5.18.2026 – meek for the moment

meek for the moment
no excuse, effort wasn’t there
that game sucked, well, yeah

Let it hurt. Let it sting like hairspray in their eyes. Let it haunt their sleep for weeks to come. Then maybe next time the Detroit Pistons get a Game 7 at home to advance to the Eastern Conference finals, they won’t play as if they’re chasing a bus that left without them.

In their worst defensive effort of the 2026 NBA playoffs, at the biggest moment of the entire season, the Pistons let the Cleveland Cavaliers whip them in the scoring game, the passing game, the rebounding game, the assists game and the coaching game. Cleveland did everything but pull the Pistons’ pants down.

Possession after possession, the Cavs fed their big men, who ate up the Pistons. Layups. Soft bankers. Lob passes. Endless free throws. Detroit was late to 3-pointers; the Cavs swished them. Detroit was late to 50-50 balls; the Cavs swiped them.

Everyone knows the Pistons are better than what they displayed in this 125-94 beatdown. But you are what you do in sports, and this Game 7 magnified the known weaknesses of this Detroit roster, like the lack of scoring options besides Cunningham, and the serious problem with Jalen Duren’s consistency.

It also revealed something we hadn’t seen before. The defense, which the Pistons and their coaches talk about incessantly as their calling card, is apparently not automatic when the stakes are high; it still must be cranked up from the heart.

On Sunday night, it was too meek for the moment. There is no excuse for that. Defense isn’t a 3-pointer that rims in and out. It’s effort. And the effort was not there.

“That game,” Cunningham said afterwards, “sucked.”

Well, yeah.

Mitch Albom: Sting of Pistons Game 7 loss is only way they’ll learn

Famously the story is told how back when the University of Michigan Basketball Team was known as the Fab Five, I told my wife I wanted people over to watch their 2nd chance at winning a championship.

She was concerned that I wouldn’t be good company if Michigan lost but I assured her I was happy they made to the championship game.

Later that night, Chris Webber called a time out when Michigan had no time outs and there were technical foul shots and a turnover and the game was over and I smashed the TV remote against the wall.

My wife said “You said it wouldn’t matter if they lost.”

“But,” I said, “I didn’t know they would lose like that!”

Last night the Detroit Pistons played a game seven – win or go home game.

I was kinda miffed as it wasn’t on TV, you had to pay to watch it stream online.

So I spent the evening reading and checking the score.

The Pistons were down by 10 early but I knew they would come around.

The Pistons were down by 15 at the half but I knew they would come around.

The Pistons were down by 30 late and I was glad I didn’t get to watch.

Mr. Albom wrote that , ” … hate to point this out, but if the Cavs had made their free throws, they would have won by 47 points.“\

I wasn’t mad but I didn’t think they would lose like that.

As Cade Cunningham said, “That game sucked.”

As Mr. Albom wrote:

Well … Yeah!.

5.17.2026 – more wonderful than

more wonderful than
way sun floats toward horizon
and into the clouds?

Broad Creek at high tide looking toward the Cross Island Bridge at Sunset on Hilton Head Island – May 16,2026

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

The Sun by Mary Oliver as published in New and selected poems (Beacon Press Collection: Boston, 1992).

As the sun is setting, it is rising somewhere else.

My day is done and is just beginning for someone somewhere else.

Into the clouds for me.

Out of the blackness for someone else.

Relaxed and easy … every evening and every morning.

At its perfect imperial distance.

Just happy to be here.

5.16.2026 – formless, faceless, he …

formless, faceless, he …
seems the very prototype
of the little man

This drawing was published in the New Yorker Magazine on May 16, 1936.

90 years ago today.

I am sorry to have to admit I had to look up Dorothy Thompson.

According to Wikipedia, Dorothy Celene Thompson (July 9, 1893 – January 30, 1961) was an American journalist and radio broadcaster. She was the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany, in 1934, and was one of the few women news commentators broadcasting on radio during the 1930s. Thompson is regarded by some as the “First Lady of American Journalism” and was recognized by Time magazine in 1939 as equal in influence to Eleanor Roosevelt.

Wow and I had to look her up.

Again, according to Wikipedia, “Thompson’s most significant work abroad took place in Germany in the early 1930s. In Munich, Thompson met and interviewed Adolf Hitler for the first time in 1931. This would be the basis for her subsequent book, I Saw Hitler, in which she wrote about the dangers of him winning power in Germany. Later, in a Harper’s Magazine article in December 1934, Thompson described Hitler in the following terms: “He is formless, almost faceless, a man whose countenance is a caricature, a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones. He is inconsequent and voluble, ill poised and insecure. He is the very prototype of the little man.”

And I thought, what would Ms. Thompson thought of the current man is office?

For some reason, I think she might have written:

He is formless, almost faceless, a man whose countenance is a caricature, a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones.

He is inconsequent and voluble, ill poised and insecure.

He is the very prototype of the little man.

Works.

Really works, doesn’t it?

5.15.2026 – there was light upon

there was light upon
the sea that made familiar
things mysterious

The Salt Marshes

There was a light upon the sea that made
Familiar things mysterious, which to teach,
With inarticulate, alluring speech,
The living wind with lisping tongue essayed.
O’er sand and weed and spongy moss I strayed
And lifeless, orient shells, musing on each;
While casting nets with ever wider reach
A fisher plied his immemorial trade.
A sea-bird winged the aerial solitude
Searching the deep for his appointed dole,
Where his wide-wandering flocks the ocean feeds;
And with the day’s full orbed strength indued,
At one with all, by all illumed, my soul
Pulsed to the rhythmus of immortal deeds.

By Peter MacArthur and published in his book, Lines (1901).

Peter McArthur (1866-1924) was a Canadian writer. Born in farming country in Middlesex County, Ontario, early in his life he started on a writing career, joining the Toronto Mail as a reporter in 1890. He found he had a knack for writing humour and submitted jokes and satirical essays to periodicals of the time. In 1902 he went to England where he wrote for Punch. After a failed business venture in New York, he returned to his farm home but still submitted articles and essays to magazines.Future books and essays began to feature stories of farm life – he was an advocate of ‘back-to-the-land’ agrarianism. In the 1920s he stopped writing after he joined a rural trust company as an executive. He lived out the rest of his life selling insurance to farmers. (Bio from Fadedpage.com)

I live a five miles from the Atlantic Coast and 6 feet above sea level.

Wikipedia says the average width of the United States is 2,800 miles so my five miles to the coast is 0.1786% of the width of the continent which is pretty much on the cutting edge.

We have the first sunrise.

And the first sunset.

There is a light here upon the sea and the marsh that makes familiar things mysterious.

The living wind with lisping tongue essays.

O’er sand and weed and spongy moss I stray.

5.14.206 – error thinking that

error thinking that
those who cause great tragedies
share in the feelings

There is no error more common than that of thinking that those who are the causes or occasions of great tragedies share in the feelings suitable to the tragic mood: no error more fatal than expecting it of them.

From De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde (Methuen & Co.: London, 1913).

President Donald Trump has said that Americans’ economic pain is not his concern when it comes to the U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran.

When asked at the White House on Tuesday if Americans’ financial situations were motivating him to strike a deal with Iran, Trump said, “Not even a little bit.” (Time Magazine, May 13, 2026).

Mr. Wilde closes his essay with this:

All trials are trials for one’s life, just as all sentences are sentences of death;

And so, here we are.