Beneath the Lights

Standing beneath the oak tree to fill the suet holder, I took a moment to enjoy it's gnarly bare branches. It's sunny again today, but not warm. there was frost this morning and I don't think it's gotten out of the 40's today. I even broke out the down coat for the drive to Kathy's. I should have gotten it out sooner....

On the way home from Kathy's we stopped by the local park, a huge grassy space bisected by a stream and a pond. I noticed the very tall poles that light up the soccer playing field for the high school. 

It seemed the perfect place to throw the squeaky ball for Spike, and it was until a very nice guy came by and said there was a $250 fine for having a dog off lead there, and that the animal control officer was...he searched for a word. 'Officious?' I said. 'Yes', he said, 'exactly'. We thanked him for warning us and on the way back to the car I found a sign that said dogs needed to be on a leash 'no longer than 6 feet' embedded in a long list of park rules.

I guess in the grand scheme of things, I won't waste any of my limited bandwidth contesting park rules*. Back to a more local park that has the same restriction but no lurking animal control officer and really no people or dogs on week days. We'll continue our search for a legal place for Spike to chase the ball. It's good exercise and he loves it. We have plenty of grassy open spaces both in front and in back of our house, but they are on a serious hill...not conducive to ball throwing.

*Not when The Felon is busy throwing out all the rules for conducting a civilized and compassionate society. He has ordered his Attorney General, Pam Bimbo Bondi to scrutinize the Second Amendment to the constitution for anything that might interfere with people's right to bear arms. He has been sued by 22 states for constitutional and human rights violations, and the courts have upheld them, but he continues to do it anyway. A New York judge is threatening to hold him in contempt of court if he doesn't comply which gets us back into very familiar territory...doing things which are so unprecedented and so outside the bounds of civilized behavior that nobody really knows how to deal with it.

The only way to challenge someone whose mantra is 'move fast and break things' would seem to be to do the same. How is that right?