memory is when you look back, answers float in to who? what? when? where?
Memory is when you look back and the answers float in to who? what? when? where? The members who were there then are repeated on a screen are recalled on a scroll are moved in a miniature drama, are collected and recollected for actions, speeches, silences, set forth by images of the mind and made in a mingling mist to do again and to do over precisely what they did do once — this is memory — sometimes slurred and blurred — this is remembering — sometimes wrecking the images and proceeding again to reconstruct what happened and how, the many little involved answers to who? what? when? where? and more involved than any how? how?
Scroll by Carl Sandburg as published in War Time under New Section of The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (Harcourt, Brace: New York, 1970).
Celebrated Halloween at work today and little goodie bags of candy were passed out to everyone.
I undid the twisty on my goodie bag and poured the candy out on my desk there, with the chocolate, were two rolls of Smarties.
For most people, they were just two rolls of smarties.
For a lot of people I know, they would be the keys to memories.
A whole lot of memories.
Memory is when you look back …
and the answers float in ..
to who? what? when? where?
For myself, I look at a roll of smarties and I am back in church.
Not just any church, but Berean Baptist Church of Grand Rapids, Michigan where this one member, Mr. Berg, came every Sunday with an old cloth Old Kent Bank bag, filled with rolls of smarties.
Once church was over, every kid and not a few adults made their way over to this guy to get their Sunday roll of smarties.
It was such a part of Sunday that Mr. Berg became the honorary Grandpa of the entire Church and was universally addressed as Grandpa Berg.
As I remember it, if I was nearby, I would get in line myself.
This went on for years and I found myself married to Mr. Berg’s daughter.
We had 7 seven kids, and getting their Sunday Smarties was as much of their day as any other kid and maybe more so as they called him Grandpa BECAUSE he was their Grandpa.
if there is magic here on this planet, it is contained in water
Adapted for this passage in the book, The Immense Journey by Loren C. Eiseley (Random House: New York, 1957) where Mr. Eiseley writes:
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.
Its least stir even, as now in a rain pond on a flat roof opposite my office, is enough to bring me searching to the window.
A wind ripple may be translating itself into life.
I have a constant feeling that some time I may witness that momentous miracle on a city roof, see life veritably and suddenly boiling out of a heap of rusted pipes and old television aerials.
I marvel at how suddenly a water beetle has come and is submarining there in a spatter of green algae.
Thin vapors, rust, wet tar and sun are an alembic remarkably like the mind; they throw off odorous shadows that threaten to take real shape when no one is looking.
Once in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh.
Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole eons, the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort.
The mind has sunk away into its beginnings among old roots and the obscure tricklings and movings that stir inanimate things.
Like the charmed fairy circle into which a man once stepped, and upon emergence learned that a whole century had passed in a single night, one can never quite define this secret ; but it has something to do, I am sure, with common water.
Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air.
It can assume forms of exquisite perfection in a snowflake, or strip the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea.
Hilton Head Island Multi Hull Regatta – Oct 24, 2026
According to Wikipedia, Mr. Eisely was a “scholar and writer of imagination and grace,” whose reputation and accomplishments extended far beyond the campus where he taught for 30 years.
Wikipedia states:
Loren Eiseley (September 3, 1907 – July 9, 1977) was an American anthropologist, educator, philosopher, and natural science writer, who taught and published books from the 1950s through the 1970s. He received many honorary degrees and was a fellow of multiple professional societies. At his death, he was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
His first book, The Immense Journey, was a collection of writings about the history of humanity, and it proved to be that rare science book that appealed to a mass audience. It has sold over a million copies and has been published in at least 16 languages. Besides being his first book, The Immense Journey was also Eiseley’s most well known book and established him as a writer with the ability to combine science and humanity in a poetic way. This book was originally published in 1946. Then, it was published again in 1957, a few years after the Piltdown Man hoax discovery.
In the book, Eiseley conveys his sense of wonder at the depth of time and the vastness of the universe. He uses his own experiences, reactions to the paleontological record, and wonderment at the world to address the topic of evolution. More specifically, the text concentrates on human evolution and human ignorance. In The Immense Journey, Eiseley follows the journey from human ignorance at the beginning of life to his own wonderment about the future of mankind.
conflict has entered new phase – maelstrom of factors of tension and risk
Based on the New York Times article, A New Level of Threat and Fear Risks Pushing the U.S. and Iran Back to Full War by David E. Sanger, Julian E. Barnes, Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman. Farnaz Fassihi and Eric Schmitt, the team of Times reporters that has covered Iran’s confrontations with the United States for decades, particularly during President Trump’s two terms.
