10.26.2021 – is temporary

is temporary
continued postponement still
necessary … what?

I admit it.

My faith in the Government of the United States has been, well, shaken, stirred, somewhat less that it might have been?

Yes yes yes, I told all the jokes.

Quoted Ronald Reagan, “The scariest words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the Government and I am hear to help.'”

Mark Twain’s, “Suppose I was insane and suppose I ran for Congress. But, wait, I repeat myself.”

And not to forget Mr. Jefferson’s, “The Government that governs least, governs best.”

STILL.

I like my country.

I like my government.

All its faults, it is what it is.

But of late I worry about it.

It is just not the same.

Then along comes a document and some of that old buddy-buddy goofy gotcha feeling was little bit restored.

Did you see it?

It was a document released by the White House as an official “Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies” dated October 22, 2021.

In part it stated:

Temporary continued postponement is necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure.

This is such a wonderful collection of words of multi syllables hammered together in such a wonderful way that it, in part, restored my faith in my government to respond like a government.

It could have been said by Humphrey Appleby.

Sir Humphrey Appleby:
I foresee all sorts of of unforeseen problems.

Jim Hacker:
Such as?

Sir Humphrey Appleby:
If I could foresee them, they wouldn’t be unforeseen.

My old Government!

It can still sling out the verbiage with the best of them.

Temporary continued postponement is necessary.

Just say that out loud.

It’s … it’s … Shakespearean!

Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the harm to military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations.

I am not talking about names or personalities here, but the monolithic double speak that is written by the body of government, the all inclusive, corporate beast that mandates or tries to mandate things like Fair Labor, Un-American Activities, Interstate Commerce and the Services of Internal Revenue through the use of the English language.

I don’t know.

Harm that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure.

See that all inclusive, military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations!

The use of OR here is magnificent.

Somehow restores my faith in Government you know?

Lets not leave out what the memorandum is about.

The full title is, in all its’ governmentalease glory, “Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on the Temporary Certification Regarding Disclosure of Information in Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated back in 1963.

More than 60 years ago.

Lee Harvey Oswald was one of the youngest people in the story,

Oswald would be 84.

Anyone in else involved the conspiracy, planning and or coverup is most likely … dead.

Yet our Government is telling us that they HAVE documents about the conspiracy, planning and or coverup, that if released would cause identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure.

The mind boggles.

Did LBJ do it?

Did Lady Bird do it?

Are we at a point that I have to explain who LBJ and Lady Bird were?

Are they now as obscure as Babushka Lady, Umbrella Man and the Three Tramps?

I have to interject, those are all real personages in the JFK assassination story.

Good ahead and do the Google if you have to.

But come on.

Identifiable harm of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest?

Oh I don’t know.

Somehow it was reassuring that the government had not lost its touch.

As Mr. Twain writes in The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg, “There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory.”

I won’t hold my breath but maybe the next time we can get, permanent temporary continued postponement.

10.25.2021 – things in our lifetime

things in our lifetime
almost everything has not
been invented yet

Tom Morey has died.

Mr. Morey was 86.

In my collection of Names What You Should Know, Tom Morey is listed under M for Morey and F for fun.

Is his obituary in the Guardian, it says, “The most significant person to get people in the water.“

Tom Morey invented the boogie board.

Tom Morey invented the boogie board back in 1971.

Mr. Morey was a surfer who thought maybe surfing could be brought more into the world of the casual beach goer.

Sol Morey, Tom Morey’s oldest son is quoted as saying, “There’s this dynamic of toughness involved with surfing, but now you had grandads, kids, who could skim it.

They could stand up on it.

It was soft.

When you are able to go into the ocean and come out of it unscathed, unhurt, that really does something to you.

The ocean is something to be feared, but the Boogie Board took some of that fear out.“

I live on the ocean now.

I understand it is something to be respected and feared and I respect and, well, kind of fear the ocean.

I swim so far out that my wife calls me ‘first course’ as the sharks will get me first.

I love the water.

I love to see people in the water.

That some one had to invent the boogie board, I see so many of them on the beach, never occured to me in my brain.

I would have thought that, had I thought that, that they had been invented by a Walmart Marketing team tasked with ‘What can we create that everyone will buy when on vacation with a price coming in around $20.”

To learn that they had been ‘invented’ was kind of cool.

To learn that they had been invented with the goal to get more people in the water and to take some of the fear of the water out of the equation was kind of freaking cool.

I have to look around and look at all sorts of every day things for the beach as well as the home and every day life and think who came up with that?

Then to think ahead.

What is coming next?

Putting Tom Morey into the Google for more information I came across another obit.

Another one I found in the University of Southern California (the west coast USC, the Unbelievable Spoiled Children one) Alumni News, that quoted Mr. Morey as saying, “Almost everything has not been invented yet.“

Almost everything has not been invented yet.

As I seem to read everything I can lay my hands, I say that certain phrases and thoughts and combinations of words catch my eye and stop me for a second on that spot of text.

I have to say that, in my humble opinion, that phrase, almost everything has not been invented yet, is really kind of freaking pretty cool.

And when you add to the mix in your brain, that it was said by a guy who invented something with the purpose of making the ocean MORE fun, I again think, what is coming next.

I can look ahead.

It is not ALL bad.

Not all despair.

Not all covid.

Not all poltics.

There are boogie boards out there in all walks of life that are just waiting to be invented.

Maybe I’ll spray paint it on my wall.

Almost everything has not been invented yet.

I feel that I could be the next great inspirational speaker and deliver lectures at $100 a ticket and just tell the story of Mr. Morey and the boogie board.

I could wear shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and carry a boogie board on stage.

I would say, with dramatic pauses, “Almost everything … has NOT … been invented yet.”

I’d make millions.

Maybe I’ll come up with next boogie board.

