Land acknowledgements are a bad idea

Land acknowledgement statements are well-intentioned.

But they are a disastrous idea: bad history, bad patriotism, and very bad politics.

My local university has a prescribed land acknowledgment, with instructions that it is to be read in full and without change. Southern Oregon University's web page on the acknowledgement shows a photo of historic property populated by indigenous people at the time of White settlement in the 1850s: Lower Table Rock. My farm is located just off the right side of this photo, on flat pumice soil where I grow grapes and find arrowheads.

SOU’s Land Acknowledgment: 

We want to take this moment to acknowledge that Southern Oregon University is located within the ancestral homelands of the Shasta, Takelma, and Latgawa peoples who lived here since time immemorial. These Tribes were displaced during rapid Euro-American colonization, the Gold Rush, and armed conflict between 1851 and 1856. In the 1850s, discovery of gold and settlement brought thousands of Euro-Americans to their lands, leading to warfare, epidemics, starvation, and villages being burned. In 1853 the first of several treaties were signed, confederating these Tribes and others together – who would then be referred to as the Rogue River Tribe. These treaties ceded most of their homelands to the United States, and in return they were guaranteed a permanent homeland reserved for them. At the end of the Rogue River Wars in 1856, these Tribes and many other Tribes from western Oregon were removed to the Siletz Reservation and the Grand Ronde Reservation. Today, the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians are living descendants of the Takelma, Shasta, and Latgawa peoples of this area. We encourage YOU to learn about the land you reside on, and to join us in advocating for the inherent sovereignty of Indigenous people.

A land acknowledgement has a political purpose central to the politics of the American left. At its political apogee about 2020, the left understood itself to be primarily a coalition of aggrieved people: Blacks, Hispanics, Women, homosexuals, labor union members, immigrants, the disabled, the overweight, the unemployed, the homeless, the poor -- everyone except healthy, prosperous White men. Such a big tent, promising huge and growing majorities. Descendants of people displaced by White settlers were archetypal victims, deserving land acknowledgements and casinos.

Land entitlement due to possession from "time-immemorial" is a sentimental falsehood. The pattern of languages and movement of tribes show that indigenous people in North America did exactly what humans do everywhere and always. They move around and fight over land and resources. They kill and interbreed with their neighbors. We are the descendants of nomads and conquerors. There is no peaceful, settled Eden-like original state of native people anywhere. The tribes listed in the land acknowledgement were fighting among themselves over turf and resources when White people arrived, and are fighting now using the courts to see who gets "dibs" on Southern Oregon gamblers. 

The local tribes were displaced brutally by White settlers and the U.S. Army in the 1850s. They moved in and squatted and broke promises and ignored treaties in order to do it. They continued a time immemorial cycle of movement and demographic change. 

The political left imagines itself to be protectors of the disadvantaged groups in its coalition, and therefore entitled to its members' votes. It is time to rethink this. People are voting like Americans, not like aggrieved members of groups. Democrats are slow to get it: a gay Republican; a labor union Republican; a Hispanic Republican; a Black Republican; a female Republican. How can that be??? Answer: They are Americans.

The land acknowledgement is a profoundly self-destructive message for the political left. It declares there is something uniquely criminal and illegitimate about the origins of America. Shame on you, America! Shame on you Americans!

The land acknowledgment does not celebrate pluralism, democracy or liberal respect and toleration. It is the opposite of the Pledge of Allegiance, with the aspiration of liberty and justice for all.

I don't feel guilty over the behavior of other people's great-great grand-parents, wherever they were. I suspect that few people do. Half my relatives were miserably poor and living in Greece when Southern Oregon was being settled. Others were in Connecticut and fought for the North in the Civil War. The land acknowledgement doesn't come across as informative. It reads like a guilt-trip lecture. I want to look forward with hope, not backward with collective guilt that I do not feel. 

Trump is president in part because he is riding backlash to the left's frame of oppressor and oppressed. A great many people who voted for Trump are disgusted by him, but they voted for him anyway because Democrats seemed even worse. Trump said America was great. Voters heard that. Democrats seem to be saying that America is systematically criminal. Voters hear that, too.

Americans don't feel guilty, not for a past they weren't here to shape. 

Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Automated misinformation

"Just be for real, won't you, baby?
Be for real."
          Leonard Cohen, "Just be real," 1992

Have you seen the videos where a housecat saves the toddler by scaring off a large bear?

Or have you seen this video, where a helpful man explains the giveaway signs that the video you watched was completely fake, created with artificial intelligence video tools?

Americans are learning not to believe what they see and read. Where nothing is credible, anything can be real. Or not. Who knows?

Guest post author Jim Sims is a retired attorney. His career involved finding, evaluating, and presenting evidence to document what is true. Sims was a member of the Ashland, Oregon, City Council, an attorney in private practice, and then an attorney representing the disabled at the Center for Nonprofit Legal Services in Southern Oregon. He is also a lifelong athlete. He competed in international Ironman triathlons for 35 years, racing to 5th place in his age group at the Ironman International Championship in Hawaii at age 73.

Guest Post by Jim Sims

Degradation of Truth

I practiced law in Oregon and California for over 45 years. The courtroom has safeguards that establish whether information presented is sufficiently reliable to be considered. Society lacks such communication safeguards. Disinformation travels at the speed of light. Looking back from age 81, I didn't foresee what was happening to "Truth."

Truth arises from identifying relevant facts and issues that determine how a matter should be decided. Reaching truthful answers requires adherence to long accepted methods of research and verification—testing whether facts actually support a given proposition. Sharing verifiable truths, however, depends on communication.

One goal of higher education is to develop the cognitive skills needed to distinguish fact from opinion. Primary education, by contrast, often focuses on simple right-or-wrong answers. Yet, as Oscar Wilde observed, “Truth is rarely pure and never simple.” Facts evolve, and our understanding of truth must evolve with them. Human reasoning is shaped by instincts and emotions developed over millennia—particularly fear and self-preservation. To manage these impulses, societies created institutions and codes of behavior that rely on shared truths and agreed conventions. The reliability of those truths, however, depends on the rigor of the methods we use to verify them.

As a trial lawyer, I learned that motive in communication is inseparable from ethics and verification. Legal disputes revolve around facts, argument, and persuasion—and there are always winners and losers. In our culture, “winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing,” as Vince Lombardi said. Today, this competitive mindset has seeped into public discourse. Assertions of every kind are launched daily into a battlefield detached from verifiable fact. 

Such an environment breeds factionalism—exacerbated by the speed and reach of modern technology. From the invention of writing to the internet and artificial intelligence, each leap in communication has expanded both the spread of information and the opportunity for distortion. Algorithms now amplify division by exploiting our instincts and data, targeting us anonymously and continuously. The social compact itself—the shared trust that binds communities—is an unintended casualty.

Factionalism, of course, is not new. The framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized it as a natural feature of human behavior. Washington, Madison, and Hamilton all warned that factions driven by ambition or corruption could undermine republican government. Madison argued that one advantage of a republic over a direct democracy was slower communication—distance and deliberation served as safeguards. He could never have imagined the instant, global communication of today.

Their warnings remain relevant. Madison cautioned that “men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs” might gain power through corruption and betray the public interest. Washington feared that such factions would enable “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” to subvert the people’s power and then destroy the very systems that elevated them.

Today, human instincts are still exploited to incite fear, division, and profit. The difference lies in the unprecedented speed and reach of digital communication. Information once traveled by word of mouth or print; now it spreads globally in seconds.

Madison saw two possible remedies for factionalism. The first—using government authority to suppress dissent—destroys freedom and democracy. The second—addressing the effects of factionalism at their core—requires an agreed method of inquiry and verification. This means insisting on evidence-based reasoning and resisting the temptation to treat unverified opinion as facts. Assertions drawn from “research” that merely recycles internet speculation or conspiracy are not valid.

Commercial and political messaging today preys on instinctual drives using data harvested from our online behavior—what we view, type, purchase, or share. Algorithms convert this data into targeted persuasion, while we remain largely unaware of how our information is used. According to the cybersecurity firm Imperva, more than half of current internet traffic appears human but is actually generated by bots and artificial intelligence.

When human factionalism meets automated misinformation, the result is a profound degradation of truth. Malicious, reckless, or careless communication spreads faster than ever, eroding the public’s ability to discern fact from fiction. The anonymity of the internet further enables cruelty and distortion by shielding people from accountability.

Truth has always required effort—careful verification, ethical motive, and shared commitment to accuracy. What has changed is the speed with which falsehoods travel and the precision with which they target our fears. To preserve the social compact, we must recommit to the disciplined pursuit of verifiable truth—before the very engines of communication that once promised enlightenment become tools of collective deception.

 

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Teach your children well

"You, who are on the road
Must have a code you try to live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a goodbye
Teach your children well"
          Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, "Teach Your Children" 1970

 

Generation Z -- people aged 15 to 30 -- came of age under a presidency characterized by insults, lawbreaking, cronyism, and flagrant self-serving grift.

I was age 10 when John F. Kennedy was elected president. I was awestruck. He said Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." He called on Americans to be patriotic and to serve the country. That sounded good to me.  "Ask not what the country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

Today I need to explain to young readers of this blog that JFK was not being sarcastic in that speech. He was not expecting "Yeah, right" smirks in response. I know this sounds quaint, but he was dead earnest.

Donald Trump defined the modern presidency for an entire generation of young adults who have never really known a political world without him at the center of it. Trump is the baseline. Trump is "presidential."

Boomers are well-accustomed to policy failures in presidents. Vietnam. The Iraq War. The blind eye to the financial industry's mortgage fraud. Some policies we admired, some we disliked, but each president broadly operated within the expectations of democratic behavior. Presidents tried to appear dignified, truthful, and grounded in civic responsibility.

Jimmy Carter modeled civic morality. Even people who disagreed with Ronald Reagan's policies heard his certainty that America must be a shining beacon of liberty and prosperity for the world. We weren't just powerful. We must be good. Obama modeled composure and intellectual seriousness. He wore a tan-colored suit one day. The political right erupted, saying that was denigrating the office. That was then.

Trump remade the office. He is a president who models rule-breaking as strength. He calls opponents “vermin,” mocks disabilities, promises retribution, and insists that any election he loses is illegitimate. The idea of a president as a unifying figure must feel old-fashioned. Older Americans know this is a departure from the past; younger Americans do not.

Trump, not Biden, narrated the American story through the Biden presidency. Trump left office for four years, but never left center stage. Trump's celebration of transgression becomes the new norm. Yesterday's guest post is an example of transgressive nihilism. Blowing up ships: how cool! Arrest Obama? What a smackdown to watch! Shoot someone on Fifth Avenue? Well, Trump's attorney argued in public that he could have Seal Team Six shoot Trump's political opponent and it wouldn't be illegal. That is how the game is played. Rules are for breaking. 

Young people are watching, and they are learning the lessons of the era:

We are raising a generation that will outlive Trump, but they may never outlive their early imprinting. Trump is the new normal for them.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Easy Sunday: The Trump Show is great TV drama

"Power resides where man believes it resides."
     Dialog from Game of Thrones

Don't let this era of Trump drive you batty. One way to stay calm is to drop out of the role of involved citizen. Instead, relax into the role of spectator. 

I received text messages last night from a reader who said she is coping just fine amid the whirlwind of news. She isn't biting her nails over each new twist in the dismantling of the old status quo in American government. She decided that the best way understand the news is to view it as unscripted reality TV, done with great production values.

It transforms how she sees the news, she told me by phone. Seen as drama -- a version of Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Succession, and Game of Thrones -- there are no good guys, only political gladiators. Stop cheering for one side. Instead, enjoy the game.

My correspondent has a job among people who take politics very seriously. They wouldn't appreciate her being entertained. They want her to be angry. She insisted that I not share her name.

[Note: I am still a concerned citizen, not a spectator. I care very much how this drama plays out. But I know there are others like this reader who find Trump a mesmerizing anti-hero.]