The article states:
The conflict in the Middle East has entered a new phase in which a maelstrom of factors, from the political calendars in the United States and Israel to the potential for all sides to be seeking pretexts for action, are creating heightened levels of tension and risk.
Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the lead negotiator and speaker of parliament, said on social media that Iran views the coming part of the war as existential.
“We are in a surprise phase of the war, and we will not fight a classic war,” Mr. Mohammadi said. “It will be an asymmetrical, fierce and conclusive war that will target the enemy’s strong points and weak spots.”
Gloom and doom but I do enjoy the word usage.
… a new phase in which a maelstrom of factors
… to be seeking pretexts for action
… creating heightened levels of tension and risk
Good writing.
And then to that last quote, a quote attributed to one Mahdi Mohammadi who is identified as being a senior adviser to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the lead negotiator and speaker of parliament.
… We are in a surprise phase of the war
… we will not fight a classic war
… It will be an asymmetrical, fierce and conclusive war
… will target the enemy’s strong points and weak spots
Let’s read the complete quote again.
“We are in a surprise phase of the war, and we will not fight a classic war,” Mr. Mohammadi said. “It will be an asymmetrical, fierce and conclusive war that will target the enemy’s strong points and weak spots.”
Tight.
Concise.
Cold.
Not a lot of wiggle room.
Just words but I remember President John F. Kennedy said of Winston Churchill, that Mr. Churchill, “… mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.“
Notice the lack of words like .. Great … Beautiful .. Huge … Deal … People say … People don’t know … or … Never seen anything like it.
It is easy to conjecture that if Mr. Mohammadi’s statement had been said by someone in the United States Government it might had read:
We’re in what they call a surprise phase of the war. A tremendous surprise. Nobody expected it, although some people say they did. I knew it. I said it a long time ago. And we’re not going to fight a classic war. We’re not doing that. Why would we? Classic wars, very overrated. People don’t understand that. This is going to be something very different. Very powerful. Asymmetrical, they call it. I call it smart. We’re going to hit them where they’re strong, we’re going to hit them where they’re weak, and believe me, they have plenty of weak spots. Plenty. It’s going to be fierce, it’s going to be conclusive, and it’s going to be a tremendous victory. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. Not even close. And people are going to look back and say, ‘Wow, what a deal. What a beautiful thing.
I think of words like justice, freedom, liberty … teachings of Jesus
If life finds you living in or just visiting the low country of South Carolina or Beaufort County to be more specific, you will become aware of the author, Pat Conroy, who grew up and made his home here.
Famous for his books and movies of his books like The Great Santini and Prince of Tides, he wrote about life in this odd county that is 10 miles wide, 40 miles long and 50% under water at high tide.
The wife and I visited the Conroy Literary Center in Beaufort and met Mr. Conroy’s sister and as souvieners of our visit, bought a couple of books.
I must say, that I book I picked out, in my humble opinion, might be the best book I have read by Mr. Conroy.
What I brought home was The Pat Conroy cookbook: Recipes and stories of my life.
The recipes are interesting.
I can’t say it’s a good cookbook as I have to yet to try any of the recipes and readers of this blog will remember that with my long association with cookbooks with working in bookstores, libraries and publishing, that to be a good cookbook, a cookbook must have at least ONE good recipe.
AND there are a lot of BAD cookbooks out there.
Again, not saying the The Pat Conroy Cookbook is a bad cookbook, it’s that the jury is still out but I am seriously looking at the recipe for Dunbar Macaroni, but I digress.
It is the … stories of my life … that make The Pat Conroy cookbook: Recipes and stories of my life such a great read.
I have been reading cookbooks since I first came across a reprint of “French Cooking in 10 Minutes”, which is subtitled “Adapting to the Rhythm of Modern Life (1930).”
Not sure when I picked my now beaten up, water stained copy, but it is one of the books that has stayed with me through all my travels.
But back to The Pat Conroy cookbook: Recipes and stories of my life.
In the cookbook, along with recipes and talking about the dish in particular and incidents that occured serving that dish, Mr. Conroy also discusses how he kept his eye open for moments in his life that he could develop into scenes in some future book.
He might not have a book in mind at the time, but he knew the scene, the moment was special and he would make a mental file of the story to be called later when he found the right place for the story.
