It’s termite season in New Orleans. Sigh. This town has more “seasons” than you can imagine, especially for a place where it’s pretty much just a variation on hot and humid all year round. We’ve got the good seasons: king cake, crawfish, creole tomato. And there are the bad ones: stinging caterpillar (!), termite, and, unfortunately, hurricane. Today’s the first day of hurricane season, and I’m guessing we have a long, long summer ahead of worry and anxiety and panic, especially with all that oil endlessly surging into the Gulf. You can’t stay angry all the time. Or, I can’t anyway. I have a job and responsibilities. I have joy and magic in my life that I’m not willing to give up. I have books I need to read and histories to know so that I don’t get distracted by the event from the facts of a system that makes the everyday a struggle and the event a foregone conclusion. And I’ve got a bike to ride. I needed to ride tonight, so I risked the rain and headed out and pedaled fast. It didn’t rain, but I was soaking wet from the heavy, wet air. I ran through a number of termite swarms on my ride, but managed to keep them out of my mouth–win!. They swarm around streetlights like the one in this picture, and they are everywhere. Yes, tonight let’s just think about termite season.