6.20.2020 – Sympathetic thoughts

Sympathetic thoughts.
America cannot be deaf,
to calls such as that.

This was adapted from this paragraph, “While we are thinking of promoting the fortunes of our own people I am sure there is room in the sympathetic thought of America for fellow human beings who are suffering and dying of starvation in Russia. A severe drought in the Valley of the Volga has plunged 15,000,000 people into grievous famine. Our voluntary agencies are exerting themselves to the utmost to save the lives of children in this area, but it is now evident that unless relief is afforded the loss of life will extend into many millions. America cannot be deaf to such a call as that.”

That was said by President Warren G. Harding in the State of Union address on December 6, 1921.

Mr. Harding was referring to problems in Russia at least and not problems at home.

About problems at home, he said, “I am not unaware that we have suffering and privation at home. When it exceeds the capacity for the relief within the States concerned, it will have Federal consideration.”

Mr. Harding also said: “It has been perhaps the proudest claim of our American civilization that in dealing with human relationships it has constantly moved toward such justice in distributing the product of human energy that it has improved continuously the economic status of the mass of people. Ours has been a highly productive social organization. On the way up from the elemental stages of society we have eliminated slavery and serfdom and are now far on the way to the elimination of poverty.

Through the eradication of illiteracy and the diffusion of education mankind has reached a stage where we may fairly say that in the United States equality of opportunity has been attained, though all are not prepared to embrace it. There is, indeed, a too great divergence between the economic conditions of the most and the least favored classes in the com

The further we get from President Harding and the more time we spend in the present, President Harding doesn’t look so bad.

After all is said and done about Mr. Harding, maybe Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt’s cousin summed him up best when she said, “Harding wasn’t a bad man. He was just a slob.”

I feel like I know what she meant.

6.19.2020 – days I hope will come

days I hope will come
rendezvous with Life I keep
fear I deeply, too

From the poem I Have A Rendezvous With Life by Countee Cullen

I have a rendezvous with Life,
In days I hope will come,
Ere youth has sped, and strength of mind,
Ere voices sweet grow dumb.
I have a rendezvous with Life,
When Spring’s first heralds hum.
Sure some would cry it’s better far
To crown their days with sleep
Than face the road, the wind and rain,
To heed the calling deep.
Though wet nor blow nor space I fear,
Yet fear I deeply, too,
Lest Death should meet and claim me ere
I keep Life’s rendezvous.

Born in 1903 in New York City, Countee Cullen was raised in a Methodist parsonage.

He attended De Witt Clinton High School in New York and began writing poetry at the age of fourteen.

An imaginative lyric poet, he wrote in the tradition of Keats and Shelley according to the website, https://allpoetry.com/.

It was another one of Cullen’s poems that may have been the first real poem I ever read.

Back in the 1960’s at Crestview Elementary School in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the school took part in the Scholastic Book Program.

We would get a 4 page newsprint catalogs of cut rate paper back books and we would be encouraged to order a book or two.

We still had to pay of course but the prices of these books were pretty cheap.

The day the orders were due, most kids in class would show up with a white envelope with a dollar in it along with an order for 1 or 2 books.

Then I would go up with order for 5 or 10 or 20 books.

I have to admit that when it came to books and me, my parents were very generous.

Maybe they figured if I was reading I wasn’t in trouble and that alone was priceless.

After a week or two, we would come in from recess and on the teachers desk would be a big box.

In this day and age of Amazon, it is hard to explain how exciting a big brown box could be.

The teacher, most likely Miss Critchell as I had her for 2 and a half years of grade school, but that is a different story, would open the box and we would see that it was filled with books and a bunch of orders.

Once we settled down, the teacher would pick up an order form, rummage for a book and call out Diane, Ruby, Richard or Cindy and those kids would go forward and the teacher would hand them their book and their order.

And I would wait and wait and wait.

Then the teacher would count the last books and look at the last order and say, “Mike, these are yours,” amd had me the box.

And that was it for me for the rest the day, maybe that week.

Teachers were as happy as I was.

Call It Courage, The Mystery of the Blue Cat, Up Periscope.

I can still remember the titles.

The smell.

The feel of a new book.

I can say I have spent all my life in information services, with the last 20 years creating an online environment for news.

But before that I worked for, going backwards, a publisher, the public library and for almost 10 years, a bookstore.

That all got started back in grade school.

I would order almost anything off of those Scholastic Catalogs.

My Mom would look over the list and ask, “Are you really going to read that?”

Of course I would say.

Though I admit sometimes I just wanted the book.

