2.8.2021 – not the years, its the

not the years, its the
mileage, those who remain
will be champions

“Not the years, its the mileage”, so said Dr. Henry Walton Jones, Jr who is better known as Indiana Jones.

And it was Glenn Edward Schembechler, better known as Bo, as in Bo Schembechler, as in Coach Bo at the University of Michigan who said “Those who remain will be champions.”

Both epigrams where on my mind after watching the 2021 Super Bowl, or Super Bowl 55.

I admit I like Tom Brady.

I admit had Tom Brady NOT PLAYED at Michigan, I would not have liked Tom Brady.

I cannot account for it but for me and I think of lot of folks (despite what George C. Scott said in the movie Patton “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser”), do not like winners or at least winners who win all the time.

Unless it is your team.

I understand that there are a lot of folks who just don’t like Tom Brady.

I am cool with that.

I never liked Roger Staubach or Michael Jordan.

But I also think no one can argue that what Mr. Brady has done as a football player, a limited field I admit, is without comparison.

Mr. Brady has played in more games than most players can imagine playing in.

Mr. Brady has won more games than most players play in.

Mr. Brady has played more games in the playoffs than most players play in the entire careers.

Mr. Brady has won more championships than you would think anyone could even want to win.

And I have to wonder what there is to Mr. Brady that makes this happen.

Believe it not, football is a mental sport.

I remember a night long long long ago when I had gone to local playground with my kids at a place called Briggs Park.

Along with a playground and a pool, Briggs Park also had a quarter mile running track and a football field complete with goalposts.

That night out on the field a semi-semi-semi pro football team was practicing.

They were the Grand Rapids Eagles or something like that.

Coached and quaterbacked by the ever popular Sparky McEwen, this was team of one time high school and college players who were playing for nothing more but a love of the game of football.

They were all out there on their own.

Drove themselves to the practice and to their games.

No locker rooms.

No team trainers or support of that kind.

It was organized football at it’s lowest possible level.

But those guys practiced hard.

I was amazed, stunned just watching a practice.

As practice wound down Sparky brought the team into a huddle.

On a hot summer night surrounded but a bunch of tired sweaty guys, Sparky launched in a Knute Rockne ‘win one for the gipper’ type of football speech.

It was all the tradition ciches.

WHO ARE WE?

WHO IS BETTER THAN WE ARE?

WHO ARE WE?

CAN WE WIN?

WILL WE WIN?

The response of the players was right out of the movies with loud mass barks.

The emotion of the response continued to build and build with each response.

These guys got motivated.

I got motivated.

It made me think.

It made me think, REALLY?

Then it made me think, WOW.

It made me think about motivation.

It made me think about how, even at this level, the players need this motivation.

It made me think about how, even at this level, the players WANTED this motivation.

They bought into it so to speak.

I remember a pre season interview with a Detroit Lions Quarterback who predicted 10 wins in the upcoming season.

I remember thinking what planet did this guy live on?

10 wins?

Then I thought about it?

Would I really want the quarterback of my team to be thinking, ‘gee whiz, we will be lucky to win a game or two this year.’

Of course not.

I wanted my Quarterback thinking we were going to win them all whether that made sense or not.

Another saying of Coach Schembechler was “what the mind can believe, the body can achieve.”

Maybe this is where Mr. Brady fits into the puzzle.

Maybe what makes Mr. Brady so valuable to a team, especially a football team, is the mental edge that with Mr. Brady on the team, the team is going to win.

A team that goes into an athletic contest already thinking they are going to win, not just motivated to think that way, but thinking that way before the game even starts is a team with an advantage.

Mr. Brady doesn’t win games without a team.

Mr. Brady’s records don’t win any games either.

But any team with Mr. Brady on it, a team full of players who HAVE looked at all those records and playing a team who has also looked at all those records has a real definite edge.

Mr. Brady is good.

Mr. Brady also makes the other players on his team better.

And as Coach Schembechler would say, those who remain, will be champions.

2.7.2021 – American Satire

American Satire
American Reality
Where does one stop, start?

In answer to the question, in a recent interview, “Do you consider yourself a satirist,?”, satirist Fran Lebowitz said, “In a way, yes, but, American reality has been so extreme of late that satire is almost impossible. Anything you could possible imagine actually happens. It would stump Jonathan Swift.”

It was Jonathon Swift who wrote, “Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”

I have to admit I am not sure what this all means.

I think it boils down to, you can’t make this stuff up.

How did a national response to a global pandemic become a political statement based on wearing or not wearing a mask?

Ms. Lebowitz also said in this same interview:

“When I was young there was a very strict idea of the boundary between the public and the private life.

So, things that you might do in the privacy of your bedroom, you wouldn’t do on 12th St.

That seems to have disappeared entirely and it is not just the young; it’s true even of people my age, who were brought up in a certain way and then forgot about it.

It is surprising to me just how unconscious people are of themselves in public, considering how much more acceptable it has become to think about yourself all the time”

Is that the answer to the question?

