world so full should be
happy as kings, and you know …
how happy kings are

One sweet morning in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and thirty-nine, a little old gentleman got up and threw wide the windows of his bedroom, letting in the living sun. A black-widow spider, who had been dozing on the balcony, slashed at him, and although she missed, she did not miss very far. The old gentleman went downstairs to the dining room and was just sitting down to a splendid breakfast when his grandson, a boy named Burt, pulled the chair from under him. The old man’s hip was strained, but it was fortunately not broken.

Out in the street, as he limped toward a little park with many trees, which was to him a green isle in the sea, the old man was tripped up by a gaily colored hoop sent rolling at him, with a kind of disinterested deliberation, by a grim little girl. Hobbling on a block farther, the old man was startled, but not exactly surprised, when a bold daylight robber stuck a gun in his ribs. “Put ‘em up, Mac,” said the robber, “and come across.” Mac put them up and came across with his watch and money and a gold ring his mother had given him when he was a boy.

When at last the old gentleman staggered into the little park, which had been to him a fountain and a shrine, he saw that half the trees had been killed by a blight and the other half by a bug. Their leaves were gone and they no longer afforded any protection from the skies, so the hundred planes which appeared suddenly overhead had an excellent view of the little old gentleman through their bombing sights.

Moral: The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings, and you know how happy kings are.

Further Fables VIII by James Thurber as was printed today, February 17, in the New Yorker Magazine back in 1940.

The first 2 stanzas of the moral are from the Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem Happy Thought (XXIV) from Mr. Stevenson’s Child’s Book of Verse.

The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

The final part, and you know how happy kings are, was a favorite Thurber quote.

Oh how I wish for a Thurber or a Mencken to experience this era …

But then, I wouldn’t wish this era on anyone.

As Mr. Thurber said, The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings, and you know how happy kings are.

The fable must have been too dark as it wasn’t picked to be the either Fables for Our Time, published in 1939 or Further Fables for Our Time published in 1955, but had to wait for the Collected Fables which didn’t come around until 2019.

once rhetorical
exaggerations feeling
less hyperbolic

Adapted from a paragraph in the article in the Guardian, The world heard JD Vance being booed at the Olympics. Except for viewers in the US by Bryan Armen Graham in Milan where Mr. Graham writes with a lot of wonderful words:

But there is a difference between contextual pressure and visible reality distortion.

When global audiences can compare feeds in real time, the latter begins to resemble something else entirely: not editorial judgment, but narrative management.

Which is why comparisons to Soviet-style state-controlled broadcasting models – once breathless rhetorical exaggerations – are starting to feel less hyperbolic.

It’s been a year without joy.

Really/

Think about it.

Bright spots to be sure.

Got two new grand kids for one.

But the bright spots have been few and far between the low spots and the daily drudge is more drudge like every day.

It got me to thinking about history.

Dark periods in history.

World War II

What was it like at home?

I am sure there were birthdays and graduations and new grand kids.

But in the back of your mind, there had to be that nagging feeling that being too happy, feeling too good … just wasn’t right.

There was a shadow over all other experiences.

A shadow that could not be erased.

There were reminders for the people at home.

Gas was rationed.

Not because there wasn’t gas but because one, there wasn’t rubber for tires, and two, it reminded folks there was a war on.

Food was rationed.

And there were those flags with blue and gold stars in windows of homes and businesses.

If your household had someone on active service, you put a flag with a blue star in your window.

If that someone died, you put a flag with a gold star in your window.

This is where those Blue Star Memorial Highway signs and the Association of Gold Star Mothers comes from.

Daily reminders that all was not right with the country and with the world at large.

I am told that the church my family attended had a banner made with 34 blue stars on it.

How would like to be looking at that during your Sunday prayers?

This drawing by James Thurber appeared in the New Yorker Magazine on January 15, 1944 after two years of war.

The caption reads, “There is no laughter in this house.”

On the opposite page from this drawing was another one.

The caption here is, “Who was that man that cheered me up so much last winter?”

The ladies are in a bookstore, looking for relief.

The New Yorker is a magazine of humor.

But it was a time without joy.

Daily reminders that all was not right with the country and with the world at large.

Today, this past year, everyday it’s something new.

Something new and somehow, something worse than yesterday.

And daily, more and more predictions on how it is going to get worse.

Predictions just a year ago, would have been dismissed out of hand.

Not possible.

Not going to happen.

Not in America.

Which is why comparisons to Soviet-style state-controlled broadcasting models – once breathless rhetorical exaggerations – are starting to feel less hyperbolic.

Breathless rhetorical exaggerations – are starting to feel less hyperbolic.

Daily reminders that all was not right with the country and with the world at large.

I embrace weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning (Psalms 30:5) …

Trying to remain hopeful for that dawning.

Not feeling worn down.

Feeling ground down.

Ain’t America great again.