I grew up with life
But I never outgrew it
too often forget

To steal from Sir Walter Scott:

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said
School year is over.
Summer is here.
Let me stay in bed.

(the last three lines are mine)

I am now old enough to be considered old I guess.

If I get hit by a car crossing the street, the headline will start; “elderly pedestrian …”

Well so what?

Can’t stop the clock.

As for getting old with life, there is only one other alternative unless you happen to have a goofy portrait locked up in the attic.

There are some things though that I hope stir your soul no matter the time of your life.

Sunny days.

Sun on the water.

Snow days.

If I happen to hear that schools are cancelled somewhere, anywhere, due to snow, inwardly, I smile and outwardly I laugh.

AND I want to stop working and take a snow day even though I haven’t measured snow on the ground (Devil’s Dandruff) in years.

End of the school year.

I hear talk of year round school and I have heard all the arguments in favor and against and the history of the development of the ‘school year’ around the farm based economic year and now the pressures to find summer day care.

Yes yes and yes.

NEVERTHELESS!

That day.

That morning.

That minute.

When it really sunk in.

To quote Maya Angelou, “singin’ and swingin’ and gettin’ merry like Christmas” deep down in the center of your soul.

The words for today’s Haiku I adapted from President Barack Obama.

Mr. Obama wrote the forward to the “The Complete Peanuts.”

An anthology published in 2016.

Mr. Obama wrote, “Like millions of Americans, I grew up with Peanuts. But I never outgrew it.

Wherever I lived, wherever I travelled, I could find those three or four panels in the paper each morning. And Charlie, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy, Franklin and the gang brought childhood rushing back.

That’s what made Charles Schulz so brilliant – he treated childhood with all the poignant and tender complexity it deserves. He gave voice to all its joys and anxieties – a spectrum of emotions that run from the start of a new baseball season to the anguished “Augh” that comes with losing the big game. He explored the emotions that we too often forget kids feel until we’re reminded that we once felt them ourselves. Hope. Doubt. The exquisite pain of unrequited love. The self-exploration of what it means to be different. The comfortable knowledge that it’s all going to be OK – even if Lucy’s advice isn’t very good.

For decades, Peanuts was our own daily security blanket. That’s what makes it an American treasure.”

Childhood with all the poignant and tender complexity it deserves.

He gave voice to all its joys and anxieties

Summer time.

You don’t have to sign up.

It’s free.

School is out.

I grew up with life.

I hope I never outgrow it.

I hope I do not too often forget the fun of doing nothing.

I saw him and he
saw me at same time, Second bite,
one that broke the bones

And other reason to stay out of the woods.

Taken from “Second bite is one that broke the bones’: Alaska man describes bear mauling”

“Allen Minish was alone and surveying land for a real estate agent in a wooded, remote part of Alaska, putting some numbers into his GPS unit when he looked up and saw a large brown bear walking about 30ft (10 meters) away.”

This is better (or worse) than the story from down here in the low country and the dog and the alligator.

That headline was, “Didn’t even have time to bark!”

slight shades of difference
religion, manners, habits
triumphed together

For George Washington’s Birthday, this was taken from General Washington’s 32 page farewell address to the nation written in 1796.

Famous for his warning against Foreign entanglements saying, “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake,” the General was also aware of the problems of party and states and government by party and by states.

The General said this:

“Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.”

Citizens, by birth or choice,

of a common country,

that country has a right to concentrate your affections.

The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism.

I recently ran across an essay that took the form of an email from a grand father to a grand son trying to explain the what this country was in danger of losing.

Have to point this essay appeared in the New Yorker on April 6, 2020 (Love Letter by George Sanders)

“… disrupt something so noble, so time tested and seemingly strong that had been with us literally everyday of our lives. We had taken a profound gift for granted. We did not know the gift was a fluke, a chimera, a wonderful accident of consensus and mutual understanding.”

The General understood this.

He even warned us saying:

“Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment.

… you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity;

watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety;

discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned;

and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.”

Happy Birthday General.

We miss you very much and wish you all the best.

As a postscript and a new citizen of the State of South Carolina I have to point out this little factoid.

The image I used today is from a portrait of

The image I used today is from a portrait of George Washington as Colonel in the Virginia Regiment, Charles Willson Peale, in 1772.

Notice around his neck is a small metal ‘gorget’ that was worn by officers of the era as a symbol of military rank.

The shape of the gorget was adapted as the insignia or badge of the 1st and 2nd South Carolina Regiments that were formed to protect Charleston from a certain British invasion in 1775.

These two regiments manned Fort Sullivan in Charleston Harbor that held off an attack of Royal Navy, June 28, 1776.

Fort Sullivan was constructed of palmetto trees.

The gorget and the palmetto tree are the symbols on the flag of State of South Carolina.

Sometime after the flag was designed a state functionary changed it a bit by tilting the gorget which makes folks think it is a crescent moon.

It is not the moon but the gorget badge of the 1st and 2nd South Carolina Regiments.

Just thought I would pass that along.

liberty, not for
this country alone but to
the world, for all time

As it is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday I thought I take some words for one of his speeches.

This is from an address Mr. Lincoln made at Independence Hall.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
February 22, 1861

Mr. Cuyler:

I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing here, in this place, where were collected together the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion to principle, from which sprang the institutions under which we live. You have kindly suggested to me that in my hands is the task of restoring peace to the present distracted condition of the country. I can say in return, Sir, that all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated and were given to the world from this hall. I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here, and framed and adopted that Declaration of Independence. I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that Independence. I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men. This is a sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world, if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.

Now, in my view of the present aspect of affairs, there need be no bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say, in advance, that there will be no bloodshed unless it be forced upon the Government, and then it will be compelled to act in self-defence.

My friends, this is wholly an unexpected speech, and I did not expect to be called upon to say a word when I came here. I supposed it was merely to do something toward raising the flag. I may, therefore, have said something indiscreet. (Cries of “No, no”) I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, die by.

The page with the txt of the speech states: On Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural journey to Washington as president-elect, he stopped in Philadelphia at the site where the Declaration of Independence had been signed. One of the most famous statements in the speech was, “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.” This hall also was the place where Lincoln’s body lay in state after his assassination in 1865, one of many stops his funeral train made before he was laid to rest in Springfield, Illinois.