go.
In the main time I have seen depressed grumpy lonely people lives changed with a visit from nature.
Could be worse you could… I read on line in alt media who have reported the unchecked /unvaccinated / uncivilized migrants on welfare wearing free Palestine socks living in 9 star migrant hotels naked and wanking in there gardens drinking and washing in there ponds.
Thanks Sylvia.
Keep em comin.
Syl, is this your future? https://x.com/i/status/1793813045979799841
Someone has to save me from myself methinks
At a loss.
Again.
In my 20 years as an outdoor educator I unintentionally saddened a number of people with stories about the workings of nature. “Energy in a natural system never goes to waste.”, if you get my drift. Tears. Lots of tears from tender minds. For 11 years after that I worked closely with a good friend in planning the management of blocks of natural areas. Some small. Some large. Some tiny. Three biggest problems were: Deer, people and raccoons. Deer eat most of the plants. Raccoons eat most of the animals. People poach most of the plants and animals. All three groups are overpopulated. They are not the only problems. The wildlife biologist was nicknamed The Terminator. Not people, of course. At least, I don’t think so. Not counting the United Nations depopulation plan either.
You are not alone, Sylvia. One of our biologists was an artist who illustrated our educational displays. She had a thing for chipmunks. Nancy Halliday. You many have seen some of some of her artwork. She created a chipmunk crossing sign for us to erect on our entrance drive after a chipmunk was killed by a car. I explained that only one chipmunk was ever run over in all the years I had worked on that site. Did not matter. We gave her hell. Chipmunks were everywhere and the highlight of a nature walk for a family. The sign went up and she was happy.
In urban areas, animals generally have far more rights, policies for them, or people concerned over them, compared to the fate and welfare of the masses (little people). In rural areas where Nature stands in the way of Capital, this concern for animals does not hold, of course.
your a bundle of joy!!!
The worst thing is they’ll never be allowed to know how badly we let them down, if we don’t fix things now.
who’s they? several of my friends and family are dead – some sudden deaths from “safe and effective”
We? We are stopped from doing most things that benefit nature while the exploiters tear the land to pieces. I’ve witnessed nature reserves, local allotments, farmland and wetlands sold off to developers. The worse thing of all this destruction is this.. No one did or said a f-ing thing while it was happening.
What do you mean? Our youngsters were the first to run to take the PCR noser, pick on fancy Masks, and took every single booster to get first their Vaxx ID.
Next they ran to the bank to get their Digital ID on their Smart Phone, their Smart wallet, and their own QR code, despite all warnings, alerts, references to the bible, elderly experience obsolete, to face a “modern” future. Lost.
Those few youngsters who found out it was a trap, now blame their parents and grandparents for deliberately leading them into a prison…….for money, although we were playing trombone tree times a day from the roof top during the whole lock down.
I did my job, and I am not gonna put my ear to any whiner’s blame game at this stage. Look:
Perhaps your comment highlights a need, despite the odds, for older generations to better assert their traditional role.
The welfare state has divided and conquered their traditional roles:
Men as a violent specie suppressing women in a thousand years exploiting children as his servants.
Women as varan mom working outside to hoard money not caring a shit for her children.
Grand parents as elderly bomb and burden because they dont contribute to the economy.
Children a cost burden on the family’s and our society’s excel sheet.
Politicians incompetent idiots who always pay too little to welfare engineers.
But luckily we have the leftists who are Researchers and Professors in Social Problems, child problems, ground school problems, Oncology problems, Kindergarten Teachers, Child Specialists, Elderly homes, Public Family Care, Public paid “friends” visits, loneliness research.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/immigration-islam-and-the-deliberate-crashing-of-the-welfare-system/
https://ihr.org/other/unknownwarriorsdevlin
https://www.hostize.com/r/CHY6Q5Kouz/nicholas-pringle-the-unknown-warriors-pdf
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/An-admittedly-very-8Sm4kPoGT5u.K_j2TziYAg
Thank you Sylvia. Your beauty is eternal. So necessary to counterbalance all the ugliness in the world.
Thank you for a very uplifting article, Sylvia. You sound like a lovely soul, and your written words and obviously deep appreciation of music, demonstrate that to be so!
Zamfir’s stirring performance offers a glimpse into the amazing power of the human spirit. Harnessing that will see us through these horrid times…
We fed a wild cat who had 2 cubs, we made the cubs come inside to eat while the mother moved on. One of the well fed inside semi wild cubs got pregnant 2 years later and then had 5 cubs, we had to start giving the cubs away or fights would ensue.
On a different topic, I’m going to follow up on a pledge I made some months ago concerning donations, two percent of contributions from my site to here.
Now I fully realize that OG does not operate on donations alone, and probably could also function to some degree w/o them. As the mechanism providers use to be able to donate, have to have some kind of interest in the site or their 3rd party involvement could either confiscate, or refuse to provide that service.
At my site I did not have the luxury of that cooperation and as such, elected to explore a different path of which is still evolving. None the less I just launched the contributions page and should be able to check in once a month to see if contributions were had.
Good luck to all, and to all a good day.
Here’s a link to the site,
http://alabamatheperson.com/
On my site there is no contributions – none wanted, none asked for, none gotten. That way I know no one but me will ever see it. People have a way of assuming that only something they have to pay for is worth their while. So, yes, if you want visitors – make them pay. They’ll love you for it.
Who said anything about paying?
Thank you for your contributions!
We actually do operate on donations alone. Small amounts from individual readers is the only income we have.
Sophie – God Bless
You have a lot of folks that help for free then, that do not derive their income solely from donations here, the site is an add on to their daily productive lives, is what I meant.
Thank you Sylvia for your courage and wisdom and beauty. I have to hope, it’s all that’s left.
Thank you for introducing me to the Pan Flute, what a delicate, haunting sound, right up there with my favourite woodwind- the Cor Anglais. Music was my first love…
Keep helping the wild things, they love us for it. I’ve a particular chaffinch that flies up to me and circles around me excitedly when he sees me coming down the field, bless his little soul.
Blessings to you.
Sylvia is awesome.
Western Tech, what a beautiful gift…
A Russian soldier tried to fight a Ukrainian FPV drone with a shovel
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1cycwta/a_russian_soldier_tried_to_fight_a_ukrainian_fpv/
What happens to most maybes?
Your best ever. Thanks.
I just asked my wife how The Barnsley Lamb Chops got from South Yorkshire to a Welsh Hill.
She says the Biggest is mine.
Maybe better, or maybe this is as good as it gets when apples don’t fall far from the tree:
The people believe the lying goverment , protect others . do your duty .stay safe etc.etc.etc .the constant messages to the people are to protect each other and their selves of course .THE PEOPLE BELEIVE THEIR GOVERMENT 100% .why wouldnt they . The goverment are paid by the people to do their duty to us THANKYOU
..and your grandparents, and your neighbours, and your friends, and your work colleagues, and finally you call the police to handcuff all those those who refuse to be like you and everybody else. 🙃 .
……………and you think its funny, but its is not funny. But you still believe in humanity:
I believe that deep inside an ISIS warrior who burned people alive, headchopped people, m.m. has a human heart ye? No! Fokking NO.
So why does it seems that somewhere the Elite goes it right in their estimation of the 500 mio. The perverts got it right? Something is completely wrong in this equation.