One of the stories he tells in the cookbook, was about his relationship with his principal, Mr. Bill Dufford, at Beaufort High School in 1962, and the concept of segregation.
I am of the north.
For me segregation is just another way to say racism.
I have lived in the south now since 2009 and not really the south as Metro Atlanta is not the south and neither is the resort community in South Carolina where I now live, but once we got outside those areas we are in the ‘solid south’ and a somewhat still segregated world.
And I struggle with but it isn’t 1962.
Mr. Conroy writes:
Because their impact cannot be measured, the teachers of the world drift through their praiseless days unaware of the impact and the majesty of their influence. I want to fall on my knees in gratitude whenever I conjure up the faces of those nameless men and women who spent their finest days coaxing and urging me to discover the best part of myself in the pure sunshine of learning.
Because this country dishonors its teachers and humiliates them with lousy pay and a mortifying deficiency of prestige among other professions, they do not receive the gifts of gratitude that brim over in men and women like me when we remember and honor their patient, generous shaping of us into citizens of the brighter world. Bill Dufford occupies a place of highest honor among the teachers who found me directionless and yearning to become a person of consequence as I stumbled through my childhood.
That summer, I took the time to study Bill as he made his way among his fellow townspeople. He attracted people with his authentic approachability, the full attention of his gaze, and the passionate authority he brought to bear on any subject that arose in Harry’s. I wanted people to look at me with the admiration that those Beaufortonians showed to my high school principal.
From watching Mr. Dufford, I learned that the principal of a high school is one of the central players and politicians in the life of a town. I discovered that Dufford was principal in parlous, aggravated times. The subject of integration was on everybody’s minds and lips that summer of 1962.
I got to watch Bill Dufford going through the painful switch from his upbringing as a Southern racist to his transformation into a Southern liberal who would play a courageous part in the integration of South Carolina schools.
“Have you ever gone to school with black kids, Pat?” he asked me at lunch one day.
“Yes sir, I have.”
“What did you think about it?” he asked.
“I never thought anything about it, Mr. Dufford,” I said. “I’m Catholic. It’s a sin if I believe in segregation.”
“That’s what they teach you? I’ll be damned,” he said, amazed. “What kind of sin?”
“The mortal kind. The kind where you burn in hell,” I said.
“What a hell of a way to handle it,” Dufford said. “Why didn’t the Protestant church think of that? …”
“It’s coming,” Dufford said. “It’s coming, and it’s coming soon and I don’t think anyone in this whole damn state is ready for it.”
“Are you ready for it, Mr. Dufford?” I said, the first time I remember teasing Bill Dufford.
He looked at me oddly, then said, “You sorry damn little pissant, you’re damn right I’m ready for it.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, Pat.
I’m Southern to the bone and was raised to defend the Southern way and I’ve done it my whole life. I’ve defended segregation my entire life, until lately.
I think of segregation and then I think of words like ‘justice’ and ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty.’
I think of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
I think of the teachings of Jesus Christ.
See where I’m going with this, Pat?”
Segregation.
Was and is a big topic of discussion from the point of view of what is right and what is wrong and at some point, some folks have and others, still have yet, to admit they were wrong.
Think of words like ‘justice’ and ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty.’
Think of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
Think of the teachings of Jesus Christ.
See where I’m going with this?
Now let’s take the discussion to the current state of affairs in the leadership of this country.
It is a big topic of discussion from the point of view of what is right and what is wrong and at some point, some folks will have to admit they were wrong.
I will go so far as to put forward that maybe its me that has to admit I am wrong.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.
And I ask you to think about it as well and what side of the question of the current state of affairs in the leadership of this country you come down on.
Think of words like ‘justice’ and ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty.’
Think of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
Think of the teachings of Jesus Christ.
See where I’m going with this?
Also thinking of those lines:
“That’s what they teach you? I’ll be damned,” he said, amazed. “What kind of sin?”
“The mortal kind. The kind where you burn in hell,” I said.
“What a hell of a way to handle it,” Dufford said. “Why didn’t the Protestant church think of that? …”
I think it’s telling to see what sin’s the Evangelical Church today does focus on as the mortal kind, the kind where you burn in hell … and what they do not.
Somehow all those admonitons about caring for the poor, the widow, the foreigner and handing out a cup of cold water to some one in need have gone by the wayside.
What a hell of a way to handle it.
Me sitting in Pat Conroy’s chair at his desk in the Conroy Literary Center in Beaufort, SC
