To thine own self be true

The U.K. vet who has raised over 32 million pounds (43 million) for Covid relief by doing laps in his backyard. He died of Covid in hospital. He is a true modern hero.

performing and recording, despite an Alzheimer’s diagnosis: iconic singer Tony Bennett. A true musical Legend with gumption and style.

with every paper I delivered.
Bad news on the doorstep.
I couldn’t take one more step.”
–Don McLean (“American Pie”)

First day/paper route/January, grade 5 (prose version)

It all went well till I got to the end of Thompson Drive which ran out of houses at the edge of a prairie.
518 was next on the list but Thompson proper ended in the 400s. In 30 below, I trudged back and forth on Ness pondering the glitch: a customer without an actual house.
Some 10 minutes on, I noticed a dark spot 150 yards away across the barren field. Could that, irrationally, be it? It was north of the 400s after all.
The Arctic wind blew– unforgiving from the north, lifting snow to sting and freeze my unscarfed face, but I got there. The iron numbers frostily on the house: 518.
And was welcomed by a bent, suspendered man with thick green glasses: Mr. Steele. Francis or Frank, as his wife called him. She was Dorothy or Dot in that last year before the old guy’s death.
They insisted I step in and sat me by the window with a hot drink, looking back on civilization. They were grateful I had come bringing news of the world (albeit late). The “new carrier”.
I sat and listened to them argue for 10 minutes until my feet thawed. The old man was nice and congenial. Dot did what he asked her to, but I wouldn’t have trusted her for a minute.

Another strange beginning that winter of yore, being taken in like that to their life apart. I wondered later how they had survived and plodding back, I realized why the previous kid had quit so soon after Christmas tips.

My daughter’s Netherland-dwarf-rabbit’s scat-trail outlines what famous night-sky formation?

(excerpted from Oscar Wilde’s poignant  “The Selfish Giant”)

One winter morning he looked out of his window as he was dressing. He did not hate the Winter now, for he knew that it was merely the Spring asleep, and that the flowers were resting.

Suddenly he rubbed his eyes in wonder, and looked and looked. It certainly was a marvelous sight. In the farthest corner of the garden was a tree quite covered with lovely white blossoms. Its branches were all golden, and silver fruit hung down from them, and underneath it stood the little boy he had loved.

Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child. And when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, “Who hath dared to wound thee?” For on the palms of the child’s hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet.

“Who hath dared to wound thee?” cried the Giant; “tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.”

“Nay!” answered the child; “but these are the wounds of Love.”

“Who art thou?” said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.

And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, “You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.”

And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms.

“Puff The Magic Dragon” written by Peter Yarrow and Leonard Lipton, as performed by Peter, Paul and Mary.

“A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant’s rings make way for other toys
One gray night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff, that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar

His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane
Without his lifelong friend, Puff could not be brave
So Puff, that mighty dragon, sadly slipped into his cave”

think of all the greats already forgotten or who will soon be forgotten. I wonder how many of the following geniuses and greats are actually known today and/or will be forgotten by subsequent generations:

Aquinas
Aristotle
Bach
Beethoven
Ingmar Bergman
Blake
Rachel Carson
Cervantes
Charlemagne
Chekhov
Constable
da Vinci
Dante
Darwin
Descartes
Dickens
Dickinson
Durer
Einstein
Erasmus
Galileo
Goethe
Goya
Handel
Stephen Hawking
Homer (not Simpson)
Ibsen
Kurosawa
Martin Luther
Martin Luther King
Nelson Mandela
Michelangelo
Monet
Montaigne
Thomas More
Newton
Picasso
Plato
Raphael
Rembrandt
Renoir
Rodin
St. Francis of Assisi
Shakespeare
Shaw
Tchaikovsky
Tolstoy
Turner
Van Gogh
Voltaire
Orson Welles
Whitman
Wordsworth
Woolf
Yeats
Vermeer
Frank Lloyd Wright

It is in the film genre that you will find the last best of pre-Covid Art; Swedish filmmaker Bergman (1918-2007), for me, epitomizes what a great artist used to be/mean.

He made over 60 important films and directed 170 plays on stage.

His best works include:
Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Wild Strawberries (1957)
The Silence (1963)
Persona (1966)
Cries and Whispers (1971)
Scenes from a Marriage (1973)
Autumn Sonata (1978)
Fanny and Alexander (1982)
Saraband (2003)

In my opinion, he represented life, death, and male-female and parent-child relationships better and more accurately than any other filmmaker I can think of. He was simply a brilliant Master of his craft on-stage and in film. As large as Shakespeare in many ways.

