strange business comes out
grappling barehanded with fate
so inexplicable
Today’s haiku was adapted from a passage from a lecture by Bruce Catton at a meeting of the Chicago Civil War Round Table on April 12, 1957.
Catton said: I do not think that all of us together, vast as our knowledge is, would pretend that we know everything there is to know about the American Civil War. We are much to modest for that: and as the lady in the movie said, we have much to be modest about. Nevertheless, I do think that all of us realize this: that as our knowledge of the Civil War broadens, the area within which we are willing to make hard-and-fast statements of face steadily diminishes. It winds up a mystery: a flaming, heaven-sent mystery, a strange business which comes out of men grappling bare-handed with fate, a complex and inexplicable affair in which ordinary human beings do, finally, confront destiny coming down the road with a shattering question to which no one quite has the answer. The Civil War begins in a mystery and ends in one; all we can be sure of is that along the way we ordinary human beings, rendered extraordinary by their confrontation with fate, coming to grips with something that goes beyond their own horizon.
A recurring theme in these daily haiku’s is that, everyday, people grapple bare-handed with fate, with the cards in their hand.
Everyday there are ordinary human beings, rendered extraordinary by their confrontation with fate.
About Bruce Catton, he may be the first person in my life that I recognized as one of those people who were called ‘authors’ because they wrote books. Catton was also from Michigan and grew up in Benzonia. His book about growing up in Michigan, Waiting for the Morning Train, is a great read and a delight to own.
The first books I was given as gifts were by Bruce Catton.
One summer when I was around 10, my Grand Father rescued a copy of Mr. Lincoln’s Army that was being discarded by the Garfield Park Reformed Church Library and gave to me with the words, “I told them my Grand Son will want this.”
(As an odd note, I have a copy of Waiting for the Morning Train that my Mom planned as a Christmas Gift for my Grand Father in 1972. Sad to say, my Grand Father died that year on December 16th. The book was in my Mom’s room for a long time until she asked if I would want to have it.)
That summer, from that volume of Mr. Lincoln’s Army, my brother Jack read chapters to me at bedtime.
Even today, if I reread the chapter, Crackers and Bullets, I hear it in my head in Jack’s voice, pace and phrasing.
Catton wrote about the Civil War in a way that allowed you to see those men grappling with fate.
Everyday, there are ordinary human beings, rendered extraordinary by their confrontation with fate.
No Haiku For You 