8.31.2026 – these are the days of

these are the days of
miracle and wonder and
don’t cry baby, don’t …

Adapted from the refrain of the Paul Simon song, The Boy in the Bubble that goes:

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry, baby, don’t cry
Don’t cry

The song came out 40 years and has the verse about:

It’s a turn-around jump shot
It’s everybody jump start
It’s every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
Medicine is magical and magical is art
Think of the boy in the bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart

And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby

Staccato signals of constant information.

I spent the weekend up in the State of Ohio (and such a state that State is in … as I understand it most of the folks who live there CANNOT spell OHIO unless someone else first gives them the O and the H) moving one of my kids from one place to another place.

I left on Friday with a backpack with some clothes for three days, my iPhone and my credit card.

I flew.

I ubered.

I uhauled.

I stayed overnight.

I ate.

I got rides from available family when I could.

I shopped.

Didn’t sleep for three days it seemed.

Hands are swollen from lifting and toting but I survived and kid survivied.

I handed that credit card over when I had too.

Read the credit card off when I had too.

Started services.

Stopped services.

So long as everything showed that magic word, approved!

All I had was a backpack, an iPhone and a credit card.

Some numbers and a connection.

Staccato signals of constant information.

These are the days of miracle and wonder

This is the long distance call

The way the camera follows us in slo-mo

The way we look to us all

The way we look to a distant constellation

That’s dying in a corner of the sky

These are the days of miracle and wonder

And don’t cry, baby, don’t cry

Don’t cry

Even my enemies will say no one can pack a uhaul the way I can pack a uhaul.

8.30.2026 – two bridges across

two bridges across
river one closed for repairs
other for painting

Education a Failure

The minor stupidities
of my world
dominate that world—
as when

with two bridges across
the river and one
closed for repairs
the other also

will be closed by
the authorities
for painting! But then
there is heaven

and the ideal state
closed also
before the aspiring soul.
I had rather

watch a cat threading
a hedge with
another sitting by
while the bird

screams overhead
athrash
in the cover of the
low branches.

As published in The Collected Later Poems of William Carlos Williams by William Carlos Williams (James Laughlin: Norfolk, Connecticut, 1944).

According to Wikipedia, “William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. His Spring and All (1923) was written in the wake of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922). In his five-volume poem Paterson (1946–1958), he took Paterson, New Jersey as “my ‘case’ to work up. It called for a poetry such as I did not know, it was my duty to discover or make such a context on the ‘thought.'” Some of his best-known poems, “This Is Just to Say” and “The Red Wheelbarrow”, are reflections on the everyday. Other poems reflect the influence of the visual arts. He, in turn, influenced the visual arts; his poem “The Great Figure” inspired the painting I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold by Charles Demuth. Williams was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962).”

The Great Figure

By William Carlos Williams
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

8.29.2026 – rigors the people

rigors the people
undergo justified in
concrete achievement

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

‘While freely conceding that the Soviet régime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigours which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’

From the essay, Politics and the English Language as published in Inside the Whale and other essays by George Orwell (This selection first published in Penguin Books as Selected Essays 1957).

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.

No kidding.

How is our current situation explained?

While freely conceding that the American régime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the American people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

8.28.2026 – feelings and feelings

feelings and feelings
feelings and feelings – let me
try thinking instead

Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead.

From the rational point of view, what new factor has H’s death introduced into the problem of the universe?

What grounds has it given me for doubting all that I believe?

I knew already that these things, and worse, happened daily.

I would have said that I had taken them into account.

I had been warned—I had warned myself—not to reckon on worldly happiness.

We were even promised sufferings.

They were part of the programme. We were even told ‘Blessed are they that mourn’ and I accepted it.

I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for.

Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination.

Yes;

but should it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this?

No.

And it wouldn’t for a man whose faith had been real faith and whose concern for other people’s sorrows had been real concern.

The case is too plain.

If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards.

The faith which ‘took these things into account’ was not faith but imagination.

The taking them into account was not real sympathy.

If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came.

It has been an imaginary faith playing with innocuous counters labelled

‘Illness’,

‘Pain’,

‘Death’

and ‘Loneliness’.

I thought I trusted the rope until it mattered to me whether it would bear me. Now it matters, and I find I didn’t.

Of course

it is different when the thing happens to oneself,

not to others,

and in reality,

not in imagination.

8.27.2026 – when up, not know what

when up, not know what
going to say – down, do not
know what they have said

Speaking in the House of Commons on December 20, 1912 in the debate about the Board Of Admiralty And Sea Lords: Resignation of Sir Francis Bridgeman, Winston Churchill said this of Lord Charles Beresford, M.P. –

I have never taken these things too seriously.

I am not one of those who take the Noble Lord too seriously.

I know him too well.

He does not mean to be as offensive as he often is when he is speaking on public platforms.

He is one of those orators of whom it was well said,

“Before they get up, they do not know what they are going to say;

when they are speaking, they do not know what they are saying;

and when they have sat down, they do not know what they have said.”

In this country, and I think on both sides of the House, his measure has been taken, not unfairly, but harm is done and has been done often abroad in other countries by the reckless statements which he makes …

This was in 1912.

Two years before the Great War.

Twenty Seven years until 1939 when World War 2 started.

Twenty Eight years until Churchill became Prime Minister.

By all accounts this was said in debate.

No doubt Mr. Churchill had his quote ready to be used if he found the appropriate moment.

What I find interesting in reading the account in the official record of the House of Commons …

No one in the House, no one from the same side of the aisle as Lord Charles … no body rose to say anything in his defence.

As Mr. Churchill said, “In this country, and I think on both sides of the House, his measure has been taken, not unfairly …”

As for the politicians and their minions today with access to social media … I can imagine what Mr. Churchill might say because this fits so well anytime anyone says anything on behalf of that current man in office or the issues created by that current man in office being in office.

Anytime anyone connected in anyway with anything starts to talk or type or tweet or whatever they do …

Before they get up, they do not know what they are going to say …

When they are speaking, they do not know what they are saying …

And when they have sat down, they do not know what they have said!

Oh, but Mr. Churchill would have had a field day with those people today!