Spring Blown Gone

The Redbud blooms are doomed tonite, with a stiff north wind and freezing sleet falling from cold, gray, cloudy skies, with hissing ice lying on the ground making the bare earth white.

The sunny blue of Saturday is gone, gone as quickly as it seemed to arrive, chased by the clouds blown in by the storm. Those blue skies and warm winds and sunny spots of greenery have disappeared.

Beware, beware! Your dreams of spring from yesterday will freeze and splinter in the wind tonite, in the cold north wind that is descending on the city and is forcing young saplings to lean to the south.

Winter is upon us yet again. So put aside those dreams of spring you had, those dreams of wildflowers waving in the breeze, for the air is cold and the skies are gray and the ice on the sidewalk crunches underfoot.

Spring is farther away than it seemed, farther than it seemed just yesterday.

9:13:49 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

Look Over There!

While the White House has the media dancing like puppets on strings about codes orange and duct tape and the impending war, look what they have in store for us. The ACLU (as linked in TalkLeft) has a detailed analysis of the Department of Justice plans for combatting the terrorists among us:

ACLU: The draft legislation ... Diminishes personal privacy by removing checks on government power ... Diminishes public accountability by increasing government secrecy ... Diminishes corporate accountability under the pretext of fighting terrorism ... Undermines fundamental constitutional rights of Americans under overbroad definitions of terrorism and terrorist organization ... Unfairly targets immigrants under the pretext of fighting terrorism ... [ACLU analysis]

This is not vague hyperbole. The statements are backed up with specifics defending their claims. And then (after they've presented the specifics) they provide an exhaustive section-by-section analysis of the proposal, a proposal that only came to light by virtue of a leak -- can't have those terrorists get ahold of our plans to ensure the domestic tranquility now, can we?

8:59:51 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

Four Hours to Spare

It is 11:00am on a long weekend. The sky is blue, but the wind still carries a chill. Central Texas spring is several weeks away, but the sun is getting warmed up for the season that is just around the corner, so by noon it should be warm enough.

The boy is off from school today. Left to his own devices, he'll settle in front of a monitor or a Gameboy or maybe just a book in bed. But today that will not do, not with a blue sky outdoors, no matter how chilly the wind. And anyway, by noon it should be warm enough.

When noon does come and the sun is higher in the sky and the songs of the morning birds -- the Cardinals and Wrens and Mockingbirds -- have yielded to the sounds of the city, we pack up a lunch and put on our shoes and grab a light jacket and head out the door.

There is a place we know with a path in the woods: a quiet, secluded, out-of-the-way place. That place is where we will go today. With our lunches in a backpack and drinks on our belts, we go to that place and follow the path from where the road ends at a dead-end sign.

We follow the path across a brown meadow and thru standing clusters of juniper and oak. We follow it to where it begins to descend, sloping first slowly and then cascading over tumbled shelves of limestone and gnarled tree roots. It takes us down: down the tumbling steps, beneath a canopy of leafless Red Oak and evergreen Live Oak waiting for the spring, thru the fragrance of Juniper, into the coolness down by the creek's edge where the rushing water calls.

Do you have four hours to spare? Come with us, we'll take you there. Down to the green-blue water rushing over its white limestone bed. Up past the rapids. Past the rope swings hanging from branches reaching out over a deep, still pool. Along the canyon walls. To the falls and beyond.

Do you have four hours to spare? Come with us! I promise you'll sleep well tonite!

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Barton Creek Greenbelt, Austin TX
9:40:40 AM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []