12.31.2021 – versions and values

versions and values
here’s an oldie but goodie
deserve to be here

Has the last year, the last two years been stuck?

I would say have been stuck in neutral but neutral isn’t a word that comes to mind right now.

Everyone has an opinion.

Everyone is on one side or the other.

And, like the weather, everyone talks about it, but no one DOES anything about it.

If someone presents and argument and that argument is dismissed then the original argument is presented all over again but maybe with a different cast of characters or facts or whatever argument is based on nowadays.

Thinking this way, a scene from the old TV show MASH came to mind.

Neither the time nor place to rehash the show or get into a discussion about the merits of the show, the high points of the show, the low points of the show or if the show has stood the test of time.

Suffice it to say, I used to LOVE that show.

Today …. not so much.

But there was a time when me and my brothers would engage in endless discussions on show trivia and complete conversations that were made up of nothing but lines from the show.

One of my favorite questions was to list in order, both ways, of what Captain Pierce had to do to get a new pair of boots and how it all came undone.

But what came to mind was Corporal Klinger and his ongoing shtick of getting out of the army.

Klinger’s interaction’s with Colonel Henry Blake during the MASH early years were both funny AND witty.

I leave unsaid my feelings on the nonsense slap happy days of Colonel Potter and Klinger.

But thinking of arguments and facts and the last two years, it was this scene that came to mind.

Klinger marches in Col. Blake’s office and offers Blake a letter that Klinger just recieved bearing the news that his Father was dying and requests an emergency discharge.

Blake looks at Klinger and ask, “The Father dying, right?”

Klinger says, “Yes Sir!”

Blake leans over, opens a desk drawer and removes a file folder of letters.

Blake opens the folder and one at a time, removes each letter and delivers a short synopses of the letter.

Father dying last year.

Mother dying last year.

Mother AND father dying.

Mother, father, and older sister dying.

Mother dying and older sister pregnant.

Older sister dying and mother pregnant.

Younger sister pregnant and older sister dying.

Here’s an oldie but a goodie: Half of the family dying, other half pregnant.

Finishing the stack of letters, Blake looks at Klinger and says, “Klinger, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

Klinger, without shame or embarrassment says, “Yes, sir. I don’t DESERVE to be in the Army.“

Not sure what this has to do with anything to tell you the truth.

Except that for all the conflict and words and arguments we have all had, the last year …

BOY HOWDY!

do we deserve to be here!

for the record and without the google …

Pierce needed boots from Supply Sgt,

Supply Sgt needed to see the Dentist

Dentist need a pass to Tokyo

Blake needed Houlihan off his case

Houlihan needed a party with cake for Burns

Radar needed a date with a nurse for the Cake

Nurse needed Klinger’s hair dryer

Klinger needed his crazy papers signed.

Pierce tries to get Burns, who has tears in his eye over his party to sign Klinger’s papers

Instead Burns rips up the papers

Klingler yells MY CRAZY PAPERS and goes and takes back his hair dryer

Radar shows up with flowers but the nurse, now without a hair dryer calls off the date

Radar returns to the party and slams his flowers onto the cake and takes the cake away just as Burns is set to blow out the candles

This causes Houlihan to scream at Blake that all this will be in her report to the General

At that moment the Dentist walks up to Blake to thank him for the three day pass which Blake grabs and rips up

Then the supply Sgt says to the Dentist, SEE YOU TOMORROW and the Dentist tells him to drop dead

And the supply Sgt refuses to delivers the boots to Pierce.

12.30.2021 – nearly ashamed lest

nearly ashamed lest
it detain our attention
or attract gratitude

I asked my wife to go watch the sunset over the May River on Christmas Eve.

I had a lot of reasons.

I wanted to go was the main reason.

I often find that working from home, I can get to Friday and never been further from home than our daily walks.

And, We were alone with no kids at home and could go without worrying what might happen at home.

It was a warm night for us anyway in December.

