TheBanyanTree: Blue Moon

[Dale M. Parish]

I don't understand the two Farmer's Almanacs that I got for Christmas  
not agreeing on things-- I can understand their not agreeing on the  
weather, but a lunar ecipse of the moon seems something that's not  
open for interpretation.  I have to taint it with the little Palm  
Pilot application that I've relied on for some years to show riseing  
and setting time for both the sun and the moon. I used to use the  
almanac to give me the general sunrise and set time, but for the ten  
years I've carried a Palm in my pocket, I've come to rely on the  
calculator, almanac and book reader to the extent that I feel naked  
without them.  I'm more inclined to believe it that either of the  
printed almanacs, based on past consistency.

Now, one predicts the lunar eclipse an hours difference from the same  
time that it predicts the full moon.  Not the start of the eclipse,  
but the peak.  And there's always room for interpretation of which  
time zone an almanac needs to be corrected, but I don't understand how  
a lunar eclipse can occur when the moon's not full.  Peter, help me on  
this.

All other things aside, this past year has become one of my least  
favorite years in my six decades.  Political and economic predictions  
aside, my personal life has been a merry-go-round of emotional and  
career assignations in which my outlook for the future gets  
depressing.  I fought and lost a complaint against my supervisor,  
providing details in which she had blackmailed my wife for a passing  
grade in a college class.  My employer's position is that since the  
actions did not take place on company property, it didn't happen.  I  
can look forward to next year working under her with dampened  
enthusiasm, and hope weakly that she honors my request for a job  
transfer while knowing that come March, she'll assignate my evaluation  
and any opportunity for a raise, placing me on the endangered list  
three years before retirement eligibility.  But I'm not going to let  
her have a free ride.  Somewhere in my medicine bag there will be a  
totem that will protect me, if I just learn the incantations. Isn't  
that what life's all about -- the struggle?  Not the destination, but  
the ride?  That which does not kill you makes you stronger.

It's been the wettest fall I can remember.  Today, there was quite a  
bit of excitement in the "neighborhood."   Cindy and I were using the  
tie tongs to drag up backlogs for the fireplace when we heard  
something and looked up to see an eightween wheeler van chugging up  
the road.  Then another, and another.  This is a Dead End road.  The  
highway department sign says so at the freeway!

A couple of months ago, an equipment rental company had dispatched a  
driver to deliver a 3 yard bucket track hoe somewhere, and he ended up  
down here.  The school bus barely has room to turn around at the end  
of our road.  This driver recognized that he couldn't turn around at  
the end of the road, so continued across the cattleguard and on up the  
road, flattening two aluminum boats at the pond to what resembled  
crumpled aluminum foil, taking half of several oak trees out, and  
leaving ruts in the ditch at every curve, before he buried the front  
axels of his tractor trying to turn around, and a twin-screw wrecker  
had to be called to get him out.  It's wetter now that it was then,  
with a month's rain on the ground.  The rental company promised to fix  
all the mailboxes he took out, fill in the ruts, etc. but only the  
ruts have been filled so far.   Dunno about the boat reimbursements.   
But I digress.

The entire neighborhood turned out today en masse to drive our  
vehicles out and park them in our driveways at the edge of the road to  
prevent any eightteen wheeler drivers from attempting to turn around  
in our driveways.  I had been tweeted that the westbound interstate  
would be closed down to one lane between 0900 and 1600 today between  
the Farm-To-Market a couple of clicks east of here to here at Cow  
Bayou.  The problem is that the Cow Bayou bridge on the interstate  
feeder road that we've always had to take was torn out for replacement  
a few months ago, and there's no way to get out of here.  Our only  
access back to civilization is a one-lane, two-way traffic section in  
which only we locals are permitted to traverse.  We thought.  There  
are interstate highway signs that state that the feeder road is closed  
to any through traffic 500 meters up the road, where the barricaded  
lane forces all traffic onto the on-ramp, unless you know to go around  
the barricate in the left lane against the one way sign.  Why would a  
truck drive think that he should do that?   All four of the truck  
drivers I questioned swore that they were directed away from the on- 
ramp against the warning signs and up the dead end road by flagmen.   
Maybe they were, but I'll bet no one will be found who will admit to  
such directions.

But it's impressive what four marooned truckers can do working  
together to back 13 meter trailers into a school bus turnaround,  
through a cattle guard and back out when they can see that they're all  
up the same said creek without a paddle.  The county will repair some  
of the damage that was done to the school bus turnaournd and the ruts  
on the road shoulder they left trying to squeeze past each other.  We  
know from experience that when the trucker tells us that their company  
will repair the damages, that when the trucking company is called, the  
ressponse is that they don't have any record of their truck making any  
deliveries in our neighborhood.  The Department of Public Safety was  
dispatched last time because the damages were attributed to or  
associated with the construction on the Interstate.  The county will  
deny any responsibilty or authority because of the state's Interstate  
construction, and the DPS's dispatcher refuses to send a DPS officer  
because we're on a county road and they believe the county should work  
any problems off the interstate.  A typical beaucracratic response.   
No one's responsible.  It will be intersting to see what response the  
neighborhood takes next time this happens.

Hugs,
--
Dale M. Parish
628 Parish Rd
Orange TX 77632		http://parishdm.home.att.net