I am 60 this week and my brother – my baby brother – is 50. My other brother – his anniversary fills the day between our birthdays. Such perfect symmetry between life and death.

I am 60 and I am sadder than I can ever remember. The kindness of strangers is what keeps me afloat. Remembering that people are largely decent and kind.

The cruelty and the selfishness which seems to be in the air, the ether, the yellow smoke curling round the window panes, filling all the space around me – that is crushing me.

People who lectured at me and adopted lofty tones of wisdom and righteousness – at 60 years of age I look at them and almost none of them has remained that person. I doubt that I have – and that is another sadness.

Damned inevitability. Damned greed and lust and fragility. Damn this political struggle to keep them all suckled fat and greased up. Damn the long game played by the obscenely rich pretending we are all pawns in some game as they own all the houses and all the utility companies and all the cards and that little top hat. Damn the whole, share price fixing lot of them.

And Happy Birthday to Jonathan and me :-)

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Classical Antiquity (Greco-Roman) c. 800 BCE–476 CE — City-states, Roman Republic/Empire.

Late Antiquity c. 250–750 — Transition from Rome to post-Roman kingdoms; Christianization.

High Middle Ages c. 1000–1250 — Feudal orders, growth of towns/universities, Romanesque → Gothic.

Renaissance c. 1350–1600 — Humanism, classical revival in arts, letters, and science.

Age of Discovery c. 1400–1700 — Atlantic exploration, colonial expansion, global trade links.

Scientific Revolution c. 1543–1700 — Copernican astronomy, new methods, early modern science.

Baroque Era c. 1600–1750 — Court culture, exuberant art/architecture, absolutist states.

Enlightenment (Age of Reason) c. 1685–1815 — Reason, rights, encyclopedism; salons and republics of letters.

Romantic Era c. 1780–1850 — Emotion, nation, nature in arts and politics.

Modernism c. 1890–1945 — Artistic/ideological breaks with tradition; mass culture.

Information / Globalization Age c. 1990–present — Internet, financial and cultural interconnection.

Entitlement (Age of Myopia) c. 2020–present — Mobile, social platforms, AI, datafication, home delivery.

We are no longer so young!

The middle years have been a bit of a mess, politically. Thought I should pass that on. A lot of people grabbing what they can and justifying it with the zealous, insincere sincerity which is the current way. Busy lecturing that the caffeine intake is killing us while complaining about a penny in the pound tax to save the Health Service. That kind of think, kid. Its all “personal responsibility” – emphasis always heavily on the personal. You would have loved it! The politics would have done for you.

Italy is nice. Christopher is all grown up and you have a grand-niece – is that the relationship? Aida – she is a tomboy and very sweet. Sharp as a tack. She would have loved you with your cheeky grin!

David is marrying soon. He is happy. So is Stephen – they all are. It went well. They all made it – unlike so many of our generation. They are all smart, healthy, employed and thriving.

Everyone else is fine. We lost Dad in April 2020 during the Covid pandemic. It was peaceful. Jonathan coped well.

And then there is you. Missing but always lurking! Happy Birthday, wee man – I miss you xxx

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water,

and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

by Wendell Berry

More on Wendell Berry on Wikipedia