Nature/Unnature

The gingko tree at the bottom of Isham Park, a spooky creature with vast, horizontal arms, keeps me posted on the seasons. It finally felled all its leaves this week, papering the path to the 207th Street subway station in the space of a few hours. In the autumn it goes from brilliant yellow to barren in a single day with the first strong breeze, as if an internal bolt suddenly came loose.

Summer lingered into November in New York this year, and although one freak event does not a globally-warmed planet make, it is disconcerting to see so many of the leaves on the other trees drop to the ground with most of their chlorophyll still intact. The fall colors this season were green, pale green and burnt green rather than the usual russets and golds. Without the bracing cold snaps of October nor hoar-frost on the pumpkin, the trees didn’t seem to register that time for hibernation was nigh. They’ll do fine anyway, no doubt, and it is comforting to know their descendants or mutant versions thereof will still be standing in Isham Park long after ours are living in stalactite caves and dining on bats.

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Meanwhile, Wall Street should consider going on lithium carbonate right away. Every day either we’re heading into recession—sell!!—or the Fed is going to soften monetary policy soon—buy!! The speculators must be having a field day and justifying their $14,000-a-week salaries, the average gross pay for financiers these days, according to one of the magazines. No wonder hamburgers are so overpriced around here.

Now that our economy has been stripped of the manufacture of actual products and runs instead on the process of selling one another houses with money borrowed from China, it’s hard to understand how injecting still more debased dollars is going to help. All eyes are now fixed on the mighty consumer in hopes he and she will once again overspend foolishly and save the day, undeterred by three-buck gas and thousand-dollar dental visits.