2.9.2020 – drive across seasons

drive across seasons
winter to spring back again
east west Atlanta

Woke up yesterday to a gray, cloudy but dry morning.

We had plans to go to Woodstock, Georgia, north of Atlanta, for a baby shower.

Ominously, son Lucas, who was hosting the party and texted everyone, “We are still on!”

30 minutes later he texted, “come at your own risk.”

By 8AM, here in Gwinnett County, north-east of Atlanta, it started to snow.

At first just a little, then a lot.

Wet heavy snow.

Brought back memories.

Lots of memories.

Discussions started about the party.

Go or no go?

For people born and raised in Michigan, driving in snow is no big deal.

Unless you happen to be in Atlanta.

There, no one else knows what to do.

There, roads are not cleared or salted.

There, roads are built without shoulders.

The 10 feet you might have available for a shoulder is turned into another, barely wider than a car, traffic lane.

There, roads are carved out of ridges, ravines and hollars with 20 foot steep drop offs on either side.

Winter, snowy weather car travel in the south is not designed to accommodate cars.

My solution was to go explore.

I needed gas in my car.

I said I would go get gas and make an assessment.

I was back in 10 minutes.

Got less than 1 mile from the house.

Cars were everywhere.

Even on the roads.

But everywhere else as well.

I pulled into the a driveway and turned around and felt lucky to get home.

“Nope, no way”, I announced when I walked in.

The party was postponed to Sunday.

My daughters in the city of Atlanta wondered if we were nuts or scaredy-cats.

They accepted the decision but sent photos of clear roads and no snow from just 10 miles away.

Later that same day, my wife and I had to take our son to downtown Atlanta.

This had been planned to be a part of our day after the party.

It was a very quick trip as by this time everyone was staying home.

It was around 2PM and the snow had stopped and was melting fast.

Driving out of Gwinnett County we soon left the snow behind.

By the time we got to our destination in East Midtown Atlanta, there wasn’t even a hint of snow and the roads were dry.

My wife and I passed the time in a cafe over Latte’s and Beignets and the sun poured through the windows of the cafe.

Driving home, we could see the edge of the storm front up ahead.

We left the sun behind and entered into the clouds and fog and cold and gray.

I felt like we had driven across the seasons in just 20 miles.

Somewhere I read that spring time advances 5 minutes or maybe it is a day for each degree north or something like that.

Trying the google and I can’t find the actually figure.

Earl Shaffer, the first person ever to walk the entire Appalachian Trail titled his book, “Walking With Spring“

South to north, walking with spring, is one of the best lines of pure poetry I ever read.

We went west to east and left spring behind.

Winter, up north winter, has come for a time to North Georgia.

I don’t mind to visit winter, but I would not want to live there.

2.8.2020 – snow snow go away

snow, snow, go away
come again some other day
I don’t want TO play

In my brain is a quote from some character in some book somewhere.

It’s a quote from some rich guy who lived in a huge house.

The quote was, “101 rooms and I spend my day searching for the warmest one.”

I got nothing against snow.

Except for the way it is cold.

The way it piles up.

The way it needs to be shoveled.

The way it makes me slip and fall,

The way it makes my car slide and crash.

The way it turns gray and ugly.

Aside from those things and a couple hundred other things, I agree that it can be pretty.

Walking in a heavy thick falling snow is an incredible experience.

If I was a real poet or artist I might be able to describe the light of a full moon on freshly fallen snow.

Moon shadows!

But more than that, I want to be warm.

Hotlanta?

Bring it on!

String of 90 degree days from Memorial Day to Labor Day?

Sign me up!

Tshirts and shorts and warm breezes, WARM BREEZES, at the 4th of July fireworks?

That is my choice to celebrate independence.

I spent the first 50 years of my existence in West Michigan.

I have shoveled TONS of snow in my lifetime.

I pushed countless cars out of the snow.

I have removed wet socks innumerable due to snow and slush.

Went to bed last night with predictions of snow.

Woke this morning.

Prepared myself and looked out the window.

Flowering tree was blossoming in the back yard.

And no snow!

Celebrated with another cup of coffee and a plate of frozen Walmart waffles.

Here is to no snow!

UPDATE – in the words of the Sponge Bob narrator, 2 hours later ….

