Old People

Having read that this winter was the warmest on record, or ever since records were kept. (1880) I have to wonder where this is leading us? As I noted while reading the book about the demise of the cod, no one would admit that the stocks were being depleted dramatically. And even to the very end; “The cod will come back” was the rallying cry for the clueless. The biggest problem is that these things take a long time, time that most people don’t seem to want to account for. When I was growing up, every manner of fish could be caught from our local pier and the brown pelican was seen everywhere. The pier is where I spent hours and hours catching mackerel, surf perch, sand dabs, tom cod and even an occasional halibut. Great rafts of anchovies could be seen from the pier and the brown pelican would entertain the pier fisherman by diving straight down into the silver horde, their huge beak open. They would reappear from the water and struggle to fly away with only a few lucky anchovies flopping to safety from their bills. Now? It’s a desert. The amount of time from then to now is about 60 years. A 30 year old citizen doesn’t have a clue! “Yeah. Right...the old people always say it used to be better in the old days. As if!”