Who knows who will?

I do know this.

Next time I am at the beach, I am bringing a couple of flowers or something and I am tossing them into the ocean.

And I am going to say thank you to Tom Morey.

10.24.21 – line of horizon

line of horizon
disappears into the sky
clouds waves reflections

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 —

10.23.2021 – more blues in blue sky

more blues in blue sky
than can ever be counted
blue bluer bluest

Pantone and the Pantone Color Matching System.

I first heard of it back in 1995 when I was working on the first corporate website I ever launched.

It was the first website for the corporation.

It was a lot of firsts and we were making up the book of rules as we went along.

It was … GREAT!

No rules!

No rules and me?

Bad idea.

Luckily for me and maybe the world, I did come up with one rule for myself that I have held to since this time.

That rule is, “No Horsing Around on the Website.”

Yes, I stole this rule from Dr. Strangelove when Major T. J. “King” Kong, played by Slim Pickins, says, “How many times do I have to tell you boys, I don’t want no horsing around on the airplane.”

It’s one of the few rules I have ever held to and it has saved my career more than once.

Anyway, at that time, the Corporate Branding Team came to meet with me about using the correct logos and fonts and colors on this Web Site.

As for logos, I said, get me a graphic in that new JPEG format and make sure the file is less than 20k and make sure the file extension is jpg as the internet cannot handle a 4 letter file.

For the fonts, I had Arial, Helvetica and Times New Roman.

For the color palette, I had 16 colors and that included black AND white.

The Art Department had the first versions of Adobe and it had 256 colors.

256 colors developed by the Pantone Color Matching System.

According to Pantone, it was all the colors that the human eye could decern.

I used to have one of those early Pantone Color Card Sets which which a set of cards attached at the top left corner of all 256 colors so you could fan out the colors and see how they looked much like the paint color cards you can get a Lowes.

It was years before monitors developed to the point that these colors could be mechanically visually reproduced.

Today the Pantone Color Matching System now lists 2161 colors.

Of those 2161 colors there are some 238 versions of blue.

These colors were identified, developed or created through years of lab work and research.

Pantone admits that some of the differences MAY NOT BE visible to human eye.

I want to ask WHY but I have been in too many meetings where someone has looked at logo or webpage and said, “I don’t know, maybe if it was just a shade more ultramarine … know what I mean?”

I say, “You Bet” and change the color from Denim Blue to Ocean Blue and the world goes on.

Which brings me to that color, Ocean Blue.

Pantone 300.

In hexidecimal, #006ec7.

A medium dark shade of cyan-blue.

In the RGB color model, #006ec7 is comprised of 0% red, 43.14% green and 78.04% blue.

In the HSL color space, #006ec7 has a hue of 207° (degrees), 100% saturation and 39% lightness.

This color has an approximate wavelength of 475.22 nm.

This color is used in the Groningen flag and Pitcairn Islands flag.

That last little factoid cracked me up.

I am one of those genetic freaks with blue eyes.

As the blue eye gene is recessive it seems that over time, no one should have blue eyes.

At this point in time, only 8% of the worlds peoples have blue eyes.

To perpetuate blue eyes you need a tight knit community that doesn’t really like anyone else and pretty much stays grumpy and together by themselves.

You know.

Like Dutch people.

Like the people from Groningen, a province of the Netherlands.

Where my ancestors came from.

Anyway, at the beach, looking out at the water.

Looking out at the sky.

I can see Ocean Blue, Pantone 300 (#006ec7).

I can see all 238 versions of Pantone Blues.

I’ll bet I can see more than 238 versions of blue.

Much like the old joke, What was the largest island in the world before Greenland was discovered? – the answer is Greenland – just because it wasn’t discovered doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.

All these colors were there before Pantone.

All these colors existed before they were registered by Pantone.

That Pantone HAS registered these colors and prevents some users from using them reminds me of the story of Winston Churchill and Charlie Chaplin.

Mr. Churchill asked Mr. Chaplin if he was planning any new roles to play.

Mr. Chapin said, “Yes, Jesus Christ.”

“Have you cleared the rights?”, asked Mr. Churchill.

Color.

Colors.

Talk to me about your fall colors.

Tell me about your reds and golds and yellows.

I’ll take my blues.

A color.

A music.

A feeling.

These things happen daily, but by accident?

Just happy to be here to watch the show.

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 —

10.22.2021 – vulnerable to

vulnerable to
commonsensical scorn of
those who seek little

I like to quote whoever first said it that common sense is pretty uncommon.

I like to think there is such a thing as common sense.

I like to think that common sense has a common denominator.

I like to think that common sense means the same thing to all people.

I have to realize a new and a new over and over again, that what is common sense to me may be alien political dogma to another.

I don’t know when I first read the above Charlie Brown comic strip.

I do know I thought it was really funny.

After I read this I loved being inside when it rained and yelling to the world at large, “See? See? See?”

Not saying that it was thought that I had little common sense or not enough sense to come in out of the rain.

Never once did I have anyone tell me that, “It’s not raining” or “That’s not rain” or “that rain is fake.”

There were some things that were accepted.

Today?

Today everything is on the table.

Today everything is open for discussion.

Today everything is … well … you get the picture.

Everything includes common sense.

Reading from the excerpt, “leave ourselves more than usually vulnerable to the commonsensical scorn of those who seek little.”

Mr. de Botton is writing about, of all things, a light switch on the wall.

Its a string of words that describe the last decade better than book I have come across.

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

We will, of course, run a risk if we spend extended periods analysing the meanings that emanate from practical objects. To be preoccupied with deciphering the message encoded in a light switch or a tap is to leave ourselves more than usually vulnerable to the commonsensical scorn of those who seek little from such fittings beyond a means of illuminating their bedroom or rinsing their teeth.

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.