“The world is too much with us; late and soon. Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours.”
William Wordsworth (1807)
Sometimes the world is too much with me, making me forever grateful for things that bring me joy. After a terrible storm that shook the house and rattled the windows, it was a joy to see the morning sunlight and feel a cool breeze.
Sam offered to remodel the hall bathroom and I took him up on it. I suggested he be the designer, choosing fixtures and colors as he liked. His fishing buddy said, “She’ll let you do that?”
I did and he did, and it turned out lovely. The newness of the bathroom brought me great joy. It was just a little thing, new paint, new mirror and a showerhead. Then he tackled a junk room, moving out weight equipment that had long since rusted, tarps that lost their waterproofness, empty containers, wooden drawers from a cabinet we no longer had and various other clutter. The garbage collectors always know when the Bardwells resume cleaning mode.
When the world’s bickering heightens, I retreat to the corner of the sofa with a good book. With January ending, I delved into Gladys Taber’s “Stillmeadow Daybook” (1955), reading the month of February. Here is what she had to say:
“Country living in these days may be rather effete, with music at the turn of the knob, news over the air waves every few minutes (if she only knew), books coming in by mail — and then you can see and hear a whole opera if so minded, on television. We live in an age, it seems, when the whole world is at our doorstep, no matter where we may be.”
In earlier days, “News came by riders, or travelers who came post chaise from Boston … Books and magazines were found rarely in ordinary homes, except a Bible and possibly ‘Pilgrims Progress.’ A home was a pretty private place then, with no John Cameron Swayze or John K.M. McCaffery or Ed Murrow large as life and delivering news so hot it smokes every evening.
“Letter writing has fallen out of common practice of late, but one fine feature of cold winter evenings is time to write to dear friends far away. A leisurely chat via paper is rewarding. One has only to read some of the letters of the past to realize how well people portray themselves when writing to friends. … Keats and Shelley wrote letters which reveal their genius as much as their poetry does. If only we had one or two letters of Shakespeare. I wonder at times why so many people have been so fevered to prove Shakespeare was not Shakespeare. … I find no trouble at all in believing in Will. Any more that I do in believing in Abraham Lincoln, the most unlikely to succeed. … What could be more incredible than this log-cabin boy with his shambling gait and attacks of melancholy and lack of polish should dominate the life of our country through a terrible war?”
And so, Gladys sums it up being glad she lives in the country, as do I. Glad I live in the country and in this country. It’s my hope God may bless me, thee, and America always.
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