The Oppenheimer Report 5/1/17

April showers bring May snowstorms, is that how the saying goes? As I begin this report on Sunday, the mercury is hovering around 33F Degrees, and once again I was fooled by a few warm, sunny days. You’d think I’d have learned by now, but every year I make the same mistake. Tempted by a couple of tee-shirt-weather days, I was at the local supermarket on Saturday, saw all the lovely spring flowers on display, and succumbed to the urge to adorn our yard with the first colors of spring. They shouldn’t put that stuff out yet for suckers like me! Experienced locals here in the Almaguin Highlands know it’s best to wait until late May to plant anything around here. Still, every year I buy something before the last frost, and then pay the price. As the Irish might say, “Today (Sunday) the weather is desperate!”. I just brought our traumatized plant in from the cold, hoping it will survive. Not known for my green thumb, I am slowly learning some hard lessons about what will and will not grow up here. 

Here in the Muskoka and Almaguin Highlands regions, we are in hardiness zones 5A and 4B. The lower the number, the more severe the climate, and the hardier the plants must be to survive. It bothers me that local garden shops routinely sell trees and shrubs that will not survive in this region. We keep a small vegetable garden during the summer, but it’s a short growing season. Many years ago, when we were building our house, I bought one of those “Topsy Turvy” upside down tomato planters you’ve probably seen advertised on TV. I planted cherry tomatoes – our favorites - in early June. By the time the plant finally bore fruit, it was late August, and just before they ripened, there was a hard frost. All was lost. Up here in the near north, you snooze you lose.

I watched part of the White House Correspondents' dinner last week, and heard young Daily Show comedian, Hasan Minhaj, roast Donald Trump (in absentia). It’s no surprise that the thin-skinned Trump would not attend this affair, because the dinner lauds those whom he considers to be creators of “fake news”. I thought Minhaj got off to a slow start, but he picked up steam in the second half of his routine, and I love to hear almost any comedian mocking Trump. It is, after all, a little like shooting fish in a barrel. I’m no fan of mainstream media, and I think many major news sources are reporting with considerable bias. That said, I do not like the direction in which this Trump administration is heading, and any attack on freedom of speech is a potential threat to our democracy. This whole battle is beginning to remind me of Edward R. Murrow vs. Senator Joe McCarthy. By the way, no one is more fact-challenged than our Commander-In-Tweet and his band of silly spokespersons. From Spicey, equating the Syrian conflict with Hitler’s Germany, to the never-before reported “Bowling Green Massacre”, to Trump’s latest boner about Andrew Jackson’s involvement in the Civil War, we are being inundated with alternative facts. Perhaps Donald should hire a tutor in American history before he opens his pie hole in public again. We’re in trouble when the average elementary school history buff knows more than our President about American history. I would not disagree that there is too much spin and misinformation in the media today, but Trump and his boneheaded minions are re-writing history.  I listened to Watergate reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward speak about the dangers of an administration that eschews the media, and those two guys know a little bit about the dangers of letting a government spin out of control. 

At the end of his roast, Minhaj joked that Trump would probably tweet about how terrible the Nicki Minaj speech was during the dinner. I guess it would be a funnier joke if it weren’t so true. Ignorance is not a good foundation for leadership, and I fear it is contagious. Look at the bright side: only about 1366 days to go!!  

  
-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2017 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED