festina lente
make haste slowly in long run
but eat everyday

Festina Lente, in the latin, or ‘make haste slowly’ or ‘more haste, less speed.’

It has been adopted as a motto numerous times, particularly by the emperors Augustus and Titus, the Medicis and appears over and over in literature.

To combine the two concepts a logo of an anchor and a dolphin together was been devised.

According to Wikipedia, “The meaning of the phrase is that activities should be performed with a proper balance of urgency and diligence. If tasks are rushed too quickly then mistakes are made and good long-term results are not achieved. Work is best done in a state of flow in which one is fully engaged by the task and there is no sense of time passing.”

I am reminded of this phrase, ‘festina lente’, as I watch this country and this government deal with the problems of high inflation, high cost of food, high cost of housing, high cost of fuel, high human cost of guns, lack of baby formula, and any number of the current crisis’s that are today’s news.

Festina lente is the watchword from history for today.

Responses to these problems should be performed with a proper balance of urgency and diligence.

If tasks are rushed too quickly then mistakes are made and good long-term results are not achieved.

We can all agree on that, right?

I am reminded of a time in the history of the United States called the Great Depression.

The people of America finally got so fed up with the festina lente attitude of the Government in Washington that in one if the great electoral upheavals of all time, they voted in Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.

President Roosevelt appointed social worker, Harry Hopkins as the Secretary of Commerce and in that role, the day after the inauguration in March of 1933, Mr. Hopkins started spending money to provide relief in the form of food and housing.

He was told he couldn’t do that.

He was told that such a program could not work.

He was told that giving out money that way would not succeed in the long run.

Mr. Hopkins replied, “People don’t eat in the long run, they eat every day.”

has nearly worried
the life out of me at times
I should be sorry

Sometime history can come alive for me and I have to talk about it.

I have been fighting my way through the Civil War campaigns of Ulysses S. Grant this summer.

I started Chattanooga and have worked backwards in time through Vicksburg and am now in the middle of the Shiloh campaign.

In my reading, I came across a minor character by the name of Col. Thomas Worthington, of the 46th Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

By all accounts the Colonel, a graduate of West Point in 1827, was a perfect pest of a person.

General Sherman especially found the man to be beyond belief and took pains to describe him in ways so that others would understand how unbelievably bad the feller was.

The accounts in the books I was reading were so overwhelming in both their statements on the man’s inability and the total agreement of all the authors that the man was useless and his own worst enemy that I had to stop for a minute.

Could this Colonel Worthington have been such a jerk?

Or, after the passage of time, when history revealed that General’s Grant and Sherman were great officers, that it became open season on anyone who didn’t recognize their virtue at the time and everyone is just jam piling on poor Colonel Worthington.

I had never heard of the guy to be honest and I thought could he really have been so bad?

So I searched him out.

With the wonder that can be the World Wide Web, I found copies of two letters about the Colonel that were written back in 1864.

The first one is hand written and states simply:

“Today I verbally told Col Worthington that I did not think him now fit for a Colonel; and now upon his urgent request, I put it in writing.”

The note is on letter paper printed with the heading, EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington.

It is dated, March 31, 1864.

It is signed, A. Lincoln.

Okay.

So maybe the Colonel was unwell and was requesting permission for sick leave and that is what Mr. Lincoln meant when he told him he was ‘not fit for a Colonel.”

Yeah, maybe.

The Colonel came back later to see Mr. Lincoln a few months later and this time, the President tried send him off to someone else.

The other letter is actually a transcription of a telegram:

It is dated: (Recd Cipher – 6:30pm) City Point, 3:10pm August 29, 1864.

It is addressed to:

His Excellency., A Lincoln, President of the US.

It states:

Your dispatch of 1.40 p.m. in relation to permitting Col. Worthington to come here is received.

I should be very sorry to see the Colonel. He has nearly worried the life out of me at times when I could not prevent an interview.

It is signed, US Grant, LT General.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I can imagine Mr. Lincoln laughing as he sent off his message to the General.

I can hear him say, “Grant will love this.”

It took the General less than 2 hours to get the telegram from the President, think about it and dictate his reply and get the reply encoded and say, nope, not me, don’t send him here.

That those two guys took time out from the Civil War to play guess who’s coming to dinner made me laugh.

It made them a little more real.

All respect to Colonel Thomas Worthington, but if Abraham Lincoln and US Grant felt this way I have to feel that the verdict of history has been just.

Colonel, you must have been one world record of a pest.

insecurity
flatlining pay are every
day reality

From the paragraph:

In fact, for millions of people in Britain, 2022’s growing sense of disaster is another chapter in a story that goes back at least 10 years – to rules and regulations that turned the welfare state into a mess of trapdoors and tripwires, to the hacking back of benefits, to the dire treatment of disabled people and to a new world of work where chronic insecurity and flatlining pay are an everyday reality.

In the article, The decade that broke Britain: the disastrous decisions that left millions in a cost of living crisis by John Harris.

What struck me is the thought that I have been focused on the Covid years of late and all the issues it has caused.

This article (based in Britain but a lot of applies here) made me realize how long, going back to the the Housing Market crash of 2009 and the first time I got fired by the same company.

Talk about insecurity.

Back in 2009 the company I was working for called me into the office on a Tuesday and I was told my job had been eliminated and that my last day would be Friday.

In the next sentence, I was told that the company was creating a new corporate department and that I was wanted to be on that team and I was offered the same job I was doing but if I wanted it, I would be doing that same job in Atlanta.

So off to Atlanta we dragged all the kids and that chapter of our life started.

Then in 2020, I got call to be in a meeting on a Tuesday and once again I was told that my job had been eliminated and my last day would again be Friday.

The first time it happened, I felt it was the current economic climate.

The 2nd time it was pure spite and meanness and people who I worked with turning out to pretty small people.

If you read this blog, you will know this turned out okay for me but do I have trust in my job, any job?

Do I jump any time I get a note to be in a meeting?

Is my insecurity part of my every day reality?

BOY HOWDY!