Guest Post by Anonymous

Your post Saturday quoted Thomas Hobbes and described everyone fighting everyone. Don't you see? You described Game of Thrones. There is White House intrigue, political violence, sudden plot twists, characters being fired or killed off, and new unexpected additions to the cast!

Reality is a great show. Sit back and enjoy the news. Don't miss the most exciting reality TV show in world history. I am so supercharged and excited to watch the news as we near the end of season one of the Trump Show reboot, Trump 47.  

I can't believe how upset my friends get over Trump, as if they could do something about him. You get one lame vote or make some lame campaign contribution, that's it, end of your involvement, unless you wanna wear a clown uniform at "No Kings" protests. I feel so sorry for my friends biting their nails over Trump, while they have absolutely zero power to do anything about it. They can't get themselves oriented to life as spectator of a fascinating reality TV show.  Too bad for them.

My reaction when a missile hit the Venezuela boat is not "Oh-my-God! What about the rule of law?" but instead to think how friggin' cool. I'm going to replay that. 

Or Trump wants to put Biden in jail. My response is "Oh man that would be SO amazing!"  

And then I think, yikes, I hope nobody assassinates Trump and ends all this edge-of-your-seat entertainment. 

I think how exciting it would be to have a Trump Resort Gaza Strip; and how exciting it would be if he tore down the White House completely; and I could only fantasize about him actually shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue. 

The whole series is based on brutal revenge, just like Game of Thrones.

As we approach the end of season one of this reboot  -- and what a bloody and vitriolic season it has been --  Trump intends to erase the last vestiges of Biden, invalidating hundreds of Autopen orders, and indicting Biden. He can indict for perjury when Biden denies the presidency was being run by a White House cabal. Trump learned this technique from E. Jean Carroll. All you have to do is goad your adversary into public statements of innocence, giving rise to a defamation claim for the denials. Biden will have no immunity if he denies he issued executive orders without reading them. Trump will drag him through hell.

I think the 2026 season two is going to be "you ain't seen nothing yet". And I don't wanna miss a minute of it. The best seats in the audience are reserved for people willing to open their mind to the reality that everyone is fighting dirty trying to win. Sit back and watch nihilistic history unfold.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.] 

The philosophy of Donald Trump

It is a Thomas Hobbes world: Everyone against everyone.

Donald Trump is an extraordinarily effective politician. He does not appear to be a deep thinker or be well versed in the philosophies of Western Civilization, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a coherent philosophy.

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes presented Trump's thinking in his classic work Leviathan in 1651:

Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called War; and such a war as is of every man against every man. . . . In such condition there is no place for Industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently . . .  no account of Time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Trump's world is a jungle of every living thing in a struggle for survival against everything else. The fit survive. The weak are crushed or eaten.

Trump is exceptional among American presidents in his open disregard for established process and constitutional norms. He doesn't respect that "common Power" of the state, unless he is the undisputed leader of it. The referee in any contest is just one more participant, to be coopted, made an ally, or to become.

Americans fetishize our Constitution and reflect with pride on the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Wise men met and debated ideas and policies. They created a government of rules, agreed upon first by convention delegates, then by states after hearing arguments printed in pamphlets and newspapers. 

Mao Zedong gave a different explanation of the origin of political power, an explanation more in line with Hobbes and Trump: 

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

State power is seized and maintained through the threat and exercise of violence, and armed forces are the primary mechanism to maintain state power. It is the threat of violence, up front or in the background, underlying all debate or negotiation.

We hear the word "transactional" repeatedly in discussion of Trump. He tests the relative power of each participant at any one moment. It is a market. It is a supply and demand curve. There are no set rules, only a continuing contest of relative power.

One of the participants in every match of power is the system in place by history and inertia. The referee. State power itself. Trump was able to stiff vendors in his real estate developments because the referees of contracts -- our legal system -- is full of delay points. Trump could game that system. Trump routinely stalled vendors who needed prompt payment, saying the vendor would go bankrupt long before a judge decided the vendor was right all along. The strong do as they will; the weak suffer as they must.