Bleechhhhhh

Bwahahhahah

11AM – don’t need this

Oh well

2.7.2020 – Humiliate, don’t!

Humiliate, don’t!
Humility, live; avoid
Humiliation

It all begins with humble.

Humble the adjective.

Not proud or haughty : not arrogant or assertive according to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Solomon wrote (maybe), When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.
(Proverbs 11:2)

I would like to think I live with humility.

Humbly.

Humble.

To paraphrase Mr. Churchill, I have much to be humble about.

Such knife edge differences in the words.

Such knife edge differences in the actions.

Humiliate.

Humility.

Humiliation.

All begins with humble.

I am not sure what comes to me when I humiliate anyone.

Remembering times when I did makes my stomach hurt and my skin crawl.

And I remember.

I hope the persons involved on the other end don’t.

I guess that is why its called scarring.

Humiliation is awful.

According to Wikipedia, ‘A study by researchers at the University of Michigan revealed that “the same regions of the brain that become active in response to painful sensory experiences are activated during intense experiences of social rejection.” In other words, humiliation and isolation are experienced as intensely as physical pain.’

Maybe more awful is that it is so often self inflicted.

In so so many ways.

I think of ways to feel humiliation.

To feel humiliated.

Humiliation is supposed to result from a deliberate act by a person to belittle someone.

To often, most often, that person, is me.

The humiliation is in my mind.

That doesn’t make any less real.

I am humiliated that I need to use the bathroom.

Is that stupid or what?

Felt that way most of my life.

As a little kid.

As a big kid.

As an adult [sic].

I can stop at a public rest area off the freeway and I stop TO walk around JUST TO STRETCH MY LEGS.

“OH LOOK,” I think, “there is a restroom. Well, since I am here, I might as well use it.”

OH COME ON!

The secret is, EVERYONE HAS TO PEE.

Get over it Mike.

Lately, I have.

I laugh at myself.

I know the secret.

Everyone has to pee.

If I were King, I would make a proclamation.

BE IT KNOWN, THROUGH OUT THE LAND, EVERYONE HAS TO PEE.

And let it go at that.

Here is the point.

I know this example, while real, is comical, compared to other things over which I punish myself with self humiliation.

But there is a response to this.

Comical as it might sound, the answer might be the same to a lot of those other things.

I have to remember always, everyone has to pee.

[sic] from the latin sic erat scriptum, or ‘thus was it written’ or, ‘as it understood’. Use of [sic] made famous by the student newspaper of Georgia Tech whenever referring to University of Georgia in print, IE: University of Georgia [sic].

2.6.2020 – songs, sounds of traffic

songs, sounds of traffic
rubber and rain, meet the road
rhythm of my ride

In the flawed but fun Amazon show, “Mozart in the Jungle’, there is a scene where the conductor is being driven somewhere in New York.

He rides with the windows open and listens to the sounds and songs and rhythm of the traffic and city.

He listens with a look of awe and appreciation.

I commute to work in downtown Atlanta from my home on the upper north side of Gwinnett County.

On average I am in the car for 45 minutes both ways.

My record to work is 32 minutes but that was at 4:00AM one morning.

Most days it is not an unbearable experience.

Most days, when I drive onto the freeway entrance, I am also entering into an unspoken contract with all the other drivers already on the freeway.

I enter into one of the largest, fastest moving co-ops in the United States.

We all want the same result.

When possible I sit back and try to enjoy the ride.

Most times I will listen to audio books or music on my iPhone.

I got exhausted listening to the radio a long time ago.

This morning in Atlanta, it was warm but not warm enough for the air conditioning.

It was raining and storming as well.

Driving with the windows open would be problematic.

I caught a break and the rain held off during my drive.

While there was a lot of spray in the air I could get by with the windows open a bit.

The sounds of the traffic made it hard to hear my audio book.

I could have cranked the volume but listening to William Shirer’s RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH at full volume was too weird.

Then I thought of that scene in MOZART IN THE JUNGLE.

Instead of a book or music, I listened to the sounds, songs and rhythms of my ride.

The steady hum of my car with the baseline of my tires on the pavement.

The swish of passing cars.

The roar of truck engines.

The smash-smush truck tires through the water.

