up, down beaches, lost … freedom, exhilarating indescribable
Beach on Hilton Head Island as storm front comes up from behind me …
Adapted from a passage in the book, The Racketeer by John Grisham (Doubleday: New York, 2012), where Mr. Grisham writes:
I stare at the moon over the ocean.
I breathe the salty air and listen to the waves gently roll ashore.
Freedom is exhilarating, and indescribable.
I can’t wait to feel sand between my toes.
There are a few early birds on the beach, and I hustle down there.
No one notices; no one cares.
People who roam aimlessly up and down beaches are lost in their own worlds, and I am quickly getting lost in mine.
Obviously I think of the priceless moments I get on my lunch to breathe the salty air and listen to the waves gently roll ashore and I feel the sand between my toes.
But that one phrase there.
Freedom is exhilarating, and indescribable.
Are there any other words that can better describe what makes America great?
With the all the effort being put into making America great again, why do I find my freedoms less exhilarating and less free.
know that sea is strong like God’s hand and that the sea holds a wide, deep death
Adapted from the poem, Sea Charm, by Langston Hughes, published in The Weary Blues (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926).
The sea’s own children Do not understand. They know But that the sea is strong Like God’s hand. They know But that sea wind is sweet Like God’s breath, And that the sea holds A wide, deep death.
foggy day on Folly Beach, Hilton Head Island, SC – 3/8/2026
Again I am astounded at the level of cheek needed to ‘adapted’ the poetry of Mr. Hughes or Mr. Sandburg for my own purposes.
Mr. Trump’s war, now nearly two weeks old, is already reshaping travel patterns, energy dependencies, living costs, trade routes and strategic partnerships. Countries typically shielded from regional conflict, like Cyprus and the United Arab Emirates, have faced retaliatory Iranian fire. The fallout could disrupt midterm elections in the United States, tilt the war calculus in Ukraine and force China into a major economic pivot.
Those effects may compound if Mr. Trump presses ahead with the war, particularly if Iran escalates its counterattacks and blocks ship traffic through the critical oil passage of the Strait of Hormuz. Some economists are already invoking a dreaded memory for any U.S. president — the specter of oil-shock-induced stagflation, with growth stalling and prices roaring upward.
“I’m old enough to remember the events of the ’70s, and a world in which oil price spikes were a significant issue both economically and for a president who might be facing elections,” said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution. “That doesn’t seem to have been priced into the decision making,” she added.
What happened in the ’70s?
Two things.
There was the Oil Crisis of 1973 and the Oil Crisis of 1979.
It’s that first one in 1973 I want to talk about.
I was 13.
Inflation at the grocery store was 14%.
According to Wikipedia:
On 6 October 1973, the Yom Kippur/October War began when Egypt attacked the Bar Lev Line in the Sinai Peninsula and Syria launched an offensive in the Golan Heights.
Israel took heavy losses in men and materiel during the fighting against Egypt and Syria, and on 18 October 1973, Meir requested $850 million worth of American arms and equipment to replace its materiel losses
On the afternoon of 19 October 1973, Faisal was in his office when he learned about the United States sending $2.2 billion worth of weapons to Israel.
The arms lift enraged King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. Faisal was angry that Israel had only asked for $850 million worth of American weapons, and instead received an unsolicited $2.2 billion worth of weapons, which he perceived as a sign of the pro-Israeli slant of American foreign policy.
On 20 October 1973, he retaliated by placing a total embargo on oil shipments to the United States, to be joined by most of the other oil-producing Arab states.
The embargo imposed on the United States led to shortages of oil in the United States, which set an inflationary spiral.
Nixon later boasted in his memoirs that the US Air Force flew more sorties to Israel in October 1973 than it had during the Berlin Airlift of 1948–49, flying in a gargantuan quantity of arms, though he also admitted that by the time the arms lift had begun, the Israelis had already “turned the tide of battle” in their favor, making the arms lift irrelevant to the outcome of the war.
In an interview with the British historian Robert Lacey in 1981, Kissinger later admitted about the arms lift to Israel: “I made a mistake. In retrospect it was not the best considered decision we made”.
Why do I have this feeling that, old as I am, I will live to hear on some documentary or read in some book that someone from this current administration will talk about this current war and say, In retrospect it was not the best considered decision we made.
Why do I have this feeling that this current war won’t be the only topic about which someone from this current administration will talk about and say, In retrospect it was not the best considered decision we made.
Why do I have this feeling that this current administration won’t be the only topic about which someone from this current generation of voters will talk about and say, In retrospect it was not the best considered decision we made.
dark, darker, darkest watch the day going backwards ready, get set, go
We read in the Bible that:
Isaiah answered, “This is the Lord’s sign to you that the Lord will do what he has promised: Shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or shall it go back ten steps?”
“It is a simple matter for the shadow to go forward ten steps,” said Hezekiah.
“Rather, have it go back ten steps.”
Then the prophet Isaiah called on the Lord, and the Lord made the shadow go back the ten steps it had gone down on the stairway of Ahaz. (2 Kings 20:9-11 NIV).
