it’s an urge to say I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me
Adapted from the book, The Art of Travel (2002, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:
A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.’
But beauty is fugitive, being frequently found in places to which we may never return or else resulting from rare conjunctions of season, light and weather.
How then to possess it, how to hold on to the floating train, the halvalike bricks or the English valley?
The camera provides one option. Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.
According to the website, GOOD READS, Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why.
As I said in the section on Architecture , what I find irresistible 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.
testing that nation so conceived dedicated how long can endure?
Mr. Thomas Jefferson, explaining the reasoning behind the Declaration of Independence, wrote that all men are created equal.
I feel that Mr. Jefferson really meant what he said.
But I also feel that Mr. Jefferson accepted that all men are created equal in the abstract, he could not figure a way of how it might be achieved in reality.
Mr. Jefferson saw that the wieght of human history and the current lifestyle of most Americans was proving his statement that all men are created equal to be, if not wrong, at least wistful thinking.
A fire bell in the night, Mr. Jefferson called it.
When the bell rang and the United States was called on for an answer, their answer was to fight the Civil War.
Review the history of that war and you can understand why Mr. Jefferson was reluctant to even look for an answer of how to achieve a country where all men are created equal.
It was left to Abraham Lincoln to try and explain why the Civil War was being fought.
It was 158 years ago today that Mr. Lincoln, in a short, short, short 272 word speech explained, “. . . our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.“
Mr. Lincoln was speaking at the dedication ceremony of a vast cemetery on the battlefield of Gettysburg.
Mr. Lincoln recognized that great as the battle, the struggle that the country was in at that moment, that there was more to do.
Somehow back in 1863, Mr. Lincoln spoke to us.
Mr. Lincoln said, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work.“
The unfinished work.
This country is a work in progress.
No kidding.
The testing, every day, the testing goes on.
Here is the full text, all 272 words of Mr. Lincoln’s Remarks at Gettysburg.
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
The obit went on to state, “The words “pub” and “landlord” scarcely do justice to the Albion or to Mike. A romantic and a perfectionist, he devoted much of his life to maintaining the comfort, atmosphere and appearance of a traditional English public house. The Albion was a magnet for those who believed that a drinking establishment should be a retreat from the bustle and frenzy of the outside world, where real ale and good food should be enjoyed in a relaxed and intimate atmosphere.”
Not a bad note to go out on, is it?
When I thought about the possibility of one day having an obit, not saying I discounted the possibility of dying, just the possibility of someone writing and PAYING for an obit, I thought a worthwhile accolade would be, “Baked good bread.”
A lot of meaning could be contained in those short words.
Says a lot about the type of person you are today.
Of late, I have cut a lot of breads out of my diet so not sure what to make of that does to the plan.
Mr. Mercer’s obit also contained this line.
Its decor proclaimed Mike’s old-fashioned and benign patriotism, but the atmosphere of the place was politically ecumenical.
Old-fashioned and benign patriotism.
Politically ecumenical.
I know the as I get older, grass is always greener 10 or 20 years ago.
But when did we all get so mean?
The irreverence combined with flippancy and no real substance for the care of people.
To paraphrase slightly what CS Lewis wrote in the Problem with Pain of the people who are confident to the very end that they alone have found the answer to the riddle of life, that God and man are fools whom they have gotten the better of, that their way of life is utterly successful, satisfactory, unassailable.
Mr. Lewis wrote that back in 1940.
Maybe we were all just as mean back then as well.
But at least back then, those folks were all stuck on AM Talk Radio and not on social media.
found in rare places beauty being fugitive how to possess it
I feel lucky.
Know what I mean?
I feel lucky.
I have lived in three places in my life.
For the first 50 years of my life I lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
On the North End of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I used to say I lived 1 mile from the house where I was born.
Well I wasn’t born there but where I lived, after coming home from Butterworth Hospital.
Come to think of it, Butterworth Hospital probably wasn’t much more than a mile away either.
Growing up in Grand Rapids and going to an elementary school where 90% of the kids came from Grand Rapids, I remember one of my teachers going around the room and asking each kid which hospital they were born at.
There were three possbilitlies.
Butterworth was the most mentioned and the coolest as it made you think that was where the pancake syrup came from.
Then Blodgett.
But Blodgett was such an odd sounding name that we all decided that had you been born at BLODDDDD-ghet you yourself were kind of odd.
And then there were the few Catholic kids who were born at St. Mary’s.