The doppler sound of taffic coming up from behind and then moving on ahead past me.

The high hum that highway traffic makes.

Sounds all man made.

Can it be called music?

If it can, its the sound track to too much of my life.

02.05.2020 – Respect, Compassion

Respect, Compassion
Dignity, Civility
Brother! Where art thou?

No handshakes.

Ripped up speeches.

Raucous applause.

Jeering.

Heckling.

I remember that President Cleveland said over 100 years ago, “What good are politicians unless they stand for something?”

But is it too much to expect they play nice in the sandbox?

Come on.

No need for Saturday Night Live to act out a parody of the speech.

Just run the tape.

Where is the dignity?

Where is their self respect?

For some reason I got to thinking of gym class at Riverside Junior High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I went through 3 years of gym classes run by Mr. Voet.

Mr. Voet had certain ideas about how gym class was supposed to be run.

Mr. Voet knew for certain that we students, 12, 13 and 14 year old boys should have these same ideas.

Look smart.

Show respect.

Show self respect.

Respect started with the self.

We all wore Riverside Junior High School gym uniforms.

White T-shirts and red shorts with matching numbers.

T-shirts tucked in.

White, over the calf, gym socks with red strips around the tops, pulled up over the calf.

(We did look sharp.)

The gym floor had numbers on it along one base line.

We were assigned a number.

Gym class started 10 minutes after the hour when Mr. Voet blew his whistle.

We were expected to be in uniform, T-shirt tucked in, matching number on shirt and shorts, socks up and standing on our number.

Mr. Voet would walk along the line, holding out his pen, cap first, with his record book and check on these things.

If you weren’t on your number you got a sharp word.

If you weren’t in uniform or if something was wrong with your uniform, he stopped, stared at you for a second and recorded a demerit in his record book and moved on.

I mention that numbers on the shirt and shorts had to match because of my little brother, Pete.

He was a year younger than me.

Sometimes our uniforms got mixed up in the laundry and our numbers didn’t match.

My number was 206, Pete’s was 3.

Why do I remember that?

Sometimes we had each others complete uniform.

Sometimes we did it on purpose.

Drove Mr. Voet nuts.

His revenge was that for every 3 demerits or so, he dropped your grade for that marking period.

The way out of this was you could come in early and run laps to get rid of demerits.

10 laps of the boys gym and 1 demerit would be erased.

I ran laps.

I ran a lot of laps.

Oh boy did I run a lot of laps.

Uniform violations was only one way to get a demerit.

I managed to find a lot of a ways to get demerits.

One memorable class, we were running some drill one at time in the gym.

We all had to line up and wait for our turn.

While waiting I looked around and saw that someone had left a Literature Textbook on the bleachers.

I sat down and started reading wherever I opened the book and forgot all about gym class.

The next thing I remember was that the gym was completely still.

I felt something warm nearby.

I put the book down and looked to see Mr. Voet about 3 inches from my nose.

Mr. Voet’s face was so red, I could feel real warmth.

The odd thing was that stillness.

Trying hard, I could pick up an echo off the walls of the gym of something that sounded like, “MR. HOFFMAN! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?”

Boy did I run a lot of laps.

As you ran down along the long side of the gym, there was a sign on the wall at the corner.

You couldn’t miss it as you ran.

I can’t remember for sure, but it said something like “Self Respect Starts with Self.”

For some reason this was on my mind last night as I watched the State of the Union.

I am not sure how it applies to all that went during the 2020 State of the Union address.

Maybe I wanted everyone to show some respect.

Maybe I wanted everyone to show some self respect.

Maybe I wanted to see everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, on the floor of the House Chamber wearing Riverside Junior High School gym uniforms and running laps.

I like that idea.

Laps.

Lots and lots of laps.

Post Script: Years later I have to say Mr. Voet was right.

Self respect starts with self.

He was a good guy as well even if he never did figure me out.

I was in no way an athlete but Mr. Voet always gave me a fair shake.

After that class period where he caught me reading, he came up to me and said quietly, “Just don’t bring anymore books or homework out to the gym, okay?”

I said, “Coach, I didn’t bring that book. It was already sitting there. I just picked it up and starting reading.”

Mr. Voet stared at me for a bit.