Current Events

Dear Maria,

Now summer arrives after you have seen a raft load of triple-digit temperatures. A 96 here this week sets the high mark so far for this season. More heat to follow, no doubt.

Glad to see you in good form while visiting Santa Fe. I have not been in that area of the world since ’98 and can only wonder at how much it has grown or changed. True locals like those anywhere that became a destination must think newcomers and tourists the root of all ills. At least tourists spend money, taxes included, and go home.

I always flinch on behalf of the locale when I see articles about best places to visit, to retire, to move, to discover—an odd notion that. National news outlets touting geographic gems? Shut up.

No danger of such reportage here in Lyman even as Greenville gets a fair share of media fanfare.

My news is of the backyard sort, squash and tomatoes sighted, cucumber and melon vines developing, a pair of robins collecting nesting material. The first garlic, a bit of a revelation when fresh from the garden to the sauté pan. Not so pungent a taste, lightly aromatic—with the added quality of being an antidote to vampires, of course.

As for other news, I am mostly sure that the parents I know, have known, would do anything to keep their children safe, to make their lives better. Fortunately, overwhelmingly, those parents never faced such dire circumstances as seen elsewhere, and likely never will.

Broadly, one thought on the matter I have in mind. Better to live in the location where people flee to than from. No point in chewing too much on this bone as even more broadly, to me it seems, politics and power make pawns of us all.

I am glad your family is safe and well, I am glad my neighbors’ families are safe and well, I am glad my family is safe and well.

Glad, too, that you are feeling perkier. So, to better days ahead.

Yours, truly,

srk