Month: January 2022

1.30.2021 – incomprehension

incomprehension
sun wasn’t, but who could have
imagined water

Adapted from the passage “Sitting there on the stump he was visited by a wave of incomprehension. The sun in the sky wasn’t problematical but who could have imagined water?” from the novella, The Summer He Didn’t Die, by Jim Harrison, Grove Press, 2005.

1.29.2022 – vivid picture to

vivid picture to
the imagination and was
worth thinking about

According to what I read and watch, a BOMB CYCLONE is heading for the East Coast of the United States.

Sounds awful.

Whenever bad weather is predicted I think of two things.

The first is that I am glad to be out of it.

That simple sentence, for me, has two meanings.

Living in the Low Country of South Carolina and yet to experience a hurricane, the weather here for the most part is what you might call salubrious (a wonderful word and I put it to you that if you can work it into your conversation today you will feel better) or favorable to or promoting health or well-being.

The proximity to an ocean that won’t go below 50 degrees helps keep most of any weather away that might include the word, “freezing.”

For the most part its warm or at least warmer here than where I grew in West Michigan.

Somewhere in my mind is a passage in a book of all old rich man, sitting in the kitchen of his mansion saying something like, “182 rooms and all I want is the warmest one.”

The other meaning to “glad to be out of it” for me, is that for 20 years I was in the news business and in the news business there is no business like the bad weather business.

After I was on the job about 6 months, creating and managing a website for a local TV station, I got a call that I needed to come up with a way to a list any school closings online.

This list also needed to be able to be updated by the schools themselves.

And if I could somehow figure out how to send out an email with the list of school closings to anyone who wanted it, that would be even better.

“When?”, was my response.

“Tomorrow”, was the answer.

Understand that just a little more than 20 years ago, none of this information was online.

There was no online.

The most fun of my job and creating an online news environment was that I never would say that something couldn’t be done because nothing HAD been done and we did not know what couldn’t be done so we did everything.

And somehow the next morning we had school closings online.

More recently I was involved with the online video streaming of news.

As EB White wrote on the News and weather, “radio [News] people, Nature is an oddity tinged with malevolence and worthy of note only in her more violent moments. The radio [News] either lets Nature alone or gives her the full treatment.

The full news treatment for News Online involved me a lot.

Weekends, after hours, all hours, I was up and online and making sure that the weather got the full treatment.

Now, I am glad to be out of it.

The other thing I think about is an essay, again by EB White.

In fact, it is the essay where that the earlier quote about Nature being an oddity tinged with malevolence comes from.

It is an essay of Mr. White’s that appeared in The New Yorker magazine on September 25, 1954 and is included in the book, The Essays of E.B. White, that you can read online at archive.org.

The title of the essay is, “The Eye of Edna” and it tells the story of Mr. White following Hurricane Edna as it came up the Atlantic Coast.

In 1954, hour by hour radio coverage of a hurricane was something new for Mr. White and the world at large.

I cannot read this essay without comparing the news coverage of 1954 with the news coverage of 2022.

What I think when I make such a comparison is that there is nothing new to the news here.

Mr. White tells how a reporter on the scene of the storm was asked about road conditions.

The hurricane rains and ocean storm surges had been predicted to wipe out local roads.

“They were wet” reported the reporter, who, according to Mr. White, “seemed to be in a sulk.”

In the essay, Mr. White recounts his own efforts to prepare his home for the coming storm.

In the essay, there is this sentence, “The croquet set was brought in. (I was extremely skeptical about the chance of croquet balls coming in through the window, but it presented a vivid picture to the imagination and was worth thinking about.).

The oft-quoted-by-me writer Alain de Botton, used the phrase, I began word-painting.

Starting with the thought a hurricane and wind tossed trees and such.

Then add a croquet set.

Throw in windows, car windshields and maybe someone’s forehead.

Then thinking about how to paint scene this with words, I don’t think anyone could do better than “I was extremely skeptical about the chance of croquet balls coming in through the window, but it presented a vivid picture to the imagination and was worth thinking about.”

29 words and I can see it all in my mind’s eye.

I can see it in my mind and it never happened.

A vivid picture to the imagination.

Something worth thinking about.

1.28.2022 – meijer or meijers

meijer or meijers
canada suburb of detroit
vernors medicine

I recently came across a list of things that all people of Detroit know.

And by Detroit, I mean, anyone from Michigan.

One was that Meijer’s was better than Walmart.

Another was the Meijer’s was called Meijer’s because you add S’s to make every name possive.

You didn’t work for Ford.

You worked for Ford’s.

Therefore Meijer’s WAS Meijer’s not Meijer.

For us in West Michigan, it was Meijer’s because it was Fred’s store.

Another was your preference of Ford’s, GM or Chrysler’s depended on wear your grandpa worked.

People in Detroit know that Canada is not a country, it is a suburb of Detroit and to get to Canada from Detroit, you have to go south.

And if you are from Detroit, you know Vernor’s is medicine.

Dutch Alka Seltzer we called it.

It is the drink you got when you had the stomach flu or an upset tummy.

There was a famous commercial for Vernor’s and the entire commercial was of a man typing and thinking as he typed.

The man was Detroit novelist Elmore Leonard.

As he typed he thought out loud.

“They looked at each other.

The man opened a can and poured.

They drank.

It tasted like ….”

The writer paused.

And paused some more.

He could not come up with the words he needed to describe the taster the drink.

He gets a can of Vernor’s and opened and poured it into a glass.

He tastes the drink.

He looks back at the typewriter now prepared to describe it.

“It tasted like Vernor’s,” he wrote.

There are no other words.

As they commercial ends, the voice over says, “It what we drink around here.”

1.27.2022 – I saw a penny

I saw a penny
picked it up, all that day …
wondered about change

I saw a penny in the parking lot the other day.

Bright and shiny, I knew it had to be new.

I checked first to make sure it was face up.

You do not pick up any penny that is face down.

I guess like an upside down horseshoe, all the luck runs out.

This one was face up so I picked it up.

I looked at Abraham Lincoln.

He has been there on the penny a lot longer than I have been here.

Mr. Lincoln has been on the penny since 1909, the 100th anniversary of his birth.

That was the first time a US President’s likeness went on a coin.

I read somewhere that the likeness of Abraham Lincoln on a penny is supposed to be the most viewed representation of any work of art in the history of the world.

Back in 1976, Braniff Airlines commissioned Calder to design the color scheme of one of their Boeing Airliners for the Bicentennial.

This red white and blue flying work of art was unveiled at Dulles International Airport and then flown on a tour of United States airports that included Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Grand Rapids had always been a bit Calder nutz and the First Lady, Betty Ford, (this story is fun and you can read the documented high level government discussion) would be part of the ceremony in Washington so Grand Rapids was added to the list of cities for the debut flight and the plane was added to the Braniff fleet.

At some point after that, Braniff issued a press release that this painted plane was the single most viewed work of art in history.

I think the numbers included anyone and everyone who ever looked up and said, “The plane, The plane” whether they knew what they were seeing or not or even if they were aware of the plane was painted by Calder.

I mean fly it over New York City and you can count 8,000,000 views.

I think Braniff accounted for their paying customers the same way which is why you don’t hear about Braniff anymore.

But Mr. Lincoln tops the list over total views of any artistic likeness, counting all the times that likeness has been reproduced and viewed.

I looked at the penny for a second or two.

It was dated 2021.

It hit me that this was the first time I had seen a 2021 penny.

Maybe even the first time, that I remembered anyway, that I have seen a penny with a date in the 2020’s.

Is it really 2021?

Really?

How DID that happen?

When did that happen?

In 2020 there was a feeling that the month of March lasted about 12 weeks.

I feel like 2021 never really took place.

Wasn’t out of the house often.

Rarely had situations where I bought or paid for something other than gas or a meal.

And never ever did I use paper money.

As for coins.

You don’t see change much anymore and so much has changed.

And I do feel changed somehow.

Or at least disconnected from the time before Covid.

I also don’t much like to look at pennies.

It was the writer, Jim Harrison, who once wrote that you aren’t old as long as keep finding pennies that are older than you in your pocket.

I used to carry a 1959 penny just for insurance.

But I can’t find it.

I haven’t thought about it years.

And now that it is on my mind, I am going find a 1959 penny.

After all, since moving to Hilton Head, where the median age is 59, I became middle aged all over again.

PS – According to what you can learn online, when Braniff went bankrupt, the Calder planes were sold at auction and the paint was sand blasted off. One website where they keep track of such things, says that the specific Boeing 727 that had been painted Red White and Blue was used as a prop in the movie Bad Boys and the last time anyone sees that specific (without the Calder Art) plane is at the end of the movie when it is blown up.