…we get rain showers
Barely deterring the hummingbirds however.
Barely deterring the hummingbirds however. Hand surgery follow-up
Yes, it is serious surgery, but it is also a very common surgery. Thumb joints tend to wear out after 60 or 70 years of use. This surgery replaces the joint. The hand still hurts, especially if she moves it, and it seems she’s always moving it. There is a lot of healing going on in there. It’s the same surgery she had last year on her right hand. Now that hand works just fine, so we feel like the recovery time on this one is a good investment. We get a follow-up visit to the doctor on Wednesday. Judy will get to trade out the soft cast for a hard one. Morning view the other direction
It’s a little shaggy since we were gone all summer. I’ll get a couple bushes trimmed and we’ll be right back in shape. The hummingbirds continue their swarm.
And Judy’s hand rests (relatively) comfortably.
The morning view
The day starts at 80 degrees. There is humidity. The high will be 95. I try to take my lunch-time walk earlier in the day but that doesn’t always work out. Sometimes I walk at a hundred. It’s very tropical this time of year. We drink morning coffee at our peril. We’re in the path of the ruby-throated hummingbird fall migration. All four feeders are busy. Buzzing, battling, high-speed hummingbirds with those long sharp bills resemble small darts. Sitting on the deck involves involuntary ducking. I have some thoughts about the accelerating pace of change today
In that context though, I think about our ancient ancestors and I’m struck not by the accelerating pace of change today, but by the incredibly slow pace of change throughout all of our human history up to now. Imagine homo-sapiens or Neanderthals on a sparsely populated planet. Every day they get up in the morning and it is the same as the day before. For years, decades, and generations, nothing changes. If they didn’t know how to make fire the day before, they weren’t going to know how to make fire the next day either. Stories could be passed down from generation to generation to generation about how the world was and how it had always been. Change was imperceptible. Technical breakthroughs, changes in climate, changes in social norms; nothing changed at a detectable rate. For each generation it had to seem like nothing would ever change. There was no reason to think it ever would.