11/13/11 THE EUROPEAN LARCH, A BUCK SCRAPE, AND ABUSE OF POWER

CHAMBER ANNUAL MEETING

FRESH BUCK SCRAPE

EUROPEAN LARCH

...FEMALE CONES

Sunday, 8:00 AM.  38 degrees, wind SW, calm.  The sky is overcast with high, thin gray clouds which are beginning to dissipate,  and the barometer again predicts precipitation.  The ditches are still running with water from the rain that fell while we were gone last week.
    The Bayfield chamber of Comerce and Visitors’ Bureau annual meeting at the Pavilion on Thursday was very well attended.  The keynote speaker was State of Wisconsin Tourism Director Stephanie Klett. The chamber is a very active and positive force in the financial and social life of the City of Bafield.
    The native tamaracks are now past their color peak and are loosing their needles fast.  In a day or two they will be completely bare.  The European larch, Larix decidua, a few doors down is still brilliantlty clothed in bronze-gold needles.  The European larch is perhaps a more handsome tree than the native tamarack, being somewhat straighter and taller, and therefore more of a specimen tree for parks and large landscapes.  Both are beautiful and adaptable trees.   The European larch has larger female cones, which hang pendulously from the branches, whereas the native tree has smaller female cones that are attached directly to the branches; a useful identification characteristic.
    Visiting my deer stand, I found this new and very large buck scrape several hundred feet to the west.  The buck paws the earth, and then urinates in the scraped earth to deposit his scent.  A competing buck will do the same, as will a doe in estrous.  Obviously, I am pleased to see there is a buck in the area.
    Observation: the Penn State scandal is a sad commentary on the moral state of our society, especially since students actually rioted in support of the head coach and  the corrupt corporate culture of the football program.  Penn State is yet another example of the abuse of power in America, abuse that is rampant in corporations, religious organizations, politics and government. 
    The truly sad thing about abuse of power is how easily people accept it.  The individual feels like a minor, powerless cog in a huge and complicated machine that he cannot affect, or he may even  become part of the abusive culture.  What we must remember is that even the smallest cog can jam the works of the largest machine and bring it to a halt, and that is what should have happened at Penn State, years ago.  The only good thing to have happened thus far in this odious mess is the firing of the head coach, two high level administrators and the University president, all of whom were not minor cogs, but major, and each of whom could have stopped the abuse if they but had the courage to do so. This episode is far from over, as there are still a lot of skeletons in the closet, and it makes one wonder whether this sickness has not spread to other college football programs, just as the cancer of child abuse metastasized throughout the Catholic Church. One would hope that every college sports program is now in the process of self examination for this and other abuses of power.