One afternoon, while the orchestra violins tuned, Chad the oboist turned to Berta, who was polishing her flute with a cloth that had once been a scarf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all over,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat is?\u201d asked Berta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLife. Earth. Thirty years, maybe less. Heat, floods, collapse. Any scientist who’s anybody agrees. But it\u2019s all right. I\u2019ve accepted it. I\u2019ve made peace.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Berta nodded. \u201cReality\u2019s a bigger landscape than fear. It includes solutions, power structures, false binaries, and who’s profiting from despair. But sure, thirty years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chad frowned. \u201cYou\u2019re not worried?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Berta looked at her flute, then at Chad, then exhaled slowly into the head-joint of her flute. One very long F# rose into the ceiling rafters and was gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDo you hear the music we\u2019re about to play?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt hasn\u2019t started,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She smiled. \u201cThat\u2019s why you don\u2019t hear it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One afternoon, while the orchestra violins tuned, Chad the oboist turned to Berta, who was polishing her flute with a cloth that had once been a scarf. \u201cIt\u2019s all over,\u201d […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"Layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-rockbob","post-8983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-tales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}