We all stayin' home

I've been waiting years for this; finally, Telegram's biggest flaw fixed:

I'm too poor to afford fast food. If I want to eat out, I have to go to the Yooper Mom and Pop shops instead. How will I survive?

Mosquitoes out and in a fury today. Be glad you're not me, normie

And to think this area used to be an ugly mining shithole

Rent only $10 a month

It's too late, New York... It's well past the point where you can save yourself by having unpleasant animals around

I hope he takes the poor pill

Gm

It should hold 👍

They say there is a sexually transmitted version of ringworm that's hit the US.

On one hand, I want this to be true; but on the other, I don't trust journalists, and especially about contagious infections

🤔

Post from Old Hollow Tree on Twitter:

Many people message me and say the same thing.

"I want to go home."

They are children who grew up in good green places who heard the golden roar of cities and moved there only to find the gold was but a thin veneer covering rot and pus. Despite this, they stayed. Sometimes the money is too good, sometimes they have already built a life that is good enough, sometimes they are just too tired.

I ask when they plan to move back to the country, to their homes.

"Someday."

Let me remind you, them, and everyone of the good man from whom I bought the High Wood, the sprawling forest surrounding my childhood home.

He too had a dream of living in the country, of returning to a place he never truly knew. He dreamt of living on what the old farmers here call The Overlook, a hillside retreat where hunters and farm hands would bring their girlfriends and wives to "take in the view" of the valley below. He cleared a road. He drilled a well. He dragged camper trailers onto the property to stay in during the summer. He would come up from the city a week or two out of the year, look at that view, and dream. He too, said "someday."

"Someday" never came.

Life kept happening and before he knew it, he was too old to realize his dream. His children who once enjoyed a week or two of their summers in the High Wood chasing fireflies and June bugs moved on. They too heard the siren song of the cities and suburbs, of an easy life. His wife became sick. She died. He became sick. He got better. He remarried. His new wife became sick. He looked up one day and realized he had spent the last thirty years in hospital waiting rooms and funeral parlors. There is joy of course. Grand children, retirement, church, time in the garden.

Yet, when we closed the deal, he looked off into a place I could not see. Someplace far, not entirely of this plane. Somewhere between reality and what could have been. There was a sense of loss, not of the land, but of something unrealized, of something desired that would never come to pass. After what felt like a very long time, he nodded and solemnly said something that will stay with me for the rest of my days.

"That old wheel keeps turning."

He was right.

Time grinds on, a millwheel that never tires, softens, or fades. You think you have time. You think the long summers of your life will never end; an eternal solstice of opportunity and second chances, of fireflies, Junebugs, and "somedays."

I would like to comfort you and tell you that you are right, that you can wait, that next year or the year after will be a better time, that you can return when the time is right.

The truth is simpler though.

That old wheel keeps turning.