It was a few days after the Winter Solstice so the sun would be setting at its most southern point in the sky over the river.

And also because of the solstice, it was conveniently timed at around 5:30 PM.

We got to the park on the bluff overlooking the river just as the sun disappeared.

I wanted to run from the car to get to the dock to catch a photograph of the scene.

I thought of the photographer Ansel Adams, and his often repeated story of how he was driving with friends in Arizona and spotted the sunset scene of a small church at dusk with the moon rising over the horizon.

He pulls the car over and in a frenzy calls on his friends to help with the camera, tripod and other equipment.

The high point of the story for most photographers is when Mr. Adams admits he couldn’t find his light meter but he did know the amount of light the Moon gave off and was able to mentally calculate the exposure setting for his camera.

Thinking of this I hurried to the river front with my iPhone out.

The scene itself of the sun setting on Christmas Eve over the May River, as I took it in, took away my urgency.

I have used the quote, “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,” before.

I wanted to the take a picture to show I was here and that the scene mattered to me.

But when I got there, all I wanted to do was look.

Look and listen.

You could hear the birds and you could here the sound of the passage of water as the tide came in.

And somehow, you could hear the silence.

A few other people were there but for the most part, it was a private viewing for my wife and I.

I thought of this quote about a scene as described by the same author of the prior quote, “like an impartial judge, modest and willingly literal-minded about its own achievements, ashamed lest it detain our attention or attract our gratitude.”

It is odd, but I thought that about the scene I was seeing.

The river, the water, the clouds, the sun setting and the sounds.

I felt it was a scene, that with all its elements, was modest and willingly literal-minded about its own achievements, ashamed lest it detain our attention or attract our gratitude.

It was a fleeting moment to be sure.

One of a kind and special.

A moment to be remembered.

But at the same time …

Of all things, a passage in the book, “How Life Imitates the World Series” by Thomas Boswell came to mind.

Mr. Boswell tells the story of how an interview in the dugout of Memorial Stadium in Baltimore with then Orioles Manager, Earl Weaver, went over long.

All of sudden, Mr. Boswell, writes, he became aware that the National Anthem was playing and the game was about the start.

The two stood up for the anthem and Mr. Weaver stopped telling the story he had been in the middle of.

The anthem came to end and and Mr. Weaver went to run out to home plate to give the lineup card to the umpires.

Mr. Weaver said to Mr. Boswell, “I’ll be right back and finish that story.”

Mr. Boswell writes that he thought this was crazy and that he was way over staying his time and apologized to Mr. Weaver and said he would get out the dugout as the game was about the start.

“Oh don’t worry about that”, said Mr. Weaver, “We do this every day.”

*Words in the Haiku were adapted from the book, The Architecture of Happiness (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

In a valley so steep that its gelatinous walls seem never to have been warmed by the sun, a drop of hundreds of feet ends in a furious brown river clotted with stones and brambles. As the train curves around the mountainside, a view opens up along its length, revealing that, several carriages ahead, the burgundy-red locomotive has taken the unexpected decision to cross from one side of the valley to the other, a manoeuvre it proceeds to execute without so much as pausing to confer with higher authorities. It makes its way over the gap, and through a small cloud, with the brisk formality one might associate with the most routine of activities, to which prayer and worship would be at once unnecessary and theatrical supplements. What has rendered this supernatural feat possible is a bridge for which nothing in this setting has prepared us – a perfectly massive yet perfectly delicate concrete bridge, marred by not the slightest stain or impurity, which can only have been dropped from the air by the gods, for we cannot imagine that there would be anywhere in this forsaken spot for humans to rest their tools. The bridge seems unimpressed by the razor-sharp stones around it, by the childish moods of the river and the contorted, ugly grimaces of the rock-face. It stands content to reconcile the two sides of the ravine like an impartial judge, modest and willingly literal-minded about its own achievements, ashamed lest it detain our attention or attract our gratitude.

