Always Another Windmill

Well, the family trend this year seems to be in starting up blogs, so it’s round about time to start mine. I’ve been on the brink of doing so for almost a year now, but kept stalling out for lack of a title. Then, last week, inspiration came in the form a birthday gift from my brother-in-law: a book of Ogden Nash poems titled There’s Always Another Windmill. My instant reaction to the title was: “That’s the damn truth!” And then, “That’s it! That’s my blog!”

The first and most obvious reference is, of course, to Cervantes’ Don Quixote (or, if your tastes incline more towards musical theater than Spanish literature, Man of La Mancha) and the title character’s habit of jousting with windmills under the impression that they were an invading army of giants. The expression “tilting with windmills” can variously suggest someone undertaking a task which is delusional, idealistic, impossible, or unnecessary, depending on your understanding of the situation and your interpretation of the title character of Don Quixote.

But there’s another reference: in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the construction and destruction of windmills plays a key role in the work of the animals in building their new society. The windmill is the promise of development and achievement, the construction of which will lead to electricity, heated stalls, and running water for all the animals on the farm. The first windmill they build is destroyed in a storm; the second is blown up by humans in a failed attempt to retake the farm. In a speech after this, Squealer (the spokespig for the regime) tells the horse, Boxer:

“What matter? We will build another windmill. We will build six windmills if we feel like it. You do not appreciate, comrade, the mighty thing that we have done. The enemy was in occupation of this very ground that we stand upon. And now-thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon-we have won every inch of it back again!”

And indeed, there is always another windmill–by the end of the book, the animals have rebuilt the windmill and are building another, although only the pigs ever seem to benefit, and life goes on as before, except for the extra work put into building all the windmills.

We all spend plenty of time working on windmill projects–personal, cultural, and economic windmills are all around us. Some of them might be functional. Some of them might be giants. And some of them might be grand schemes to keep us all busy. Let’s all pray that we can better learn to tell the difference–and to take up the cause of the knight-errant when the windmills threaten, whether with the lance of Don Quixote or the pen of George Orwell (or even the verse of Ogden Nash!).

So I hope some of you out there will come and join in the tilting–for justice, for sport, or just for fun.

There’s plenty of windmills to go around.

And if we succeed or fail in our quest, not to worry–there’s always another one . . .

This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Metablogging, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.