Low Points and High Points

The ever-useful, ever-informative Point-Interface email list in Point Roberts has today brought us to a summer low point (which in itself is informative and, perhaps, useful): someone has absentmindedly (?) left a mattress in the parking lot of the Trinity Lutheran Church and someone else has absentmindedly (?) left a dead sea lion on the beach in Lighthouse Park. Is this the natural pathway of a spectacularly downhill-sliding trash collection problem? And if so, what is next? Non-functional ferries left on South Beach (rather than over in B.C. near Deas Slough, where they rightly belong)? Cargo containers gathering up on the baseball field (instead of Mitchell Island) as a result of Americans' failure to buy enough from Chinese manufacturers? Perhaps we’ll start finding excessively amorous Republican office holders cluttering up the corners of the Post Office, creating their own dead letter office.

Hard Times, indeed.

On the other hand, there are high points. I, myself, have just watched a son and daughter-in-law leave after a wonderful visit in which the absolute pleasure of their company was absolutely amplified by their generous willingness to help us along in our twilight years by rebuilding a cement block pathway; doing a lot of maintenance on the frog pond; providing us with a pair of perfectly-engineered hummingbird feeders; and giving me and teaching me how to use a Kindle. All those years of childcare repaid in a flash!

And now I have to go read my new book, walk on the new walkway, admire the much cleaner and better arranged frog pond, and feed a hummingbird before they leave, too. And mop up a few, discrete tears.