There were so few Catholic kids at my school as most Catholic kids in the neighborhood went to Blessed Sacrament.
BUT they didn’t go to Blessed Sacrament until 2nd grade.
So these kids were part of our class for two years and then mysteriously disappeared from school.
They disappeared from school but not from the neighborhood.
We would still see these kids in the park and such.
And the word would spread, ‘They go to Blessed Sacrament.’
As my only other exposure to Catholic churches and schools at that time was St. Mary’s Hospital, I figured ‘going to Blessed Sacrament’ meant they got sick.
It was weird too because in the morning after school started we could look out the windows at the Blessed Sacrament bus as it stopped at the corner and we would see these kids line up and get on the bus and go off to therapy I guessed.
That bus stop was at a corner right next to our school, Crestview Elementary.
The Blessed Sacrament bus in the morning came by that corner, as I mentioned, after school had started.
The Blessed Sacrament bus in the afternoon came by about 10 minutes after our school got it.
Over the years it had become part of social schedule of Crestview Elementary to gather at the corner and when the Blessed Sacrament Bus stopped at the corner, exchange greetings with those kids on the bus.
Language used in these greetings was most unusal.
It would have been okay had you been deaf as both groups of students also used sign language to express themselves.
That it was the B.S. bus was just a gift of the Gods.
In the short story, I Went to Sullivant, James Thurber writes, “Now and again virtually the whole school turned out to fight the Catholic boys of the Holy Cross Academy in Fifth Street near Town, for no reason at all–in winter with snowballs and ice balls, in other seasons with fists, brickbats, and clubs.“
I knew just what that was like.
This exchange lasted as long as the bus was at the corner and then satisfied that honor had been upheld, everyone went home.
When I got to sixth grade and was a member of the school safety squad, that was my corner.
Most of the time, being so close to the school, the kids who had to cross came and went quickly and I could take off.
But every once in awhile I stuck around … just to observe don’t you know.
That year, the Crestview Greeters must have got louder or more persistent or something because neighbors complained to school.
I never figured out how it came about but the Principal, Mr. Domagolski, arranged with Blessed Sacrament to have his wife ride along on the B.S. Bus.
Mrs. Domagolski road the bus and reported two things to Mr. Domagolski.
The first thing she said was she had NEVER heard such language.
Mrs. D needed to hang out on our playground a little more often.
The 2nd thing she said was, “AND THAT SAFETY JUST STOOD THERE AND DIDN’T DO A THING.”
I know this because both Mr. Vanderwheel, the teacher/coordinator of the school safety squad and I got called in the Principals office together.
When you think about it, this was again irony on the greek tragic play level.
It was in Mr. Vanderwheel’s class that I was awarded around 364 demerits.
And now both of us were in the Principal’s office.
Mr. D repeated the line, “the safety didn’t do anything” and glared at me.
I can’t remember what I said or if I melted into the floor.
This was big time crime.
And I was in for it.
I think I did ask what could I have done?
And what was I supposed to do?
I was about 5 feet tall and weighed about 47 pounds.
Any 4th grader could have beat me up and most of the mean 4th graders already had.
Really?
I was supposed to stop this crowd and make them shut up?
And besides that, how was this NEW to anybody?
It had been going on for as long as I could remember.
Mr. D stared at me then looked at Mr. Vanderwheel and back at me and said slowly, one word at a time, “YOU ARE OFF THE SAFETY SQUAD.”
In my mind I remember that he walked over and unhooked my orange cross belt and let fall to floor but that may not have happened but it felt like it.
You remember the TV show, BRANDED, where the show’s opening depicts Chuck Conners getting drummed out of the Army and and his sword taken away and broken over someone’s knee?
That’s what it felt like.
And we left.
Mr. Vanderwheel kinda sorta said he was sorry but there was nothing he could do.
But he did do something.
He let me stay on the squad a substitute.
Which was kind of funny as a safety had a corner every other week.
As a sub, I was getting calls almost everyday.
I never ever got that corner by school again.
I am pretty sure that once or twice Mr. D say me on a corner with my belt.
It seems to me like I waved.
But it was never mentioned again.
ANYWAY, as I was saying, I lived a mile from the house where I was born and a mile from the cemetery where I would be buried.
That was Fair Plains Cemetery, a City Of Grand Rapids Public Cemetery where my Father and Grand Father was buried.
