Despair is a delusion of confidence that asserts it knows what’s coming, perhaps a tool of those who like to feel in control, even if just of the facts, when in reality, we can frame approximate parameters, but the surprises keep coming.
Anyone who makes a definitive declaration about what the future will bring is not dealing in facts.
The world we live in today was utterly unforeseen and unimaginable on many counts, the world that is coming is something we can work toward but not something we can foresee.
We need to have confidence that surprise and uncertainty are unshakable principles, if we want to have confidence in something.
And recognize that in that uncertainty is room to act, to try to shape a future that will be determined by what we do in the present.
Recognize that in that uncertainty is room to act.
I have been told that the symbol of Ukraine is the sunflower.
I find it, well, comforting, or fitting, or entirely appropriate that Vincent Van Gogh let out so much of his expression through sunflowers.
While I agree and endorse that We need to have confidence that surprise and uncertainty are unshakable principles, if we want to have confidence in something.
I agree too with the statement that the world we live in today was utterly unforeseen and unimaginable on many counts.
But I also am comforted knowing that when the when Moses came down Mt. Sinai with the 10 commandments and he wrote the the first five books of the Bible, God knew that it wouldn’t be long until I was reading those books on something called an iPhone.
watching ukraine war watching and waiting for what … for that shoe to drop
Me and my brother Pete were just over a year apart in age.
We were brothers.
We fought a lot.
And often.
There is a famous scene in our childhood when my future sister-in-law, Judy Beach was visiting us.
Judy had grown up in a nice, calm family with one brother.
She dated my brother Paul who was and is a nice, calm guy.
I suspect Judy was surprised if maybe not overwhelmed when she was at our house ‘to meet the family’ and me and Pete got into it, MMA style.
It wasn’t until we were a little older when we got into Junior High that we learned about wrestling and trying to use our weight (which neither had very much of) to hold the other down.
Nope.
This was brawling.
This was we-watched-them-do-this-on-tv cowboy in the saloon bar fights.
This was Three Stooges, sitting-on-you-while-trying to bash-your-head-through-the-floor slugfests.
We swung and kicked and bit as best we could.
Screaming all the time.
And no one paid much attention to us.
But it caught Judy’s attention and she was distraught and anxiety gnawed at her.
Was no one going to say anything?
Was no one going to stop this?
I was 9 and Pete was 8.
After a while, my Mom took notice.
“Stop it, stop it, stop it.” said Mom.
Judy later told how relived she was that finally this was over.
She felt she could breathe again.
Then my Mom said, “Give me your glasses.”
Pete and I both wore glasses that got broke often.
We took them off and gave them to Mom who put them on the kitchen counter.
“Okay, get it over with,” she said as she turned back to Judy and we got back to brawling.
It must have been something to see.
I remember another time one of these fights took place in front of my Grandfather.
He stood over saying, “Here here, here here.”
Which struck both me and Pete so funny that we stopped fighting just to laugh.
For a long time we could make the other laugh in church by leaning over and whispering, “Here here.”
SO we watch the war in Ukraine.
The world stands by and says, “Here here, here here.”
The world stands by and says, “Now stop that.”
The world stands by and says, “Now look out for that nuclear power plant.”
We know we aren’t going to do anything.
They know we aren’t going to do anything.
Well, we are going to cut off their allowance if they don’t stop.
What to do?
What can you do?
So we wait for this war to be over.
Though I am not sure what over means.
I think I want Mr. Putin to come to his senses and say, “My bad – So sorry – We are leaving.”
I also want a million dollars (tax free).
I know Mr. Putin is not going to come to his senses.
Mr. Putin wants to make Russia great again.
So what do I want?
Let’s go the movies.
Do I want to be Richard Blaine?
Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca and get back into the fight, a fight I know this time our side will win?
Do I want to be Sam Spade?
Humphrey Bogart in Maltese Falcon and say to Putin, “I won’t play the sap for you! I won’t play the sap for you because you’ve counted on it.”
I have to admit I think a lot of problems that people have could be avoided if they had said to themselves, “I won’t play the sap for you.”
