Columnist Judy Wagner: The lions of spring

Judy Wagner

Judy Wagner

By JUDY WAGNER

Published: 05-27-2025 7:00 AM

“What a blue sky!” so says my husband as we pause in our garden prep work. “Looks pretty grey to me,” I counter, looking straight west under the brim of my garden cap and noting the piling, darkening clouds on the horizon. Then I tilt my head to look up: magnificent depthless blue sky! Yet again this garden place teaches: just a slight change of perspective can alter everything.

The colors of spring have been flooding our senses. We have watched as the forsythia and the goldfinches synchronized their brightening to sun yellow. Now it is the turn of the dandelions. As a child I was disappointed that they didn’t hold up very long after being picked, but we picked anyway and teased each other by holding the flowers under chins to see if we “like butter!” And of course the seed puffs have delighted many a child as they helped disperse the magical little parachutes of seeds. The puffs themselves are a mastery of function and artistic design. Still, I used to pull out dandelions in the yard and garden beds—weeds!—until our son took up beekeeping and told us that dandelions are one of the important early food sources for bees. Now I don’t pull them all out. I leave a good assortment for our pollinator friends, so crucial to the success of our vegetables, fruits, flowers and food crops of all sorts. Just a slight change of perspective and we understand things differently.

The yard was also awash with the sound of birds keeping up the age-old rituals of courtship and procreation, all the while enchanting anyone in the vicinity. I knew the catbirds were back, but one bird serenading us caught my attention with his wide repertoire—some calls I didn’t even recognize. The flash of white and grey as it flew verified it was a true mockingbird, beloved bird of my Georgia childhood, now comfortable in New England. I am not sure if it was the song variety or the sheer gusto that made us smile more.

There is nothing to make us smile in our nation’s capitol, however. The offensive behavior of Elon Musk and the president who prides himself on trashing values, precedent and government has now moved into blatantly illegal, dangerous and unconstitutional territory. The plan clearly is to overwhelm people so the breakage cannot be stopped. The president is clearly picking specific actions for their shock value and, more crucially, to test how much resistance there is so he can push harder. These areas stand out:

Immigrants were chosen as a test point because a long, relentless campaign to vilify immigrants has convinced many they are a cause of national problems rather than a key source of workers and future vitality. How far can the administration go to arrest and deport anyone (even US citizens) it doesn’t like? The use of masked armed agents and abysmal foreign prisons places the US among the worst despotic regimes.

Wholesale trashing of federal programs without congressional approval has left us without crucial health care, air traffic control, tracking dangerous weather, social security assistance, and myriad other basic services; the whole destructive operation was also a smoke screen to give Musk huge amounts of our personal data for whatever nefarious ( and money grubbing) purposes he chooses.

Development of a cruel, damaging national budget: stripping Medicaid away from 8-12 million people; cutting taxes for the wealthiest .1% of Americans while adding over $4 trillion in debt; adding additional bloat to our military budget ($1 trillion); slashing support for green technologies; and causing another downgrade of the national credit score.

Wrong-headed, erratic tariff pronouncements, unproductive “negotiations” with other countries, many of whom were allies but are now insulted and angry about our behavior, weakening important international bonds– all have set us up for a dreadful collapse of the amazing economy achieved under the previous administration.

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Outrageous grift enriching the president — an outright bribe of a $400 million “palatial” jet from Qatar, sponsor of terrorist groups; plans for a $45 million birthday party; “business” deals with Saudia Arabia and UAE (major sponsor of both sides of Sudan’s tragic civil war); crypto deals large and small.

As we navigate this split screen spring, with its simultaneous views of nature’s rebirth alongside the intentional decimation of a treasured nation, remember the dandelions: bold, beautiful, creative, persistent, nourishing and deeply, deeply rooted.

Judy Wagner lives in Northfield. She reminds everyone that June 14, 2025 is “No Kings” Day — find an action near you and go!