Swampeast Arkansas is bone dry.   In our Delta, this is a crucial time of the year for strawberries.  They have to  send out new runners so we have good berries next year.  They aren’t.  They are dying.

We hear about full rivers and lush pastures in Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, and even parts of Oklahoma.  So we wonder why we are being punished.  Add in the oil spill to our South and our preachers have plenty of material.  The  apocalypse must surely be upon us.

A new revelation about the end times is being heard from the pulpits.   Though we are only having minor earthquakes–from the drillers extracting gas from the shale 4000 feet down–these do fit with the new revelation.   Man is destroying the Earth and we’d better repent or we are in for it.

After the July 4th sermon we all laugh and joke with our friends, drive our SUVs and crew cab pickups past several houses jammed full of the undocumented who work our farms, and end up at the local Chinese or Thai restaurant where we gorge on food shipped in from California.

Then we head out early to the 4th of July extravaganza to get good seats.  That gives us time to read the paper.  Again someone is in trouble for telling the truth about Afghanistan.  The head of the Republican party thinks land wars in Afghanistan are unwinnable propositions, but that’s not the Republican Party line so he is about to lose his job.  Somehow, the Republicans are supporting Obama against their own party head.

The modern Republican blind faith in the military is echoed even by the symphony orchestra as they warm us up for the fireworks.   Lots of marching songs, red, white and blue and praise of the military.  The last articles I read are about the huge need to reduce our national debt, though we would never cut the military, of course.

I deal with all these signs of the impending apocalypse by taking a nap.   I wake to exploding pyrotechnics.  I’m in a great mood and enjoy the ride home knowing just what I must do: save my strawberries.

So this morning I set up the sprinkler and give myself and the strawberries a good soaking.  My getting wet is a reward for weeding the berries.  It’s hard to convince myself to pull weeks in the rock hard soil.  But this way the sprinkler keeps me cool and loosens up the week roots at the same time.

Now my strawberries are weed-free and well-watered.  Tending my strawberries amid signs of apocalypse might be like rearranging deck chairs on the sinking Titanic.  Or a way of acting locally while thinking globally.  Or, I hope, something too profound to put into a few words.

All I really know is my strawberries appreciate the attention.