7.24.2026 – fire burns beyond the

fire burns beyond the
vaporous sun delivered
from the gloom of night

Sunrise over Broad Creek – 7-24-206 Hilton Head Island

Far into the vast the mist grows dim,
A deep and holy silence broods around,
Fire burns beyond the vaporous rim,
And crystal-like the dew bestrews the ground.

The last laggard star has fled the glowing sky,
Comes a quiet stirring and a gentle light,
A vast pulsating music, throbbing harmony,
Beyond the Sun delivered from the gloom of night!

Dawn by W. H Auden as published in Juvenilia: Poems, 1922-1928 by W. H Auden (Princeton University Press: Princeton, N.J., 2003).

According to Wikipedia, Wystan Hugh Auden 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973 was a British-American poet. Auden’s poetry is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form, and content.

Public recognition of Auden’s work sharply increased after his “Funeral Blues” (“Stop all the clocks”) was read aloud in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994); subsequently, a pamphlet edition of ten of his poems, Tell Me the Truth About Love, sold more than 275,000 copies. An excerpt from his poem “As I walked out one evening” was recited in the film Before Sunrise (1995). After the 11 September 2001 attacks, his 1939 poem “September 1, 1939” was widely circulated and frequently broadcast. Public readings and broadcast tributes in the UK and US in 2007 marked his centenary year.

I remember that poem from Four Weddings and a Funeral …

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, 
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, 
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum 
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. 

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead 
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, 
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, 
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. 

He was my North, my South, my East and West, 
My working week and my Sunday rest, 
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; 
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. 

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; 
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; 
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; 
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

I would be lying if I said I was any more familiar with the Mr. Auden.

What sticks in my mind is a single quote from a commencement address at the University of Michigan back in 1986 by Dr. Charles G. Adams, Pastor of Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit.

Not sure why but I was listening to WUOM radio that day and the broadcast what went down in history as one of the best commencement speeches ever given at Michigan.

It was titled, Hope vs. Fatalism and in his address, Dr. Adams challenged the new graduates TO DO SOMETHING.

Dr. Adams said, “The hope that you represent is both within you and beyond you. As W. H. Auden observed, “Nothing but a miracle can save us.”

Dr. Adams then painted a dark dark picture of the world at large, and quotes a recent Newspaper editorial that stated, “There is no answer to the human dilemma, no deliverance from the human predicament, no formula for world peace, no means of achieving racial harmony and ethnic mutuality and congeniality. Life is a lie, a meaning less aimless hoax.”

So we find ourselves suspended on a see-saw between an optimism that fails us and a fatalism that does not try to help us.

Optimism says, “There is no sickness.

Fatalism says, “There is no cure.”

Optimism says, “There is no death.

Fatalism says, “There is no victory over death.

Optimism says, “God is in his heaven; all’s right with the world.”

Fatalism says,
“Life is but walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
And then is heard no more;
it is a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound-and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Is there no way out of this vicious, manic-depressive cycle of optimism and fatalism? I make bold to suggest that you who have been educated at Michigan can be open doors of hope into a system that is deemed closed, final and fatal. It is up to you to break the vicious cycle of nihilism and transform cyclical futility and fatality into linear progress and destiny.

You have been trained here to go into all the world and stand and serve as living alternatives to ignorant optimism that blinds one to real difficulties and also to crippling fatalism and cynicism that freeze human initiative and paralyze human effort.

You are graduating from Michigan to inherit the whole world with all of its problems. Go into all the world and take the power of your mentality, the energy of your integrity, the efficiency of your technology and the fire of your spirit.

Inherit the whole world with all of its problems.

Go into all the world and take the power of your mentality,

the energy of your integrity,

the efficiency of your technology

and the fire of your spirit.

