The mill, chance and Red Fish, Blue Fish

Sometimes you just stall...

Every week Substack reminds me five days after I’ve posted that I have two days left to keep up my streak. “You’ve published five weeks in a row!” it says back pattingly.

I found this encouraging enough until I missed the (imaginary) deadline, and then, Substack encouragement algorithm-wise, it was back to square one. Was it disappointed in me? I sure was.

I expect most people who publish here want to publish regularly, we’re all trying, working at it, but it’s not like we’re building a huge following with expectations. I suppose it’s all part of professionalism, work ethic, and our ideas about achievement and worth, but the simple fact is this week I feel stalled, ran out of gas or let the clutch slip. (What will we do when we can’t use fossil fuel metaphors?)

When in doubt, my fall back is JESTERS! And when jesters have an off week (I’m pretty sure they don’t but let’s just say) what do they do? They play cards!

Card games give us a lot of good metaphors that feel very timely right now:

The stakes are high. It’s a gamble. Is he bluffing? Play your cards close to your chest. Ante up. Are you “in” or “out”? Ace in the hole. He has it in spades. Wild card.

My guess is the jester would be playing all Jokers.

Ba da bum.

So, if you have been following my Notes at all, you’ll know I’ve been posting U.S. election-related cartoons, that started out with the idea of “red fish, blue fish”, flippity flop, something fishy… It seemed like a good metaphor and I knew I was referring to Dr. Seuss, but I had no idea, hand over heart, that that was actually the name of one of his books. Oh dear.

I did not know Dr. Seuss when I was a child. Not that I recall. Too Canadian most likely. But over time, you learn about a lot of things, including about children’s books and authors, and especially when you have a child. So credit where credit is due, thank you Dr. Seuss.

You can read the whole wonderful book here.

Interestingly, the lines in the book read:

One fish, Two fish, Red fish, Blue fish,
Black fish, Blue fish, Old fish, New fish.
This one has a little car.
This one has a little star.
Say! What a lot of fish there are.
Yes. Some are red, and some are blue.
Some are old and some are new.
Some are sad, and some are glad,
And some are very, very bad.
Why are they sad and glad and bad?
I do not know, go ask your dad.

Isn’t that interesting!