This effort is all about the madness of trees. And a man named Jeffrey Badger. Or rather his website. Or rather, I met his mother, a lovely lady, who gave me his web address. ('Yes, I have a record. A record for being compassionated and convolutionated.' -me after two beers and a Presidential speech.) At a craft store. I met Badger's mother at a craft store. You know, the place where plastic flowers look so very like plastic flowers. (Don't ask what I was doing there. Lost. Swear it.) Where women buy fuzzy bits and sparkly bits and make, um, fuzzy/sparkly bits. (Okay, not lost, but under duress.) Creating their own gravity. Whole ecosystems thriving, despite what Bush's official forestry guy claims about the non-existence of ecosystems. (For more adroit deductions by Bush appointed Allan K. Fitzsimmons, free-market policy analyst/national forest manager look for: "Ecological Confusion Among the Clergy," 2000, and "The Illusion of Ecosystem Management," published by the Political Economy Research Center, 1999. For people on the go, there's always the abbreviated Seattle Times version: "Fitzsimmons says ecosystems exist only in the human imagination and cannot be delineated. Federal policies, therefore, should not be used to try to manage or restore them." More reassuring nuggets? "It would not be a crisis if the nation's threatened and endangered species became extinct." Ah, well, we can all rest easy now.) And that's why I'm doing this. For the Healthy Forests Initiative. Um, I mean, for the trees. Er, rather, for endangered things under a Clean Skies Initiative. Okay, so it's just a hobby. The good old craft store redirect. (Tune in next week for "Love in Digressions; my Secret Affair with David Bainbridge." Post production title: "Aristotle, Fly Testicles and Me.") Where was I? Oh, yes... Crafting. So, that's why I'm doing this. For the same reason women everywhere staple and glue gun bits of themselves to some new bit of something else. All of us knowing we'll never survive the cancer, the stroke, the angina, the drugs we did in the 60's, 80's, and 90's, or another installment of Bush foreign policy, to get to know the people still to come. Or in my case, the people already gone. Forward or back, it's much the same token of love. And remembrance. Because the things we make are undeniably stapled (I have scars...) to bits of ourselves. And because, for me, hugging trees is the closest I can get to hugging the people I've already lost. (You can't be still reading this, can you? Good God. Made of staunch stuff. Torturous thing. Even I haven't been able to plow through it. Now, go away. Save yourself. Or better still mail me a proofed, abridged version and I'll post it. I'm in earnest.)

So, anyway, thanks everyone. And thanks Badger and Badger's mom, and everyone else online who has been wonderful. I hope something here helps someone else out there. And remember, like my dad always said, "Be a good citizen and plant a tree." Or was that Yogi Bear?

I've got lots of research that's been heaping up. A bit overwhelming. I'm not quite sure how to proceed. Like the crazy American heiress who kept building onto her house in order to stay alive. Mad as a loon, but one hell of a house. I forget her name. Anyway, I'm sure it'll all get sorted out. The website, not the house. Until then, good luck!

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