Smooth Moves

Slap European on a biz and watch the profits and respectability roll in. Europe has brilliant cachet of which the U.S. can now only dream.

Obama gave us a patina of smooth, smart, stylish élan. He was America on it's very best day. 45? He's cheap ass, pitted, gold colored veneer, lumpily covering the diseased and fetid worst elements of this so recently great-ish nation.

Politics aside, we’re seen (and see ourselves) as sad bumpkins in comparison to our European brethren. Always have. Frankly, after seeing  so many of my countrymen behaving dimwittedly and horridly while abroad, I understand.

French women in particular are seen as paragons of style, grace and smoothivty. So many articles wax on about their secrets 

What are the mysterious qualities that make French women so stylish?
French women. How do they do it?
No-makeup makeup isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and who better embodies this effortless aesthetic than the quintessential French woman?

French women would even be better at surviving our current political shit show! The New Yorker, snarkily, fabulously, tells us how in the article, How to Survive the Next Four Years Like a French Woman.

French women seem to do everything with an effortless je ne sais quoi—whether it’s eating, dressing, dating, or resisting fascism. (source)

Given the results of the election in France, I totally get it.
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I give a little cabbage to lefties running for office. Not often – I’m not a Rockefeller or a Trump – but I do send a bit. ActBlue handles a lot of the email begathons and, boyhowdy, they’ve got some serious scare mongering, guilt inflicting, passive aggressive headers going on.

donna - we're PLEADING (SERIOUS)
I'm sickened (AWFUL news)
Pack Up. Go Home. We're DONE.
⚠️ URGENT - via Jon Ossoff HQ
and the just plain sad,
emailing for $5 - 

I get it. A lot of folks will respond to scare mongering and guilt AND I know shit’s mega serious now — more so now than in any other time in my long life.

Still, the email titles are, I find, condescendingly annoying. They’re the fastest way to get me to hit delete without reading.
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What do a lot of trees in a neighborhood signify? Generally the leafier a neighborhood is, the nicer AND more expensive it is. Why? Trees need some land and care. Poorer areas of a city, more often than not, go without both.

Valhalla isn’t a Richie Rich area by a LONG shot. There are trees but not to the same degree as you’ll find in Brookline, Stoneham or Lexington neighborhoods. Part of that is due to us being on a wee spit of land, jutting into the Atlantic just one town south of Boston. Up until the mid-1900s, the Neck was a vaca spot. Wee holiday cottages were built butt to butt. Most properties have little more than postage stamp lawns with, MAYBE, one or two trees.

Us? We’re lucky. Five tall elms and one dogwood live on the property line between Valhalla and our neighbor to the front, Angela. In front and on the side facing away from the water we’ve got another seven – one blue spruce, two dwarf firs, a birch, a maple and, of course, The Amazing Bob and Rocco – our cherry trees.

It occurred to me today that we’ve run outta tree planting space. What to do? What to do?

Trees Atlanta, One Tree Planted, Global Trees and Trees for the Future for a start. The leafy babes won't be in my back yard BUT they'll exist.