Season of Mists and Bee-sy Fruitfulness - column, 2 October 2016

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Season of Mists and Bee-sy Fruitfulness

Prime Minister Trudeau, a well-known international authority on prolonging adolescent behavior into middle age, attempted to teach Prince George how to high-twerk (or something) during last week’s state visit of Prince William, Duchess Catherine, and their children to Canada. Prince George, three years old, refused to indulge the P.M.’s low-prole importunities, and in so doing gave an adult a lesson in adult behavior.

Perhaps Prince George will visit the United States and help our 70-year-old presidential candidates try to grow up.

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An eternal bottom-of-the-page filler for newspapers is California’s San Andreas Fault. The theme is that someday the fault will split and California will disappear into the sea in an Atlantis-ish (or Pacific-ish) disaster. My theory is that California will remain in place and the rest of North America will disappear into the sea.

Either way, the Deep Internetistas will insist that the earthquake was all a false-flag operation promoted by the Galactic Masonic Skull and Bones Vatican Klingon Illuminati Rosicrucian Templar Golden Dawn Bilderberg Opus Dei Priory of Sion Lizard People Bohemian Grove Continuum of Really Mean Evilness in a secret plot to…but I lost the plot of this narrative long ago.

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The Peerless Progressive People’s Excellent Bobdescanted Exploding Smartphone and Washing Machine Company has been falsely headlined for its purportedly exploding washing machines. PPPESES&WMC’s dumb-phones have been known to burn down American cars, but their washing machines don’t really explode; they merely wobble sometimes. Hey, duty laundry dude or dudette, just balance the load, okay? It’s not that difficult.

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One longs to see a bumper sticker or a letter jacket featuring a quotation from Habukkuk.

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New tenants have settled in nicely on my magnificent rural estate – several colonies of well-behaved and industrious honeybees who were raised in Buna. My north county apiarist consultant, Terry McFall, tells me that the work of honeybees is responsible for roughly a third of all food raised, so without the little fellows we would all be hungry. Further, although there are native wild bees in the Americas, Europeans imported honeybees in the 17th century for their greater honey production.

Alaska’s beekeepers must import honeybees each spring for their honey production and for the enhancement of agriculture. There have been some experiments in keeping bees alive over the winter, but the results are inadequate and the few survivors never manage to recover fully.

In these October days we may turn to Keats’ “Ode to Autumn” for a celebration of bees:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
…to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease

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