Pictoral Perspective

[neadods]

Adding insult to injury, this morning I woke up to find out that one of the cats had horked up all over my bedspread. Which will tend to show stains. (I don't know why that's listed as new; the local Ikea's had it for months now.) Then I spent three hours at work pretty much smacking the keyboard and thinking "Waaaaaaaant braaaaaaaiiiiiiinnnnn" before I gave up and came home. One more thing going off and I'm going to buy a pickup and a dog, because I'm obviously living the lyrics to a country song.

Anyway! For y'all who don't live just down the road from me like redpanda13, a few pictures to give perspective.

Start here:


That bookshelf to the left? To the left of that is a window, through which I took this picture of the Lydia Pinkham bottle:


The tree trunk in the middle? The one it looks like my fingertips are just brushing? Is that tree. That's how close it struck.

I've pulled the shards out of the wet grass and put them on the pavement to dry. The tip of one was buried 3 inches deep in the ground.


I'm still at the point where I just go look at the tree and say "daaaaaaaaaamn" at the damage.






Thanks to everyone, I've got 8 recommendations for tree people. I'm going to start calling around soon.

Also, as I wended my way home early, I passed the local clinic. It's 40 Days of non-stop protests Life, so even though it's closed right now there were 7 protesters, signs including the Babies Die Here and a huge cross with "abortion" written on it. I've been feeling quite guilty about being "off" for 7 weeks, so I've signed up for a stint tomorrow. I'm expecting it to be physically & emotionally draining, so afterwards, I've pretty much promised myself that all I need to "do" for the rest of the day is eat onion dip and finish reading "Trust Me, I'm a Jr. Doctor" until it's time to geek (Cry? Rant? Squee? I don't know yet) about Doctor Who.

Comments

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

*hugsespeciallyfortomorrow*

Wow! That's one hell of a lightning strike!

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Tongue cannot tell how happy I am that it took out the tree and not the garage or the house!

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

I can imagine...

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

yeah, i was about to say - that tree is dead. it just doesn't know it yet.

we had a big tree (florida oak, at least 35 feet tall, 3-4 ft diameter) hit by lightning in the forest behind my house in 1977. By 1979 it was still standing but with no leaves, and the streak down the strike point still stuck out...

...but by the time we returned to that house years later, the whole tree was down and decaying into sawdust. but it fell over, on its own time. if anywhere other than a forest, somebody would have heard (or at least, heard an insurance bill go up...), but out in the woods nobody noticed.

so yeah, get that thing out of there because it is dead and it will collapse at some point in the next year or to, given its smaller size.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

that tree is dead. it just doesn't know it yet.

I keep thinking that it's like a guillotined body with the heart still pumping. Which probably says a lot about my mind.

so yeah, get that thing out of there because it is dead

Especially as it stands a 3/4 chance of hitting something important; there's only one direction it can fall and not hit houses or my garage. I've called all 8 landscapers - my intent is to have it down by Christmas if it's not too expensive.

[elasg.livejournal.com]

Um... I do have some expertise in this field.

It's very unlikely the tree is dead. It may have been structurally compromised, I can't tell from the picture, but lightning doesn't usually kill a tree. With the way a tree is designed, that kind of damage isn't really going to do it a lot of damage (at least not biologically).

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Well... Some of my calls are out to arborists, who I expect to say if they think they can save it.

However, with the way we get hurricanes these days and the liklihood of crushing something really expensive, I'm inclined to be final.

[elasg.livejournal.com]

An arborist is the way to go - that should give you the best information - I was just commenting because a single lightning strike isn't likely to kill a tree.

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

It's not dead-- that would be if it were girdled, with the bark off all the way around the trunk. But it does look compromised, and I'd worry about the next real big windstorm, given the damage it would do to your house or the neighbors' if it, or a big chunk of it, came down.

But then I'm the one who had a tree fall on my head to the tune of 60 stitches, so I'm a but twitchy.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I don't want that to ever happen to anyone, I'm still sorry it happened to you.

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

That was supposed to be "a BIT twitchy". Impact was 3 1/2 years ago and I'm still a bit yippity....

[elasg.livejournal.com]

That's really typical lightning damage. I see a lot of trees like that, though usually not 25 feet from my house! Eeek!

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

"40 Days of Life Religious Terrorism"

There, FTFY.

