I'm Perry from Santa Barbara and I support the slowdown meeting a wide diversity of poets

and their outstanding poems takes my mind and heart to a higher place, a truth that feeds

my day away from the debilitating misinformation or the plagues us, join me by making a gift

to the slowdown today. Go to slowdownshow.org slash donate.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. As I write this I am looking out the window

at the 110-year-old Elm Tree that fell on my house. The earth surrounding the tree's

base resembles a raised carpet. 65 miles per hour winds toppled it. There it rests until

the tree's surface comes along with a chipper truck, buzzing chainsaws, and massive

loppers. Then roofers and carpenters will arrive to repair the dent at Eve and smash gutter

that broke the tree's fall. In due time the house will be restored to its former look

with no trace of nature's tournatic winds having karate chop this section of the house.

The leaning Elm is a striking visual reminder of nature's power, one that can easily turn

the sturdiest tree for a brief moment into a hovering Mary Poppins. I cannot help but

turn my century old home into a symbol. This house probably bears more scars than I am aware,

hidden by cosmetic changes and renovations, new owners with new intentions. The footprint

has been slightly altered from its original construction. The former breakfast look where the

damage occurred is now a small sitting room. Occasionally I walk around and listen to its

creaks, hoping to hear its history. The events and lives of the people who occupied this base

long before me, who ran their hands down a banister, who bent to stoke flames in the fireplace,

who looked out this very window as the world passed by.

If you are a writer, old houses are more than quaint. They send the imagination down the corridors of

time. What did the children dream of? What songs were sung? What stories did the elders share?

...