5.20.2026 – the question, of course

the question, of course,
is how you can make your soul
clap its hands and sing

The question, of course, is how you make your soul clap its hands and sing.

My bones seemed built out of incomprehension.

The road was rutted enough by winter rains so that the car drove itself.

I was ringed by four mountain ranges in this valley but then natural beauty seems to offer no more than you can bring to it. There was scarcely a patch in a thousand square miles I hadn’t covered on foot.

Looking down you see blue and black gama, side oats gama, curly mesquite, sprangle-top, and the grassy skin of the local earth.

Straight up is invariably sky.

Up in my own country it was apparently our nature to kill seventy million buffalo just as it was our nature to destroy the Native cultures.

History will not help your soul clap its hands and sing but it is unconscionable to proceed without knowing it.

From True North by Jim Harrison (New York, Grove Press, 2004).

Mr. Harrison is referencing the poem, Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats.

Mr. Harrison quotes the 2nd of 4 stanzas.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing.

And louder sing.

An aged man is but a paltry thing.

History will not help your soul clap its hands and sing but it is unconscionable to proceed without knowing it.

So much news of late.

How frail our constitution was.

How frail life is.

Therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

BTW – to make this work, I had to add a word to Mr. Harrison’s words … have a feeling he would not have been happy but when I do the same thing to Shakespeare and Sandburg …

5.19.2026 – a small sailing craft

a small sailing craft
is full of strange promise and
the hint of trouble

If a man must be obsessed by something,

I suppose a boat is as good as anything,

perhaps a bit better than most.

A small sailing craft is not only beautiful,

it is seductive and full of strange promise and the hint of trouble.

EB White in his essay, “The Sea and the Wind That Blows,” (1963; Essays of E. B. White, p. 205)

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?