Up On Hawthorne Hill by Richard DeRosa

Of garlic, onions and majority rule

Took down the garlic the other day, trimmed it, and shifted it to trays for winter storage. On the same day tied up the red and yellow onions, and hung them along the barn rafters to cure for a few weeks. These are two of my favorite pastimes up here on the hill. One would assume that such tasks are rather mindless. Not so, at least for me. Focusing on an ostensibly simple, repetitive task frees the mind from the burden of forced thought, leaving it free to go where it pleases. There are times when time passes and yet seems not to have passed at all. It is as if one is suspended in-corporeally in a separate reality. Normally, my mind wanders in and about pedestrian yet pleasing byways. Not so the other day. For some time now I have been troubled by what Walter Lippmann characterized as the tyranny of the majority.