Restraining hands... or paws

Since the passing of Arpad the Magnificent this summer (pictured above), predators have already started moving in. A couple nights ago, we were awakened when an unknown critter attacked Pearl, our aging peahen. Last night she disappeared. This would have been unthinkable in Arpad's heyday.

It makes me think that all our lives would be a lot less safe without the often unseen restraining hands (or paws) of those who, without fanfare, keep things from being as bad as they could be.

I've more than once quoted the last lines of George Eliot's (Mary Anne Evans) Middlemarch here:

"...the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

(Note: not all of the good guys who faithfully lived a hidden life were as glorious or beautiful as Arpad. They probably didn't bark as much at night either. Come to think of it, I visited Arpad's tomb tonight and poured him a libation of goat milk. But the point remains I think.)

OFF TOPIC. Here's a final digression of grieving for a dog. After he died, I dreamed that I climbed a mountain and looked down. There was Arpad and some other dogs I knew who had passed running around and having a great time. I tried to climb over the mountain to them but it was too steep and I couldn't cross the line.

I think that may have been a classic Freudian albeit nonsexual wish fulfillment dream of good dogs living forever. I wish it was real. Or that, in the Buddhist spirit, Arpad had been reborn in the Pure Land of Amida Buddha, where he could work towards ultimate Nirvana under the most favorable circumstances. Or that I could ever be as cool as he was.

Guarding from evil things folk that are heedless

The theme at Goat Rope lately is things from The Lord of the Rings that are totally realistic and relevant to working for social justice. This is installment #3. I have often thought about how much misery has been prevented by uncelebrated and unknown people who without fanfare do a lot of good and/or keep a lot of bad things from happening. They may be this schoolteacher or that old lady who sits on her porch and keeps an eye on the neighborhood or any number of people who work behind the scenes and away from the cameras. Every time I read the trilogy, things jump out at me that I missed before. I was particularly struck this time by the mostly unnamed Rangers of the North (Aragorn was their chief). These are looked down upon as discreditable vagrants by respectable people in the books, yet as the old and wise Tom Bombadil tells the hobbits,

"Few now remember them...yet some go wandering, sons of forgotten kings walking in loneliness, guarding from evil things folk that are heedless."

The great writer George Eliot, aka Mary Anne Evans, expressed the same idea at the end of Middlemarch:

"...the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

So here's to the unknown Rangers of our world, walking in loneliness and faithfully living a hidden life. Without them, we'd be a whole lot worse off.

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING STANDARD OF LIVING discussed here. RIGHT WING DEMOCRACY CORRUPTING BILLIONAIRE SELF PITY discussed here. A BOGEY-WOMAN OF THE RIGHT, poverty advocate and frequent Glenn Beck Target Frances Fox Piven, speaks here. GOOD DOG! Here's a survival story from Japan about how a 12 year old Shih Tzu saved its 83 year old owner from the tsunami. GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Unhistoric acts

I have long suspected that the people whose lives have been the most useful to others aren't necessarily the ones who get all the attention. The last lines of Middlemarch by George Eliot (aka Mary Anne or Marian Evans) sum this up nicely:

"...the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."