Consider how much more acceptable it has become to think about yourself all the time.

I like Ms. Leibowitz a lot.

Just when you think she has gone off into the happy world of hyperbole and complains that New York City spent $40 million dollars researching how to and then putting lawn chairs in Times Square, you find out she was telling the truth.

When I consider how much more acceptable it has become to think about yourself all the time, I am reminded of an essay on the future by one of my favorite writers, Michigan’s Own, Bruce Catton.

Mr. Catton wrote, “The dismaying world we confront was given its vast intricacy and its perilous speed by human beings. The one basic resource we have always had to rely on is the innate intelligence, energy and good will of the human race. It is facing an enormous challenge, but then it always has; and it meets each one only to confront another. If now we give way to the gloom of the apostles of catastrophe we are of course in the deepest sort of trouble. The old reliance is at our service. It can bear us up if we put out full weight on it.”

This is where that comment of Ms. Leibowtiz comes in to play.

American reality has been so extreme of late that satire is almost impossible.

Anything you could possible imagine actually happens.

If we have to rely on the innate intelligence, energy and good will of the human race while at the sane time we consider how much more acceptable it has become to think about yourself all the time I think we are of course in the deepest sort of trouble.

Not something I would dare put my weight on at this time.

2.6.2021- week ends in weekends

week ends in weekends
curtain falls over weekdays
clock stops two days off

Henry Ford did not invent the automobile.

Indeed (love saying that in this context – I will say it again) Indeed, such an authority as the United States Library of Congress says “This question [who invented the automobile] does not have a straightforward answer. The history of the automobile is very rich and dates back to the 15th century when Leonardo da Vinci was creating designs and models for transport vehicles.”

The the LOC more or less credits Karl Benz with inventing the gasoline powered combustible engine self powered vehicle that he named after his daughter, Mercedes.

That being said, who can forget the tableau of young Henry Ford working on his first cylinder in the kitchen of his Dearborn, Michigan home.

Baby Edsel in his cradle in the corner.

Wife Clara holding a wire next to a battery.

And Henry with a paper funnel feeding a drop of gasoline into his homemade cylinder with a single piston ring loaded into it.

Henry squeezes the eyedropper.

The gasoline drops.

Henry yells NOW and Clara touches the wire to the battery.

And BANG, the piston is shot out of the cylinder across the kitchen.

Really.

Who can forget that?

Henry Ford did not invent the assembly line.

Eli Whitney of cotton gin fame is given credit for that.

But you have to give Ford credit from creating the worlds greatest version of the vertically AND horizontally integrated corporation based on the assembly line where sand, iron ore and raw rubber came into one end of the Rouge River Plant in Dearborn Michigan and Model T Ford cars came out the other end.

Henry Ford in 1914 DID create the $5 day.

In an era where car companies were raiding each others work force for skilled workers, Ford cleared the table by doubling wages.

This move created the middle class and a market for his cars.

This move created Detroit that at one time would be the 5th largest city in America with a population over 2 million.

This move created the The Southern Diaspora, the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners to the north.

Then in 1926, Henry Ford created the weekend.

According to Wikipedia, “In 1926, Henry Ford standardized on a five-day workweek, instead of the prevalent six days, without reducing employees’ pay.”

Understand this was not just in his factories but in the Ford offices as well.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, weekend, as the period from Saturday to Monday during which business is suspended and shops are closed first appeared in print in the London Times in 1913 (Times 13 Sept. 17/3) with the line, “The Money Market was steady with a fair demand for advances over the week-end at about previous rates.”

In the show, Downton Abby, the Dowager Countess, (ain’t that a title to hope for) hear’s the term used and questions outloud, “Week … End?”

I love Downton Abby and all that I learned about the British Aristocracy.

It dovetails so nice with what I learned watching the movie Gosford Park and reading the book, Snobs.

In fact all the inside looks of those hoity toity Brits that you get from these sources paint a pretty standard picture.

Then I realize that Julian Fellowes wrote all of the them.

As an aside, Snobs is worth the weekend fun read if just for a look at what Downtown Abby might be like today.

So why all this on weekends?

My first job was in retail in a mall bookstore.

I stayed with that bookstore for years.

I loved that bookstore but working retail meant working weekends.

From the bookstore I moved over to working for the library.

And that meant working weekends.

Then I got a job with a publisher running their corporate library and fact checking.

I was in a 9 to 5 job with the publisher – (notice a theme here? – bookstore – library – publisher?) and for the first time in my life in years I had a weekend.

The the publisher asked me to take over, design and manage their corporate website.

Websites run 24x7x365 or in other words, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

While I technically did not ‘WORK’ on weekends, if there were website issues I was expected to take care of them.

Oh forget that, I wanted to take care of them.

I adopted the Vidal Sassoon motto of ‘If You don’t look good, We don’t look good.” and applied to myself and the website I was responsible for.

And there went my weekend.

Then I started on a 20 year career of Online News.

As I was fond of saying, the urgency of news with the immediacy of web.

Combine that with my ‘Dutch Work Ethic’.

My wife will tell you that from the day I started in News, I worked 24x7x365 even if was vacation.

To make matters worse, in the early part of my career I worked at one TV News Station and worried about one website.

Then I was bumped up to the corporate level and worried about 60 TV stations on 4 networks in 4 different time zones.

Like the man said in Chariots of Fire, “But a short sprint is run on nerves. It’s tailor-made for neurotics.”

Then overnight it changed.

I am still working in the online but for a site that doesn’t change on a whim of the weather or a tweet.

The system the website lives on is as reliable as any system you can ask for.

And when my Boss says have a good weekend on Friday night, he does not expect to talk to me until Monday morning.

It is an adjustment.

It is wonderful but still feels strange.

I am still getting used to it.

I am reminded on the scene in the movie Cool Hand Luke.

Luke encourages all the members of the road gang to work harder, work faster and use up on the materials on hand for road building.

Luke gets the crew to finish up all the available work before half the work day is done.

“What do we do now?’ they ask Luke.

Luke smiles and looks at the crew.

“Nuthin!”

2.5.2021 – sunny sunshine sounds

wind, waves, sun on water
bright flashing specks of sunshine
wind plays sun on water

It is a show that never ends

It is a show that plays for free.

The wind.

The waves.

The sun on the water.

The sparkles and flashing specks.

One giant disco ball.

The wind at play with the sun on the water.

Part of a series based on an afternoon spent at the beach on Hilton Head Island.

I wanted to see if I would be ‘inspired’ by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Some turned out okay.

Some were too forced.

Some were just bad.

Some did involve some or all of those feelings.

As far as it goes, I guess I was inspired by by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Click here for more Haiku in the BEACH category —

2.4.2021 – her ways are ways of

her ways are ways of
pleasantness, and all her paths,
silently, are peace

I still start my day with the newspapers.

And what a depressing way to start your day.

I understand most folks when they get older feel this way about the current age.

I ask, was it like this when I was a kid?

My brother Paul will recount that when he was in college the world was also going to pieces, demonstrations had taken over college campuses and the National Guard had killed 4 students and the hippie culture was destroying the America that the world had come to know.

In his book, the Winds of War, Herman Wouk comments on the world through the voice of his center character, Victor Henry.

Mr. Wouk talks through Captain Henry and says, “Our moral climate does seem to be going to hell in a handbasket – I am writing in 1970, the “counterculture” era – but my superiors were making that complaint in the 1920s, the “flaming youth” era, which then more less included me.“

Maybe so.

Maybe this happens to everyone.

Doesn’t make it less of a shock.

While I dislike bringing up Bill Cosby, I think of his story called the Chickenheart that tells how scared he could make himself listening to horror theater radio.

Cosby’s story of the Chickenheart depicts himself in real terror due to the radio program.

Then Cosby’s Dad yells, TURN IT OFF STUPID!.

If I stop reading the newspapers and stop watching the news on TV, will it all stop?

Will what I don’t know not bother me?

Can I really believe what I see, hear and read?

Truly the TV News has got to the point that you can write the stories before you watch them just by know what channel you have on.

Pondering such I walked in the other room to go to work and turned on my computers.

One the first things to do is set up the background music for the day and click on Classic FM from London.

I like this online station for lots of reasons and that they are 5 hours ahead (GMT) lets me know someone somewhere in the world has made it through the next 5 hours.

Yes that is dumb but it is useful in its dumbness.

Today when the station come online, Jupiter by Gustave Holst was playing.

You may not know the tune off hand but I would bet you would recognize it if you heard it.

The music was set to the hymn, I Vow to Thee, My Country, made famous by Diana Spencer as it was included as one of her favorites at both her wedding and her funeral.

And there’s another country, I’ve heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

Wikipedia states that “The origin of the hymn’s text is a poem by diplomat Sir Cecil Spring Rice, written in 1908 or 1912, entitled “Urbs Dei” (“The City of God”) or “The Two Fatherlands”. The poem described how a Christian owes his loyalties to both his homeland and the heavenly kingdom.”

The last person I expected to show up was Cecil Spring Rice.

‘Springy’ was a great friend of Theodore Roosevelt and was the Best Man at TR’s second wedding.

Everyone knows that TR’s first wife Alice, and the mother of THE Alice Roosevelt (Longworth … if you can’t say something nice about someone … come sit be me), died after giving birth.

But I digress.

The wikipedia line, “The poem described how a Christian owes his loyalties to both his homeland and the heavenly kingdom.”

Let’s repeat that, “A Christian owes his loyalties to both his homeland and the heavenly kingdom.”

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Somehow I wish I had let this one alone and just enjoyed the music.

Seems like this morning I am back where I started.

The thought of taking the path of no news beckons.