CONTACT CAROLINE
facebook
rss
tumblr
twitter
goodreads
youtube

  • Home
  • Write Away Blog
  • Books
    • Books
    • Trompe l’Oeil
    • Heart Land
    • Gothic Spring
    • Ballet Noir
    • Book Excerpts
  • Audio
  • Video Vault
  • Press
    • News
    • Print Interviews
    • Plays
    • Ballet Noir in the Press
    • Trompe l’Oeil In The Press
    • Gothic Spring In The Press
    • Heart Land Reviews
  • Contact
  • About
  • Resources
    • Writer Resources
    • Favorite Blogs
    • Favorite Artists



If One Could Talk With Rudyard Kipling

Jul 28, 2017
by Caroline Miller
IF, Rudyard Kipling, what you Kipling think of technology?
0 Comment

IF ONE COULD TALK WITH RUDYARD KIPLING

Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” offers advice on character building and how to weather the vagaries of one’s fellowman. Unfortunately, it says nothing about coping with electronic devices, which is natural enough as the man died in 1936.   A few of the lines from his poem have some relevance as one stares into a dead computer:

                             “If you can keep your head about you…

                             If you can wait and not be tired of waiting…

                             If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster…”

But I wonder what he might have written had he lived long enough to enter the age of PCs and the World Wide Web. Perhaps “If” might read:

               “If you can be denied access to your e-mail and not reach for a hammer,
               If you can stare into a frozen screen and not pull the plug,
               If you can treat the crash of your hard drive as an opportunity to take a holiday
               And not send death threats to the retailer who sold you that piece of junk,
               If you can lose control of your ruler bar but keep your voice as you scream at the machine
               Or laugh when your text refuses to shift from single to double space
               Or your copy completely disappears…
               If you can cope with mountains of junk e-mail, scam artists and scads of invitations
               To sign up for cheap Viagra,
               Or can laugh when a pornographic website sends messages in your name to your mother,
               Then you have lost touch with reality and need a straight jacket, my   friend!”

 

(Blog first published 3/11/2011)

Social Share

Contact Caroline at

carolinemiller11@yahoo.com

Portland, Oregon author Caroline Miller had distinguished careers as an educator, union president, elected official and artist/advocate.

Her play, Woman on the Scarlet Beast, was performed at the Post5 Theatre, Portland, OR, January/February 2015

Caroline published a serialized novelette, Marie Eau-Claire, on the website, The Colored Lens.  She also published the story Gustav Pavel,  a parable about ordinary lives, choice and alternate potential, on the website Fixional.co.

Caroline has published four novels

  • Ballet Noir
  • Trompe l’Oeil
  • Gothic Spring
  • Heart Land

Subscribe to Caroline’s Blog


 

Archives

Categories

YouTube-logo-inline2 To access and subscribe to my videos on YouTube, Click Here and click the Subscribe button.

Banner art “The Receptive” by Charlie White of Charlie White Studio

Web Admin: ThinPATH Systems, Inc
support@tp-sys.com

Subscribe to Caroline's Blog


 

Contact Caroline at

carolinemiller11@yahoo.com

Sitemap | Privacy Notice

AUDIO & VIDEO VAULT

View archives of Caroline’s audio and videos interviews.


Copyright © Books by Caroline Miller