find no peace, all my
war is done – I fear and hope
burn and freeze like ice

Adapted from I Find No Peace written around 1540 by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503 – 11 October 1542) who, according to Wikipedia, was a 16th-century English politician, ambassador, and lyric poet credited with introducing the sonnet to English literature.

Always one of my favorites and the one I would choose to have read at my funeral should sch a thing ever take place.

I find no peace, and all my war is done.
I fear and hope. I burn and freeze like ice.
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise;
And nought I have, and all the world I season.
That loseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison
And holdeth me not—yet can I scape no wise—
Nor letteth me live nor die at my device,
And yet of death it giveth me occasion.
Without eyen I see, and without tongue I plain.
I desire to perish, and yet I ask health.
I love another, and thus I hate myself.
I feed me in sorrow and laugh in all my pain;
Likewise displeaseth me both life and death,
And my delight is causer of this strife.

This is a series of haiku drawn from this sonnet for the purpose of feeling in dates that I missed so I can complete publication string since I started this.

Forgive me this indulgence.

MJH

crave goofy humor
current unfortunate time
of unpleasantness

I recently quoted the actress Diane Lane.

Some of what she said is not moving along out of my brain.

Ms. Lane talking about growing up in America in the 1970s said, “It was an exciting time in America in 1976. We were 200 years old and very proud. We’d got rid of Nixon and we had hubris and joy. As Americans we had a sense of humor about ourselves, so our music had a sense of humor that hasn’t been around since. Everything had this goofy sense of humor.“

Americans had a sense of humor about ourselves.

If that line doesn’t make you put down your handheld or turn off the TV and just think for a minute.

Boy howdy, how about that!

Got to say it again.

Americans had a sense of humor about ourselves.

Years ago I was in Chicago on the Miracle Mile at Stuart Brent’s bookstore.

I knew it was Stuart Brent’s bookstore as the name of the place was ‘Stuart Brent Books.”

According to one online account, “owned and managed by the strange and wonderful Stuart Brent.”

The store was cramped and filled with bookcases, books and the life of Stuart Brent.

Over the years of being in business, Mr. Brent got know or at least meet almost every American author of note.

And Mr. Brent was there to tell you about it and himself.

The place was a memorial to Stuart Brent.

I happened to know that Mr. Brent knew Ernest Hemingway.

He knew him well enough to get postcards from Mr. Hemingway when Mr. Hemingway was off in Cuba or Spain or killing animals in Africa.

I know this because there were several of these cards framed under glass hanging on the end of a bookcase.

Mr. Brent was faced with the all to often problem of owning post cards from famous people and that was how to show that the card was really addressed to you on the front and still show the autographed note on the back.’

I will say that Theodore Roosevelt had the same problem with photographs that had been personalized on the back by the Kaiser.

TR’s solution was to frame them with glass on both sides and lay them on a table so he could display both the photograph and the personal message.

I know about the Hemingway postcards, which Mr. Brent displayed half and half, some cards from the address side and some with the message side (who knows maybe the ones that showed just the addresses were drunken slurs or something like ‘Stu, can you pick up my laundry’).

I may have been the last person to see them in their original frame.

I can say that because I knocked the frame off the wall and the glass and frame shattered and Mr. Hemingway’s cards went all over the floor.

As it sunk in what had happened and what I had done it also sunk in that the strange and wonderful Stuart Brent was standing next to me.

Standing next to me and glaring.

Standing next to me and glaring and pointing to the glass on the floor.

Mr. Brent was overcome and couldn’t get any words out.

He just sputtered and gurgled and glared.

He stood and glared and pointed and kind of shook all over.

Then he waved his arms over his head and swung them down as if to wipe the image from his eyes and he turned up his chin and stalked away in a fury without words.

Dismissing me form his world.

The place went silent.

Well, what do you do in such a situation?

I stood there.

All the other customers pointing at me and telling their friends what I had done and also saying, ‘boy am I glad it wasn’t me.”

Then a young clerk came up with a broom and dustpan.

He motioned me out of the way and started to sweep up.

I stooped done and said, “I am really really sorry.”

I think I said it about 1,000 times or at least that is how I felt.

Then the clerk stood up and looked over his shoulder.

He leaned into me close.

And he whispered with some of that goofy sense of humor, “Hey look, it is okay… Nobody died you know.”

He gave me the impression that this had happened before.

He gave me the impression that this had happened a lot.

He gave me the impression that Mr. Brent would have reacted the same way to almost anything that could have happened in the store that day.

And somehow, he gave me absolution.

As a final note to the Stuart Brent story I once told this tale to my friend, Gerald Elliott, the one time Editor of the Grand Rapids Press.

“STUART BRENT!”, Mr. Elliott almost exploded.

“That big blow hard.”

Turned out that in World War 2, Mr. Elliott and Mr. Brent had served together in the same US Army information outfit of some kind.

Mr. Elliott was none too impressed with the strange and wonderful Stuart Brent.

BUT I DIGRESS.

My point being who is there today that can restore the goofy sense of humor for us.

I can’t say nobody died.

