8.10.2020 – must not be hasty

must not be hasty
is easier to shout stop!
than it is to stop

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien writes in his book, The Two Towers; being the second part of The Lord of the rings, about when the two hobbits, Merry and Pippen, meet the oldest living creature in Middle Earth.

Fangorn or Treebeard discusses the current world situation in the land. especially the local ongoings of the nearby wizard named Saruman.

About this feller Saruman, Fangorn says, “his face as I remember it became like windows in a stone wall: windows with shutters inside.”

Fangorn gets so worked that he says it must stop.

He then says, “I will stop it.”

Then he says, “But I spoke hastily. We must not be hasty for it is easier to shout stop! than to do it.”

Abraham Lincoln would tell how his office was full of people telling him how to run the war and that he HAD to get rid of this General and that General and replace them with ANYBODY.

Mr. Lincoln is recorded to say something along of the lines of, “That is fine for you, but who do I put in their place.?ANYBODY may work for you, but I must have somebody.”

8.9.2020 – where college football

where college football
deemed indispensable
as blood to the heart

Steve Hummer of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote in his article, Bad day for college football could reverberate in the South, of the overall awfulness of a fall with out college football.

He wrote, “That has to deeply, on a gut level, concern those who live in warmer latitudes and in like-named cities. Places where college football is deemed as indispensable to the fall as helium is to the party balloon or blood is to the heart.

Huge dominoes have fallen. Are they crashing our way?

Know that it’s really big news when the coronavirus pushes back football in the Big Ten and the Pac-12. But also understand that if those in the SEC and ACC eventually are compelled to do the same, that would represent a seismic culture shock. Then we’d be talking about a family crisis.

Of course they love their college football in those other precincts, too. But Southerners have elevated the sport to a way of life. Some would say we have made it too important, but lose a season’s worth of games and then tell me that it didn’t hurt.

Perspective isn’t absent here. We know it has been close to seven months since the first case of the coronavirus was confirmed in the U.S. and that we’ve lived through far graver things than the putting off of a little tackle football. This disease has picked and picked and picked at the fabric of life, badly fraying it. Denying a Southerner his or her college football would be just another colorful thread pulled loose. Just so happens to be a thread tied at one end to the soul of the South.“

Before I could get up on mount my high horse to shout out a loud OH BLESS YOUR HEART I ran across this in a letter by EB White.

He was writing in the spring of 1957 to a friend of his who had just experienced the death of his father.

Mr. White wrote a warm, chatty letter about what traits we inherit from our parents and what traits we pass along.

He added a postscript, “It is also necessary at this season to establish firm emotional connections with a major league ball club, to share in the agonies of their defeats and the ecstasies of their triumphs. Without these simple marriages, none of us could survive.“

If Mr. White could feel that way, can Mr. Hummer be far off.

I, for myself, am not in a position to argue.

8.8.2020 – priorities straight

priorities straight
covid? money? election?
a good piece of toast!

In the book, WLT a Radio Romance, Garrison Keillor wrote a soliloquy delivered by Ray, the owner of radio station WLT.

Ray said:

“Don’t concern yourself with things you can’t change, I say.

It’s more important to make a very good cup of coffee and a very good piece of toast than it is to worry about Josef Stalin, because I can something about breakfast and I can’t do anything about Stalin, and I am sure he’s having a wonderful breakfast.

Five months of Covid and covid fatigue is very fatiguing and I can’t do a thing about it.

I do find no little satisfaction that Covid is still tossed out by the spell check.

I wear my mask but then what?

We are doing okay money wise but it looks and sounds like the country isn’t and if Congress and the President could … Okay, my covid fatigue is too great to even finish the sentence.

Then there is the election.

I know how it should end.

I know how to achieve this end.

And in the end, no one asks me.

So that leaves toast.

Not too light.

Not too dark,

Not too hard.

Not too much butter.

Not too much cinnamon sugar.

Concentrate.

Put some effort into it.

Put some heart into it.

And there it is!

A very good piece of toast.

Caring about something that I can care about and do something about.

Something to make it worth my while.

8.7.2020 – just being friendly

just being friendly
recent action that needed
an explanation

Walking along the other evening, my wife and I came up behind a family on their way back from the park.

Their was a Mom and a Dad and three little boys.

They were pulling a wagon and one of the boys rode in the wagon facing backwards.

We were conscious of social distancing but a change in the lights at a cross walk brought us up close to together.

The little guy in the wagon stared right at me so I waved.

He waved back.

His brothers turned around to see who he was waving at and they both stared at me.

So I said, “hi guys, how are you all doing tonight?”

The boys just stared and me.

Never said a word.

The light changed and the family started across the street.

We held back to give them some distance.

But I heard one little boy, who was holding his Dad’s hand, say to his Dad, “Why did that man say that?”

His Dad kept walking and said, “He was just being friendly.”

So was this snotty little kids who are told to not talk to strangers?

And I admit, they won’t meet many stranger than me.

Or is there a generation growing up now that needs friendliness to be explained?

Social distancing.

Masks.

No contact.

Coming at a higher cost everyday.

8.6.2020 – I work then time off

I work then time off
after few days I relax
into just myself

I was inspired by a couple days away and this:

That’s what holidays are about, really: time. The hours we work means that we can spend months living alongside other people and feel that we have not really seen them at all. Put us on a cheap flight to Crete and after a few days we relax into ourselves. The stress dissipates. We look across a taverna table at their pink faces as they nurse a cold Mythos and shove courgette fritters into their gobs and we feel, well, love.

In the past few months, I have come to realise just how much I relied on holidays to keep me sane. Yes, we are in the middle of a pandemic, and yes there’s the climate emergency to consider, but the draw is strong.

From We all want a holiday from coronavirus – even if that’s a fantasy by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett