Go placidly amid the noise and the haste…

Maybe it’s because I’m celebrating a “significant” birthday tomorrow.

Or maybe because I’m still recovering from my most recent bout of Covid.

But I’m cheering for a guy who wears red Granny pants, who is unfashionably earnest, who tries to do good.

Yep, Superman.

I’m not a huge superhero fan, but I appreciate the ways that myths can still speak to us about what the poet e.e.cummings called things “we cannot touch because they are too near.”

Things not defined or degraded by trapping everything in the black/white mode of current political and cultural attitudes.

Or the life lived by this guy — brought to my attention by an excellent daily offering from Dave Pell, the self-styled “Managing Editor of the Internet,” who offers more than just a round-up of daily news but insights that go beyond news.

Here is Pell citing an obit in the Minnesota Star Tribune:

“My father-in-law, Claude, did not live an opulent life. He lived in ways to which we all should truly aspire.” 

An obituary with a broader message: A tribute to an uncommon man.

Set against the social media influencer dreams of many, this retelling of a quiet life unhinged me in the best possible way and reminded me that we can each and every one of us make a lie of Henry David Thoreau’s quote: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Of course, this obit touched my heart in a special way because he was, uncommonly these days, a fan of newspapers!

Instead of feeling sad, angry or afraid, maybe you can encourage some little miracles like lightning bugs or monarch butterflies.

Ages ago, I first came across a prayer/poem called the Desiderata. 

Here is a taste: “Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.”

I was a teenager and it spoke to me. When I first read it, it was with this history: Desiderata was “found in Old Saint Paul’s, Baltimore, dated 1692.”

We know better now. Here’s its tangled history. 

But, for this minute, I will return to my teenage years and savor its sentimental simplicity.

I’m pretty sure Clark Kent would. You can, too. 

Here is the Desiderata in full.

And as a reminder that none of us are perfect, a correction.

In my last newsletter we referenced a story from a couple of years ago, (Weather self-defense: How to get real-time alerts to help you prepare) and in that old story we linked to the emergency management of a Delaware County in Ohio.

Oops. Here’s the right link, to the state of Delaware. 

There are two ways of looking at this mistake. On one hand, embarrassed that, despite close editing, we goof up.

The other? How terrific that a reader read that newsletter so closely that she discovered it and told me about it.  

Thanks to all of you who read this letter, and our stories.