With a little luck, the life updates in this blog should get a little more boring. Kelly joins the dog and I in California today, and should be able to get some well deserved rest and relaxation. The house is still on the market, but that is a worry for another day.
I expect to fill this space more with my philosophical ruminations, which I find more fascinating than most of my daily life. Hopefully, you will too.
I came up with the title for this blog almost two years ago. Samwise Gamgee has always been my favorite fictional character ever since seeing the animated "Return of the King" at a very young age. ("Where there's a whip... there's a way..."). In some ways, it is odd that I grabbed onto him rather than Frodo. It could be that by starting with the RotK (it took me a couple more years to finish the books for the first time), my first impression of Frodo was a whining, tired and indecisive hobbit while Sam did all the real work.
While my appreciation for Frodo has grown with the dozen or two times I have read the books, so has my admiration and identification with Sam. I have always seen myself as the able assistant rather than the leader. I tend to be the practical minded supporter who figures out how to make it happen rather than the idea creator.
Which brings me to the quote... "Where there is life, there is hope, as my gaffer would say. And need for vittles, he'd mostwise add." When I was younger, and EVEN more idealistic than I am today, I think I only focused on the first part. Just having hope in the middle of Mordor surrounded by a million orcs is a significant achievement. But the power comes from the second part. Without a practical mindset, hope is an ephemeral and transient entity.
The challenge comes in finding the balance... how much practicality and how much idealism. Samwise knew when to stop saving food and water for the return journey from Mount Doom and to just concentrate on keeping Frodo going. The challenge is finding the balance that you can live with in your own head.
That was old Hamfast's advice for his son. My dad offered advice from the confusing "You can't have your cake and eat it too" (what else do you do with cake?) to another of my life mantras "There are two things in life worth their money every single time... education and travel." On this Father's Day, anyone reading the blog is encouraged to leave comments with good, bad or humorous tidbits their fathers passed along to them.
Last Book Read:
This was a birthday gift from the SHW, though I had to wait until she was done reading and laughing hysterically at it. I guess the added anticipation was part of the present.
The author attempts to spend a year following all the rules of the Bible. Amusement and insight follow.
The most impressive aspect is how he manages to avoid the easy shots. While the incongruity of some rules with modern life create humor, he is usually respectful to the history and to the people who genuinely believe it. (The second most impressive aspect is that his wife is still married to him at the end of the year.)
As I learned from reading Karen Armstrong's books, ritual is important for its own sake. It doesn't matter if the ritual is eating an injection molded bread-like disk or calculating the minimum distance along the surface of a sphere between two locations. The point is that sharing a ritual helps create a community and provides an opportunity for an individual to see oneself as part of something greater.
This was a pretty good book, though I would probably recommend using the library. It does make me want to check out his previous book where he reads the Encyclopedia Britannica from cover to cover.
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Perhaps, then, this is not a good time for one of my father's oft-recited pearls of wisdom "Life's a bitch and then you die."
I was hoping for "You're like a blister. You only show up when the work is done." from Kelly's dad archives.
Except for the part about how that's not something he's ever said. But it's a good one anyway.
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