So it goes

We continue to have brief thaws when we rush outside to do what we can, followed by arctic cold.  Yesterday it was fifty and we worked on the perennial beds.  Now we are told to expect a serious nor’easter on Wednesday bringing much snow, high winds, coastal flooding and probable power outages.  Then it's supposed to warm up again.  Never been through a year like this one.  Climate change at work.  Everything is more extreme.I hope we don’t lose power because we must go into Boston on Thursday for theRevolutionary Moment conference at Boston University, regardless of the weather or the power situation.  Our friend Dale will take care of the greenhouse while we’re gone and if he has seedlings of his own by then, he can put them in with ours.  On Friday April 4th, we’ll celebrate my birthday along with his partner Stephen’s – we do this every year together but the conference blocks us from doing so closer to our real birthdays.I am hoping while we’re in the city to go to Whole Paycheck to buy some naturally raised meat.  I won’t eat supermarket beef or lamb.  We can always get naturally raised chickens locally as well as free-range eggs.  Enough people keep chickens around here again.  People used to have animals – goats, chickens, rabbits, etc – but after affluent people started buying summer houses here and retiring here, they objected.  Now people have fought back and are having at least some animals, especially chickens and bees.  But suppression goes on. A friend who has two horses from whom we used to get manure for the gardens has a ex-suburbanite neighbor who complained about her manure pile and so she can’t have one any longer. Someone has to haul the manure away and waste it.Yet another friend was diagnosed with cancer, someone much younger than me again.  His is a type that is more treatable than most, but he is stuck in Canada with his little dog while his partner is here in Wellfleet.  He’ll have to stay there for two or three months during his treatment.  He had rented his old apartment out from under himself expecting to drive back here weeks ago, so now he’s trying to find a place to stay with doggy until he can finally return.  His partner should be able to drive up to spend some time with him once Dan finds a place, but since his partner’s in town government, there are limits on how long he can ever be away.On the other hand, a friend went this winter to help her mother while she was dying, spent a month she could ill afford there.  Then her mother recovered, which is good news except for the unpaid bills. Now she has to work twice as hard simply to manage.  Plus she has to be out of her year-round rental by fall and must find a new one she can afford, preferably in Wellfleet.  Nothing ever goes smoothly, it seems.  Maybe for the wealthy.I am writing poems and working outside when the weather makes it possible.I am back being active in Downcape Downwinders, a group trying to shut downPilgrim, a clone of Fukushima which leaks tritium into Massachusetts Bay, has a poor safety record, is cutting corners on everything to make money for Entergy corporation based in New Orleans, has four times the legal limit of spent rods on site.  There is no evacuation plan for Cape Cod nor can there ever be since we’re joined to the mainland by only two bridges that regularly back up for miles every holiday and every warm weekend.  We’re downwind from leaky old Pilgrim with no hope of survival when it blows. Every nuclear plant built by G.E. on that model has had serious problems.  And mostly the media are not informing us about how serious what happened and IS STILL HAPPENING at the Fukushima reactors is – how widespread the radiation, how increasingly dangerous the leaks are.  Are, now were.  It’s still happening but it is no longer news.  The only politician who seems to care about our survival is Dan Wolf, who was forced out of the governor’s race on a technicality.  As Kurt Vonnegut wrote, So it goes.