5/18/11 TAMARACK CONES, AND A DIM LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

SPRING

TAMARACK...LAST Y EAR'S EMPTY CONES

...NEW FEMALE CONES, TINY BUT BEAUTIFUL

Wednesday,7:15 AM, 47 degrees, wind NE, calm.  The sky is mostly overcast and the barometer again predicts rain, but it doesn’t feel like it.  I was two days late putting up the hummingbird feeder, but it only took a couple of hours yesterday morning for them to find it.
    The American larch, or tamarack, Larix laricina, is a common native northern tree occurring in bogs, along lake and stream banks and often drier sites.  It is a conifer, but its needles are deciduous. Its new needles are bright green, darker in summer, and a  glorious golden  yellow in the fall. Male and female cones occur on the same tree, appearing in the spring.  The male cones are yellow when the pollen is ripe, and the young female cones a bright reddish purple; while minute, they are quite beautiful, and mature into cones which bear the naked seeds.
    I have referred to the coming dark ages which will descend if the American “empire” falls; on further thought, the dark age is already upon us, and it is inescapable, mandated by the federal government.  Very soon the familiar, tried and true incandescent light bulb will be outlawed,  to be replaced permanently by florescent and LED bulbs.  The smart money is buying up the remaining stocks of old fashioned bulbs, which is being decried as “hording,” and environmentally irresponsible.  Who are these environmental retards?  Yours truly, for one, as I cannot read by the florescent bulbs, I have tried them and switched back to the old incandescents.  And, the LED’s are reported to be even dimmer, plus they cost a fortune, $20 to $50 a bulb. Figure $2,000 to equip the average house. The poor and those on fixed incomes will not be able to afford these bulbs, and there will be  the inevitable legislation to subsidize their purchase, which will have to be paid for by everyone else.  And don’t tell me the electric bills will go down, compensating for the switch, they will not. People will either use more bulbs and more electricity or they will sit in the dark, or will have to purchase electronic readers, which will use still more electricity. And, if electrical use does go down, the rates will automatically go up, to compensate for the decrease in profit by the utilities.  Other “dark ages” have been figurative, but this one will be literal. What kind of mindless ninnies have we become, allowing ourselves to be led around by the nose by faceless bureaucrats and nameless professors, and forced by law to do the totally absurd?  I’m afraid the light at the end of this tunnel is dim indeed, and very expensive.