May is a busy month. Socially, it tops most of the others. Graduations and end of the year programs are happening all over. Spring weddings go from now into June. Vacations begin when college classes end and by mid-June, summer has taken over. Lifestyles change; we move outdoors to patios and porches and yards where picnic tables beckon. Except for the classes of students parting for the last time, it is a mostly happy month.

If every single postal patron in the country were to recycle every piece of junk mail, there would be no shortage of pulp or reusable paper or whatever the second time around produces. In one recent week I had six so-called “opportunities” to improve my financial situation by moving my charge accounts to a variety of banks and other institutions. I chuckle as I put all the offers and accompanying literature in the recycle bag. I have one long-time charge card that has served me well for over 20 years and have no interest in charging. Thank goodness our town recycles junk mail and magazines.

Included in the magazine bag are the umpteen sales catalogues that keep coming. For three months I have tried to stop one company from sending a catalogue with only men’s clothing about once a week. They don’t read or care about my plea to stop sending this material. I give up and put them in the recycle bag without even looking at them.

Mail offers include everything from special kinds of coffee to children’s shoes. And real estate. And hickory smoked hams. And china dolls. And raincoats, and… on and on.

More annoying than the mail offers are the telephone calls. They come at most inconvenient times – just as you get settled at the dinner table or as you are about to get in the shower. About one third of them have special financial offers. A new plan that “just became available,” a “CD that pays the highest interest rate available.”

I used to be cordial to such phone salesmen. No more. I’m so sick and tired of these calls I now say crisply “I don’t buy anything over the telephone, not even a light bulb” – and hang up.

If only some telephone company could find a way to stop these bothersome calls, a lot of us would be grateful. If such callers had to buy an expensive permit to sell by phone, or could be fined for each interruption, it would be good news for most of us. Privacy has become a much-appreciated commodity, which seems to be less and less available in the commercially structured world we live in.

Ah well! No complaints in the bird world outside my glass doors. The goldfinches come to dine at the small thistle feeder Laurie hung up last week. The hummingbirds come every day, now including the one that “sits down” on the edge of the feeder while it helps itself to syrup. And the male cardinal is completely out of character as he comes several times a day to the suet feeder. In thirty years of bird feeding I’ve never seen a cardinal do that!

The quote last week was by Heywood Brown, from “Seeing Thing At Night.”

Who said, “The short memory of American voters is what keeps our politicians in office”?