A few unrelated thoughts

Pulling a few unrelated thoughts together here:

Although we’ve lived in Peachtree City for 36 years altogether, we’ve been in this house for 23 years now, the longest we’ve lived anywhere. Wouldn’t you think there would be no more surprises?

We kept as many trees around the house as we possibly could, both hardwoods (mostly oaks and walnuts) and pines, and that means that in the fall they drop acorns and nuts on the roof. This year, however, we’re finding acorns we’ve never seen before. These are tiny, 3/8 of an inch across, like the richest dark brown faces tucked up under a lighter brown hat, and usually in pairs.

But it may be the larger, typical-looking acorns that hit the roof with a crack that belies their small size, and then bounce down the roof, in an accelerating tattoo, ending with a loud thump on the deck. Walking on the deck has been rendered hazardous. Dave clears away the leaves almost daily, but the acorns get caught in the spaces between the boards. Those that don’t become as treacherous as marbles under unwary feet.

What I want to know is how this is the first year we’ve even noticed these little fellows? Were the mother trees simply growing year by year until they reached whatever level of maturity is required to produce acorns, then, BOOM? And since the trees are not actually above the roof itself, how do the acorns get on the roof?

Don’t say squirrels. These nuts fall night and day. We may have to post “hard hat zone” warning signs out there.

* * *

A couple of weeks ago, at 9 on a windless evening, friends were enjoying the quiet of their Peachtree City home when suddenly, CRASH! The sound of a massive old elm tree breaking at mid-trunk and falling on – on what? What could sound so much like a train wreck in their backyard?

Flashlights in hand, our friends went out to find the dead tree split into several pieces and lying across the top of their motor home. One window was shattered, the top of the RV collapsed, but this does not approach what they saw in the morning by daylight. Interior walls buckled so that doors, drawers, and cabinets were jammed open or closed, and it quickly became apparent that this was a major accident and might not be repairable.

It is not true, as rumor has it, that the owner was loading firewood on top for a planned camp-out later this month

* * *

You don’t often catch NBC News anchor Brian Williams in a gaff. He was announcing the stories that would appear after the next commercial, and this is what he said: “[When we return,] the women who came out today and said they were discriminated against for being pregnant by a high profile American company.”

Whew. I went on the NBC website to be sure I had it right. Don’t know if he wrote this or if someone else did, but that’s what he read.

* * *

And the latest overused word – signature – stuck on everything from cooking (“her signature fried chicken”) to sports (“his signature fast ball”) to music (“the orchestra’s signature encore”).

This too will pass, I’m sure, just as “resonate” and “at this point in time” did several years ago. “Issues” is another word one can only hope is beginning to resonate as cliché in the public ear.

And suddenly every committee, business and government body is holding forth for “transparency.” Not a moment too soon.

* * *

The AJC ran a front page error last week in a story bylined by a Los Angeles Times reporter. I have a hunch it was a typo that slipped through unchallenged by a spell-checker and a copy editor.

The Dalai Lama, you recall, would be in Atlanta to accept a professorship at Emory University and then off to Washington for an informal meeting with President and Mrs. Bush in the residential quarters of the White House.

“But the president,” the article continues, “also will encounter him the next day in a public and official setting: the Capitol, where the religious leader and Nobel Peach Prize winner will receive the Congressional Gold Medal.”

The Bush administration was trying to play down the congressional presentation so as not to rile China. Maybe the Chinese wouldn’t realize it was actually our nation’s highest civilian honor and not just an award from a state fair.