Sun

This flower was alive yesterday when I took this photograph. It had sprung up in the most unlikely of sandy poor soils, battled off automobile fume and oil slicks, and fought for root space with crabgrass and ragweed. Then, the real estate agent who cannot seem to sell the house and lot behind mine, pulled up in his truck and snapped it at the neck before his open house this afternoon, as if it was an eyesore. This plant had grown to five feet in height in the course of three and a half months. I saw this happen from my kitchen window and said out loud, "What the hell is the matter with people?" "What daddy?" my four year old asked from the kitchen table behind me. "Sometimes people don't pay attention to what they're doing," I grumbled. "A man just killed one of our sunflowers and I don't think he even knows what he did." "Because he didn't see it?" she asked. "Because he didn't see it." I marveled at her youthful wisdom. "He's interested in money," I said. "When you have money on the brain, it's difficult to see things." Later, after my daughter had followed me outside while I showed my oak sapling to the real estate agent (so he didn't put another footprint into it), she was at the kitchen table again, and I was looking out the window. "Did the man do what you asked him?" she asked. "He knows that the tree is there now, " I answered. "Maybe he couldn't see it because he had on dark glasses," she said.

In Ecuador protestors took over the state oil refinery and shut down oil production for several hours on Friday. As of noon today, oil production for Latin America's fifth largest oil producer is at 1/10th of its ordinary output. Protestors wanted more of the oil money spent on schools and roads. Instead, they got oil profit's current commodity of choice, a well-armed military. In Argentina workers have re-started closed factories.