It's building season here at the Missions, and part of that means new roofs on churches. So I tore myself away from the cut and thrust of US Presidential Race 2016 to see how the work was getting on. It was getting on just fine, in fact the crew were finishing up.
"Good work!" I told the Boss of the roofers and he told me it was all done bar the clean-up. We talked about the job for a little while and the helpful weather. Far better to be roofing in the mild springlike Texan winters than in, say, August. No fun to be up on a roof in 100++ degree temperatures.
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| Someone's photo of Calgary from Scotchman's Hill |
"Oh, we'd be here in August too," he assured me, and I'm sure they would. I told him about the Calgary roofers I know, up on the tall buildings in sub, subzero temperatures. "Cold!" the reverse of Texas but maybe harder. I respect that job.
Then we shook hands and he thanked me for the business and I headed for home, detouring by the lake for a bit of bank fishing. I cast away with a white shad crankbait and didn't catch anything, but it was fun trying.
It was also fun to look at the limestone banks of the lake, with its fossilized wood, shells and vegetation frozen in stone, as though they'd been churned together in a great cataclysm. I reflected on that and the several "extinction events" that have overtaken life on earth. How was it possible, in the face of global die-offs, for life to reassert itself so abundantly?
Metaphors for civilization and US democracy notwithstanding, I headed for home and meetings with yet more roofers, house painters and "tree service."
Mind how you go,
LSP
