Saturday’s weather came off lousy with wind, snow, heavy roads, limited visibility, yet still the turnout for my parents’ birthday celebration was gratifying. Dad will be 95 on the 20th of February and Ma reached 90 today, the 17th, this date also marking their 69th anniversary. Years keep piling on; I guess I should know since my 68th occurred on the 15th. As long as we can keep counting all is well. Of that generation of Buelings only Dad remains of the family and two of the wives with that surname remain living, my mother, and the wife of Leslie, Kathy, whose birthday was the 16th.
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A headline in today’s paper: Where did the moderates go? The first sentence in the article reads “The moderate middle is disappearing from Congress.” The story is often told about President Reagan and Tip O’Neill of how they’d fight over political issues but would join each other for jokes and drinks after hours. Apparently that doesn’t happen much with the present bunch of polarized politicians. I can’t help but refer to a W. B. Yeats poem “The Second Coming.” The first few lines say:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
While the poem does not speak to political issues, it has been said that it is open to differing levels of interpretation. I think it fits well with the situation in Washington.
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I wondered how things were going one hundred years ago during the month of February in the old home town so I went to the well again and hauled up a bucket full of items. My great-grandfather made this news: “We noticed an item in the Progress a few weeks ago stating that coyotes were very thick out in Owego. Well, I guess they must be. A few weeks ago Tom Anderson, with the aid of his two dogs and a pitchfork, killed one. Keep the good work going, Tom.”
The Ransom County Immigration Association have just completed the overhauling of their three big cars, the Marmon and two Maxwells. Chauffeur Blanchard has carefully inspected the mechanism of the machines and pronounced them to be in perfect working order. The land company is expecting a heavy influx of land seekers this spring, and their three cars are now in readiness to show the hungry seekers a good share of their land within a short time.
