The Dawning Of The Age Of Aquarius

Celebrating New Year's Eve With Our Good Friends, Linda And Ron

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. - Wendell Berry

8:15

Well, it's a new year, 6:30, and I started it by reading about the unspeakable terrorist attack on a night club in Istanbul this morning, a short walk from where we lived in the 1970's.  Then, I listened to a TED talk by Jonathan Haidt, a professor, writer and social psychologist at UVA.  He spoke about the troubling great divide in the world as well as the US, exacerbated by the Internet, negative campaigning/propaganda, our reliance on intuition (feelings) rather than reason and the purification of political parties over the past 30 years. He feels this divide between the left (draw bridge down) and right (draw bridge up), red and blue, threatens our democracy, even more than our racial divide. The left does not only dislike the right or vice versa, they are disgusted by them.  Neither can see the rightness of the other side, the wrongness of their side.  He offers no easy answers, only dialogue, empathy, a willingness to listen and give some respect to the others' beliefs.  I'll try.

Anyways, it's a lovely morning here at the lake, 8:00, lots of guys out fishing to bring in the New Year.  A touch of color in the southern sky, both blue, orange and pink as the sun tries to break through the cloud cover.  It's 28º and Evie, lucky girl, is still sleeping.

We did not do much yesterday and did not have to worry about dinner because we were going out with Linda and Ron.  So we had a easy morning, as Evie continued to ponder rearranging  our living room furniture, and I have to admit that I am beginning to like it more as I get used to it. We both thought that a lentil soup sounded good so as Evie put it together, I gathered the trash and went off to the Transfer Station, to end 2016 and thank the guys with a tip.  When I got home, Evie was upset because she had turned the burner to high rather than simmer and had burned the soup, making it inedible so we had to throw it away.  That did it for working in the kitchen for her.

We then wasted the afternoon or so it felt as Evie lay on the couch, by the fire, reading and I watched football in the TV room, napped and read until it was time to shower and get gussied up for dinner. Linda and Ron picked us up at 6:00 and we realized we had not seen each other since before Thanksgiving so we had lots to talk about.  We drove to Jamestown, to the Landmark, perhaps the nicest restaurant in downtown.  We sat in the bar, having a beer until our table was ready and it was fun to be in a large dining room filled with people dressed up for the night.  We had a fun waitress, found meals that sounded good, ordered a bottle of wine and were happy.  I had a vodka pasta with shrimp and scallops, the other three had salmon or sea bass.  Our meals were quite good so we made the right choices.  We stayed until 9:30 when we headed home.  Neither of us are big fans of New Years Eve, so we went our different ways.  Evie and I watched some of the depressing Ohio State game and looked for information of the terrorist attack in Turkey but all of the major channels were bringing in the New Year's celebrations, not news.  We headed to bed around 11:15, too tired to stay up for the New Year, alas.

A quotation for 2017: "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one." Voltaire