Out would come the checkbook and the next day I would give my teacher a white evenlope with the order and my Mom’s check.

I feel like I read them all the books I ordered.

I know I read a most of them.

Most of them in a matter of days.

I know I got lifted eyebrows over, “A Students book of Verse” or something like that, but I know I got the book.

I remember looking at it when it came and wondering why I ordered it, but there it was.

I remember that it was 4th or 5th grade.

Crestview had been integrated by them.

I was sitting at my desk.

I would read at my desk when we were supposed to working on other subjects.

I would open a book in my lap to hide it and read.

I always thought my teacher didn’t notice.

She might not have noticed the book but she had to notice I was being quiet.

And if I was being quiet, the teacher wasn’t going to do anything to get me to stop being quiet.

I had the Students Book of Verse open.

I was thumbing through it, never having read much poetry aside from anything I might have had to learn as a ‘Memory Selection.”

Somehow, someway, in 1970, the editors of that book managed to include the poem “Incident” by Countee Cullen.

Never heard of it,

Never heard of Cullen.

But I read his poem.

I slapped the book shut and put it in my desk and slammed the lid.

I was shaking inside.

Had anyone seen me reading that poem.

Had anyone known that that poem was in my new book.

How has THAT poem got into this book?

To this day I wonder that.

I like to think that some young editor at scholastic snuck the poem in there with the hope that one kid, like me, might learn from it .

It was the 60’s..

About the same time we had a school concert with lots of Bob Dylan songs.

I might have got looks when I slammed my desk but no one, including the teacher, said anything.

I hid the book back in the box and later that day took all the books home.

When I had a chance to be alone, I got the book out the box and read the poem again.

For a little kid there were just too many emotions.

One was WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Another was awe.

Awe because, while I couldn’t verbalize it and today I still can’t, how could all this emotion and feeling and meaning be contained in the words of poem.

A short short poem and it said so much.

I looked around at my classmates and could not understand.

You could say that’s when I discovered the power of poetry.

Makes me laugh to think that I am now writing these daily haikus.

Dandelions in a forest of redwood trees with poems like Incident.

Maybe besides poetry there were other things that I understood that day.

Things that were WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Not much I could to make it right.

But I could try.

It wasn’t the wrong I wanted to concentrate on but the right.

A rendezvous with life

Even though I have fear, I have hope.

And I give thanks for the parents who wrote those checks for those books.

And I give thanks for a wife who understands and we always try to give books as gifts to the kids.

And wait for those days I hope for.

For those who have never read it, here is Countee Cullen’s Incident or Incident in Baltimore, written in 1925

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.

6.18.2020 – state of nonchalance

state of nonchalance
can be respectedly cool
on the after beat

Can I return to that state?

That State of Nonchalance.

Right now, it sounds so … so … so .. right.

I am not sure of the first time that I heard the name, Duke Ellington.

I am willing to guess that it was in a Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs goes back in time and takes on a Knight.

Bugs asks the Knight if he has ever heard of Bugs’ friend, the Duke of Ellington, Count of Basie and Cab of Calloway.

“Rogues and upstarts all of them.” replies the Knight and the two fall to battle which Bugs win when he trips the Knights horse and the Knight is catapulted by his own lance into the next shire.

The house were I grew up was filled with records.

Everyone bought records.

Even my Mom, which I covered in an earlier entry.

I played them all.

Some of them maybe once.

Some of them maybe less than once.

Some I played a lot.

At some point I discovered my Dad’s big band records.

And at some point I discovered Duke Ellington.

On Saturday afternoons in the fall at my house, you could count on my Dad tuning in that day’s Michigan football game.

My Dad was a HiFi (not wifi, HiFi) or High Fidelity nut and wired our house for sound,

You could hear the game in any room of the house.

This of course was back in the day that there was one, 1 … ONE college football game on TV for the entire country.

There was also a rule that any one college could only be on TV twice in a given season with special dispensation that any school could be on three times but never more that 5 times every two years.

We listened on the radio.

We listened to the University of Michigan Radio station, WUOM, and the deep voice of Tom Hemingway.

It was the background sound to fall at the Hoffman House.

I mention all this because after the football game was the UOM Radio’s show “Music of Big Bands” with the wonderfully named Hazen Schumacher.

Schumacher was another of the great voices you could hear on this radio station.

I would sit and listen to the music until someone noticed the game was over and turned the radio off.

On one afternoon, the show featured Duke Ellington.

No one noticed or maybe everyone enjoyed the music because I listened to the entire show.