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.

12.29.2021 – miss the pace of it

miss the pace of it
the sheer multicultural
wonder of it all

We recently made a weekend trip to see the kids and grands.

For us, this means a return to the ATL.

Atlanta.

Atlanta, Georgia.

While we were stopped in traffic on the connector in downtown, I turned to my wife and said, “You realize there are more people stuck around us then live where we live?”

My wife says she loves where we live but she misses the energy of Atlanta.

I understand what she is saying.

But for me, I don’t miss it one bit.

Recently in the Guardian, a Ms. Laura Barton wrote an article titled, “I moved to the coast for a better life – now I’m back in London where I belong.”

In this article, Ms. Barton recounts how she had left London in 2014, “ … looking for something that felt more like a community, close enough for creativity to mingle. Somewhere, perhaps, to finally feel settled.“

Ms. Barton says that while she found something close to this on the Kent Coast near Dover, she ” ... thought about the city and all the things I missed – galleries and gigs and theatres, city parks, city trees, architecture, friends, restaurants, 24-hour grocery shops stocked with everything from za’atar to rambutan, the pace of it, the constant evolution, the sheer multicultural wonder of it all. More than anything I missed people who talked about things other than themselves. The possibility it offered. The quiet, beautiful anonymity.”

Her article ends, “At last, I thought, I have escaped back to the city.“

First off, let me point out that Ms. Barton’s life out of London took seven years to reach the breaking point.

We have been here on the coast or the low country, country under 20 feet above sea level, for just over a year.

Maybe I will get there in a few more years but for now …

With that understood, let me take a look at what she says she missed and what we had in the ATL.

Galleries and gigs and theatres.

We were not much into the arts in ATL.

And the age of COVID didn’t help much with getting out and about to see shows.

We went to the Art Museum [sic] and we had tickets to the ATL symphony that got cancelled due to covid.

There were lots of community art fairs and shows and such that we liked but a good number of those take place here in the low country as well.

Architecture.

ATL wins this hands down.

When you live in a hurricane zone, not much thought is put into structures that might need to be rebuilt every couple of years.

Friends.

This one is a toss up right now.

ATL was so big and changed so often, friends were not something we made a lot of.

We are working at that here but, well, anyone who has moved has lived this part of the story.

If this includes family and our kids and grand kids, ATL wins easily.

On the other hand, our family loves to come to the coast.

One grand daughter got out of the car, run for hugs and then said, “Can we go to the beach now?”

Restaurants.

There are about 300 restaurants here in our immediate area but its pretty much seafood.

This might be a down side but I love how it worked out.

Still I wish there was a decent pho shop or Indian place.

When you come right down to it, Fat Matt’s may be what I miss the most about ATL.

24-hour grocery shops stocked with everything from za’atar to rambutan.

ATL wins this one.

There are NO 24 hour grocery shops in the Low Country and I am pretty sure you could decide to go shopping for almost anything, anytime in ATL.

Published or online listed hours for places of business here in the Low Country are like , you know, suggestions?

The pace of it, the constant evolution.

Again ATL wins this hands down.

There is a pulse to the air in ATL.

There is a smell in the air here in the Low Country.

(It’s the pluff mud.)

The sheer multicultural wonder of it all.

ATL in this respect, is almost beyond belief.

I would watch the news and see video of a crowd of people and I would say it was either a UN Refuge Camp or a Gwinnett County Park on Sunday Afternoon.

The low country, especially the resort area where we live, is a lot of things, but multicultural is not one of them.

Add on that most folks are vacationers here for a week and the faces constantly change but the people don’t.

(Or is the other way ’round?)

More than anything I missed people who talked about things other than themselves.

This line bothers me a bit.

Is Ms. Barton complaining that no one wanted to hear about her?

I read somewhere once that to be interesting, be interested.

For me, I feel I AM interesting because everyone is so interested in me.

I have to tell myself to listen at least once in a while.