I came to work last week and the sun was up and out of the Atlantic Ocean and shining in my eyes and the sunshine made me feel good the way sunshine does down here.
Maybe growing up in West Michigan which has the 2nd most overcast skies in America just behind Seattle, made me really appreciate sunlight.
There is a quality to a bright sunshiny day that I hope I never take for granted.
This morning I got up and drove to work in darkness.
I parked behind the office and walked through the pool area to back doors on sidewalks lit by street lamps.
I have no strong feelings about daylight saving time one way or the other.
It came with the year, like the holidays and was controlled by the Government, like taxes.
The concept of all of us being on the same clock seemed important.
When you think about it, that the Prime Meridian is pretty much accepted by the world regardless of race, creed or country of origin is unusal.
According to Wikipedia, In 1884, the International Meridian Conference (of government representatives) took place in Washington, D.C. to establish an internationally-recognised single meridian.
That Conference decided to accept The Greenwich meridian as the prime meridian, a geographical reference line that passes through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in London, England.[1] From 1884 to 1974, the Greenwich meridian was the international standard prime meridian, used worldwide for timekeeping and navigation. This prime meridian (at the time, one of many) was first established by Sir George Airy (in 1851).
Greenwich Mean Time.
GMT.
Somewhere I have seem photos of a metal rail or rod set in stone that marks the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory in London.
Imagine my shock when looking up data for this essay I read in Wikipedia that in1984 it was superseded in that role by the IERS Reference Meridian which, at this latitude, runs about 102 metres to the east of the Greenwich meridian.
I do not know if there is a brass rail somewhere in London marker the IERS Reference Meridian.
BUT I digress.
I remember a lecture back in college where the Professor described how back in the day in small towns, the local jeweler, if there was one, would take their best clock on the first day of spring, would watch the shadows and when the sun was directly overhead and the shadows disappear, the jeweler would set the clock to noon and hopefully the clock would function properly until you could set the time again on the first day of winter.
The Professor didn’t say what would happen on cloudy days.
Then along came trains and train schedules and standard time so that trains would run on time and not run into each other.
I have a old gold packet watch at home from 1900.
It was certified to keep Official Railroad time which meant it could run for a year with just being wound and not lose more than 15 seconds.
It was a Federal Law that if you worked for a Railroad you had to carry such a watch.
Again I digress and here we are in Daylight Saving Time.
I am again driving in the dark, waiting for the sunrise in a couple of weeks.
We changed all the clocks.
All the iPhones change by themeselves.
If it wasn’t for Ovens, Microwaves and Cars, most folks wouldn’t even notice though they may scratch their heads and wonder why it was dark again.
And I am reminded of an incident back when I was working in the Newsroom in Atlanta.
I was proofing a story and noticed that a reporter, answering all the whos, whats and wheres had stated that the when was 10:15 a.m. EST.
I approached the reporter and said that the time had changed and they should now use EDT in place of EST.
The reporter stared at me for a second, and I am not embellishing this one bit, and they asked, “Those letters mean something?”
Now it was my turn to stare.
Before I could say anything, the show’s Producer spoke up.
leaning against each other like drunken brothers at a funeral
Adapted from the poem, Even Numbers by Carl Sandburg as published in The People, Yes in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg by Carl Sandburg (Harcourt, Brace and Company: New York, 1950).
1
A HOUSE like a man all lean and coughing, a man with his two hands in the air at a cry,
“Hands up“
A house like a woman shrunken and stoop-shouldered, shrunken and done with dishes and dances
These two houses I saw going uphill in Cincinnati
2
Two houses leaning against each other like drunken brothers at a funeral,
Two houses facing each other like two blind wrestlers hunting a hold on each other.
These four scrawny houses I saw on a dead level cinder patch in Scranton, Pennsylvania
3
And by the light of a white moon m Waukesha, Wisconsin, I saw a lattice work in lilac time white-mist lavender a sweet moonlit lavender
Sorry but I just couldn’t resist.
Hey Little Brother!
Still in the drivers seat!
For those who know, they know,
For those who don’t know, that’s my little brother Pete watching me handle the reigns sitting in the drivers seat ( at the Dutch Village in Holland, Michigan).
I don’t have glasses yet and it looks like I still have my front teeth so this could have been the summer of 1968.
1969 was a rough year on my face.
I got glasses.
On my 9th birthday, I got hit in the face with a surf board that gashed my cheek open.
On Thanksgiving Day, running from my brother Timmy, I slipped and fell on the basement floor and chipped my left front tooth in half.
Still wear glasses.
Still have the scar.
One of grand daughters just lost her front teeth and asked her Mom if she could get a gold tooth like Pappa.
BTW, I should mention that this college basketball season, Michigan went undefeated on the road in the Big 10, something that hasn’t happened since 1976.
They tied the record of most regular season wins by a Big 10 team.
And in the process, the swept the home and away series with that team in East Lansing.
No Haiku For You 