change in plans, outlook gradually, suddenly unexpectedly
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
“What brought it on?”
“Friends,” said Mike. “I had a lot of friends. False friends. Then I had creditors, too. Probably had more creditors than anybody in England.”
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, New York: Scribner, 1954.
“No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength” (or “no plan survives contact with the enemy”). Helmuth von Moltke the Elder.
Moltke’s main thesis was that military strategy had to be understood as a system of options since it was only possible to plan the beginning of a military operation. As a result, he considered the main task of military leaders to consist in the extensive preparation of all possible outcomes.
Such planning leads to a zugzwang where all options, all decisions, first gradually, then suddenly and always, unexpectedly, lead to a worse situation than it was at the beginning.
frauds and contenders the predictable chaos of college football
Hindsight is 20 – 20 .
Monday morning quarterbacks.
Second Guesser.
This morning, Paul Myerberg of USA TODAY, in his column, Winners and losers from Week 8 in college football led by Wisconsin, Oregon, used the phrase, PREDICTABLE CHAOS.
It reminds of the joke about the driver who kept their hazard flashers blinking when they drove.
“Maybe I am going left, maybe I am going right, but something is going to happen.”
I consider myself a fan.
I follow Michigan football.
I want Michigan to win.
But I am no longer at home with the would-a, could-a, should-a of sport.
I have always lost patience with the Tim McCarveresque, “if that ball is five feet deeper, it is a home run.”
Well, DUH.
Much preferred Harry’s Caray’s disgusted old call of ‘RON CEY HOME RUN’ for a pop out to the infield.
No ifs or buts, once the game is over, its over and move on to the next.
no guarantee made terrible or works of art translate your vision
The quip goes, “I know art. I just don’t know what I like. That’s my problem.”
This gray Saturday morning, with Tropical Storm Nestor side swiping Georgia and turning my weekend to rain, I got to pondering over the coffee.
The Verse of the Day in my email from The Bible Gateway read, “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. ” ( Psalm 37:4 NIV )
Nearing 60 years of age, what are the desires of my heart?
On a grand scale, to survive this life and having accepted the gift of grace through Jesus Christ, look forward to eternity with God.
That out of the way, what else?
Happiness for me and my wife.
Security.
Freedom from want. (A note of this: Freedom from want was a part of FDR’s 4 freedoms:
Freedom of speech
Freedom of worship
Freedom from want
Freedom from fear
When these were presented to Josef Stalin, Stalin paused at number three and asked, does this mean ‘want’ or ‘desire’.
He was assured that it was ‘want’.)
Success and security for my children and grand children.
This pondering leads to how have I lived my life?
How will it translate.
My life wasn’t terrible.
Not sure it was a work of art.
It had beautiful moments.
Cringe worthy moments from childhood to yesterday abound.
I think about what I know of my Grand Father’s lives.
Not much really.
Makes the goal of emulating Ernie from yesterday’s post seem all too perfect.
To live a life and die with the note:
will be remembered for his gentle, loving, and generous nature.
Caramel, Carmel? one is candy, one is in California
Caramel can be pronounced Carmel.
To tell the truth, I always thought that Carmels were the light brown hard-soft candies from Kraft.
They were wrapped in clear plastic that would often rip and stick to your fingers when you unwrapped them.
It took an entire package of unwrapped carmels to put on the stove to make carmel apples.
The commercials showed a happy Mom and happy kids, happily sticking a small wooden stick into an apple and happily dipping the apple in a vast vat of melted carmel and removing perfectly coated carmel apples.
While my Mom let us make carmel apples every year, we never came close to this pool of carmel.
We would ask if we could use two bags of carmels but the limit was one bag.
We all helped unwrap the candy and the plastic wrappings were everywhere.
Using a double boiler, we would melt the carmels and wait.
And wait.
An wait.
After a couple of hours Mom would say it looked ready and we grabbed our apples.
Into the carmel the apples would go.
Instead of disappearing into a thick ooziness, the apples would go in about half way and hit the bottom of the pan.
My Mom and learned the trick from years of doing this and had taught us to turn the apple sideways and spin the stick so that the apple was coated with carmel.
It wasn’t the dipped apples from the commerical but it worked pretty good.
Mom had a piece of butter wax paper ready and we would plunk the coated apples down on the paper.
The carmel would slowly slide down the sides and create the traditional crown or cap.
Into the fridge and wait for the carmel to harden.
I loved these things.
I never bought on in a store or farmer’s market that came close to how good these were.
I mean, some places actually rolled the apples in nut pieces.
Near sacrilege in my book.
As much as I enjoyed Carmel Apples, I had a major problem eating them.
When I was nine, I chipped a front tooth.
Broke the thing in half actually.
Lucky for me, my Dad was a Dentist and was able to cap the tooth.
But nothing put a capped front tooth to the test like eated a carmel apple.
I don’t remember how many caps I broke off.
It may have been just one.
But I was fearful everytime I had one.
It seems to me that Mom would had me mine out the fridge and say, ‘you be careful of your tooth.”
Yes, later in life, I tried the ‘Caramel Dip” for apples.
Well, just not the same is it?
Just today I saw a restaurant review that stated, ‘Caramel is on the bottom on the bottom of the pudding.”
And I said to myself, ‘what is the difference between Caramel and Carmel.
Turns out that all these years I have been eating Caramel Apples.
No kidding.
Carmel is a town in California made famous by the photos of Ansel Adams.
I knew that.
Either pronunciation, Caramel (/ˈkærəmɛl/ or /ˈkɑːrməl/), can be used so I feel better about that but still.
No Haiku For You 