Dr. Adams, speaking in the manner of a revialist preacher had the crowd roaring and he closed with:

If you have a hard way to go, walk it by faith.
If you face a mean problem, work with it until you work through it.
If you have a misunderstanding, settle it.
If you have a grudge, drop it.
If you have hatred or resentment, shake it off.
If you have a high mountain, move it by faith or climb it by work.
If .you have a battle, fight it.
If you have a handicap, rise above it.
If you have race prejudice, overcome it.
If you have temptation, conquer it.
If you have evil, destroy it.
If you have a challenge, face it.
If you have trouble, take it.
If you have a cross, bear it.
If they knock you down, get up.
If they push you against the ropes, come out swinging.
If they laugh at you, keep smiling at them.
If they talk about you, keep praying for them.
If they hate you, keep loving them and
If they kill you, just rise again–

Don’t let anything paralyze your mind, tie your hands or defeat your spirit.

You are the hope of the world, a light to the nations, a blessing to humanity.

We-shall overcome!

As an after thought, it seems like years later I happen to catch an announcement that WUOM radio that the address was going to rebroadcast (and I mean years later) and the announcer, Fred Hindley, added … this is most requested rebroadcast recording of anything we have. I will add this was also the official radio station of Michigan football.

ANYWAY so where am I.

Not sure really but the sunrise and finding the Auden poem and the Auden reference that brought this speech were all a very welcome part of my day.

Some things I needed to be reminded of.

BTW – Click here for a PDF of the typescript of the address – Sadly 1986 is before the YouTube era,

7.23.2026 – watchman, what’s left of

watchman, what’s left of
the night, morning is coming …
but also the night

Adapted from the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 21 where we read …

“Watchman, what is left of the night?
Watchman, what is left of the night?”
The watchman replies,
“Morning is coming, but also the night.
you would ask, then ask;
and come back yet again.”

This passage was in my morning reading before I got the Guardian opinion piece, Three speeches on a single day signaled a dying American democracy by Robert B Shpiner who wrote:

The presumption that US elections are legitimate died last week in Washington. It was 237 years old. It did not die of one wound. It died of three, inflicted in a single day, in daylight, on the record. And the country, running to the loudest of them, never examined the one most likely to kill.

In critical care we distinguish the mechanism of death from its cause. The mechanism was a Thursday. The cause was chronic, progressive and untreated.

Mr. Shpiner points to a speech made by the deputy chief of staff of that man in office to the US State Dept. Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism, where he said:

He called “leftwing political terrorism” a “fatal cancer of civilization”.

He said that its politics, left to run its course, “always becomes a gulag”.

He said antifa demonstrators are “all deformed in some way, in their appearance, in their dress, in their mannerism”, that “their outer appearance becomes a manifestation of their inner hatred”, and he asked why there is “not one normal-looking person among them”.

I MUST INTERJECT – this deputy chief of staff asked why there is “not one normal-looking person among them”. REALLY?

REALLY???

But I digress.

He said that when the leftist protests that his rights are being violated, those appeals “must fall on deaf ears”.

He urged the assembled governments to be “completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilization”.

And he described the work already under way in six verbs: “disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest and prosecute”.

Mr. Shpiner closes with:

In 40 years of intensive care, I have pronounced death many times. The criteria are strict because the declaration is irreversible, and so we are taught to be certain before we speak. I have also, more than once, seen a rhythm return after the room had gone quiet, when someone refused to stop compressions on schedule. This notice is filed in the knowledge that pronouncements can be premature. It is filed in the fear that this one is not.

Watchman, what is left of the night?”

The watchman replies,

“Morning is coming, but also the night.

You would ask, then ask; and come back yet again.”

For so long the mid terms have been promised as our morning in America.

“Morning is coming, but also the night.

7.22.2026 – part is that folks don’t

part is that folks don’t
expect the U.S. Senate
to be functional

For the article, Who Should Represent Michigan?, the New York Times assembled a panel of experts with a range of viewpoints for a new installment of The Choice, aimed at guiding Michigan voters through the core issues in this election.

The article had a lot to say about my home state and the people who live in my home state and how the people who live in my home state vote in elections in my home state.

But there was one sentence that spoke to the country as a whole in my opinion.

A sentence that spoke to the problems we are having to deal with as an evolving democratic society.

Those founding father, to use the phrase coined by Warren Harding, put together a country that worked fairly well for the last 250 years.

