Steppenwolf

Dear God, how was it possible? How had I, with the wings of youth and poetry, come to this? Art and travel and the glow of ideals - and now this! How had this paralysis crept over me so slowly and furtively, this hatred against myself and everybody, this deep-seated anger and obstruction of all feelings, this filthy hell of emptiness and despair.

-- “Steppenwolf” by Hermann Hesse

Rudy

Pop received a new visitor this morning. When I went to the door, I thought it was business, because a Via van was parked out front, and the visitor was the driver. I figured that Pop signed up for something and forgot about it. But no. When Pop came to the door, he stepped out shouting happily, “Rudy!” It sounds like a familiar name that has been mentioned down the years, but I cannot recall seeing him before. It could be a different Rudy. Interestingly, when Rudy left and Pop came back inside, he does not tell me anything. Usually Pop likes to share such joys, and this would have been one of the rare times that I was actually curious.

John Adams

We have a few quotations on the feelings and passions of the founding fathers and the revolutionary generation. Thomas Jefferson said of stodgy John Adams, “He hates Franklin, he hates Jay, he hates the French, he hates the English … To whom will he adhere? His vanity is a lineament in his character which had entirely escaped me … vain, irritable, and a bad calculator of the force and probable effect of the motives which govern men.”

Adams could dish it out as well and said of Thomas Paine, “the satyr of the age … a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a butch wolf.”

[Source: Ron Chernow, “Alexander Hamilton”]

Pop

Pop loaded up some beer and food and is heading out to Jack’s place this evening. He said Jack is “firing up the grill.” I just hope that it doesn’t give Pop any ideas. He hasn’t fired up the grill in a long time, and I would hope that he has left it behind him.

The Natural World

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