If you are like me, the only reason you know it is President’s Day today is that there will be no mail delivered. Nevertheless, it gives me an excuse to ramble on about one of my favorite men in history, President Theodore Roosevelt.
I grew up thinking of TR as the tubby guy with weird glasses…..but as I got a little older and more appreciative of the male species, I found a new admiration for Roosevelt. He was a visionary and a leader, a conservative progressive in an era before it was fashionable. He recognized the rugged beauty of America and preserved it through our National Park System. Beneath the weird glasses and unfortunate mustache, he’s kind of hot. There it is….. I think Theodore Roosevelt is hot. I’ve confessed my sin to my husband, who has resigned himself to it.
Theodore Roosevelt was a raw, aggressive man who deeply loved his family and had a passionate relationship with his wife (Both of them. After his first wife died tragically young, he spiraled into a depression, abandoned his burgeoning political career, and lived as a cowboy on a North Dakota ranch for two years.)
He wrote one of my favorite quotes about manhood of all time. Man or woman, anyone who embraces this philosophy and tries to abide by it will do well in life:
It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
Today, I’m raising a toast to, President Roosevelt!