In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
English poet Christina Rossetti. The poem was published, under the title “A Christmas Carol”, in the January 1872 issue of Scribner’s Monthly
In 1963 when I was thirteen years old in my first year in boarding school at St. Andrew’s College outside Toronto I received from my sister (who lived with our parents in Stockholm, Sweden) a small, green plastic bound diary with a lock and key for a Christmas gift. I used it consistently and hauled it about with me for quite some time before I abandoned it for a larger writing format. When I began studying and practicing law I initially wrote by hand with a fountain pen in large hardback volumes with blank, lined pages; then graduated to smaller tomes of a similar nature. Eventually I began typing on blank pages which I housed in a custom-made leather bound three-ring binder with my name emboldened in gold lettering on the front. Finally just before retiring from the practice of law in 2014 I translated my ramblings to the internet, initially a Google blog then this more private web site (which I had intended for use if I pursued my election and career as a municipal councillor). When I retired all the historic handwritten and typed diaries were sent to the shredder with the mass of old files inherited by me from my predecessor R. A. Jamieson QC. What remains as a written account of my life is captured in my blogs and this web site.
After listening to Trump, CNN and FOX NEWS for the past four years I cling to my belief that Trump and his administration are perverted. Knowing what I do about New York City I am not a stranger to pretence and fraud. I am however less than persuaded by my native instincts when it comes to an assessment of Trump supporters. I am far from having a marketable picture of them.
The glassy, frozen sky early this morning ensured that what remained of the ploughed snow on the blacktop was slick ice. Our cycling threatened to become a chance encounter with misfortune. Nonetheless by adhering to the dry portions of the road – some of which patches were only on the left side – we escaped injury while at the same time engulfing the crystal fresh air and capturing rays of warmth from the brilliant sunshine. By the time we rounded the corner on Church Street and headed to the library it was evident that our erstwhile railway right-of-way was covered in snow. We turned back.
In a paddock of one of the farms along the Appleton Side Road today I saw a Mustang covered with a dusting of snow. For the uninitiated it is a spectacle which incites a combination of novelty and a breath of regret for the animal. Neither is fully apt. The Mustang reportedly has a thick layer of fur beneath which it succeeds to muffle the snow from the animal’s body heat. This makes sense given the comfortable appearance of the horse and the perpetuity of the snow. It is noteworthy however that the horse should nonetheless have a lean-to or shelter from which to escape the wind and precipitation.
We awoke this morning – a raw and cloudy Sunday morning – to a “snowfall warning” on my iPhone Weather App. Thanks to hurried matutinal activity we luckily escaped the immediate peril until after we’d completed our routine 10 km cycle along the erstwhile railway right-of-way. I remarked how bare are the trees. While cycling I wondered when will be the last time we’re able to bicycle. For the past many years – since 2014 when we began wintering in southern climes – we have cycled almost every day of the year. I say this with an immoderate degree of approval at my age – if for no other reason than people marvel when seeing me: “Look at that old fogey still struggling along!” Cycling has always been my preferred exercise. It’s the closest thing to a car without the guilt. Even in Florida swimming was always more a diversion than a workout. Once though on Longboat Key I recall having swum parallel to the shore from our property on Longboat Club Road to the Resort at the southern end of the island and back. It wasn’t the first time I’d reminded myself that I prefer sitting, cycling or swimming to almost anything other than walking. For my entire life walking has provoked me. I believe the last time I walked any distance was in Rome.
In my experience – after forty years of hard labour as a servant to the rich – most of us gleefully acquaint the weekend with a trickle of one week and a glide into another. It is a stubborn custom. Though the measure of activity on the weekend and during the week is often no more than the slightest difference, that apophthegm about a change and a rest freely pertains. Otherwise we’re about as changeable as a retired greyhound; namely, from the moment we’re out of the cage it’s off to the races! However before that stimulus overtakes us there is the incomparably soothing Saturday slide – the truncation of effort and the collapse into everything good about life.
My grandfather – my mother’s father – had a notoriously peevish temper. I nonetheless dilute his abbreviations because he was an unremittingly pious man; and to my knowledge he never drank or smoked. Nor would I expect there to have been anything remotely lascivious in his behaviour notwithstanding he, like my mother, was devilishlly good looking. The last time I saw him I was no more than 21 years of age. I say this because my historic – and perhaps modified – recollection is that his paroxysms were more from annoyance than anger. Though this sounds an improbable distinction it is meant to capture the incongruence of events more than dispiriting encounters. To my deathless ignominy the authors of my own – shall I dare say “inherited” – snappishness inevitably amount to such trifling encounters as an unwilling App on my iPhone, or a casual bump on the side of my glasses when passing through a doorway, or an uncooperative salad bag whose top won’t properly open (and don’t get me started on those plastic bags in grocery stores for vegetables and fruits – they’re utterly impossible to open), or the myriad of other natural but insufferable repercussions of old age.
Today I have in the words of E. F. Benson’s Lucia been “terrifically busy about nothing“. Whether sadly or not the indisputable truth is that life in the country during this relentless pandemic has descended to a collection of mundane exploits. We of Sleepy Hollow reputedly have little to divert us apart from art festivals, film clubs, rides upon the alameda, rushing waterfalls, stone and brick homes and vast stubbled fields.
There is a wide range of apothegms which are available to provide direction in matters of the heart and mind. There is clearly also an application to business and commerce. I’d like to touch upon the sometimes delicate though predominant matter of trust. It’s possible that the trustworthiness of a person depends upon as little as the weather, so mercurial at times is the persuasion. Even associating someone with vastly superior ornaments such as intellect or rationality does little to advance the inquiry . In the end we make our own choice upon what credentials are convincing. Here are some suggested rules to ponder.