down dark path changing shape of our nation perhaps irrevocably
Adapted from the Opinion Piece by the Detroit Free Press Editorial Board that was headlined: Michigan can’t send an extremist to the U.S. Senate: Our endorsement.
The Editorial Board stated:
Everything you’ve heard about Michigan’s U.S. Senate race is true:
An extremist is asking voters to send him to Washington, masking an agenda far out of step with Michigan’s mainstream under the pretense of normalcy.
If elected, this man would urge America down a dark path, changing the shape of our nation, perhaps irrevocably.
“You want to know something?” Karras crossed his knees and put his fingertips together. “I don’t think I would have been much of a football player if I didn’t have a name like Karras. That hard K sound is the key. If my name was Harris, an H instead of a K, and they’d baptized me Alexander . . . with that name, ‘Alexander Harris,’ I’d never have made it as a football player—at least not as a defensive tackle. It’s not a football player’s name. Maybe I could have been a flanker with a name like that . . . but more likely I would have turned out to be the Secretary of the Interior.”
“Would you say this theory was true of other football players?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “John Unitas. Think of that name. It suggests authority and teamwork. Twenty percent of a football player’s genius is the name he was born with. Leo Nomellini— what does that name bring to mind but power and an afternoon of terror for the guy going in against him? Sam Huff? A guy that’s going to blow you over. Csonka? It sounds like a blow to the gut. Dick Butkus? Look at the collection of consonants—that’s why he’s a great linebacker. If his name was Robin Jenkins, he couldn’t have made it in the Ivy League.”
“Or take the other side of the coin,’ Karras said. “Milt Plum. That’s why Plum was never a great quarterback with the Lions, however gifted he was with natural ability. He was destroyed by his name. His parents probably wanted him to play the cello and take them for picnics up on the hill when they were eighty years old, so they called him Milt. You played bridge with him when you were at Detroit, right?”
That’s right,” I said, “He was very good.”
Karras nodded. “Of course, there’s not much his parents could have done, given that name Plum, but suppose they took out the Milt and called him Jack and spruced him up with a good middle name. Suppose they called him Jack Kong Plum.”
Jack Kong?
“Sure. Some of his aunts might have objected—on the grounds that there weren’t any Kongs they could recall in the Plum family tree, but someone called Jack Kong Plum would have been a helluva quarterback. He’d talk different, and he wouldn’t have played bridge, and he’d walk different with a name like that. He would have started out right in football.”
From Mad Ducks and Bears by George Plimpton (Random House: New York, 1973).
I read Mad Ducks and Bears when I was a little kid and long before I was a football fan.
I grew up in a ‘sports aware’ home where it seems like the Detroit Tigers were on the radio all summer long and Michigan football was on through the fall and on fall Sunday’s, the Detroit Lions were on TV (though my Dad loved to throw a wrench in the works and change the channel over to the AFL to watch Joe Namath and the Jets – but that was just to raise the level of discussion).
But I wasn’t much a fan and didn’t pay much attention to it.
But I read everything.
I read all the books about Gridiron Greats and the Fireside Book of Baseball, and I can’t tell you why.
Maybe it was the sports writing.
Because I was attracted to the writing of George Plimpton, who made a career of taking part in professional sports in order to write about it.
I think I saw his TV special first where he talked about his time with the then Baltimore Colts for the basis of the TV show.
But the show was full of references to his time with the Detroit Lions and a book called Paper Lion.
I read that when I was about 10 and then I read his 2nd book about his friendship with Detroit football players Alex Karras and John Gordy.
It was then that I read the above passage about names.
Names and professional sports.
And it has stuck with me to this day.
Nothing to do with how gifted someone was with natural ability, the player was destroyed by his name.
A little time back, Michigan had a quarterback named Wilton.
Nothing against the guy, but he was doomed.
Way back in 1979, I knew Michigan was in trouble with QB B.J. Dickey and when Rich Hewlett was announced as a surprise starter in the OSU game, I knew the game was over before it started.
Just say it outloud.
BJDICKEY
His parents probably wanted him to play the cello and take them for picnics up on the hill when they were eighty years old, so they called him BJ.
And Rich Hewlett?
Of course, there’s not much his parents could have done, given that name Hewlett.
But call him Jack?
Call him Jack Kong Hewlett and he’d walk different with a name like that. He would have started out right in football.
When the Lions made a splash signing a new QB that had just won the Heisman I was less than thrilled as I knew Joey Harrington just … didn’t have the name.
clock stopped 5:30 now always time to quit work, have drink, cook dinner
The clock stopped at 5:30 for three months.
Now it’s always time to quit work,
have a drink, cook dinner.
From Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry by Jim Harrison as published in Jim Harrison: Complete Poems by Jim Harrison (Copper Creek Press: 2021).
Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry is pages of seemingly unconnected, random thoughts expressed in three lines.
Every three lines is a thought unto itself and no connection to the previous or following lines.
Not sure what Mr. Harrison meant by a conversation in poetry, but there it is.
Reading through the poem, this triplet caught my imagination.
For no greater reason, I just like the concept.
I was reminded of the story of how the Marx Brothers would be on a movie set in Los Angeles and at 2 p.m., one of them would yell, “It’s quitting time in New York!”
I am reminded of the old drinking saying, “it’s five o’clock somewhere”.
Which is not just a saying but, according to Wikipedia, is a song performed by Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett, and written by Jim “Moose” Brown and Don Rollins. It was released in June 2003 as the lead single from Jackson’s 2003 compilation album Greatest Hits Volume II. It spent eight non-consecutive weeks at #1 on Billboard Hot Country Songs in the summer of 2003, and ranked #4 on the year-end chart. In addition, the song peaked at #17 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September, and ranked #65 on the year-end Hot 100, making it the biggest pop hit for Jackson and the first top forty hit for Buffett since the 1970s.
On November 5, 2003, it won the Country Music Association (CMA) Award for Vocal Event of the Year. It was Buffett’s first award in his 30-year career. It also won two Academy of Country Music awards for Single Record of the Year and Vocal Event of the Year. The song became the #3 song of the decade on Hot Country Song.
Also according to Wikipedia, The title refers to a popular expression used to justify drinking at any time of day, given that somewhere in the world, it is 5:00 p.m., the end of the workday for a traditional “nine-to-five” worker. The narrator states that he has not had a day off in over a year and that he wants to leave work and relieve his stress by drinking alcohol. The lyrics include the phrase, “It’s only half-past twelve but I don’t care. It’s five o’clock somewhere”: even though it is not 5:00 in the narrator’s time zone, it is in another part of the world. For example, a time of 12:30 p.m. in Newnan, Georgia, Jackson’s hometown, usually translates to a time of 5:30 p.m. in London, England. Even though it would not exactly be 5:00 p.m. in London, one can still assume that it is five o’clock in London. If Jackson is narrating in the Pacific Time Zone, a time of 12:30 p.m. there coincides with a time of 5:00 p.m. in Newfoundland.
That may be the most bizarre passage of wikipedia I have ever read.
Do I reply with a loud, “Reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllly?”
Or … “NO KIDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDING.”
It’s just goofy that things that come across my screen to my fingertips somedays.
First of all, it’s based on the assumption of Standard Time as if Daily Savings Time (EDT) or British Summer Time (BST) then the Eastern US is 5 hours different from UTC.
Also, I love to tell folks that I listen to an online radio station from London because it is 5 hours ahead so I know, somewhere, someone has made it through the next 5 hours.
Then the selection of Newfoundland and 12:30 p.m. (Pacific) is 5:00 p.m. in Newfoundland which just cracked me up.
See, when I was in college in Ann Arbor, Michigan I listened to the Canadian Broadcasting Company or CBC for their music.
AS an aside, thinking of Ann Arbor and Canadian Radio, back in the day, Univ of Michigan Football used to be broadcast by CKLW in Windsor.
Folks who didn’t know would comment how odd it was that that feller who invented the modern Collegiate Athletic Corporation, Michigan Athletic Director Don Canham, would choose a canadian radio station.
Canham would then explain that CKLW was outside of the US and did not have to comply with FCC regulations on signal strength and it had 50,000-watt a clear-channel signal (“blowtorch signal”) that reached numerous U.S. states.
But I digress.
