Ding Dong Ditch

Before cell phones and internet, we had prank calls on landlines (until the dreaded *69) and Ding Dong Ditch to ghost and harass people...

But this is about neither. I thought of this after posting a comment on a social media platform I don't use often. I'm a Ding Dong Ditcher of comment sections, but there's a good reason I've started this as an unofficial policy.

For one, I often choose heated topics that seem multifaceted and considered but often carry a myopic bias. This means I am looking for a diplomatic way to tell someone they overlooked a sometimes simpler solution. At the same time, I'm not there to field a writer's emotional responses if they lash out. Is it a failure for me to deliver the proper context or a failure on their part to take criticism without it putting them on the offense? Eh, I'm not sure I care right away, but at some point I will. Conversing is part of the learning, but I do have selfish and specific motives for how I deal with it.

As do we all, but I'm not here to force everyone to admit something either.

Hitting publish is something I attempt to avoid when I am most vulnerable, but a comment is a drive-by, even when carefully considered. Not only is there a chance that their fresh posting is leaving them soft-shelled, but there's a risk that I am even not prepared for the discussion.

Right away, that is.

So after saying my piece, even if I ask a question, I don't immediately look for a response or even outright ignore the notification. I often endeavor to forget, leaving notifications hanging to return later. I've never been an immediate responder to texts or messages or calls. Even with friends, I give them specific outlets for the hierarchy of where they'll stand a better chance of a quick response.

I'm sure some might take this as a sign of weakness, but it's more an eccentricity. I'm not out to avoid, but being committed to a public discussion or social situation means I avoid my usual instinct to react on impulse, and want to consider, or even forget, to look at something more critically, to be more considerate. This is not about dangling people along or enforcing patience. I just refuse to be rushed or baited into an emotional response. In my eyes, I'm being respectful and rational, though we can agree to disagree.

The analogy ends with the initial disappearance. I return, after all. Sometimes they don't reply or ignore it. At that point, it's done. It's not for me to demand knowledge of whether they've read it or acted on it. What else? Well, sometimes they thank me, politely or not, and say they've considered it or disagree. It's actually pretty rare that one who considers themselves a professional regresses to butthurt. In that case, my usual response is to walk away. On occasion, oh happy day, discussion happens, new friends or colleagues are made, the sun glitters on the ocean.

Ha, I suppose this is my own defensive response to avoiding a discussion I've started. However, it's because it's been misconstrued that I find it's one of those things I enjoy correcting. Sure, I avoid all messages starting with 'hey' and I have pet peeves in conversation, but I've discussed that too. Those who know me are well-versed in my ways and I in theirs and we still adore each other, so I'm a fan of making things clearer to bypass the sticky parts.

I don't really have hard rules and sometimes people decide to test my sense of humor and patience by pushing a button. I put it out there, knowing that was a risk. Sometimes I respond to the humor, sometimes I'm just not in the mood and I'll tell you to fuck off. Don't take it personally. If I'm talking at all, you haven't been exiled. 

Fuck if I know what I'm talking about. Late night healing pain and all, I think it's time to wander off and prepare for going to battle with my friend Monday. Lots to do so I want to tackle it with more brain cells than what I ended up with today. Knock on wood...

Winter Wonder What Now?

Positive posts on FB are why I still bother with social media. Rainbows, clouds that look like dragons and middle fingers, hilarious animal videos and the wit of my many friends. I don't even hate that when weather hits people clamor to show pictures of the destruction and look for each other and scramble to make sure their animals are comfortable. Like books, the less the posts are attempting to influence or call for sympathy, the more likely I am to allow myself to find those depths for myself.

But this post is about weather. Shit's ridiculous here and in many other places besides. These aren't old gripes but rather new for the Cincinnati I've spent a good chunk of my life in. The trees around here have no idea when to cycle, the bugs multiple in huge numbers and take over when the cold would have taken care of it-- it's unnatural chaos in nature. 

This spring, there were several damning false starts. Flower bulbs shot up almost immediately at the first sign of melt then stopped again. The trees didn't even try. Until they did, suddenly, and we had some of the worst cases of asthma, respiratory distress, the pollen and mold counts were insane. Just tree sperm everywhere and well beyond the usual spring cycle, into summer. It was actually a milder summer than usual and one without the drought of the year before that turned everything shriveled and brown. There was plenty of rain and yet, the tomatoes just didn't grow in abundance. I still pine for the summer like the one where there more tomatoes than we and the thieving squirrels could handle.

