6.20.2021 – He sees farthest, he

He sees farthest, he
is key, he supplies, he checks
he has the most faith

For Father’s Day, 2021

Adapted from Wlat Whitman’s in “By Blue Ontario’s Shore” final 1867 version.

The passage in question actually us referring to poets but I repurposed the meaning for Dads.

bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither
more nor less,
He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
He is the equalizer of his age and land,
He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,
In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty,
building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts,
commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health,
immortality, government …
He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling round a
helpless thing,
As he sees the farthest he has the most faith …
He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and
women as dreams or dots.

6.19.2021 – all things considered

all things considered
beach, sun, wind, waves, sand, would folks
live anywhere else

Part of a series based on afternoons 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 from the BEACH

6.18.2021 – defy ignorance

defy ignorance
of vested prejudices
vested interests

17 syllables, 7 words and more situational application than you can shake a stick at, if that’s your idea of a good time.

If I started listing the different situations in the current news cycle that these 7 words could be applied, the list would soon be hiring than the Empire State Building and its 102 floors.

I adapted today’s haiku from a “Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West” written by Wallace Stegner and published in 1954.

Major John Wesley Powell was the one armed explorer of Wonderful World of Disney fame who rafted down the Colorado River in 1869 and located the Grand Canyon and invented a tourist sport at the same time.

Major Powell also served as the second Director of the United States Geological Survey, a post he held from 1881–1894.

When Mr. Stegner wrote about Major Powell, Stegner was able to comment about the problem of living out west.

Living out in the American West where there was LOTS of SUNSHINE, LOTS of WILD FIRES and VERY LITTLE WATER.

Mr. Stegner was able to comment about as Major Powell noticed that there would be issues.

Major Powell published in 1878 a government paper titled: Report on the Lands of the Arid Regions of the United States.

According to one account, Major Powell, “. . . unflinchingly described the scarcity of water, and summarized that much of the American south-west, if it must be settled, should be settled lightly and modestly. Overpopulate it, and it will be unforgiving.”

According to Mr. Stegner, “As a government scientist, Major Powell was now defying ignorance. He was taking on vested interests and the vested prejudices by which they maintained themselves.”

As one account puts it, Major Powell was a sage.

And what does sage mean?

According to the online Merriam-Webster it means:

Wise through reflection and experience.

Proceeding from or characterized by wisdom, prudence, and good judgment.

One (such as a profound philosopher) distinguished for wisdom.

A mature or venerable person of sound judgment.

So what happened to Major Powell and his report?

No one listened to him.

6.17.2021 – its easy to see

its easy to see
beginnings of things, harder
to see how they end

Adapted from the essay, “Goodbye To All That” by Joan Didion as it appeared in her book, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Farrar, Straus and Giroux – 1968, New York) and the passage in that essay that reads:

It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was. When I first saw New York I was twenty, and it was summertime, and I got off a DC-7 at the old Idlewild temporary terminal in a new dress which had seemed very smart in Sacramento but seemed less smart already, even in the old Idlewild temporary terminal, and the warm air smelled of mildew and some instinct, programmed by all the movies I had ever seen and all the songs I had ever heard sung and all the stories I had ever read about New York, informed me that it would never be quite the same again. In fact it never was. Sometime later there was a song on all the jukeboxes on the upper East Side that went “but where is the schoolgirl who used to be me,” and if it was late enough at night I used to wonder that. I know now that almost everyone wonders something like that, sooner or later and no matter what he or she is doing, but one of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.

6.16.2021 – first and foremost my

first and foremost my
occupation is reader
not a thing wrong there

I was reading an interview with Fran Lebowitz and I loved when she stated that her occupation was ‘reader.’

Then later in the day I went back and looked for the quote and it is driving me nutz as I while I can find the article I was reading, I cannot find the quote.

What is odd is that the first line and third lines are there.

But not the one where she says her occupation is reader.

It bugs me that I cannot find it.

Because I love that line.

Who says your occupation has to provide money?

I have an occupation.

I am a reader.

I read.

I am occupied with my reading or I am when I not occupied with being at the beach.

I design websites for money to pay for room and board and provide for my family.

As for my occupation, I am occupied with reading.

First and foremost!

And there is not a thing wrong with that.

I can’t wait for the next time I have to fill out paperwork for anything.

I had to change the last line around a little.

Not a thing wrong there.

In the article, Ms. Lebowitz had just commented, “I’m just finishing Cynthia Ozick’s new book (“Antiquities”). She’s a fantastic writer. This is a very short novel, especially in these days when novels tend to be 7,000 pages long.”

