1/30/10

1/30/10

For the past month I’ve been cutting up a load of logs for firewood. They came from Schroon Lake, maybe thirty miles away. Most of them are sugar maple, tall slim trees, each yielding three or four sixteen foot logs, knotty, with a small core of rot. The bark on some of them flows like a river around the lopped off branches, covered with frilly pale green lichens and bright clumps of moss. Logs from the deep woods. For good measure the logger threw in a couple of hemlock logs – maybe he thought I wouldn’t know the difference. Hemlock and sugar maple often grow together. Crushed against one log was a long strand of princes pine, a club moss of the forest floor, kept bright by the cold. If it isn’t too cold, I can smell the sweetness of the blocks as I split them. The wood inside the logs is slightly pink. I feel slightly guilty at using these offerings from the forest – at least I should pay attention to them. One tree is a species I don’t recognize – perhaps red elm.

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Now everyone is moaning about the deficit. Okay! How about paying for our current wars? (Bush and the Republicans never thought this necessary.) I think a universal draft is the best way to keep American foreign policy honest, and the U.S. a republic rather than an empire, but if we must have wars, we should pay for them. Everyone’s wars – everyone should pay. Perhaps a 1% surcharge on income taxes to start, the percent rising as incomes rise, to a maximum of - what? 100% on incomes over $2 million? 200%? Those poor bankers will need even larger bonuses….