Fall? What's fall? We had about two weeks that felt like it. Leaves finally started turning colors and the nights were good for bonfires. Yet there were and are still a lot of green on the trees.

Then winter happened.

Kind of. Not really. We got snain, what the boys and I call the combo of fat snow flakes and rain. We woke up yesterday, at first admiring the fingers of ice dangling everywhere, not really paying much attention to the big downed branch in the front yard that came down while we slept.

We heard a loud crack, what sounded like someone loudly and poorly opening a bag of potato chips and saw another rather large branch come down. I went outside to look and immediately noticed that every tree still burgeoning with still green leaves looked at least ten feet short, drooping with the sheer weight of ice that coated every branch, stem and leaf. I told the boys we'd get a better look when we went outside to go to school and nearly every fifteen minutes another branch went down.

Reports all over the area reported down branches and even huge trunks, split under the weight of weather that trees here just hadn't evolved to handle. Power lines as well. People started to post about not having power, some getting it back after hours, some going on a day or more. We worried about it too. A couple of branches rest right over our power lines and if the rain had kept coating everything where it froze, we'd be among them.

I was already devising a way to keep my tropical fish alive if it came to it. Luckily, our house still gets hot water and the stove still works when the power is out.

Until the tree gets taken down, I can't say I'm not thinking about the what-ifs. All the same, nature used to be an adaptive cycle that wavered but always managed to balance out. These years have been anything but.

It doesn't matter if people believe climate change is real or that we affect it greatly. There are actual studies that can tell you that not believing we are part of the problem is willful ignorance. If you're only going to make an argument for human comfort, then you can't deny that even what is out of our hands is still something we have to clean up then work to solve. When you suspect that something is killing you, are you really that surprised that rather than being cautious at the first sign, it got worse because you waited for all the evidence to came in?

There's enough. We're fucking up a world we have the run of, even though we also have the means to fix it. We're sniping away at insignificant petty shit and the greed, even brought to spotlight, is never really tackled. We all bitch about it. I do too. And maybe we can't win people over, certainly not by being 'passionate' know-it-all assholes at that.

We're attacking each other over the big unknowns, writing off what nature is telling us clear as day. Even though they don't directly correlate to all arguments of climate change. I'm not going to hoard lists here of every natural and unnatural occurrence as a way to make everyone bow to the whims        of the planet. I don't disagree that the earth does go through drastic natural shifts. Yet don't use those as blankets for a shitty carbon footprint. I won't make a case for being efficient. Just don't be the dick trashing your neighborhood and choosing luxury over harmony every time.

Life would suck if we always let moral judgements be public domain. I get that. Yet denial over the evident, the whole ant and the grasshopper dilemma of not doing shit until it's too late? Don't be that guy. I'm sure even if you are, people still love or tolerate you. It's just disgusting to me that someone like that pretends to give a shit about the seed they spread. People who pretend to guard the sanctity of human life and willfully give their progeny a future full of their table scraps.

Whether you plan on putting these things to thought or not, give your children some desire to figure out how to help ecosystems heal at least. Human intervention in nature CAN leave an impact on human progress. No, you don't have to go vegan or live a joyless life of strict discipline to be mindful of your impact. Encourage and reward those who are doing it. Look at the efforts of permaculture farmers, scientists, doctors. You don't have to be the big change to support it.

I know I'm jumping between two topics that could be muddied as far as how much they actually intersect, but when people start diving down the rabbit hole of climate change, they sometimes brush it off as natural, disregarding that human intervention is just as natural. Our methods of self-preservation and progress are a necessary balance. We can build a better life, but not on the garbage of the broken things left half-working. We tidy the space and learn from the mistakes.

Maybe I give my own species too much credit, for what we can do and what we will do. I live a good life, but we all think that too. I know it's useless to get frustrated when the mess you try to avoid is the mess someone else makes. What keeps me happy is doing what I believe is right for me. I don't police those I love and I don't police the planet. I just sincerely hope we will continue to discuss it.

Because these goddamn trees need some boot camp style weather training at the very least.