By Ron Baker
I love the chatter that arises as Spring approaches. Especially if you hang around those whose life is the soil.
Now, chatter is just that! Not a research paper delivered at a conference to enhance the researcher’s status. Or a political statement designed to influence a social gathering towards a partisan agenda. Or an in-depth documentary that purports to gather facts while presenting an opinion. Or even an editorial in a newspaper/social media network letting out an individual’s cogitations.
Chatter is what we speak around friends.
I’m at a local coffee hangout and a group has the spring snowfall map and expected grasshopper distribution map in front of them. They are experts in their fields – quite literally. Their predictions follow the science but also their own experience. Do we have more moisture than in previous years? Yes. Will the grasshoppers be abundant? The map says maybe – we’ll see.
Another bit of chatter may also be heard around town. This chatter comes from those who know snow. The intermittent weather ups and downs have apparently sucked a lot of moisture out of the snow cover into the ground already. The shell on top of the ground will melt but not with the intense amount of moisture that has accompanied other years where flooding has happened.
To chase chatter can be fun. That’s why we have coffee clatches and old men who hang out sipping a hot beverage and tea parties and potlucks and grocery aisle discussions. If we don’t have social interactions, our aloneness tends to breed mental health issues. If we have too many social interactions, we are forced to sift through too much information and we love to sensationalize rather than sort out the chaff.
Of course, I come back to the old word – gossip. Just a short thought. Privacy commissions are put in place for a reason. Unfortunately the long reach, claimed to be the spirit of a law, can lead to restrictions far beyond that which is healthy for a society.
Back to chatter! In our chatter we need to keep in mind that an expert’s opinion may be coming directly from the person in front of us. We need to ask questions of that person. Why do you believe what you do? Where did you get these ideas? Have these ideas been proven in the past? What do you think this means for our future? And maybe the best question of all: Why should I believe you?
Now that makes for a great chat session.
And YES, I would love to see lots of moisture in the ground and no flooding this spring!
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