Title: To Hanker or Hunker
Category: Archery
Blog Entry: Hanker…as in to hanker for…well I have a hankering to go yonder…yes indeed, I hanker to go yonder. I wonder on the etymology of words such as hanker and yonder and ponder even more why they show up more often in western novels and lore than eastern novels and lore. I couldn’t imagine Captain Ahab stating he had a hankering for Moby Dick for instance, or that the great white whale was yonder. They used to yell, “There she blows!” Except that the Air Force flies into the wild blue yonder wherever that may be, I reckon we don’t any longer go yonder. Nor do we eat succotash, which was quite common to eat in my youth leading me to despise lima beans, as one of the two foods I refuse to eat, the other being ???r.
Anyway I am getting older, in a scant three months the mythical age of doom (65) arrives. One is supposed to retire at 65; one has to caulk one’s joints in order to keep them from leaking, and then grease them to get them working again…the problem is, I don’t feel like 65 and I don’t wish to retire. Still, more and more I hanker to go yonder. My form of ‘restless leg syndrome’ is to go yonder which is tantamount to stating I’d like to just “walk-about” as the Aussies say.
Problem is that the trappings of civilization have crept perniciously into my life, especially since moving east. The east is full of needy people rushing hither and thither creating a massive gridlock of nastiness, poverty and excess, and anger at those around. It is more important to get nowhere faster than one’s companions on the expressways which leads to an endless rash of accidents in the same places, day after day, in a maddening cycle of repetitiveness. Those of my ilk develop coping mechanisms, like listening to recorded books. The current trove of books includes, The Founding Brothers a book about those who formed our country. Yes, politics and ambition were a??? and thriving in the cauldron of our countries formation, nurturing the dichotomy of state’s rights versus federalism. There was a fascinating treatise on the Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton duel. Interestingly, Hamilton had hatched a plan (nothing to do with the duel which was some years later) to assume all of the State’s debt and make it a national debt, he was a Federalist and wanted to deposit the monies needed with a group of New York Bankers, he was also the Treasurer at that time and thus sought to consolidate his power as well. You do see where this leads as a parallel to what we are currently doing. In this morning’s paper AIG was mentioned, you know the company we gave an 80 billion bailout to…well their ex CFO, now a consultant gets a million a month in consulting fees, the CEO has paid himself a five million bonus and a group of executives used four hundred thousand for a party in a luxury resort. All this admitted to Congress yesterday. The best tradition of Hamiltonian politics laid bare.
What is incredibly interesting is, that even after a civil war we still are fighting the same dualism, with the President on one side and the Congress on the other, both trying to be the usurpers of power and driven to excess shouting down the opposition only now with sound bites and not with meaningful coherent argument.
Maybe it is this that has driven my hankering, an urgent flowing from my spirit, needing to get away from the pressures crafted by the modern world. What I have is my deer stand, a place to hunker in and hanker away, until that too becomes needed by the developers or the drillers for unneeded oil. Then I am certainly going yonder.
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