9.15.2020 – God gave us all brains

God gave us all brains
Think he expects us to use them?
BOY! My Mom sure did

My Grandma used to tell the joke about the boy who picked up a red-hot horse shoe.

He dropped it real quick and the blacksmith said, “Burned you didn’t it?”

Boy looked at him and said, “NO SIR . . . just don’t take me long to look at a horseshoe.”

Just so much stupid around these days.

Just plain stupid.

From the I DON’T CARE WHAT WILL HAPPEN, IT IS MUCH WARMER INSIDE THE SHIP THAN IN ONE OF THE TITANIC’S LIFE BOATS kind of stupid.

To the I CAN’T BE OUT OF MONEY, I STILL HAVE CHECKS kind of stupid.

I don’t do stupid well.

I don’t suffer stupid gladly.

I am often stupid, I admit, but lately …

So this morning I was reading an in depth article on Salmon Farming.

The wave of the future.

The green solution to protien.

The answer to so many problems.

EXCEPT that … it costs more to feed the fish than you can sell the fish for at the market.

With price supports and grants-in-aid and such, farm raised salmon is cheaper right now but not sustainable.

But that is just STUPID.

I don’t know why, but that just was the limit this morning.

Does anyone think things through?

The fires out west are bugging me.

All the brush would burn up every 10 to 20 years.

Then man starts putting out the fires.

Then along comes a developer who never met a place that wouldn’t look better with a bunch of Pulte Houses-by-the-yard and thinks these woodland views, especially in these canyons are just the spot.

The next thing you know you got these communities surrounded by 120 years of woodland trash.

And you might be able to guess what happens next and it does.

OH I KNOW.

But gee whiz.

Just so much stupid.

God DOES expect us to think sometimes.

MY MOM SURE DID.

Once I was in my room and I heard the footsteps of someone coming down the stairs.

For some reason, I knew it was my older brother Tim coming to get me.

Who knows why, he most likely had a reason, lots of reasons.

So I quick hid in the closet.

The footsteps came to the door of room and then came into my room.

I stood still and held my breath.

Then the door of my closet was pulled open.

And there I stood.

And there was my Mom with a bunch of clean shirts to hang up.

I said, “Hi Mom.”

She didn’t she hi.

She just kinda screamed and tossed the shirts to one side and started swinging her fists at me.

Swinging them in big arcs, up and down and thumping me on the head and arms.

I ducked my head and dove out of the closest

She kept swinging.

“DON’T”

“YOU”

“EVER”

“DO”

“SUCH”

“A”

“STUPID”

“THING”

“AGAIN”

She said this several times.

She said each word as she swung a fist.

She finally wore out and stood there.

Then she turned and shook the dust off her shoes and left.

All I could think was, “Boy Was I Stupid.”

9.14.2020 – authors, yourselves of

authors, yourselves of
those laws on which your (and my)
happiness depends

Mr. Samuel Adams, the cousin of John Adams, not the beer, said in a speech in Philadelphia on August 2, 1776, the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, that:

Nothing that we propose can pass into a law without your consent.

Be yourselves, O Americans, the authors of those laws on which your happiness depends.

I have to feel that Mr. Adams, if alive today, would read the papers and watch the news and say to himself, “something went wrong here.”

Or maybe not.

Maybe Mr. Adams would say, “Gee Whiz, I WARNED YOU.”

All these issues.

We did it to ourselves.

But I have a hope in Mr. Adams’ closing thoughts.

“Go on, then, in your generous enterprise, with gratitude to heaven, for past success, and confidence of it in the future.“

Confidence of it in the future.

Maybe it is a curse.

But I still feel it.

9.13.2020 – on nine eleven

On nine eleven world history, infamy one word for the day

The recent anniversary of 9/11 brought so many and to this day almost unbelievable and unreal memories. Many references were made to the fact that no attack since Pearl Harbor had been made against the United States. Fewer and fewer people will remember Pearl Harbor. But the news media will always commemorate with films clips of burning ships and the clips of President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking Congress for a Declaration of War. The most famous part of the speech and maybe the most recognizable words from the speech is the first line that states, “Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in world history.” But that is not what FDR said is it? The News Reels of the era clearly show that FDR said, “Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.” The existing typescript of the first draft shows that the phrase used the words, World History. It also shows that the words are heavily crossed out. Penciled in above is the single word, “infamy.” The archivists say that the edits are made in FDR’s handwriting.