Lots of people are dying.

Too many.

This is the real deal.

Lots of things are changing and going away.

Maybe some of these things will come back.

I hope.

I really hope a national goofy sense of humor is one of them.

Sad to say that on this note I saw in the news that some goofy folks are leaving steel monoliths in odd places around the country.

One of these monoliths in the California town of Atascadero somehow offended some people and they had to go and pull it down.

Disparaging this act, the Mayor of Atascadero’s, Heather Moreno said, “We are upset that these young men felt the need to drive five hours to come into our community and vandalize the monolith. The monolith was something unique and fun in an otherwise stressful time.”

Something unique and fun.

Something unique and fun and it offended this other bunch of people.

Gee freaking whiz.

I was about to say oh well, there is no Constitutional right to being happy.

But THERE is in the Declaration of Independence.

Mr. Jefferson wrote (with some editing by his buddies), “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

For that alone and maybe being the first President to serve ice cream in the White House, Mr. Jefferson should be able to put himself above and beyond present day examination of himself by present day standards.

Mr. Jefferson felt that it was a “SELF EVIDENT TRUTH.”

This it is true and it does not need to be explained.

HELLLLLOOOOOOOO.

That the Creator endowed us with the UNALIENABLE right to the PURSUIT of HAPPINESS.

Doom and gloom begone with you.

We, as Mr. Lincoln put it, we, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility to restore this country.

A goofy sense of humor?

Great place to start.

do bears … in the woods
and when in Rome … but it seems
not what some expect

“Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light, you get up, and everything in between is just in between. It’s quite wonderful really.”

So writes Bill Bryson in his book, “A Walk in the Woods : Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail.”

In the book Mr. Bryson recounts the grind of walking from Georgia to Maine and all the things wonderful and not wonderful that happen.

The overall theme is that you are out in the wild and should expect to be in the wild.

I suppose that is why its called wilderness.

Mr. Bryson relates how the driver who took him and his hiking buddy to the start of the trail in Georgia told stories about other hikers.

One group of hikers showed with brand new equipment, the nicest stuff you ever saw, after spending God knows how much on the stuff and quit hiking after a mile and a half.

The driver said the hikers said it wasn’t what they expected.

“What did they expect?” asked Mr. Bryson.

“Who knows? Escalators maybe. It’s hills and rocks and woods and a trail. You don’t got to do a whole lot of scientific research to work that out.”

Read this account and you laugh.

What did they expect?

What did they expect.

TOILETS it seems.

The article, “Worst work in the world’: US park rangers grapple with tide of human waste” details how some American National Park and wild lands are being overwhelmed by poop.

And it seems not just poop but the fact that park visitors needed a place to poop so the poop piles up in the few public toilets.

One Park Ranger recounted how the waste will freeze and thaw in pit toilets until it rises up out the pit and has to be hauled away.

Hauled away sometimes by helicopter.

One the answers seems to be carrying the poop out with you in doggie bags.

Yeah, that will work.

I am trying to figure out what is missing here.

Do these folks really hope to find a bathroom at the top of Mt. Rainier?

The article ends quoting a Mr. Ben Lawhorn, director of education and research for the outdoor ethics group Leave No Trace.

He said, “If a bathroom is still miles away and hikers don’t have a carry-out bag, the best thing they can is tote a trowel to a spot far from streams and trails.”

“Once you get eight miles into the backcountry, it’s up to you to dig a hole,” Lawhorn said.

This has to be included in Hiking Guides now?

I don’t know what to say but well, poop!

waiting in an age
believes in symptoms, malaise
wonder what might be

Location as the feller says is everything.

I feel that way when it applies to the flow of a news broadcast.

If you watch the evening news there will be a story the headlines unemployment, need for rent relief, food lines and the inability for our Government to think there might be a need for some kind of aid.

The next story in line to be presented for consideration will headline the failure of consumer spending, the down size ‘black-friday’ and the lack of a big-spending ‘cyber-mondey’ and how this will all negatively impact the recovery.

And there will be no comment, commentary or even recognition of these two stories being back to back.

I am not saying Post Hoc Propter Hoc but rather the juxtaposition of the two stories.

Gosh if those poor people just got off there lazy butts and spent some money on unneeded Christmas gifts we could get out of this mess and help those poor people.

I am reminded of a story of Frank Lloyd Wright, concerned over the plight of architecture in Washington, DC got some office time with President Franklin Roosevelt.

“Mr. President,” said Mr. Wright, “If you would get out of that chair and walk down Pennsylvania Ave. and see what is going on, you would put a stop to it!”

Mr. Wright received no further office time from President Roosevelt.

It sure seems like we are sick.

Sick of lots of things.

Sick for lots of reasons.

So we wait.

It will soon be a new administration.

But the same old Congress.

Malaise?

You bet!

Hopeful.

Wondering.

Waiting.

About the best news out of Washington these days concerns the current President’s effort to contest the election.

As I understand it, the President is relying, relying heavily, on the advice of … wait for it … his lawyer.

If that doesn’t make you smile.

Almost Greek tragedy in its appropriateness for the moment.