If you want to get to know this genius better, the documentary Bergman Island (2007) is recommended.

(Decontaminating groceries and packages)

Basics

Don’t leave home unnecessarily except to get gas for the car (or pick up mail occasionally from a group mailbox if you have one).

Have all your groceries delivered. Walmart, Costco, Superstore, and Organic Box all deliver.

Keep in touch with out-of-house family via phone, email, messaging, Skype, or Zoom. If you really need to visit, do so safe-distancing. (You want to protect them and they, likewise.)

(multi-screen Zooming with family)

Resign yourself to cocooning and hunkering down. Get used to the drawbridge being closed; mask and safe-distance with neighbors. Put a sign on your front door, indicating you’re not answering and where parcels can be left. Always have a mask handy if you step outside the door. Use gloves to gas up.

You will eventually find that you don’t miss crowds and noise, and that you can function without others for the most part, and that you don’t miss the negatives in the company of other people. (This is the ‘salvation’ part of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Hell is other people”.)

Beyond That

Focus on life around home. Get things done, especially things you have long been putting off. ‘Make hay’.(Don’t have neighbors or service men into the house unless there’s an emergency.)

Clean house. Downsize and get rid of stuff that neither is useful (which you are likely to use) or beautiful. The rest can go.

Make a plan for each day: what you will do, aim or need to accomplish to help you stay focused. Keep a day-timer to help you record things and to put important dates on it.

What are your values? What do you want to retain from the olde days? What gives your life purpose and meaning in the here-and-now? Make a list of priorities to stay focused.

And don’t forget to build pleasures and fun into each day. Treat yourself like never before!

Spend some time taking stock, reviewing your life, how it’s going, making changes you want to make. It’s your life and what you make of it. (Consciousness and reflections are constant and essential parts of life.)

(kids exercising at school)

More than ever, diet and exercise are essential each day. What you put into your body (eating wisely) and how you stay loose and mobile. Above all, move as constantly as you can–moving all parts of your body and mind.

Mental exercise is more important than ever. Avoid being a mere couch potato watching t.v. and sitting on computer. Sedentary lifestyles kill. It’s that simple and obvious.

It’s also, incidentally, a good time to look out for others. Charitable donations are more obviously good, healthful, and necessary than ever. We are all social animals; “No man is an island”–what happens to others is my responsibility as a social animal. If we can, we ought to help others in need. A no-brainer.

What happens outside your door is what it is. If governments and other people are being stupid and ignorant about the pandemic, you need to focus on your own life and your own family’s life (factoring in maintaining friendships in significant, memorable ways as well).

There is way too much noise out there and it can even get into your home via t.v. and computers; use a Mute with t.v.s during commercials and don’t let your t.v. idly blab away at you; having the Frame channel on with landscapes is a better, relaxing, interesting watch, for example). And, by all means, get a Call Display and phone-message machine if you have a landline phone, so you never have to pick up again without knowing who’s on the other end of the line. No one needs to voluntarily allow intruders to encroach on one’s life.

Watch good and great movies; in other words, don’t bother with most of Netflix’s offerings.

Improve yourself. Do more reading. Read literature and the great writers (they’re all pre-21st century.) Feed your head. Think. Stretch your brain, perspectives, and soul.

Listen to more instrumental music. Be bold and adventurous and listen to more soulful, spiritual music like jazz, classical, or East Indian.

Look at famous art: paintings, sculpture, architecture by the greats. This can be done online, via videos, or books. Take this ample time to enrich your life.

Lastly, keep your own body fit. Beyond diet and exercise, take care of any health concerns before they become issues and problems. You owe it to yourself to look after yourself. As, is apparent throughout this blog entry, you have to do this because nobody else will. And you can’t be good to/for others unless you are good to yourself.

Finally got around to seeing Altman, the 2014 DVD documentary by Ron Mann on the great unconventional American film director. Well-done, with scenes from many of his films. Numerous interviews with Altman, his wife Kathryn Reed, and actors who worked with him. There is also rare footage from early t.v. work in addition to several home-made movie clips. He followed in Orson Welles’, Alfred Hitchcock’s, and Ingmar Bergman’s footsteps (as did Woody Allen, too) in making independent movies in the auteur style. Quite an entertaining and insightful expose of how Altman worked and his style. Highly recommended for serious film fans.