It has survived wars, depressions, pandemics and who knows what else.

It has survived because 250 years those feller designed safe guards to keep things going in spite of ourselves.

The strongest links in that chain of safeguards was that the government was made up of three equal parts that checked and balanced each other out.

It wasn’t by accident.

Each part had a significant and special role to play.

In this article, Who Should Represent Michigan?, the Times panel were asked several questions and each panel member was allowed to answer.

This style of opinion piece would surly produce lots of statements that stood out.

But it was the response to the question on the Economy, How effective do you think the candidates would be at championing legislation to bring good-paying jobs to Michigan?, of panel member Sarah Anthony, a State senator from Lansing that got me.

Because to the question How effective do you think the candidates would be at championing legislation to bring good-paying jobs to Michigan?, State Senator Anthony said: So from a federal perspective, I think part of this is that folks don’t expect the U.S. Senate to be functional anyway. I think we’re looking for someone who will just speak to us and say, “Hey, man” — to whomever, the 22-year-old that’s in their mom’s basement that’s just trying to figure out life or the struggling single mom or the senior citizen who’s thinking that their grandkid won’t get it out of their kid’s basement. Those people are looking for someone who’s just going to be our loudest champion, not this thoughtful, creative policymaker.

Lots of wisdom in that statement but look at the foundation of the statement.

So from a federal perspective, I think part of this is that folks don’t expect the U.S. Senate to be functional anyway.

I think part of this is that folks don’t expect the U.S. Senate to be functional anyway.

Folks don’t expect the U.S. Senate to be functional anyway.

The next time you ask how does that current man in office get away with all this nonsense, just say to yourself, Folks don’t expect the U.S. Senate to be functional anyway.

We got to get that back,

We got to get them people in office to realize we ARE watching and they are doing nothing.

That not expecting the U.S. Senate to be functional will not be accepted.

The Senate has learned the less they do, the less that will be expected and I guess, the more they can get away with.

And that may some of the most lasting damage done to this country.

7.21.2026 – was swallowed one time

was swallowed one time
deep in the dark and came out
alive after all

If I should pass the tomb of Jonah
I would stop there and sit for a while;
Because I was swallowed one time deep in the dark
And came out alive after all.

If I pass the burial spot of Nero
I shall say to the wind, “Well, well!” —
I who have fiddled in a world on fire,
I who have done so many stunts not worth doing.

I am looking for the grave of Sinbad too.
I want to shake his ghost-hand and say,
“Neither of us died very early, did we?”

And the last sleeping-place of Nebuchadnezzar —
When I arrive there I shall tell the wind:
“You ate grass; I have eaten crow —
Who is better off now or next year?”

Jack Cade, John Brown, Jesse James,
There too I could sit down and stop for a while.
I think I could tell their headstones:
“God, let me remember all good losers.”

I could ask people to throw ashes on their heads
In the name of that sergeant at Belleau Woods,
Walking into the drumfires, calling his men,
“Come on, you … Do you want to live forever?”

Losers by Carl Sandberg as published in Smoke and Steel in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (Harcourt, Brace: New York, 1970).

I who have done so many stunts not worth doing.

“Come on, you … Do you want to live forever?”

And came out alive after all.

7.20.2026 – I am but a shell

I am but a shell
a dim, tremulous murmur
from great days long dead

I am a shell. From me you shall not hear
The splendid tramplings of insistent drums,
The orbed gold of the viol’s voice that comes,
Heavy with radiance, languorous and clear.
Yet, if you hold me close against the ear,
A dim, far whisper rises clamorously,
The thunderous beat and passion of the sea,
The slow surge of the tides that drown the mere.

Others with subtle hands may pluck the strings,
Making even Love in music audible,
And earth one glory. I am but a shell
That moves, not of itself, and moving sings;
Leaving a fragrance, faint as wine new-shed,
A tremulous murmur from great days long dead.

A Minor Poet by Stephen Vincent Benet as published in Young Adventure: A Book of Poems by Stephen Vincent Benet (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1918).

I am a shell. From me you shall not hear.

A tremulous murmur from great days long dead.