My Dad said so many people from the North End in general and our Church, Berean Baptist, in particular, were buried at Fairplains that Resurrection Day was going to be like a Sunday School picnic.
From where we lived at the time, a small triangle connected my house, my mom’s house and the cemetery and that was my world.
Once when I was working at WZZM13 in Grand Rapids, there was a general conversation in the newsroom about travel and traveling.
General Conversation in the newsroom was one of the best things about working at WZZM13.
Here was this great big room, crammed (pre-covid) with desks, TV’s on everywhere, radios and cop scanners blaring and everyone would be engaged in a general free for all conversation on anything but the news.
Never knew what we would be talking about and what might be said, but everyone contributed.
I remember once to make a point, I raised my voice in song and sang the ‘WHERE OH WHERE ARE YOU TONIGHT’ song from HEE HAW.
I got to the second WHERE and the entire newsroom or at least all those who knew the song, joined in.
The best part was the look on the face of the people who didn’t know what was coming and when we all hit the “THHHHHHPTTTT You Were Gone” people screamed.
So into this conservation on travel, I interjected my “I live a mile from where I was born and I mile from where I am going to be buried” and Jenn, the noon show anchor, tears up and says, “That is so depresssssssssssssssssssssssssssssing.”
Little did I know or ever imagine that my job would take me to Atlanta, Georgia and then to the South Carolina coast.
I now live almost 1000 miles from where I thought I might be buried.
The plan today is ashes in the ocean but that’s another story.
I am living in a place I had never heard of before.
I am living on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean that I had only even seen twice in my life.
And I am lucky.
I have met a few local people down here.
And by local I mean people who grew up here.
It isn’t easy.
30 years the population of Bluffton, SC, was 738.
Today it is over 30,000.
Less than 1 out of 30 folks down here are locals, long time locals.
And you know what?
They don’t go to the beach.
Nothing new to see there for the long time locals.
For me?
Everything is new.
I love it.
This is a rare place.
The beauty in places like this are fugitive.
I wonder how I can possess it?
I wonder can I possess it?
And I quit wondering and just enjoy.
I am lucky.
Lucky to see this new, to see this new at my age.
And just enjoy it.
Lucky.
Moonrise over Folly Field Beach – Novemebr 2021
Adapted from the book, The Art of Travel (2002, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:
A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.’
But beauty is fugitive, being frequently found in places to which we may never return or else resulting from rare conjunctions of season, light and weather.
How then to possess it, how to hold on to the floating train, the halvalike bricks or the English valley?
The camera provides one option. Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.
According to the website, GOOD READS, Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why.
As I said in the section on Architecture , what I find irresistible 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.
in this twilight zone don’t know what this is really take to get fired?
At some point in the course of being the head coach of the Detroit Lions of the National Football league, the head coach will give voice to their legacy quote.
At some point, being the coach of the Lions gets to them and they express their frustrations in a quote that lasts longer than the time they were head coach.
This week, after a pretty brutal overtime tie game to the Pittsburg Steelers, head coach Dan Campbell said, “I’m in this twilight zone, I don’t know what this is really.”
We do.
It, for lack of anything better, its the Same Old Lions.
Look at this list of quotes.
None of these are made up.
“I mean for us, it’s obviously – we’re trying to get better. We’re just trying to get better.” Matt Patricia
“It’s not easy to win and I think that often times people kind of take it for granted.” Jim Caldwell
“It doesn’t end well for head coaches in the NFL, no matter how much you want it to.” Jim Schwartz
“It answers how I go through all this every day. It’s dark and I’m going to dig through. My shovel is sharp and my pick is sharp and my will is outstanding.” Rod Marinelli (Most folks still not sure what he meant or even if he knew what he meant)
“Sometimes you take two step backwards to take one step forward. Sometimes, it’s five steps back.” Steve Mariucci
“There’s no excuses in this league. Snap, hold, kick.” Marty Mornhinweg (Just that simple)
“We better get better as the year goes on.” Matt Millen (A GM not a head coach but this feller HIRED the 3 preceding fellers – haven’t we suffered enough?)
“I get all the damn criticism — people hammering me! I’m a good coach! I know what the heck’s supposed to be done! And I’m not going to second-guess myself one damn time!” Bobby Ross
About Bobby Ross, “Bobby got to the point where he literally tormented himself over each loss,” said Lions general manager Chuck Schmidt. “He felt his job was to get the team ready to play, and he didn’t know what else he could do.“
“I’m like that big buck that’s in the field.” Wayne Fontes
“What’s a guy have to do to get fired around here?” Daryl Rogers (This was AFTER being given a contract extension.