When the show came to an end, Schumacher played Duke Ellington’s sign off song, Satin Doll.

Side note: It was years later that I found out this tune had lyrics. It was even later that I found out the lyrics were written by Mr. Johnny Mercer, Savannah’s own.

It was a trademark of the Duke to close by talking to the audience, thanking the audience and reaching out to the audience on how to be cool.

I can hear it now.

The deep deep deep voice of the Duke saying, “I see I don’t have to tell you; one never snap one’s fingers on the beat, it’s considered aggressive. Don’t push it, just let it fall. And so by routining one’s finger snapping and choreographing one’s ear-lobe tilting, one discovers that one can be as cool as one wishes to be.“

I was about 10 or 11.

A 10 year kid trying to be respectedly cool.

I tried it.

I tried it and tried it.

I stood in the bathroom and I tried and tried and tried.

I had some problems.

Some more obvious than others,

One I didn’t discover until much later, that I had no natural sense of rhythm.

Not making that up.

Another problem was that I didn’t understand half of what he was saying.

But the sound.

The richness of that voice.

The love in that voice.

I felt like he was speaking to me.

I only heard it that one time and I never forgot it.

And I never forgot the Duke.

Named my youngest son after him.

Got his music in my heart,

He was very beautiful, very sweet, very gracious, very generous.

As Alistair Cooke wrote is his obit of the Duke, we have his music, all of it.

I loved it all madly.

PS: Here is the text of the Duke Ellington Sign Off – through the magic of the internet, I also included a clip of of the Ellington Band -It is a short short clip and worth the time)

Thank you very much, ladies and gentleman; you’re very beautiful, very sweet, very gracious, very generous.

This is Satin Doll [band playing behind him].

We use it for the purpose of giving background to this finger-snapping bit, and you are cordially invited to join in the finger-snapping.

Crazy.

I see I don’t have to tell you; one never snap one’s fingers on the beat, it’s considered aggressive.

Don’t push it, just let it fall.

And if you would like to be conservatively hip, at the same time tilt the left ear-lobe.

Establish a state of nonchalance.

And if you would like to be respectedly cool, then tilt the left ear lobe on the beat and snap one’s finger on the after beat, thus.

And then you might be as cool as Inez Cavanaugh.

And so by routining one’s finger snapping and choreographing one’s ear-lobe tilting, one discovers that one can be as cool as one wishes to be.

With that, we certainly want to thank your for the wonderful way you’ve inspired us, and remind you that your are very beautiful, very sweet, very gracious, very generous, we do love you madly.

6.17.2020 – help me find my dream

help me find my dream
shatter darkness, smash this night
shadows into light

From the poem, As I Grew Older, by Langston Hughes

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun —
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky—
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!

6.16.202 – no difficulty

no difficulty
believe what is comforting
and find convenient

Who does not want to believe in what is comforting and what is found to be convenient?

I do have a specific group in mind.

Please read this short statement.

Is it an accurate statement?

It should not be thought that the Presidential party line is necessarily disingenuous and insincere on part of all those who put it forward.

Many of them are too ignorant of outside world and mentally too dependent to question self-hypnotism, and who have no difficulty making themselves believe what they find it comforting and convenient to believe.

There is an the unsolved mystery as to who, if anyone, in this administration actually receives accurate and unbiased information about outside world.

In atmosphere of oriental secretiveness and conspiracy which pervades this Government, possibilities for distorting or poisoning sources and currents of information are infinite.

The very disrespect of the President for objective truth–indeed, his disbelief in its existence–leads them to view all stated facts as instruments for furtherance of one ulterior purpose or another.

I wish I could say I wrote it.

It is a very famous bit of writing.

I also wish I could say it was written about the current Administration in Washington.

Except for a few words, it was written by George F. Kennan when he was serving as Chargé d’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in 1946.

Mr. Kennan was asked by the United States Treasury why the Soviets were not supporting the newly created World Bank.

In Mr. Kennan replied with an 8,000 to 10,000 word cable gram explaining the Soviet Union.

I was taught back in college, that Mr. Kennan said, “They asked for it, they are going to get.”

Mr. Kennan’s cablegram became known as the LONG TELEGRAM or the X TELEGRAM.

And played a role in much of the Foreign Policy of the United States for years and years afterwords.

When Mr. Kennan wrote the words I posted above, he was not refering to the President and his administration.

Mr. Kennan was referring to the Soviet Union in general and Joseph Stalin in particular.

I struck by how changing just a few names the thoughts fit.

And if the shoe fits …