I admit the word may have been suggested to FDR. I cannot claim that FDR thought of the word. I can say that compared to the WORLD HISTORY, the use of the word INFAMY makes all the difference. Abraham Lincoln could have started out saying 87 years ago instead of four score and seven. But Mr. Lincoln chose Four score and seven. Trumpets instead of car horns. The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines INFAMY as: evil reputation brought about by something grossly criminal, shocking, or brutal or an extreme and publicly known criminal or evil act. An extreme publicly known evil act. Shocking and brutal. Infamy. 9/11.

9.12.2020 – most reckless action

most reckless action
perpetuated in the name
of college football

Christine Brennan of USA TODAY, a writer I like and not just because she is a Michigan Fan, wrote today in her article, I love college football but just can’t watch amid COVID-19 concerns, In what has to be the riskiest roll of the dice in the history of college sports, 76 universities, many of them in the South and Southwest, are embarking on the most reckless action ever perpetuated on college campuses in the name of athletics, pressing on with their quest to play football in the middle of a pandemic.

Ms. Brennan states, “The worst thing you’ll be able to say about those schools is that they were too cautious about the health of their student-athletes.

What’s the worst thing you’ll be able to say about the schools that allowed football and other sports to continue? That answer will come in a few months.

But at the moment, what we do know is that the dozens of schools playing football have no idea if by allowing fall sports to be played, they will bring illness, hospitalization and even death to their campuses and communities. They can’t know what they will unleash. They’re just guessing and hoping.”

For longer than there has been a pandemic I have been suffering from a near-terminal case of Harbaugh.

I even talked my Doctor (a Notre Dame Grad but here in the south, what you going to do) to put ‘Suffers from Harbaugh’ on my official Medical Record.

That being said, I like Jimmy “I lost the Brown Jug” (in case he thinks I forgot about Rickey Foggie and Lou Hotlz’s one year with the Golden Gophers) Harbaugh.

And I understand, if not Jimmy then … who?

I don’t think His Evilness Urban Myer will come out of retirement but I would … well …

So I resigned to being good but not great.

And the only real goals left for me as a Michigan fan is to be 1) The first team to 1,000 wins (sometime now in 2024) and 2) not let Ohio State pass us in all time wins in the Michigan – Ohio State series … in my lifetime (58-51-6) so they got to grind out a few wins in the next 8 years.

So what do I have to say?

I agree with Ms. Brennan.

Michigan Football was here before I was born and will be here after I die someday.

I feel the pandemic is real.

I feel we can take time to pause and be safe.

I can wait.

And, as Coach Schembechlor said, “Those who remain will be Champions.”

9.11.2020 – sheer drop to the sea

sheer drop to the sea
sliver of moon, pale blue sky
warm breeze, lemons, pine

Sometimes Bill Bryson gets it so right with what he writes I want to cry.

Consider this from Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe.

Mr. Bryson is descrbing the view of the ocean off of the Island of Capri.

It was nearly dusk. A couple of hundred yards further on the path rounded a bend through the trees and ended suddenly, breathtakingly, in a viewing platform hanging out over a precipice of rock – a little patio in the sky.

It was a look-out built for the public, but I had the feeling that no one had been there for years, certainly no tourist.

It was the sheerest stroke of luck that I had stumbled on it.

I have never seen anything half as beautiful: on one side the town of Capri spilling down the hillside, on the other the twinkling lights of the cove at Anacapri and the houses gathered around it, and in front of me a sheer drop of – what? – 200 feet, 300 feet, to a sea of the lushest aquamarine washing against outcrops of jagged rock.

The sea was so far below that the sound of breaking waves reached me as the faintest of whispers.

A sliver of moon, brilliantly white, hung in a pale blue evening sky, a warm breeze teased my hair and everywhere there was the scent of lemon, honeysuckle and pine.

It was like being in the household-products section of Sainsbury’s.

Ahead of me there was nothing but open sea, calm and seductive, for 150 miles to Sicily.

I would do anything to own that view, anything.

I would sell my mother to Robert Maxwell for it. I would renounce my citizenship and walk across fire.

I would swap hair – yes! – with Andrew Neil.

Just above me, I realized after a moment, overlooking this secret place was the patio of a villa set back just out of sight.

Somebody did own that view, could sit there every morning with his muesli and orange juice, in his Yves St Laurent bathrobe and Gucci slippers, and look out on this sweep of Mediterranean heaven.