Hopalong Cassidy Trail
Streator, Illinois
I have refused so far to dwell long in my morning writing on the crisis of the day. See, I do not speak its name. At Seven in the evening, I read the Streator Times cover to cover to see if the local news brings warnings. By then, I have sipped on the national and world news all day, and the local news becomes a last word from society.
Upon arriving home, I flip a calendar to show the next day, declaring the day over. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. I have of course quoted the King James Version of Matthew Chapter 6, Verse 64. At 7 in the evening, I’m not taking thought of the morrow. Nor am I then thinking too much of the day on hand.
Live in day tight compartments. Dale Carnegie taught that idea in his classic book, “Stop Worrying and Start Living”. So I have let the door of the day close when I go home. He found the idea in the writing of Sir William Osler.
Osler accomplished great achievements in his life. A Canadian doctor who helped to found John Hopkins University, he also brought medical students out of the classroom and into the clinic, establishing the first residency program. If day tight compartments worked for Osler, day tight compartments should work for me. I still believe this although I have yet to accomplish as much as Osler. He also wrote, “No mind, however dull, can escape the brightness that comes from steady application”. This quote gives this drudge, myself, much hope.
I read Dale Carnegie in high school, also reading the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. I’ve read through the basic ideas again as I composed this essay, and I’ve used them all in the four decades since high school. I wonder why I’ve made friends and influenced people without becoming wealthy. Maybe it’s because I took too seriously the musical, “How To Succeed in Business without Really Trying”.
I haven’t given up the quest in my mid-Fifties. Lately, I’ve been reading books on nature. The Beekeeper’s Lament by Hannah Nordhaus published on Kindle kept me turning pages for two days. I was really swiping pages, and it was easy to read the illuminated page in the dark. I had almost sold my Kindle Fire for fifteen dollars, but I grew to like it after my Hewlett Packard laptop went on the fritz.
Nordhaus wrote a beautiful book, even documenting how Queen Bee mills in California keep the honey bee industry alive by raising thousands and thousands of queens. I had called Ray Lowe of Hiwire Honey a genius when I saw him at the Regional Farmers Market in Syracuse because he knew how to create queens in his hives. Lowe went “ah, shucks”, and let me take his picture.
Nordhaus peeled back the veil on this Queen bee magic. She writes step by step how Pat Heitkam of Orland, California produces one thousand queens a day during the spring. A neighbor produces five thousand a day. Without queens to re-queen hives across the country, we wouldn’t have a honey industry in America.
Now I’m onto The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs, a book by Tristan Gooley, rather a Bear Grylls type who walks through the heath and gorse, reading the trees and flowers. He has the ability to consult a map, study the landscape and then make progress for miles without consulting the map again. A good skill if a sniper has popped onto the scene because who has time to keep looking at a map when live rounds are being fired?
I’ll write. I’ll read. I’ll take a walk. I’ll harass my friend the beekeeper, Aaron Morris of Round Lake New York, with my pesky questions. At the end of the day, it is what it is, to yoke together two cliches. Jim Harrison died a poet’s death, suffering a heart attack while writing his daily verses. All I have to do is keep writing to suffer the same. I have few plans to let up. Dale Carnegie advised us to mentally prepare to accept the worst if necessary. The worst is I'll die. Like Elizabeth Warren, I have a plan for that.
Sir William Osler
By Gilbert & Bacon - Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7405477
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