And then I wrote...
by Dick Schilling, Editor Emeritus
...that sometime during the cold weekend, I was listening to a radio program in which the interviewer was talking to an octogenarian. He said he admired the elderly man’s spirit despite some obvious maladies associated with old age. The old gentleman said he realized long ago that an aging body would not react the same way it did when younger, but he felt he still had some remaining control over his mental outlook and attitude.
Words to live by. If you can.
I notice I can stand more heat as I age, and have less tolerance for cold. So these past two weekends which included below zero highs some days may not only have affected my body, but played games with my mind, too. I display an inordinate interest in weather forecasts now, whereas in my younger years I would simply accept the likelihood of what was apparently about to happen. I have no more power nor less today than I had then, but I fret about it more.
I addition to the heat/cold physical difference, I more and more each day detect a deeper influence brought by human actions, or even words describing those actions.
When I taught Christian doctrine classes to high school seniors for a couple years when I was in my 30s, I always went away from the printed materials furnished because that boiler plate approach, I felt, was certain to bore these older teens, and would probably put both them and me asleep. Instead, I used words from popular songs, such as Who Will Answer or The Mud Kids, or maybe recorded pieces such as Desiderata to make the point the lesson was trying to get across. I could recite or read those words with sufficient emphasis to affect them, I thought, while remaining unaffected myself. Now, I cannot do so without breaking myself up! Does that signify a softer heart or an age-softened head?
Today is the day named for Martin Luther King Jr. It is a holiday for some; not for others. Thought about that this morning when I heard the newspaper carrier and the trash collectors working despite 15 below zero readings, and appreciated once again the service they and others provide under often adverse conditions. And I still don’t know why MLK gets a “day” while people who have done more good for more people (Salk; Edison) do not. I suspect it is a matter of white guilt and unrealistic black expectations.
As I pondered ideas for this column this frigid winter morning, I noticed at the bottom of the TV screen the scroll of schools that were closed or starting late. There were a few which provided the message in Spanish as well as English, but neighboring Postville also included a third language which I did not recognize.
Brave new world
Maybe MLK did make a difference after all.
