I have switched on the facility that enables comments to be moderated. What this means in practice is your comments will not appear immediately you post them, as they have done in the past.
It would be a rare comment that I would not publish and I’m sad that the need for me to moderate them has arrived.
So be it.
The other day while cruising through one of our vestibules I bumped into this crew of geriatric vacuum cleaners waiting to be sent off for recycling. They had been accumulating under the back stairs apparently. One by one they got to the state when no more life could be coaxed from them and so, obviously, they were not able to do any more work.
I happen to think there is something rather fine about the way we keep our electrical equipment going for as long as we do. This is because of thrift considerations of course, and also about just taking care of things. Just like we take care of people when they break or are wearing out.
This afternoon I visited an elderly woman. In an attempt to stop her books and many belongings from sliding onto the floor I retrieved an old fashioned address metal holder from the bottom of the pile. It was obviously the cause of the precarious arrangement. Untrapped, it sprang open! ‘Oh, I keep it there because it won’t close any more’. Some things just keep on having a life don’t they, just like this bright lady.
Can we ever do enough to honour and respect the wise ones, who wear out slowly and in the process teach so much?
The office cyclamen has been ailing for months. We though it was iron deficiency so we treated it for that and the leaves still yellowed. I finally figured out it was probably a disease and upon microscopic observation, I thought I detected a white something (fungus?) at the base of the stem so went on online and came up with probable diagnosis. I was so struck by the little sentence below that I thought to send it to you.
Take care.
Here is the offertory sung at the end of the Remembrance Day ceremony :
The wind is rattling my door tonight, great gusts of air thrash around the stone buildings. My mind is drawn to those less fortunate.
Down Under, in Australia, there is an ER Nurse who I like to visit when I need a certain kinda lift. Here is (part of) what he has to say about what to do when a resuscitation goes bad.
Slow speed: Somewhere between rushing around like a headless chook and dropping into ‘frozen in the headlights’ inertia, is a zone of slow speed where tasks are performed with an easy fluidity. Once you have centered yourself and focused your breathing for a moment it is pretty easy to drop into this niche. And with some slow speed applied to the one thing, you will begin to accomplish a lot quickly.
When anything goes bad, or evenly mildly out of hand, most of what is listed in this article, ‘in the zone’ will come in handy. Remembering to do it is the hard part.
Remember, tomorrow is Remembrance Day.