Vine Maple Farm – Page 2 – Pioneers, books, computing, and our future

January 7, 2026January 7, 2026

Three From The Military

I write short stories. Check out my book, Elementary Forms of Religious Life, for samples. I’m toying with a story inspired by the saga of a failed-businessman who, I am waiting to hear, has been caught snitching bon bons while taking out the cat litter.

Three military men appear in this strange and dysfunctional spectacle.

The oldest soldier was a pilot shot down over hostile territory, tortured, held as a prisoner of war for five years, was released, and became a U.S. Senator.

The second soldier flew combat missions in Iraq, became an astronaut, and commanded space shuttle missions. He retired from the military when his senator wife was shot in an attempted assassination and was elected to replace her in the U.S. Senate.

The third military man was a part-time member of the National Guard, led small infantry squads and sat in an office during three tours in the Middle East. He became a cable television anchor where he projected a tough persona on camera while presenting his own off-camera spectacle of drunkenness and erratic bullying. But, by golly, he looked the part.

The TV drunk was appointed to a casting couch cabinet as Secretary of Defense. He disclosed classified information on unofficial and insecure media and, in the interest of transparency, I suppose, invited a journalist to listen in. The leak jeopardized the lives of troops on the ground, no doubt more seriously than when he led rifle squads.

The failed businessman derided the prisoner of war senator for allowing himself to be captured.

The casting couch secretary accused the astronaut senator of sedition and tried to strip his military rank and deny his pension when the astronaut quoted the Department of Defense Law of War Manual on social media.

I won’t be writing this story. It’s beyond belief and I’m too busy avoiding cat bon bons from Venezuela in the news.

January 1, 2026January 1, 2026

Anno Mirabilis 2026

Scanning the screens on this morning of 2026 CE, I noted that if 2025 was Anno Horribilis, folks hope 2026 will be Anno Mirabilis, which led me to ask what Anno Mirabilis 2026 would be.

My first thought was that the ICE raids would end, the streets calm down, and the U.S. would return to welcoming immigrants as my grandparents and great-grandparents were welcomed at the beginning of the 20^th century.

Next, laws would be passed to re-establish and strengthen the middle class of this country: Tax credits for those at the bottom of the economic scale, moderate taxes from the middle, a fair share from the top, and free access to the best medical services for all.

In an Anno Mirabilis, science would be restored to an honored and supported source of insight, innovation, future prosperity, and reduced suffering. As science has detected that human activity has changed the climate for the last century, let science show us how to improve it in the next century.

An Anno Mirabilis foreign policy would recognize that justly deliberated and restrained international economic cooperation, free trade and markets contribute to well-being and trust among all nations and peoples.

Most of all, from the meekest to the most powerful, from the richest to the poorest, from the foolish and the wise, may 2026 be a year in which we all take a moment to become kinder, juster, and more reasonable before we speak, write, or act.

December 13, 2025December 14, 2025

Floods

This morning, for the first time after several days of heavy rain and thick clouds, fog blanketed the fields. The fog gradually thinned, and the sun shone on Mt. Baker, Komo Kulshan, wrapped in glittering white snow. Flood waters have been retreating since yesterday morning.

This flood is said to be the product of an atmospheric river, a phrase my mother’s parents would have thought outlandish, even silly. Nothing like a river crashing down from the mountains laden with precious rock flour.

My mother’s parents owned a farm near the Nooksack River downstream a few miles from Lynden. They expected their fields to be underwater for several months in the year, which they gladly traded for well-watered and fertile soil for their crops.

Their house was on stilts until they bought a parcel of high ground for their dwelling, barn, chicken coops, and machinery shed. When my mother was born during a March flood, my grandfather fetched the midwife in a row boat, a mode of transportation he knew well.

My mother’s father was born on the polders of the Netherlands and grew up in the Dutch community on Whidbey Island where he learned to live on the water. This was before the Deception Pass bridge was built. He courted my grandmother in Lynden. To visit my grandmother, he and his brother rowed across the notorious whirlpools and tidal rips of the pass. I never heard what motivated his brother, but I like to stretch the point and say that I was born to the product of a daredevils in rowboats and spring floods.

I’ve gotten emails from all over asking if my family is okay in this much publicized flood. I answer that like most longtime Whatcom County residents, we have learned to live with the fall and spring floods that arrive most years; this year’s flood is was higher than usual but not unheard of.

Lest anyone doubt, I agree that the climate is changing, but climate is averages and statistical norms; weather is the events of a single day or week. Climate change can be detected with objective answerable questions, like ‘was the average July temperature at a give spot between 1950 and 1980 the same, higher, or lower than the same average between 1980 and 2020?’ Consult the records and you have an answer.

The folks who do those calculations say climate has changed. With all the changes I’ve seen in my lifetime, I’m not surprised, and I don’t think climate change is a hoax. However, a lot of the talk I hear about climate change is, in my opinion, uninformed and not as factual as I would like it to be.

We should all feel sorry for the sufferings of those driven out of their homes by the floods and do whatever we can to help, but I still enjoyed the weather this week: heavy rain splatting in my face and rising waters revealing the contours of the earth in ways that are unseen on lesser days.

The weather service predicts the atmospheric river will return for a reenactment next week. The meteorologists know more than I do, but this morning, looking at the sky and the mountain, I have doubts.

We’ll see. I’m used to being proven wrong.