Friday, January 13, 2012

The World As It Was and Should Be


I downloaded a dozen FREE books to my Kindle Fire last night, one of which was In Africa - Hunting Adventures In Big Game Country (1910) by John T. McCutcheon.

A quick glance through the table of contents found this summary of Chapter Eight:

Meeting Colonel Roosevelt in the Uttermost Outpost of Semi-Civilization. He Talks of Many Things, Hears that he has Been Reported Dead, and Promptly Plans an Elephant Hunt

Nice!

Now to be clear, I am not saluting elephant hunting, but neither would Teddy if he were alive today. This is, after all, the man who almost single-handedly created the National Forest system, the national Wildlife Refuge system, and the National Park system, and who did more to protect wildlife in this country than anyone who came before or who has come along since.

But Roosevelt believed in an active life, well-lived. He did not shrink into his hole, cuddle up next to the fire, and play board games all day. Life was to be lived, and he was out in the world living it. That is the world as it was, and the way it should be today.
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1 comment:

Seahorse said...

Have you seen the book "Bulu", the true story of a (half) Jack Russell in Africa? It's billed as a young readers' sort of book, but I recently picked it up and it reads just fine to me.

Seahorse