Trump is not shamed by assertions that he wants to be king or that he is flouting the Constitution. He does not care about being kind to recipients of U.S. foreign aid, or being fair to immigrants, or that he is flouting international law by bombing boats in the Caribbean. Fairness, kindness, and circumspect process are the gentlemanly civilizational veneer obscuring the real relationship between people. Mao Zedong said it: It is power, backed by armed forces.

The Supreme Court is justifiably afraid of Trump. He will obey their decisions only if it serves his purposes. They know that. They will be careful not to put Trump into a corner. They are bluffing. Trump is not. He has the armed forces.

There is only one power currently able to stop Trump: his health and mortality. His right leg drags. He writes increasingly unhinged tweets. Something is wrong. 

I suspect Trumpism will end with Trump. He fostered a personality cult, and there is only one Donald Trump. Americans elected a constitutional head of state who does not believe in a constitutional head of state.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.] 

Empty Nest by design: A guest post

Thanksgiving with friends. Not family.

Something big was happening in America around 1971, the year I graduated from college.

It wasn't an event. It wasn't in the news. It was an idea drifting out into the zeitgeist and changing lives. Women in my circle of friends were deciding that they would have great careers and exciting lives of significance. They decided they wouldn't bear children.

There was a combination of reasons for a shift in expectations about childbearing. Paul Ehrlich's book, The Population Bomb laid out a moral argument for childlessness. America began having "Earth Days." Educational institutions changed; it switched from unusual to normal for women to enter the professions. Betty Friedan had written The Feminine Mystique describing women's frustrations with being a stay-at-home wife; my friends, male and female, had read it. Soon Gloria Steinem will be founding Ms. Magazine. The Vietnam War was underway and there was the thought that maybe it was cruel to bring children into such a messed-up world. Good contraception was available. The idea of sex between consenting adults disconnected from marriage and pregnancy.

Ideas in the zeitgeist translate into personal behavior  as preferences and expectations and self image. Who am I really? For many of my classmate friends in high school and college, it resulted in their not having children, or having very few and having them "late" by prior standards. That Norman Rockwell painting of grandparents hosting a Thanksgiving feast for a large family at a long table is nostalgia and cliché; not description.

College classmate Erich Almasy describes his journey. 

Erich Almasy and Cynthia Blanton on a trip to Nepal. Dole Foods was a client of their consulting firm.

Guest Post by Erich Almasy

A Life without Progeny

Peter asked me to expand upon the comment I made about children, and my lack thereof. A recent news article pointed out that over 75 percent of people over age 72 are white and that less than 50 percent under age 18 are. MAGA and white supremacy will go away as we Boomers die off and the races of color who have made the United States a true melting pot take their fair share. 

Children. Probably the most momentous decision any couple or even an individual makes. I met my life companion (so hard to come up with the proper expression) as I was leaving college to venture to Alaska and later, Egypt. Cynthia had taken a year off (now euphemistically called a gap year) to earn enough money to finish her senior year. She had broken up with her boyfriend of many years three days before we met and was on the rebound. Needless to say, I pounced, and since I had made clear that I was about to become a world traveler, she decided it was an easy one-night stand. How wrong she was. We spent a good part of the night talking, and came to common agreement on many things that seem to daunt couples of much longer duration. We agreed on religion (none), politics (liberal), and children (none).

The last perspective seems an odd one for people aged 21, so a little background may help. Cynthia was a child of separation. Her parents were not the best of friends and may have gotten married because Cynthia came along. This was not uncommon in the late forties and early fifties before birth control was readily available to women, and that makes such a difference! Her father led a pretty much independent life and her mother had a lot of trouble coping. My parents also had me prematurely. In fact, as I much later found out, they weren’t married until I was four months old. Theirs was a combative marriage. Both were well-educated, opinionated liberal individuals, my mother from northern Wisconsin and my father a Jewish refugee from Vienna, Austria. The latter was something I didn’t fully understand until his death in 2004.

Cynthia’s rejection of motherhood was understandable given her upbringing. Mine, less so, since I was a largely happy child whose parents spent time both educating and nurturing -- until the end of my freshman year in college, when my mother had a nervous breakdown and was diagnosed (poorly) with bipolar disorder. This amazing woman (a feminist before the word was coined) was suddenly gone from my life and I found myself drifting away from my father and younger sister. Living in Boston while they lived in Los Angeles made this distance easier. I seldom thought of family.

