I have always been charmed by The Old Farmer’s Almanac, which has been published around this time of year for these 232 years now since it was established in 1792 by the late Robert B. Thomas.
I picked up the 2024 edition on impulse the other day with a thought that, this year, I would do more than browse through it, I would actually try to read the whole thing for the first time.
So far I’ve read only the first page, but I’ve already gained a bit of inspiration in the form of a lovely bit of life advice from a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
Rest not! Life is sweeping by,
Go and dare before you die;
Something mighty and sublime
Leave behind to conquer time.
My handful of regular readers know this is a theme in my thoughts: Having failed in my duty to the species to convey my DNA to a new generation, I have been trying to create stuff that might survive for a time after I inevitably leave this mortal coil.
As I mentioned last week, I have at last completed a morsel along those lines, which may not be “mighty” but may possibly qualify as “something sublime,” if I may be so bold. No, it’s not one of my novels in progress, which would be appropriate on the first day of National Novel Writing Month, wouldn’t it?
No, this is the little scrap that qualifies more as a novelette, which I have held back in describing, other than to hint that I consider it a “little Christmas present.”
In the grand tradition of unwrapping one’s presents slowly and carefully, I plan to reveal the title and subtitle on Wednesday morning and share the work during the Christmas season. Whether it’s destined to “conquer time” is not up to me, but I hope and pray the story will brighten this one Christmas, at least.
