Another Day in the Country
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
Maybe it's the New Year that sparks change in people. Maybe that's why I'm noticing so much change. Usually, I make a list of resolutions, changes, that I want to make in my life. This year, I only made one. Lose weight. I've gotten sloppy about the way I eat. I still haven't found a mode of exercising (other than yard work) that I enjoy! My pants are uncomfortable. So, I set off to the store for some things I needed to change my lifestyle. 1. A scale. 2. A pedometer. 3. More salad.
When I walked into the door at the store there was a stack of bathroom scales right there at the front door, along with another stack of exercising contraptions and liquid diet drinks. Evidently, I wasn't the only one to decide that a little change was in order.
Having now stated the fact that I'm changing to the whole world, which is massive peer pressure, I'll change the topic.
We're still talking about change; but previous change was the kind I initiated. Difficult though it may prove to be, it was my idea. The other kind of change is the kind that is foisted upon us. We don't necessarily want it. We don't like it. We've got to learn to live with it!
Yesterday, Triple T and I were on an adventure, driving down the interstate and suddenly I realized something had changed. Instead of just rolling landscape in front of my eyes there was a whole forest of windmills on the horizon. We're not talking the kind that Kansas has always had; but the kind that I am used to seeing in California — wind generators — taller than a grain elevator kind of windmills, making the service trucks look like matchbox cars. "Whew this is something relatively new!" I exclaimed. I didn't like this change.
We kept driving and while I hoped this windmill epidemic was contained in one vista, they just kept coming around every turn. While I know these generators are ecologically wise, and I'd much rather see them in Kansas than coal-burning electricity producing facilities, this was still Change with a capital C. These tall impostors were a reminder (underlined by the recent ice storm) of how hooked we all are on electricity and the changes we are bound to see because of our growing addiction.
Change comes at us so quickly these days that it is mind-boggling. My phone is out of date in two months. My computer programs are obsolete in less than a year. I'm struggling to keep up.
Tony was getting a different satellite for his television this week and I listened to the technician trying to explain, to a 95-year-old man who refuses to use his pesky hearing aids, how things are changing every few months in this industry. Tony — who already has more TV clickers than any human being should have, and was adding one more to the collection — knows all about change and navigates it surprisingly well.
At Christmas, my third and fourth grade art students at Centre Elementary, were writing letters to Santa Claus. I read them and was amazed at how many kids were requesting iPods for Christmas. These kids are embracing change, begging for it. I, on the other hand, value the hearing I have left so much that I'll probably never get an iPod.
One of the things I've always liked about Ramona in particular and Kansas in general was how slowly things changed. The pace seemed slower — although that was probably just because I was visiting then and not living here like I am now.
I like seeing big round bales on the horizon line as I drive the interstate, old-fashioned windmills pumping water in a field, snow drifts along the fence lines. On another day in the country, I give thanks for our wide open spaces that for years have seemed unchanging!