That tree looks a lot like what came thru our roof during Ike.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

YIKES! Through?

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Yep. My after-action report is here. Basically, the top half of an oak tree just broke off and came crashing down on the house. The tree was perfectly healthy, too; there was no reason to think anything like that would happen.

[amethyst-hunter.livejournal.com]

Oh, I hate those 40 Days For Lies fuckers. As if their harassment has ever done any good. :p

[sarah-ovenall.livejournal.com]

I escorted at my local clinic yesterday. Going to write it up as soon as I'm up to it -- the clinic was early morning, then I had stuff to do all day until late last night, couldn't put any of it off, and I really should have followed your plan and given myself time to emotionally recover, and now I feel exhausted. The protestors here seem to have been coached in how to talk to us. No harsh words or yelling, instead 3 people came up to me and tried to start a conversation and be my frieeend. All three used almost exactly the same words. Kinda creepy. 

I have a tree that lost a major limb during an ice storm. Everyone that's seen it (including an arborist) agrees that the tree can't be salvaged and will eventually die, but it's been years and the rest of it still looks healthy. So you might not have to lose your tree immediately, maybe you'll get -- well not good news, but at least less dire news from your tree person.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

All three used almost exactly the same words. Kinda creepy.

I bet it was! What were they saying, so that I can prep to hear it?

I was going to write up my shifts, but in the end there was very little to say. Even Eeyore kept a cork in it, mostly, and there were fewer people and signs in the cold and rain when they had to face us down than there were when they had free reign of the sidewalk and it was warm and sunny.

Eeyore did insist that I was "intimidating" people because a few turned towards the protesters, then away after I quietly said "You don't have to talk to them if you don't want to."

Eeyore did keep saying that "Killing a child is always wrong." I turned to one of the other protesters and asked which Bible verse is the one about dashing babies' heads on rocks.

[sarah-ovenall.livejournal.com]

These are the things they said:

-I'm not your enemy
-I don't want to feel like we're on opposite sides of a battle
-I don't have any anger towards you, please don't be angry with me
-I know you're doing what you think is best for these women
-I know you're doing what's in your heart, just like I'm doing what's in my heart
-We're both trying to help these women in our own way

After the "I'm not your enemy" talk, later each one tried to talk me out of escorting people, you know, "look at them, they don't want to do this! Can't you see they're confused?"

I wasn't expecting this at all and it kind of threw me -- the first time I didn't realize it was a coached tactic, I thought she genuinely felt bad about the way the antis demonize us. Normally I don't talk to them no matter what they say, but in this case I said:

"I don't think you're my enemy and I don't have any anger towards you, but I'm not going to talk to you."

That worked more or less: one of them kept trying, "Can I just ask your name? Can I ask how you came to do this? Did they recruit you from the college?" but every question she asked, I said "no", then finally I said "You can ask me anything you want, but I'm not going to talk to you." Then she gave up.

The worst part was later in the morning, when the patients were mostly inside and they were just praying. They read out a prayer that went like "Lord, I hate those who hate you. I loathe those who act against you. I hate them with perfect hatred. I call them my enemies." All three of the people who told me they weren't my enemy. Standing in a row with all the rest, facing me, promising to God to hate me with perfect hatred. (Did I mention I was the only escort yesterday? Just me on one side of the street and 15 of them on the other.) At the time it really pissed me off but now I feel almost sorry for them. The cognitive dissonance required to hold both those thoughts in your head must be literally painful.

And now I'm starting to ramble so I should make a post of my own about yesterday, rather than threadjacking yours.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

De nada on threadjacking. To tell the truth, I'm too busy being gobsmacked that you were the only escort. I'm not even allowed to go out on "my own" at the clinic - too likely that one of the antis, probably Eeyore, would claim some sort of assault without a witness.

That "let's be friends" script is beyond creepy. Suddenly the protester who told me "Smile, people will agree with you more" (??) sounds semi-normal.

The imprecatory prayer doesn't shock me, though. It would take someone who was very, very foolish to answer the protester questions or to believe the "we have something in common" speech. It's as false as the "I used to be an atheist but now I have faith" speech that then rambles on to describe no form of atheism I know of.

Mostly what I get is loud prayers that pro-choicers wake up to their inherent racism and join the protesters. In between Eeyore's fantasies of us as demons.