In Ann Arbor, I would listen to the CBC and they would announce an upcoming show saying that it would be on at 10 a.m. in Ontario, 7 a.m. in the Pacific, 11 a.m. in the Atlantic .. and then they would always add …. one half hour earlier in Newfoundland.
Pronouncing it New FOUND land.
I heard that so often than for the longest time, when making plans to meet with friends and a time would be settled on, I would add …. one half hour earlier in Newfoundland, which made my friends smile, as they moved a little further down the bench.
ANYWAY, I was tickled to see that someone, whoever wrote that wikipedia article on 5 o’clock somewhere picked on poor old NT or Newfoundland Time.
Then whoever wrote the wikipedia article picked out little old Newnan, Georgia.
I have been there!
I have friend in who live there.
When I lived in Lawrenceville, Ga we used to joke that Newnan and Lawrenceville was about as far away two places could be (70 miles) where you could live and STILL say, you were from Atlanta.
I did not know Alan Jackson was from Newnan but I bet my friends did.
What I knew about Newnan was that was where the a spur of the railroad broke off and went to Warm Springs, GA where Franklin Roosevelt built a house.
There was no turn around in Warm Springs so when the FDR took the train, the train had to turn around in Newnan, and the back all the way down the 80 miles to Warm Springs.
An interesting footnote to history that got messed up, as in her book, No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin, a book about Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt, either Ms. Goodwin or her editor watched too much Seinfeld as in the book the town is identified as Newman, GA.
TO get back to the point.
The clock stopped at 5:30 for three months.
Now it’s always time to quit work,
have a drink, cook dinner.
I like the concept and it appeals to me greatly.
And that is all I wanted to say.
Lastly, of late, I have had lots of queries on ‘how do I write these essays’ with, as a professor of mine in Ann Arbor might say, a touch of a suspect animus that I got the feeling folks wonder how much of these are written with help of AI.
Happy to say, none of it.
I cannot explain it, but these just spill out of my brain like cider out of spigot on a barrel.
This morning I sat down with that bit of Mr. Harrison in mind and now I look down and its 4 pages and 1200 words later.
One thought led to another and it came out my finger tips.
And believe me, this was planned as a quick in and out – type out the lines of the poem and say i liked the thought and be done … but nooooo – the way my brain works kicked in and the horse was out of the barn!
Sometimes in the middle of these things I think of an Aunt of James Thurber who, according to a Thurber story, set out to prove she could fix some mechanical device and after hours of trying yells, “Won’t someone take this G*DD*MN thing away from me!”
As Harold Ross of the New Yorker might say, “There you are.”
pay no attention to man behind the curtain … life’s better that way
Of late, one aspect of my life has been put under a magnifying glass and it is terrifying to live with.
Not hungry and eat too much.
Can’t sleep but always sleepy.
All because I can see under the ice as it gets thinner.
Prior to this, for all I cared, the ice was thick and opaque and I skated smoothly over the surface.
Now the ice is transparent and getting thinner.
Not there is anything under the ice that wasn’t there before.
It is three months to Christmas.
The world will be different in those three months.
This country will have gone through it’s most contentious mid terms elections since the Civil War DID divide the country into two parts.
Artificial Intelligence will have had another three months to kill all of us.
Maybe my personal crisis will be resolved.
And maybe a hurricane will come and wipe out the barrier island I live on.
There all sorts of unforeseen changes coming that if I could FORESEE would mean they would not be unforeseen.
But maybe it’s better NOT foreseeing.
There is nothing new under the ice.
It’s just that I can see through the ice and see what’s down there.
Herman Melville, in his book Moby Dick, described life this way:
. All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit—strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?—Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman’s nooses; and, like the six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing the crew pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every neck, as you may say.
Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for those repeated whaling disasters—some few of which are casually chronicled—of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by the line, and lost. For, when the line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat, is like being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you. It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning; and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself could never pierce you out.
Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual play—this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.
But why say more?
All men live enveloped in whale-lines.
All are born with halters round their necks;
but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.
And if you be a philosopher,
though seated in the whale-boat,
you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker,
and not a harpoon, by your side.
What does he mean?
