April 16, 2021: The Bees and the Trees -

I am upset about large things - guns and racism and homelessness and vandalism and refugee limits, and the loss of my old friend who died - and it’s slopping over into Outsize Irritation about small things. Irritation is a step up from being flattened, but not a big step.

Today, I am wildly irritated by unsolicited paper products. I SAID it was outsize.

The Save the Bees people sent me a multi-page plea for support, plus a little Save the Bees bookmark, ordinarily unremarkable, but annoying today. Save a tree, bee people! I don’t want your dumb bookmark! I have countless dumb bookmarks, and I still use a scrap of something or other to mark my place in books.

The Bee bookmark wouldn’t have bugged me so much if it hadn’t followed on the heels of a thick packet from the Arbor Day Foundation. I like bees! I like trees! And I did not ask these people to pester me.

The Arbor Day packet was intended to guilt me into sending money, of course, and the deal was that if I sent in a donation, they would plant three trees someplace. Trusting that I would do my bit, not even waiting to see if I came through, the Arbor Day folks had included three lovely cards, with gorgeous photos of outdoorsy things like a canoe and mountains and a wee fox kit, emblazoned with noble quotes from Rachel Carson and such. On the inside, each card said that a tree had been planted in honor of the recipient. When I sent in my money, I could a) sponsor some trees, b) feel virtuous and c) signal my virtue by mailing the cards to three environmentally-conscious friends or relations! Win, win, win!

This put me into a tiny rage. The tree people had felled some trees to make cards I should not WASTE, but could not in good conscience USE. (I checked, by the way, and the cards didn’t mention being made from recycled paper.) Curse you, tree people! It’s bad enough when some news outfit sends me an unsolicited calendar, but the TREE people? Also, I resent having my guilt chain yanked. I didn’t harvest the trees to make the unwanted cards (and the rest of the thick solicitation packet, the testimonial about how important trees are, etc.), so why should I feel guilty putting the cards into the recycle bin?

Remember those old “You can help…. OR you can turn the page!” magazine ads for whatever it was, maybe Save the Children? I got a solicitation like that today from St. Jude. Don’t you have even TEN DOLLARS to spare? Prime guilt-chain yankers, but at least they don’t drop a child off on your doorstep. See, now I’m just fulminating. Guilt will make me fulminate, guaranteed. I turned the page, and I still feel crummy about it.

Honestly, I don’t want to be this crabby. It’s a temporary condition. I used to roll my eyes at people who fussed about minor swag, customers who would say Please don’t give away tiny erasers with your company name on them, because you are supporting the toxic eraser industry (I made that one up, but you get the idea).

Or thank-you items!  I do some volunteer work for my alma mater, and some of my fellow volunteers used to write Reply All notes every year when we’d get our volunteer thank-you gifts. They were, I thought, being fuss-budgets: Please do not send me a thank-you flash drive made in Country X, which has a terrible human rights record. That sort of thing. And yet, they weren’t exactly wrong, and now here I am, grousing about three unsolicited cards and a bookmark.

It could be worse, I suppose. Oregon Field Guide is re-running a piece on Invasive Species Barbecue, ie, how to cook up various weeds and invasive animals, including frogs and crayfish. I like crayfish as much as the next person, and I grasp that some of them are bullying our native species, but somehow, the whole barbecue idea has a tiny whiff of revenge to it. Or maybe I’m projecting. It would be one thing to recycle the Arbor Day cards, and something else to make a giant bonfire and burn them, right?

Anyway, I dug the cards back out of the recycling, and inserted a “NOT” in the message. A tree has NOT been planted in your honor! Now I need to think long and hard about who should receive them, because it has to be someone who appreciates my killer wit. There are only three of these cards. They are collector’s items! Act now, and one could be yours!