A Favorite New Year's Eve Poem

Thomas Hardy wrote this poem on New Year's Eve, 1899 as he awaited the dawn of a new century. At first blush it appears to be negative, but it is actually full of hope:

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

Merry Christmas!

Just in case I have any regular blog readers out there (though I suspect that I do not) I thought I would pause from my preparations this Christmas Eve afternoon to wish you a Merry, Merry Christmas!

Why don't we use the word 'merry' more often throughout the year in any other context? It's a better word than most of its synonyms, implying joyous contentment and quiet laughter. Maybe it's because of the Christmas connotation, but the word makes me think of rosy cheeks and twinkling eyes. A person cannot be merry and angry at the same time, or merry and envious, or merry and dissatisfied.

So when I wish you a Merry Christmas, I am wishing you the absence of all of the negative sentiments as well as the presence of all of the good sentiments that should accompany the season.

Margaret Thatcher: REAL Leader

I recently came across these quotes by Margaret Tatcher, the former conservative Prime Minister of Great Britain. I thought they could serve to remind us what a REAL leader of either gender is like:

"Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides. " MT

"I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end." MT

"Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy." MT

"We want a society where people are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. This is what we mean by a moral society; not a society where the state is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the state." MT

"There is no such thing as Society. There are individual men and women, and there are families." MT

"To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects." MT

"All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail. It must be business as usual." MT

"The desire to win is born in most of us. The will to win is a matter of training. The manner of winning is a matter of honour." MT

"I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air." MT

"We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend." MT

"Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus." MT

"Being prime minister is a lonely job... you cannot lead from the crowd." MT

"Platitudes? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true." MT

"Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it. " MT

Peggy Noonan, the Wall Street Journal columnist, related this story about Margaret Thatcher in a story printed in November:

In the early years of her prime ministership, Margaret Thatcher held a meeting with her aides and staff, all of whom were dominated by her, even awed. When it was over she invited her cabinet chiefs to join her at dinner in a nearby restaurant. They went, arrayed themselves around the table, jockeyed for her attention. A young waiter came and asked if they'd like to hear the specials. Mrs. Thatcher said, "I will have beef."
Yes, said the waiter. "And the vegetables?"
"They will have beef too."

Me, the Mother Hen

Thirteen years ago I was standing outside my home on a bright, beautiful Saturday in August when a little boy, barely two, wandered into the road between two cars parked along the curb. He was crossing the street to play at my neighbor’s house, where he had a two-year-old buddy, but he didn’t have parental permission, of course, or a hand to hold to cross safely. (Two year olds know no fear. He only wanted to play.) At the same moment I heard a truck barreling down the street behind me. I screamed…so loud that my throat was sore for several days afterward…hoping to scare Seth (that was the little boy’s name) into stopping before it would be too late. I wanted him to wonder, ‘What is that woman screaming about?’ and stop to look at me, but a second later I witnessed the child’s body bouncing beneath the truck’s axel. A few hours later, after dark had fallen and I had heard the song ‘Bring Him Home’ for the first time, Seth was officially pronounced dead at the hospital. Some of his organs and tissues live on in others, but his precious little spirit has gone on.

I had two small boys of my own at the time, and have since had two girls. I would have been classified as an overly protective mother even before Seth’s death, but I have become an overly protective mother-at-large since. In the years that followed the tragedy, I became a un-caped crusader, stopping lackadaisical parents everywhere to tell them the cautionary tale of Seth if it appeared that they were not properly restraining their children. On several occasions, I’ve parked my car in strange neighborhoods to walk toddlers home – children who were too young to be walking down the street alone. Some of them were lost, others were not old enough to talk, and one was wearing only a diaper. Some parents were defensive, others appreciative or embarrassed, but I tried not to concern myself with their reactions. Most of them are probably wonderful, caring parents – they have simply not witnessed the instantaneous tragic death of a child and probably cannot imagine it happening. They are blithely unaware of the potentially irreversible consequences of inattentiveness.

My own children bore the brunt of my anxiety. We held hands like clustered sky-divers in grocery store parking lots until they were tall enough to be seen over car bumpers. To this day, in order to reduce the risk of choking, I slice all hot dogs length-wise and dispose of small bouncy balls and disk-shaped hard candies immediately. I have never encouraged them to wander far from home or to ride their bikes to distant shopping centers like I did a child, even though I enjoyed those outings and gained confidence in myself by returning safely from them. There is value even in childhood in spending time alone, confronting fears and dangers, real and imagined, but my children have rarely had such experiences. They do remarkably well in the real world despite my overbrooding nature. I’m sure it hasn’t been easy for them to spread their wings from inside the cocoon.

I know, I know – it’s impossible to prevent every eventuality. We can’t clothe our children in bubble wrap. Reasonable precautions can be taken, yes, but life itself is so precious that spending our lives preventing life from happening has a cost, too.

