Month: August 2019

August 31 – meaning of the past

meaning of the past
understanding memory
listen, carefully

Today’s Haiku is cribbed from reporter/author Tony Horwitz in a round about way.

It resonates for me back to college, when I had a class titled, “The Revolution Through the Documents.”

The point of the class was to learn how to use historical 1st person reports and letters to understand historical events.

The class was designed to take advantage of the amazing archives at the William Clements Library on the campus of the University of Michigan.

The class had 7 other students beside me.

The Professor was wonderful.

He introduced this small group of cocky 20-something year olds to the world of historical research.

He had three rules.

  1. Take the reader by the hand. You are the expert. Do not expect the reader to know what you know.
  2. Avoid a sense of present-mindedness. Do not assume that the people in the documents knew what you now know or had access to the information you now have. For example, in 1776 there wasn’t one decent map available that could come close to a throw away map of the eastern United States that you get free at a gas station.
  3. Compassion.

The philosopher George Santayana is credited with saying, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’.

I hesitate to quote someone like George Santayana because I have not read anything by him but this quote.

Churchill changed to the quote to the more remembered, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”

Today, it is in fashion to condemn the past in an overwhelming sense of present-mindedness, then to try and learn from it.

Compassion?

Compassion is one of the great words, greater concepts and the greatest personal quality that has been abandoned in this century.

August 29 – civil conversation

civil conversation
choosing fairness over fear
expression to hope

Hammered out from the Manchester Guardian, online as, The Guardian.

The newspaper states, “A civil conversation has never been more important in American public life. Guardian journalism, driven by fact-based reporting, offers an independent voice of reason at a time when the national conversation is divisive and embittered. At a time of acrimony, America is in need of public civility. For 200 years Guardian journalism has been committed to giving expression to hope, not hate, and choosing fairness over fear.”

I have always liked The Guardian.

Maybe because part of my family emigrated from Manchester.

Maybe because Alistair Cooke (America, Masterpiece Theater) was for many years, the USA Correspondent for the Guardian.

It is a newspaperpaper with an interesting history.

Started in 1821, in 1936, ownership was transferred to a trust that was created in 1936 to “secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of the Guardian free from commercial or political interference”.

I like a newspaper that claims to be, “committed to giving expression to hope, not hate, and choosing fairness over fear.”

Of course, this is a newspaper in Britain, not the United States.

August 28 – Thousands of reasons

Thousands of reasons
community of commuting
a single purpose

Roadway is filled with cars and trucks.

Everybody is heading in the same general direction.

Roads and paths that converge into one.

The road into or around Atlanta.

Same purpose.

The road more traveled.

The path taken.

It is the reasons that are less traveled.

The reason not taken.

That makes all the difference.

The Road Not Taken
BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

August 27 – Painting Yesterday

Painting Yesterday
Watercolors, Blacks and Blues
Today, blank canvas!

I took this image for the web – I am not trying to paint

Many of these haiku’s and notes would indicate a good sized helping of depression and a side order of oh-woe-is-me on my plate with a glass of life-sucks as I take a table at the it-can’t-be-done diner.

A friend mentioned that my recent haiku’s were so sad and depressing.

Not my intent.

Well, not always.

But today my thought was even though a painting of my yesterday would be heavy in blacks and blues, today, the canvas was blank.

The paintbox is open.

Lots of colors available.

Lots of blank canvas available.

Who knows how today’s painting could end up.