[Image: “Vogel duikbank,” by a Flickr user who goes by the name (?) Ebelien. Found it there, of course, and — likewise — use it here under a Creative Commons license. (Thank you!)]

From whiskey river:

More than ever, I’ve come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity and ability to cope with change. Is it any wonder that the world seems full of strange and implacable forces to someone who doesn’t know how to look up a Zip Code, use a computerized card catalog, or even make a long-distance phone call? When my husband tended bar in Lemmon, he was often asked to place calls for people flustered by a pay phone. The night he telephoned a research library at a university in California to settle a barroom dispute about the planets is now part of local legend. He might as well have been a shaman.

(Kathleen Norris [source])

…and:

Directions

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world.
— Hamlet

Take a plane to London.
From King’s Cross take the direct train to York.
Rent a car and drive across the vale to Ripon,
then into the dales toward the valley of the Nidd,
a narrow road with high stone walls on each side,
and soon you’ll be on the moors. There’s a pub,
The Drovers, where it’s warm inside, a tiny room,
you can stand at the counter and drink a pint of Old Peculier.
For a moment everything will be all right. You’re back
at a beginning. Soon you’ll walk into Yorkshire country,
into dells, farms, into blackberry and cloud country.
You’ll walk for hours. You’ll walk the freshness
back into your life. This is true. You can do this.
Even now, sitting at your desk, worrying, troubled,
you can gaze across Middlesmoor to Ramsgill,
the copses, the abbeys of slanting light, the fells,
you can look down on that figure walking toward Scar House,
cheeks flushed, curlews rising in front of him, walking,
making his way, working his life, step by step, into grace.

(Joseph Stroud [source])

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