Steve is grateful for…
I am reading historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book about presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. (I am grateful for good books, perhaps now more than ever.) In it, the author observes that a large increase in nervous disorders occurred in the early 1900s. Three reasons for that development were cited: increased speed of communication (telegraph); clamorous city life replacing the rhythms of nature; and the tabloid press exploding local stories into national news. Now 12 decades later, we persist along that misguided path. Email and texting have replaced the telegraph, of course; screen time has further removed us from nature; and social media are supercharged tabloids. We are living our lives at great remove from our essences. So it is that I bicycle to my pond, load my cheek with soothing tobacco, fish with a lure crafted from wood when I was a boy, and delight in fooling one, two, three, four, five bass. I am as a snowy egret, attracting meals with yellow feet. I am grateful that my mother taught me to fish and to love the birds, to derive pleasure from a hike in the woods. I am glad that she caused me to put up my BB gun and resisted always my pleas for heavier arms.