The possibility it offered.

ATL is all about the possibilities it offers.

If you are young and live in America today and you do not live in ATL, I feel sorry for you.

I like to joke that suppose if for a social experiment, we identified everyone with ideas, get-up-and-go, gumption and the like and took them out of the mix.

What would be left?

EUROPE!

After 20 years in the TV News Business, working with TV stations across the country, I feel I can say the same thing about the United States.

If its happening in America, it’s happening in ATL.

That leaves us with The quiet, beautiful anonymity.

Here is the head scratcher.

I know what Ms. Barton means but it seems to fly in the face of all else that she has written.

She wants the hustle and bustle … without the hustle and bustle?

In college I tried to describe days filled with an overwhelming desire to be alone coupled with the overwhelming sense of loneliness.

If there is anything I have found a lot of here in the Low Country along the Atlantic coast it is a quiet, beautiful anonymity.

In the essay, Cape Cod, Henry Thoreau writes about the coast that, “A man may stand there and put all America behind him.”

And that is the slam dunk for me.

As I said, I spent the last 20 years in online news.

The urgency of news and the immediacy of online meant that for me, when I started in the year 2000, I worked, I was on, I was wired in, 24×7 365 until I was told my services were no longer needed.

Maybe I got some form of PTSD.

Today I seek a quiet, beautiful anonymity.

I like to stand on the coast.

I like stand on the coast with my feet in the ocean.

I like to stand on the coast with my feet in the ocean with all America behind me.

12.28.2021 – right now a moment

right now a moment
of time is passing us by
capture that moment

This quote:

“Right now a moment of time is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do that we must put all else out of our minds. We must become that moment, make ourselves a sensitive recording plate … Give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time.“

is attributed to the painter, Paul Cezanne by the Cezanne’s biographer and business partner, Joachim Gasquet.

I went searching for a quote on time and a moment of time and this one seemed to work.

I went searching old school.

I got out my hard cover, printed copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (17th Edition).

Cheating in a way to look for quotes to turn into Haiku but then I think of what Winston Churchill said (and he said a lot).

Specifically, I mean, what Mr. Churchill said about Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.

Writing in an early autobiography effort, Roving Commission: My Early Life, published in 1930, Mr. Churchill wrote, “It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently.

The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts.

They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.”

When I started writing this blog to myself, I wrote, “With my haiku’s, I feel if I can pull an obscure bit of text from a forgotten book or poem, I can help reset the clock on that book or poem in the worlds collective consciousness.”

I think this lines up nicely with Mr. Churchill’s, “They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.”

ANYWAY, I needed a quote on time and the moment in time.

I needed this because of two photographs that were taken over the holiday weekend.

My wife and I were at my daughters’ home in Atlanta.

We had traveled to Atlanta to be with our kids and grand kidz to celebrate Christmas.

During the gift giving / unwrapping stage, my wife and I, on opposite sides of the room, had our phones out and took a pictures at about the same moment in time.

We appear in each others photograph.

A moment in time.

Passing us by.

Captured from both sides.

We are that moment.

right now a moment
of time is passing us by
capture that moment

12.27.2021 – sighed and looked

sighed and looked
sighed and looked, looked
and sighed again

Adapted from the poem, Alexander’s Feast by John Dryden (1697) and the lines that read:

The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gazed on the fair,
Who caused his care,
And sighed and looked, sighed and looked,
Sighed and looked, and sighed again;
At length, with love and wine at once oppressed,
The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast.

It was written, according to Wikipedida, to celebrate Saint Cecilia’s Day.

Jeremiah Clarke of Trumpet Volunteer fame, set the original ode to music, but the score is now lost.

The main body of the poem describes the feast given by Alexander the Great at the Persian capital Persepolis, after his defeat of Darius.

There is much here but my daily struggle embraces:

And sighed and looked, sighed and looked,
Sighed and looked, and sighed again …

Sigh.