To which the author replied, “I’m glad you picked fiction, because I find as I get older, many of my peers say they can’t focus on fiction.”

Ms. Lebowitz replied as only she can, “There is something wrong with them.”

Kinda love that a lot.

Lesson today?

If your peers say they can’t focus on fiction, there is something wrong with THEM.

6.15.2021 – another story,

part our history
be re-created over
and over again

Based on a passage from My Life Through Food, (Gallery Books, New York, 2021).

The passage reads:

Losing a beloved family heirloom is a very real personal loss; they’re things that cannot ever be replaced or re-created.

But perhaps the most precious heirlooms are family recipes.

Like a physical heirloom, they remind us from whom and where we came and give others, in a bite, the story of another people from another place and another time.

Yet unlike a lost physical heirloom, recipes are a part of our history that can be re-created over and over again.

The only way they can be lost is if we choose to lose them.

For more on this book, please see the post 11.8.2021 – our history’s parts.

Please note, this post was NOT created on the date in the title.

6.14.2021 – shifting the focus

shifting the focus
of discussion to become
able handle talk

Adapted from the book, The Architecture of Happiness (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

The advantage of shifting the focus of discussion away from the strictly visual towards the values promoted by buildings is that we become able to handle talk about the appearance of works of architecture rather as we do wider debates about people, ideas and political agendas.

According the The New York Review of Books, this is “A perceptive, thoughtful, original, and richly illustrated exercise in the dramatic personification of buildings of all sorts.”

What I find irrestible in reading Mr. de Botton is his use of language.

I get the feeling that if you made a spread sheet of all the words, adverbs and adjectives used by Mr. de Botton, you just might find that he used each word just once.

Neat trick in writing a book.

If I knew how to do that, I would.

6.13.2021 – how adjudicate

no easier to
resolve, but then no harder
what is beautiful

Adapted from the book, The Architecture of Happiness (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

Arguments about what is beautiful emerge as no easier to resolve, but then again no harder, than disputes about what is wise or right. We can learn to defend or attack a concept of beauty in the same way we might defend or attack a legal position or an ethical stance. We can understand, and publically explain, why we believe a building to be desirable or offensive on the basis of the things it talks to us about.

According the The New York Review of Books, this is “A perceptive, thoughtful, original, and richly illustrated exercise in the dramatic personification of buildings of all sorts.”

What I find irrestible in reading Mr. de Botton is his use of language.

I get the feeling that if you made a spread sheet of all the words, adverbs and adjectives used by Mr. de Botton, you just might find that he used each word just once.

Neat trick in writing a book.

If I knew how to do that, I would.

6.12.2021 – became poetry

became poetry
highest communication
untranslatable

Adapted from an essay with these lines.

Do you remember the best kiss of your life?

I imagine that you do.

It’s an evocative question?

The essay ends with this line.

Kissing at its best becomes a fluency, a poetry; the highest form of communication, a physical language.

The best kiss of my life?

I don’t even want to share it.

It was a conversation, almost.

And, in this instance, untranslatable.

Almost poetry on its own.

An Ode to the End of Covid maybe.

(the essay is I don’t know whose idea it was to smoosh our faces together, but I could kiss them by Hannah Jane Parkinson, under the heading, The Joy of Small Things.)

6.11.2021 – as it gave great hope

as it gave great hope
return to ease of normal life
healing to have this

I was struck by the last paragraph of the this story this morning in I left New York for a 4-night trip to Savannah, Georgia by Katie Nave about her first trip outside of New York City and the lockdown rules there.

The paragraph reads:

“The mental health benefits of this trip were much greater than any vacation I’ve ever taken, as it gave me great hope that, at some point, we’ll fully return to the ease of normal life. It was healing to have this experience with the person that I love and, thanks to science, I’d do it all again.“

I grew up in West Michigan and late in life my job moved me to Atlanta.

While there, my wife and I discovered the city of Savannah and the “low country” or “Gullah-Geechee Corridor” that runs along the east coast from North Carolina to Florida.

Much to my surprise after another job change and we find ourselves living here.

There is much to enjoy and we enjoy it very much.

I now wear a Savannah Banana’s Baseball cap.

It was fun to come across this article about our adopted location.

It was fun to read about things we are accustomed to through the words of someone who was seeing these things for the first time.

But it was awful, truly awful to read and think about the awful impact of this awful virus.

People like to use the term, Game Changer.

Covid is the GAME CHANGER of this age.

Will its impact ever be understood?

Will it impact ever be overcome?

I love that last line.

” … great hope that, at some point, we’ll fully return to the ease of normal life. “

Great hope.

Return to ease of normal life.

It is healing to have this.

The start of the healing.

Come visit Savannah.