Spring has come to the North! Only minutes away from the disaster site, the spring planting continues as always. Farmers who once bent over double planting rice shoots one by one now use rice planting machines. The seedlings, loaded from trays onto racks on the machine, look like squares of green shag carpet.
Once, twenty years ago, Curt had a memorable incident on a railway platform. As he stepped forward to board the train he ran right into an elderly woman. She was so stooped over from a life working in the rice fields that he didn't even see her! Back in the '90s, you could see many such elderly people in the streets. Permanently bent into a tipped-over "L" shape, they went about their errands while pushing little carts. With rice planting machines and rice combines becoming ever more common, this miserable variety of old age may someday disappear altogether.
Like tiny mice nibbling away at the misery of traditional agricultural life, humans inch forward.
Your mind seems to be much on tiny mice. Ironically, we had an incident with three tiny mice around the same time you were doing your volunteer work.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to imagine that this is so close to the devastation! Still, I suppose life will go on as usual where it can.