Columnist Frank Bruni is back after a month away. His “For the love of sentences” includes Peggy Noonan’s note on the chilliness of Ron DeSantis who gives her the feeling “that he might unplug your life support to re-charge his cellphone.” Well put, Noonan.
And Nathan Heller in The New Yorker said this about the declining attention spans of college students: “Assigning Middlemarch is like trying to land a 747 on a small rural airstrip.”
Here’s some wisdom from the internet: It’s just as hard to try to lose at Rock, Paper, Scissors, as to try to win.
Yesterday was the wedding anniversary of John Rolfe and Pocahontas. Mazel Tov kids! They married in 1614. He was 29 and she was only 18. Her real name was Moataka. Pocahontas was a nickname that means “playful one.” She was kidnapped by the English who intended to swap her for prisoners held by her dad, the Chief. While captive, she learned English, converted to Christianity, and changed her name to Rebecca. What is it with this girl and names? And she and Rolfe fell in love, which seemed to nix the swap plan.
He asked her dad the Chief for permission to marry and then asked English Governor Tom Dale also. “It is Pocahontas,” he wrote, “to whom my hearty and best thoughts are, and have been a long time so entangled, and enthralled in so intricate a labyrinth that I (could not) unwind myself thereout.” Not exactly a Shakespearean sonnet, but love is love.
They later toured England with their infant son Thomas. Pocahontas grew ill and died there, in an inn in Gravesend. John left Thomas behind to get an English education, and returned to Virginia. They never saw each other again.
It got as high as 74 today at Owl Chatter Central. Winter is on the run, no question. One of our favorite songs about the changing seasons is Urge For Going, by Joni Mitchell. Tom Rush does a great version of it.
I had a girl in summertime, with summer colored skin
And not another man in town my darlin’s heart could win.
But when the leaves fell trembling down
And bully winds did rub their faces in the snow,
She got the urge for going, and I had to let her go.
And she got the urge for going, when the meadow grass was turning brown
Summertime was falling down, and winter closing in.
So I’ll ply the fire with kindling, pull the blankets to my chin
I’ll lock the vagrant winter out, and bolt my wandering in.
I’d like to call back summertime
And have her stay for just another month or so
But she’s got the urge for going, and I guess she’ll have to go.
Here’s a poem by Ted Kooser, from Winter Morning Walks to send us on our way.
There are days when the world
has a hard time keeping its clouds on,
and its grass in place, and this
is one of them, tumbleweeds
huddled up under the skirts
of the cedars, oak trees
joining hands in the windy grove.
Even the dawn light, blocky
with pink and yellow and blue
like a comics section, quickly
fluttered away, leaving a Sunday
the color of news.
Good night everybody! OC is heading out to Detroit tomorrow, God willing. First stopover — Brookville, PA.
The Wellington Files 