o tempora! o mores!

After a very foggy morning, we’re enjoying another beautiful autumn afternoon. I’ve lived in Minnesota long enough that I’m experiencing “We’ll pay for this!” vibes. As I’m sure you know, Halloween / Samhain is but two weeks from now. Peak leaf color is near in our neck of the woods. Dandelions are still blooming, as are butter and eggs. Although we’ve yet to experience a frost, the mosquitoes, deer flies, and related vermin have disappeared. Hornets and wasps are still out and about. That reminds me. I should get out and about more, not in the Jeep but on my feet. I should write 500 times “Looking at nature through the window is NOT forest bathing or anything like it."

foggy October morning

Photo by J. Harrington

Sourdough is proofing in a banneton basket. Bread baking is progressing better as I pay more attention to what happens as a result of what I do. I bet a similar approach would benefit my fly fishing and poetry attempts. That’s something to think about and work on over the winter.

If I seem more out of sorts than usual today, it’s due, in part, to concerns that Jim Jordon may eventually be elected Speaker and what that would mean for the country. If, at any job I’ve ever held, I were as inept and unproductive as Republicans are these days, I would have been fired, and deserved it. It seems we have to wait until next year to fire unproductive members of Congress and that’s possible only if more of US come to our senses. That’s all for now, except I think today’s poem is an indication that others have been where we are now, so perhaps there’s hope.

(If you need or want an explanation for today’s title, look here.)

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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