Resourceful

Nature is healing herself in response to the pandemic: lilac runners are shooting up in the garden, the grass needs mowing every couple of days, and my sunflowers and potatoes are happily reaching their fronds toward the sky.

Not only that, but human beings have begun appearing in greater numbers at the usual time in the usual place than in many a month; I know we’re not out of the darkness yet, but these glimmers of hope give one hope for a more hoped-for tomorrow.

Plus, further evidence of making lemonade out of life’s lemons: 

1. Scavenging “firewood” (I guess any wood is “firewood” if the fire’s hot enough) from a hole in the ground that used to be the world’s slowest supermarket;
2. Sourcing firestarter from a convenience store rack of auto-supply products; 
3. “Discovering” a new and actually quite reasonably-placed firepit on the shores of our fair city’s fairest watering hole; and
4. Reinventing a midnight tradition by holding it earlier in the evening and on bikes with electric motors rather than fixed-gear drive trains.

The 18^th century British Empiricist philosopher, David Hume, wrote: “Let the course of things be allowed hitherto ever so regular; that alone, without some new argument or inference, proves not that, for the future, it will continue so.  In vain do you pretend to have learned the nature of bodies from your past experience.”

In other words, we can’t predict the future from past events; just because the sun rose today, yesterday, and all the way back to the beginning of time, doesn’t guarantee that it will do so tomorrow; we can’t be certain about any of our scientific predictions, no matter how accurate they have been so far.

That said, I’m not surprised the evening’s events abounded in such nonsense and shenanigans; every other time I’ve broken Rule #1 and listened to You-Know-Who, things have gone this way; no reason to expect they won’t next time, either, as well.