Well, summing it all up, I think Mr. Melville is saying, Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.
uneasy season unconsciously retreat from world got out of hand
In the essay, A Slight Sound at Evening by EB White as published in The Essays of E.B. White by E.B. White ( Harper Colophon Book: New York, 1979), commented on the 100th anniversary of the publication of Walden by Henry David Thoreau writing:
In our uneasy season, when all men unconsciously seek a retreat from a world that has got almost completely out of hand, his house in the Concord woods is a haven.
In our culture of gadgetry and the multiplicity of convenience,
his cry “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” has the insistence of a fire alarm.
In the brooding atmosphere of war and the gathering radioactive storm, the innocence and serenity of his summer afternoons are enough to burst the remembering heart, and one gazes back upon that pleasing interlude
— its confidence, its purity, its deliberateness
— with awe and wonder, as one would look upon the face of a child asleep.
This essay was written in 1954.
72 years the onslaught of the culture of gadgetry and the multiplicity of convenience, could only be a nightmare when viewed from 1954 let alone 1854.
Yet in 185, Mr. Thoreau wrote in his book, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
I am reminded of the short story, The Grizzly and the Gadgets by Mr. White’s office mate, James Thurber.
The Grizzly and the Gadgets
A grizzly bear who had been on a bender for several weeks following a Christmas party in his home at which his brother-in-law had set the Christmas tree on fire, his children had driven the family car through the front door and out the back, and all the attractive female bears had gone into hibernation before sunset returned home prepared to forgive, and live and let live. He found, to his mild annoyance, that the doorbell had been replaced by an ornamental knocker. When he lifted the knocker, he was startled to hear it play two bars of “Silent Night.”
When nobody answered his knock, he turned the doorknob, which said “Happy New Year” in a metallic voice, and a two-tone gong rang “Hello” somewhere deep within the house.
He called to his mate, who was always the first to lay the old aside, as well as the first by whom the new was tried, and got no answer. This was because the walls of his house had been soundproofed by a soundproofer who had soundproofed them so well nobody could hear anybody say anything six feet away. Inside the living room the grizzly bear turned on the light switch, and the lights went on all right, but the turning of the switch had also released an odor of pine cones, which this particular bear had always found offensive. The head of the house, now becoming almost as angry as he had been on Christmas Day, sank into an easy chair and began bouncing up and down and up and down, for it was a brand-new contraption called “Sitpretty” which made you bounce up and down and up and down when you sat on it. Now thoroughly exasperated, the bear jumped up from the chair and began searching for a cigarette. He found a cigarette box, a new-fangled cigarette box he had never seen before, which was made of metal and plastic in the shape of a castle, complete with portal and drawbridge and tower. The trouble was that the bear couldn’t get the thing open. Then he made out, in tiny raised letters on the portal, a legend in rhyme: “You can have a cigarette on me If you can find the castle key.” The bear could not find the castle[Pg 92] key, and he threw the trick cigarette box through a windowpane out into the front yard, letting in a blast of cold air, and he howled when it hit the back of his neck. He was a little mollified when he found that he had a cigar in his pocket, but no matches, and so he began looking around the living room for a matchbox. At last he saw one on a shelf. There were matches in it, all right, but no scratching surface on which to scratch them. On the bottom of the box, however, there was a neat legend explaining this lack. The message on the box read: “Safety safety matches are doubly safe because there is no dangerous dangerous sandpaper surface to scratch them on. Strike them on a windowpane or on the seat of your pants.”
Enraged, infuriated, beside himself, seeing red and thinking black, the grizzly bear began taking the living room apart. He pounded the matchbox into splinters, knocked over lamps, pulled pictures off the wall, threw rugs out of the broken window, swept vases and a clock off the mantelpiece, and overturned chairs and tables, growling and howling and roaring, shouting and bawling and cursing, until his wife was aroused from a deep dream of marrying a panda, neighbors appeared from blocks around, and the attractive female bears who had gone into hibernation began coming out of it to see what was going on.
The bear, deaf to the pleas of his mate, heedless of his neighbors’ advice, and unafraid of the police, kicked over whatever was still standing in the house, and went roaring away for good, taking the most attractive of the attractive female bears, one named Honey, with him.
MORAL: Nowadays most men lead lives of noisy desperation.
This culture of gadgetry and the multiplicity of convenience.
You bet, the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Boy howdy but nowadays most men lead lives of noisy desperation.
