Cutting to the Chase

Jerry's tree crew arrived this morning when I was still  reading the paper in my pajamas..The trees on our front lawn have grown so much with all the rain they have gotten this year that their height and density have all but obscured the mountain vineyard  view that attracted us to this house in the first place. Their instructions were to take anywhere from 12 to 20 feet  from the tops and thin the three trees on the lawn. 

While  we waited on the front porch for OilMan to finish his shower, we surveyed the trees and the guys discussed, with a combination of English, Spanish and much gesturing the best way to go about it. Eventually, Dave, the foreman said, "just make it look good". I laughed, but I also thought that cutting to the chase is always better than endless discussion. Not only was that a pretty clear goal, but it respected the ability of the "climbing" team to make the right decisions. 

While I was driving home from Pilates class later in the morning, I listened to Jeremy Hobsen interviewing a Mexican senator about this statement made the other day by Trump, "Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying, in some form, for the badly needed border wall" The senator prefaced his very rational discussion of such an irrational statement with, "well  Trump is either bipolar or schizophrenic...."

Once again I thought how refreshing it was, especially in the political/news arena, to hear someone state the obvious so that we didn't have to waste our time wading through all the media doublespeak and Trump's delusional lies. 

I feel that political correctness has been carried to such an extreme in this country that often the main point gets lost in the in the deluge of analysis, parsing and choosing of words and general pussyfooting around  the subject. Many discussions about Trump would not even have to happen if we just  begin with the idea that he is delusional, incoherent and has no idea how even 'normal' human interactions work, much less any kind of basic knowledge of how government works, we could save ourselves hours of trouble and anxiety.

I'm really tired of wasting my time pretending that someone so out of touch with reality should be taken seriously.

After he had cut the top one tree down by almost 20 feet with just one branch sticking out of the top like a small tree, one of they guys called down that there was a bird's nest in it.  OilMan's yelled up to him to  climb up and look into the nest. When he signaled that it was empty, OilMan told him to cut it down. 

I may be making a simplistic comparison here, but when the landscape gets so cluttered  up that you can't see the forest (or the nest) for the trees, it's time to clear away the detritus and look at the reality. See extra