“It was answered, but the answer was No.” Monte Clark on a silent prayer for a last play 43 yard field goal to win the game on go on to the NFC Championship in 1983. Lions kicker, Eddie Murray missed.
I can go back to Tommy Hudspeth but I cannot find any quote.
I did find the UPI story about him being fired and his entire 8 member coaching staff let go.
The story quoted Lions Owner William Clay Ford saying, “Ford today called Hudspeth an ‘outstanding individual…’ For the sake of the loyal Lion fans and the general good of the football team we just felt a change was necessary at this time.”
Think of that statement, For the sake of the loyal Lion fans and the general good of the football team.
Got that in your head?
The UPI story said, “The Detroit Lions today dismissed their head coach, Tommy Hudspeth, and his eight‐man coaching staff. Hudspeth’s staff included Bill Belichick, Rollie Dotsch, Wally English, Ed Hughes, Bernie Miller, John Payne, Floyd Reese and Fritz Shurmur.”
So For the sake of the loyal Lion fans and the general good of the football team, William Clay Ford got rid of Bill Belichick.
Bill Belichick has won SIX Super Bowls since.
In the same time, the Lions have won ONE playoff games.
I know I know I know but there it is.
Back in 2008, Mitch Albom wrote, “Then again, what’s a coach to do?
Every time the other team lowers the bar, the Lions crawl under it.
They are the NFL’s answer to the Limbo.“
John McKay (USC Student Body Right – the only football play named after a student demonstration) had an old saying: “Don’t coach the great ones too much because you don’t want to tamper down their talent.”
Maybe that is the problem here.
These fellers who coached Detroit some how coached TOO MUCH and tampered down all the talent.
Maybe it would be better to get the 11 best athletes they can and then let the quarterback draw out plays on their hand like we did playing in the park behind Aberdeen Elementary School.
It is at the point that if the Detroit Lions announced that they were going to do everything they could to assemble the worst team possible in NFL History, the current Lions would still lose to them.
They say about Juwan Howard, the basketball coach at the University of Michigan that he can get players to play better than they know how.
Somehow the Lions do that too.
Only in reverse.
Still the Lions manage to accomplish the impossible.
Each year it seems, they make last years team look better.
Notice I stopped at Tommy Hudspeth.
The earliest Lion’s Coach I can remember is Rick Forzano.
I could not find a quote from him but here is his picture.
Often a picture says 1000 words.
I think I can explain why.
William Ford’s brother was Henry Ford II.
Henry Ford II was by all accounts one the biggest jerks to come off a Detroit assembly line.
William wanted to stand out from his brother’s shadow.
The easiest way to do that was to be, simply, a nice guy.
And William Ford gloried in that.
By all accounts.
From his players, to his coaches, to his staff to everyone, William Ford was the nicest guy you might ever meet.
When Leo Durocher said nice guys finish last, William Ford decided to show just how true that was.
If Lions fans could talk to him I sure he would understand.
He wanted to win too.
But if the choice was win or be a nice guy, winning came in 2nd.
In my mind, I kinda like it.
It’s that trick the Cubs developed over the years of being lovable but being losers.
I warned a lot of Cub fans that finally winning a World Series may create a greater sense of loss than never winning.
Like Henry Hill at the end of the movie, Goodfellas, the Cubs are no longer the worlds most loved losers, they are like all the other teams that managed to win one World Series, “an average nobody… get to live the rest of [my] life like a schnook.”
Back when I worked at WZZM13 TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I wrote a story for online asking readers to send in their favorite Lions memory.
Neither here nor there but I miss Henry Wofford.
I still wear his good luck tie to work when I need good luck.
In the story I said come on, there have to be some good moments, right?
I started it off with a tribute to the great Dexter Bussey.
Dexter understood Detroit.
Dexter said, “These fans are great. They support us. They don’t mind losing. They get off on that somehow.“
The next day I got a call from Dexter Bussey’s son.
He wanted to tell me how much my story meant to his Dad.
I don’t think Dexter got a lot of fan mail.
Also we got 4 other positive memories sent in.
I think one reminisced about how happy Lions fans were when they traded for Scotty Mitchell.
If I had a chance to talk to Dan Campbell I would love to tell that no, you aren’t in the twilight zone.
No Haiku For You 