Rates of changes

Many of the fields of corn I drove past this morning will not be “knee high by the 4th of July.” Lots of carryover corn in many soy bean fields. Hay fields in various stages of cut, raked and drying, baled. We haven’t yet reached the boring (for us) monotonous condition of head high cornstalks lining many roads and obscuring much of the view. That comes later this summer.

late June, corn field

Photo by J. Harrington

I’m finding myself a little bit surprised that Independence Day weekend is almost upon US. If the weather so far this year is an indication of the future, we’re likely to have a hard time remembering how it used to be with four seasons. These days it seems almost as though we’re experiencing a different season every week. The prior sentence does not apply to road construction season. If our winters keep warming, road construction season could become year round and we may need that to repair all the buckling roads caused by summer’s heat.

There’s a joke about “I’m not the man I used to be. Never was.” That’s getting to be more and more true of many things in the world these days. The rate of change is faster than I can keep up. How about you? Back in my Fundamentals of Sociology college days, the professor made a point of stressing that technological change often occurs faster than societies and cultures can adapt or adjust. That was long before things began moving as fast as they are these days. And pundits tell US that much of the current friction in our society is due to the efforts of a significant minority to go back to when white males were the unchallenged Alphas in charge. That would have to be before the Civil War, wouldn’t it? If we follow the direction conservative, fundamentalist, radical, rightists are headed, how long will it be before we’re back living in caves? Remember Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear series? Are the Democrats and Republicans of today comparable to the Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals of her novels? Since we’ve considered moving back in time, let’s close today’s post with a poem from days gone bye.

If—

By Rudyard Kipling

(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

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