— Month of November workout totals: Swim-3; Bike-2; Run-5; Lift-4; Yoga-1; Pilates-7
— The eleventh month rushed by too swiftly, and tumbling in its wake is my disposition of alarm at the churning pace. Nothing to do but accept that it’s gone and take stock of my affairs. On Friday I pinch-hit for David as a Rotary greeter. Saying grace is one task of the greeter, and perhaps I was a bit too creative with my public invocation. That I’m less self-conscious about such things is a sign of something meaningful, but I’m not in a mood to muse beyond that vague notion. After David got back from Georgetown, the four of us convened for a round of Mhing. Dana played as splendidly as I did poorly (couldn’t seem to get out of my nervous system Frank’s Shanghai from the holiday). Even so, it was an enjoyable evening because Mhing is such a great game.
— David, Greg, and I gathered at Simpson Knob the weekend prior to Thanksgiving, hoping for a significant whitetail harvest, but all we came up with among us was a little button buck that I took on Saturday morning. At first I thought his ear flicking at 50-60 yards was simply more wild turkeys at play, but then I could see his head, and eventually figured out that he was preparing to bed down for the day. I watched him for a while and knew his location on the ground would not afford a proper shot (actually, I thought it was a doe at that point in my observation). Before much long, I grew a bit impatient and decided to climb down from my stand to approach through the woods on foot like a true hunter. After carefully trimming off 10-15 yards from the total distance, keeping a tree between our positions, I crept around the oak and saw him stand up in alert. My Marlin .44-magnum lever-action carbine (the only Dadbo-owned rifle for which I held any interest) cracked in reaction to the animal’s movement, and he leaped away. “Missed,” flashed through my mind, with the thought lingering, especially after I reached the spot he’d just been, and just then I heard Greg call out my name. “Don’t think I hit him,” was my response. “Well, there’s a deer over here,” he replied in a matter-of-fact voice. Within an hour, I had given a chant to the Great Spirit and skinned my game with the new knife Greg had presented to me the night before. Later in the week, David reported that Greg claimed a button buck of his own at his brother’s farm a couple days before Thanksgiving.
— It doesn’t look like I’ll finish the biography of Thomas Bewick before it’s due back at the library, but I’m not sure I want to read about his demise anyway—I’ve grown much too fond of the fellow. For anyone who doesn’t recognize the name, I’m certain that his work will appear familiar. He single-handedly restored wood engraving to universal esteem in his lifetime and sparked the advancement of printing technology for the next century. He was perhaps the greatest graphic artist of his era—certainly in Britain—and, although he had flaws (as most men), he seems to have been a remarkably fine person worthy of emulation in numerous respects. Reading about his rise to artistic immortality reinforces two vital lessons that continue to clobber me across the skull like a ball bat: each individual who makes a constructive mark on culture inevitably deals with all the same nonsense, hassles, heartbreaks, and vicissitudes of fortune that everyone encounters, and through it all, continues to work his or her ass off.