The heat is on, now, full, fierce summer, the kind of weather that is delicious and lazy if the livin is easy and you have nothing particular to do, but it's miserable otherwise. Fortunately, the days are long, as though the sun, too, wants to get up early while it's still cool and linger in the evening when the air grows soft again.
I've been introducing Steve and his baby to the art of walking around just after dawn, and the equally alluring art of doing nothing at all in the shade in the afternoon. The other day, we were engaged in the nothing at all part under an elm tree near the Mansion. Charlie, Joy, and Apple Blossom and Joy sat nearby, although we hadn't said anything since we all sat down, so I am unable to say whether we were sitting together in the social sense or not. Perhaps we were all simply enjoying the same shade.
A group of young day-campers ran by, ignoring us, playing some kind of imaginative game in the sunshine. The one running in front (being chased?) turned toward the others and sang out "ooooooooooo!" while slapping at his open mouth with one hand. One of the following children said "Pow! Pow!" shooting an invisible gun. The other must have had a Star Wars blaster, because she said "Pew! Pew! Pew!" instead.
"Why don't we have any Indians here?" asked Apple Blossom.
"We have at least three," said Charlie, rattling off the names of three yearlings with ancestry on the Indian Subcontinent.
"No, I mean like them," Apple clarified, pointing to the children.
"Them? Well, there they are."
Apple sighed and rolled her eyes. Charlie smiled, fractionally.
"How do kids learn stereotypes like that?" complained Steve.
"They're six years old," I said. "Maybe they just like making that noise."
"While pretending to be Indians," Steve added.
"Seriously, though," said Apple,"why no Native Americans?"
"I don't know that we don't," I pointed out. "I don't know everybody's ethnic background. I don't know yours."
"Mostly German," said Apple.
"I don't think they need this place," said Joy.
Charlie rolled his eyes.
"And they are an extremely small portion of the population," he put in. "Statistically, you'd expect them to be rare."
"But not non-existent," said Apple. "We're not that small a school."
"We're mostly white, here" acknowledged Steve. "When nothing changes, nothing changes."
"What do you mean, they don't need this place?" asked Apple of Joy. "I would think it would be the perfect place for them."
"Exactly. What we have to give, they already have. Like showing gratitude to the natural world."
"You can't make generalizations like that!" protested Steve, "you're totally romanticizing a culture you don't understand."
Joy looked surprised to be thus taken to task by a student, but then she shrugged her shoulders. She didn't contradict Steve, though.
Charlie reacted more forcefully.
"What, walking around giving coins to plants?" he said. I should explain that a lot of people on campus make a practice of leaving a small gift, usually a coin, sometimes a small crystal or some other offering, as thanks whenever they harvest a wild plant for any reason. Charlie has never thought well of it. "Of what possible use could a coin be to a plant? Is it going to buy itself ten cents' worth of fertilizer. Meanwhile, you get to feel all noble and shit for leaving religiously inspired trash."
"And what do you do, when you harvest a plant or an animal?" Joy asked, knowing the answer.
Charlie did not respond, Just looked at each other, but I knew the answer. And I knew that Charlie offers thanks.
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