spartanburg country

Last week laid off workers in Chicago took over a window and door factory. They'd been given a three-day notice that the plant was shutting down, and they were sent home without assurances of federally mandated severance and vacation pay.

Yesterday afternoon we took an hour or so to walk in what we like to call "Spartanburg's Central Park," the Edwin Griffin Preserve (The Cottonwood Trail) on the Lawson's Fork. It's the closest public space to our house, and we get out to it as much as possible.

Change, we're told, is natural. It's impossible to hold anything in suspension very long. Even if old things and places survive they fade from their former glory. The termites eat houses. Foundations shift. Trees we thought would never die fall down in a wind storm. The places and things we remember from our childhood are often transformed by neglect and abandonment or commerce and growth. Streets are widened. Yards and trees disappear as curbs are set. Whole neighborhoods vanish.

I was out weeding my wildflower garden this week and, I kid you not, a spaceship landed. It was small and looked a little like an outdoor charcoal grill, all shiny and round. When it spoke I realized it was not an errant flying charcoal grill, but a curious creature from a galaxy far away.