Just one more form to fill out...

Choices. Outside the window, the long rays of the sun setting in the end of the first third of December. The tall, slender, gray-and-brown, lichened-covered tree trunks. The cobalt sky, mixed with streaks of snow-white milky clouds. Pine trees providing shelter from the freezing cold, forming a diamond-shaped framed opening through the woods, revealing rows of charcoal and slate-gray rooftops where once I watched doves and crows gathered in harvested soybean fields.

We keep expanding, generation after generation finding a new place to live, just as my wife and I found this house under construction and called it our own.

And so it is that I find myself participating in this country's effort every ten years to count the number of people who breathe and move about a portion of North America.

Sitting with an eclectic group of people who have their reasons for joining the census team. Writing our names and addresses, answering questions by "X"ing checkboxes. Listening to instructions of Ed telling us not to get ahead, the attentive eyes of another teammate waiting nearby. Sitting in a meeting room of the local library where I once gave a talk in 1990 or 1991 about recycling conifer trees after removing the annual festival decorations, promoting the Huntsville Botanical Garden's tree recycling effort that I started with cooperation from local businesses and volunteer organizations (inspired by Kingsport's annual tree recycling that was canceled recently due to low participation).

An arbitrary numbering system, based in part on our number of fingers or toes, the "number" zero invented by one or more cultures eons ago.

Using numbers and languages, people will organize teams based on boundaries drawn on maps of organized streets and dwellings. Teams. Players. Game plans. I know this score, don't I? Civilisation deciding how to be civilised.

Our future based on filed reports. Interviews. Ringing doorbells and hammering door knockers. Just like the summer I sold books door-to-door for Southwestern Book Company (1983?), listening to all the "No" and "I'm not interested" responses in order to find a "Yes" two or three times a day. This time, we've got nothing to sell. We're gathering information for everyone to enjoy a better tomorrow, all 'cause there are those who want to tax, sell or trade with us based on our population demographic distributions. Bell curves and hockey sticks.

Everyday people talking with everyday people, seeking those who, for one reason or another, didn't mail in their mailed-out census questionnaires. Maybe double-checking a few along the way.

I'll let you know how it goes. All I did, with those in the room with me today, was colour in 28 circles using a no. 2 pencil after filling out a couple of background information forms using a government-issued ballpoint blue ink pen. The rest is up to those who need to gather an army of census takers every 10 years. They need plenty more folks, if you're interested in putting on your walking shoes and spending some time chatting with people in your part of the country while making a little money, too. Ten percent of us not actively employed (more like 20, but that's fodder for another blog) - should be lots of us interested in taking home a few extra paychecks, right? I'll leave that thought up to you.

Time for me to watch Earth rotate, rolling dark shadows up the mountain slopes and taking away the Sun's heat another day, the lights of my people blinking on like summer fireflies, a few pushing curls of smoke out the tops of chimneys, most pulling energy out of power lines running to their homes' heat engines.