I eventually returned from my adventures, and Cynthia and I embarked on our POTOSLT (Persons of the Opposite Sex Living Together) relationship, which lasted 24 years. With no children plans, we didn’t need holy matrimony, and we married in 1995 only because the company I joined did not provide health insurance for unmarried couples. So romantic! 

We now live in Mexico and celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday with the families of two Mexican friends (brothers who married sisters) and their four adorable children. Thanksgiving is not a Mexican holiday, even though the turkey, sweet and white potatoes, green beans, cornbread, and even the pumpkin pie all originated here. In our almost 55 years together, have we missed the sound of little feet, growing into adults, followed by more little feet? No. We have worked together, traveled together, fought together, and enjoyed life and love together. She is my best friend, although her dog Max and my dog Tomás try to claim precedence. Over the years, many friends and acquaintances have questioned our decision, speculating that we would regret it. Some people just aren’t cut out to be parents. It’s not that we don’t have family. Cynthia is very close to her younger sister and I have finally become close to mine. In fact, my sister Lisa and I will be traveling to Vienna in August to discover more about the relatives we lost in the Holocaust.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.] 

Thanksgiving 2025: The vineyard is going dormant.

Skip this post: 

It is about the vineyard again.

We got our first frost on Friday, November 20.  

We got a second frost on Sunday, and it froze again this morning.  

My Pinot Noir grapes were the earliest to ripen, and the earliest for the leaves to turn color and drop. This is how they looked yesterday, next to rows of Cabernet Sauvignons.  Pinot Noir is on the right.

This is the third year after planting, so we expected either no harvest or a small one. We picked the Pinot Noir grapes on October 6, and expected to pick the slower-ripening Malbec's ten days later. I had such high hopes. It was a crop so heavy that we needed to drop half of it to the ground a month before the intended harvest. I was proud.

September 2 photo

But about three days before the day for picking, starlings found us and wiped out the Malbec crop. They ate them all. Pow!

Here they are yesterday in an oak tree next to the vineyard:

The photo doesn't tell the story. There are thousands -- maybe tens of thousands -- swooping around in murmurations. They swoop in, chatter a while, then swoop out. They are beautiful if they aren't destroying one's crop.

I will need to figure out some kind of netting to protect the two later varieties of grapes, the Cabernet Sauvignons and Malbecs. That is a problem for next year. Now I am trying to feel good about relaxing and letting nature take its course. I have drained the irrigation lines so they won't freeze. The weeds aren't growing. There are no herds of elk making trouble. I need to let go, chill out, and let the season do its work.

Plants have their own schedule. The Malbecs still have their leaves, but they have turned brown. The Cabernets are still green and growing. I took this photo yesterday:

Side by side, Cabernets on the left

In my youth it was common to get a first frost in late September or the first week of October. Frosts devastate a melon field. A September or early October frost takes a lush field of green and turns it black. Vines wither immediately. Melons are exposed. It would look eerily like a field of skulls. For about two days following the frost, I could pick and sell the melons that had gotten ripe, but melons get the sugar and flavor that makes them delicious from a healthy living vine, so a frost is the sudden death event for a commercial harvest. I didn't want to sell an OK melon. I wanted to sell great melons.

Maybe it is just "weather." Maybe it is "climate." But this year is beyond all my experience in getting a frost this late. I planted melons in early May. The field came ripe in mid-August. A frost did not end the season; the field died slowly, of old age. 

I am leaving the melon field untilled, at least for now. It is not an attractive field in this condition, but I did not see any interest in the crop by starlings, and the melons have seeds that other birds will like so I will leave them until I see starlings.

It is healthy for me to look up from politics from time to time. Long after I am gone, and long after Trump is gone, this land will be here, as will be the tilt of the earth, the trip around the sun, and the seasons. 

[Note: To receive this blog daily by email, go to: https://petersage.substack.com Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]