A few years ago my children and I were sitting ducks at an intersection, waiting for the left turn light, when a Dodge pickup truck slammed into the back of our mini van. We were dazed and confused with bumps and bruises and a few lacerations, but we emerged without serious injuries. Our mini van, however, was totaled independently at both ends. Every seat, including the car seat, was broken.

From that experience I learned that sometimes it’s simply a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We can be grateful for the pieces of our lives left intact, pick them up, literally, and go on.

"It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" at Our House

Close Encounters of the Finned, Feathered, and Furry Kind - or - The World Is My Zoo

Though I've never lived more than 30 minutes from the nearest Cineplex, I've always been fascinated with wildlife. We interact so little with these other creatures on Planet Earth that they may as well be alien species - beautiful, mysterious, and living in whole societies of their own of which I will never be a part.

This realization strikes me each morning as I drive my children to school past a large field at the commuter airport near our home. The periphery of the property is marked by a high fence and on the posts of the fence we often see hawks scanning the meadow for rodents. On one occasion while I sat in my car watching such a hawk, I experienced the thrill of the hunt vicariously when, all in one motion it seemed, he swooped down, caught a vole in his clenches, then soared into a high tree.

At least once a week in this same field we see a fox or a pair of foxes wandering in search of other unsuspecting rodents. In winter the foxes are easier to see because they are red dragging bushy tails behind them on the crust of the snow, but we see them in summertime, too, plodding along in search of food. I learned in elementary school picture books that foxes are sly and in high school ecology class that, though they are frequently city dwellers, people rarely see them. These foxes have an added level of security due to the airport fence, which seems to alleviate their concerns about human beings like me. They tolerate the paparazzi while they do what they have to do to survive.

On three occasions we've seen eagles in our neighborhood: one roosting on a post, one sitting in a pear tree that seemed only slightly larger than he was, and one soaring just above the rooftops. Hawks, eagles, and foxes, one very large rat and countless small mice - these are the wild animals who have visited our neighborhood.

But despite the fact that I am a city dweller (or, more specifically, a suburb dweller), I have had the random pleasure of seeing many creatures in their natural habitats (i.e., outside of zoos): a wolf, a handful of black bears, a smaller number of grizzly bears, several moose, herds of deer and elk, an occasional armadillo, porcupine, opossum, or raccoon, flocks of geese and pelicans, a pod of orca whales, a sea otter, and several sea lions. Seeing an animal in nature inspires wonder: What do they do when we aren't watching them? Where do they rest? How do they communicate with others of their kind? Ultimately, how do they survive?

Most wild animals are like unicorns: we hear they exist or have existed, but we do not expect to see them with our own eyes. In nature we listen and we look and sometimes our piqued senses are rewarded with a fleeting vision of something we have heard about only in stories or on Animal Planet -- There it is! It really does exist!

Outside of these unpredictable sightings, animals exist for most of us only in zoos and in fairytales.

Poetic Food for Thought

I came across this poem and enjoyed thinking about it, so I thought I'd share it on my blog. It was written in 1895 by Sam Walter Foss, who must have been a very interesting person. It reminds me of modern-day cowboy poetry, which I enjoy not necessarily for its poetic quality but for its sentiment. Anyway, I hope you like it.

The Calf-Path

One day through the primeval wood
A calf walked home as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And I infer the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bell—wether sheep
Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bell—wethers always do.
And from that day, o'er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made.
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because 'twas such a crooked path;
But still they followed — do not laugh -
The first migrations of that calf,
And through this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.
This forest path became a lane
That bent and turned and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city's crowded thoroughfare.
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.
Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed this zigzag calf about
And o'er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way.
And lost one hundred years a day,
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.
A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move;
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf.
Ah, many things this tale might teach —
But I am not ordained to preach.

Life Lessons

It occurred to me today that in life there are certain lessons we learn over and over again, and one of them is this: if you want something done, it is best to do it yourself. This is true no matter how wonderful your support system is (and mine is phenomenol), no matter how much people love you and wish they could help you...in the long run and in the short run, too, it's best to do it yourself.

For many reasons:
1) no waiting. Your priorities are your priorities and they do not have to be synchronized with anyone else's.
2) job satisfaction. The reward of a thing well done is to have done it...and all of those sentiments.
3) learning opportunity. Often we think we need someone else's expertise in something because we are avoiding learning what it will require to become experts ourselves. We don't want to do the homework, but if we don't do the homework we don't learn...and we will need the expert to help us again.
4) serendipity. When we try something new that takes us out of our comfort zone, we are likely to stumble upon dormant talents and new interests. Self-reliance excavates skills. We learn to live by our wits.
5) action is powerful. We seize power over our circumstances when we take action to alter them in any way, large or small. Action is a powerful tool we would not voluntarily relinquish if we understood the consequences of doing so.
6) empathy with our fellow man. If I am willing to care for myself as a human being, to do what is required to survive and thrive on this planet, I will automatically have things in common with my fellow man who is surviving and thriving in much the same way.

But all life lessons teach another lesson, too - balance. Self-reliance has its requisite opposite. We do depend upon one another - we simply must. More about that in another post...