Monday, March 16, 2008

Yesterday morning we went to brunch at Drumlin Farm — it’s a Mass Audubon Sanctuary out in Lincoln where we go with April often. It’s got goats and cows and chicken and sheep and fields and greenhouses and birds (naturally, Audubon). And, in mid-March every year, they have a big maple syrup breakfast to help raise money.
It’s great — all these moms and dads and grandparents and kids bundled up in the cool morning, crowding into the main hall with an enormous fireplace. There are piles of pancakes and sausage (the sausage is Drumlin Farm’s own — they raise pigs, too) and you get to see the sap dripping from Grandmother Maple and watch it boiling away in the evaporator. Last year was a great syrup year because of the prolonged cool spring. This year’s warm spring, however, meant that our dinky bottle of Drumlin Farm Maple Syrup ran us $10.

But that wasn’t the price everyone was talking about.

Despite the fact that every table had more kids than adults, the main topic of conversation wasn’t the latest cold or school policies or even Dora the Explorer. It was the price of gas. How people were not driving their minivans anymore. How they had canceled April vacation plans because it’s too damned expensive to fly with the “fuel surcharge” now. How they had to send money to their folks in Florida — where you have to drive — because, of course, Social Security can’t cover this and no one planned on these prices when they retired.

And there was a lot of talk about how the clusterfuck over in Iran is going to make matters worse. And how Bush was going to exploit this. One man at the table next to ours got so angry, spitting and spluttering, that his wife made him leave. He was going on and on about the elections and how this whole thing in Iran was just to distract us from the fact that the elections were totally rigged. Normally, this kind of behavior in public gets uncomfortable stares and pursed-lip silences — especially around kids. And there were some. But, as his wife was dragging him out, he got a lot of high-fives and “Right on!” (damned hippies need to update their lingo.)

There’s a deep unease that’s bordering on violent anger in Boston and its surrounds. It’s making me nervous.