Green Shoots

You can only shake your head and laugh at the NYT report from deep in the heartland on the sprouting and growth of trees in abandoned silos scattered in the declining rural areas of Kansas and Nebraska.  As the growth of large farms and subsequent redundancy of most older farm buildings in the midwest has left most of said buildings to the vagaries of nature.  Since most silos are cylinders of concrete blocks with wooden rooves, the roof is the first thing to decay, and the organic matter provided by the rotten wood and whatever feedstuffs may have been left in the silo provide enough nourishment to seeds dropped by birds for them to sprout and actually grow out of the silos.  The resulting tableau is at once arresting and sad.  As small farmers were packed off to the cities and the rural areas become mega farms employing few people, the small amount of civility is gradually overcome by nature.  You have to believe if the corporate overlords could do away with people altogether, they would do it in aNew York minute.  The NYT article petered out long before any such conclusion was reached. Or indeed any conclusion at all.  I guess the reporter was fascinated by the trees, but not interested to wonder why or how things have come to this.  More's the pity.