It’s a mystery. Yesterday, as I do from time to time, I stopped in at Coonskin Crossing, the country gas station and convenience store in Amesville. Looking around and as always wondering what it was about a Chinese virus that doubled the price of potato chips, I saw something I didn’t expect.
If it were a situation comedy — “The Office” comes to mind — there would be delight and hilarity in watching the now-faded orange man and the clown car holding his alleged national security officials zooming around in search of an excuse for their breathtaking incompetence.
If the president of the United States could pry himself away from betraying the country’s friends for a while, I have a project that could actually do the country some good, bring in some cash, give citizens a reason to be happy with him, and let him give useful flight to his rage.
It suddenly made terrible, nauseating sense. Dan Henninger, the calm and perceptive editorial page writer for the Wall Street Journal, appeared Saturday on the Journal Editorial Report on Fox News Channel, discussing Friday’s Oval Office bullying of the president of Ukraine by Donald Trump and his pudgy verbal thumb-breaker, J.D. Vance.
Let us begin by establishing that Marie-chan is the cutest cat ever. There is no escaping it. A little white ball of fluff with a face that suggests that she thinks she is much bigger and more fierce than she actually is, when you see her you want to look in back to find out if there is a key where you can wind her up.
Well, now I’ve done it. When a person mentions genealogy he becomes very popular all of a sudden, as if there’s some secret knowledge he possesses that if divulged will loose the keys to the kingdom. There really is no such knowledge, just a few tricks that anyone can employ. What prevents people who are interested from diving in may be the thought that it can’t be that easy.
Do all families have a deep corporate interest in genealogy? I hope so, because it is fascinating and satisfying. The subject swoops in unannounced and occupies my days every few years. Though I’m by no means an expert, I think I’m a relatively skilled dilettante and have a long, strangely constructed family tree to prove it.
It is coincidence, not design, that makes my small contributions so far this year into what seem like an endless reminiscence. Even so, I am forced by circumstance to write about water heaters then and now.
Saturday will mark 20 years since the chilly day I arrived at this peculiar little house on a peculiar little farm in the Appalachian foothills. When you meet people they always ask what brought you here, and in my case, there’s no particular answer. The currents of life, I suppose. It was a gamble, as life tends to be.