10/06/11 APPLEFEST PREPARATIONS, ASH, ASPENS, AND DEAD ELEPHANTS

CARNIVAL RIDES BEING SET UP

THE STAGE GOES UP ON RITTENHOUSE AVE.

THE COAST GUARD PITCHES IN...BETTER THAN PT?

NO PARKING SIGNS ARE UP AROUND TOWN

WHITE ASH FOLIAGE TURNS PURPLE

WHITE ASH PINATELY COMPOUND LEAF

ASPEN ARE TURNING YELLOW-GOLD

Thursday, 8:00 AM.  53 degrees, wind SSE, calm.  The sky is clear and the barometer heading up.  It promises to be great weather for Applefest, which starts officially tomorrow, and unofficially today with apple pie desert for Senior Citizens this afternoon.  I seldom admit to Senior status, but will do any thing for apple pie.
    I had almost despaired of Lucky recovering, but after I got him out for a bit this morning, supporting him with a sweatshirt under his middle and holding him up by its sleeves, a spark seemed to be ignited and he walked around the house a bit mostly on three legs and drank deeply from his water dish for the first time in several days.  Being as old (make that mature) as I am, I have witnessed a lot of creatures, dogs and humans both, get old and eventually  die, and it is my observation that death in old age usually comes when the individual wills it to and not much before. And it looks like  Lucky wants to survive this, in whatever doggy way he considers such things.
    The carnival rides are being set up, the vendors stalls are marked out all around the downtown and vendors will be erecting their stalls today and the “no parking” signs are up on city streets.  Applefest is upon us once again.
    Daffodils are going in but slowly, being short several workers but in they will go.
    White ash, Fraxinus Americana, leaves turn pink and purple in the fall, and there are some beautiful ones around the countryside.  Green ash leaves turn yellow.  The quaking aspen, Populus tremuloides, turn a clear bright yellow-gold.  Now for some political commentary:
    Ashland, our neighboring city twenty-some miles to the south, has been in the throes of a mayoral recall election ever since the its mayor was elected last spring.  It has been a ceaseless, accusatory, innuendo and scandal-based attack by a handful of opponents who thought they should have won the election. Even though I have no “skin in the game,” I am overjoyed that they were trounced in the special election, Mayor Whalen winning well over fifty  percent of the votes against multiple candidates.  It appears that average voters are tired of the forever-campaigns and all the personal villification that keeps a duly elected official from doing his or her job, right from the start.
    On the national scene, the Obama administration evidently hates rock-and-roll, country music,  and the uniquely American steel stringed acoustical guitar that enabled it all, since they have been determined to drive Gibson Guitars, the grand daddy of them all, out of business or out of the country, and have now doubled-down on the industry by attacking other guitar makers and the rather big small business of dealers who sell what are now antique American guitars, which can bring tens of thousands of dollars on the worldwide collectors market.  All because many of the beautiful, hand crafted instruments have rare woods, and in particular inlaid ivory on their fret boards.  This in recognition of one aspect or another of some endangered species law.
    Please!! Those elephants from which the tusks were harvested and the trees from which the woods came have mostly been dead half a century or more, given the obvious antiquity of the guitars, and cannot be suffered to die again.  Is there no common sense left in our government?  Why is it persecuting these legitimate and valuable  businesses?  Fifty jobs gone here, a hundred more there, an individual’s livelihood and tax contribution wiped out; it all adds up to the garroting of the entrepreneur and the economy along with him, and the stifling of individual freedom, all to be replaced by what; a Cuban economy?  One of the first things Castro did was collectivize the little cigar makers, and now he and his cronies are the only ones who can smoke or sell Cuban cigars. Is that the way to go, America?  Where would Steve Jobs have ended up had he been in a collective?  Probably in some gulag!