On the other hand …
It just occurred to me.
In Maltese Falcon, Bogart wears black suits.
In Casablanca, Bogart wears the white dinner jacket.
How long will it take for the shoe to drop?
Cities bombed.
People killed.
Now here here.
March Madness is about to start and we would really like to just watch it okay?
Boy I wonder who Joe Biden has in his bracket?
I think, in the end, the movie will be the old John Wayne standard, Chisum.
You know the line.
Finally John Wayne has been pushed too far and he is asked what he is going to do and John Wayne says, “What I’d have done 25 years ago.”
make definitive futuredeclaration is not dealing in facts
Once the war in Ukraine started, I often found it difficult to write a haiku on a daily basis.
To fill in those gaps, I turned to this entry, originally posted on March 6, 2022 and created several haiku to fill in gaps.
Please forgive this effort on my part to produce a daily haiku in retrograde fashion but as I like to say, my blog my rules.
Suffice it to say, this entry may not have been created on this date and this essay was not written for today but then the essay itself is somewhat timeless in its application.
Despair is a delusion of confidence that asserts it knows what’s coming, perhaps a tool of those who like to feel in control, even if just of the facts, when in reality, we can frame approximate parameters, but the surprises keep coming.
Anyone who makes a definitive declaration about what the future will bring is not dealing in facts.
The world we live in today was utterly unforeseen and unimaginable on many counts, the world that is coming is something we can work toward but not something we can foresee.
We need to have confidence that surprise and uncertainty are unshakable principles, if we want to have confidence in something.
And recognize that in that uncertainty is room to act, to try to shape a future that will be determined by what we do in the present.
Recognize that in that uncertainty is room to act.
I have been told that the symbol of Ukraine is the sunflower.
I find it, well, comforting, or fitting, or entirely appropriate that Vincent Van Gogh let out so much of his expression through sunflowers.
While I agree and endorse that We need to have confidence that surprise and uncertainty are unshakable principles, if we want to have confidence in something.
I agree too with the statement that the world we live in today was utterly unforeseen and unimaginable on many counts.
But I also am comforted knowing that when the when Moses came down Mt. Sinai with the 10 commandments and he wrote the the first five books of the Bible, God knew that it wouldn’t be long until I was reading those books on something called an iPhone.
Kremlin said its war going according to plan no Putin plan b
According to the today’s front page of the New York Times:
The Kremlin said its war in Ukraine was “going according to plan” and signaled no intention of backing down. The statement came in a description of President Vladimir Putin’s phone call with President Emmanuel Macron of France.
balls strikes baseball strikes outs out at the plate lock out cant go home again
I loved baseball.
It took me a long to time to get there.
My family was a big baseball family.
My Dad, because they were available on the radio from Chicago in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where grew up, was a Cubs fan.
Back then, teams like the Detroit Tigers argued about the wisdom of having every game on the radio.
My brothers and sisters grew up Tiger fans.
I was 8 when the Tigers won the World Series in 1968.
Back when all the games were played at 3pm on the afternoon so kids at my school, Crestview Elementary were sneaking small, transistor AM radios into class.
At that point I was not a fan.
Baseball and sports, any sport just took too much time and I had so many things to do with all that time in childhood.
There were Gilligan’s Island reruns and Bugs Bunny cartoons to watch and books to read.
Sometime in the summer of I think around1975, I was out with my Dad on a late night drive and he had the Cubs on the radio from Chicago.
My Dad always had the Cubs on.
Not only could we sing the song the started Cubs broadcasts,
Let’s go – batter up – we’re takin’ the afternoon off
it’s a beautiful day for a ballgame for a ballgame today
the fans are out to get a ticket or two from Wala Wala Washington to Kalamazoo
it’s a beautiful day for a homerun but even a triple’s ok
we’re gonna cheer and boo and raise a hullabaloo at the ballgame today
The Chicago Cubs are on the Air!
But we could sing most of the commercials as well.
“You can take Salem out the country BUT ...”
Vince Lloyd and Lou Boudreau
Don’t know who they were playing but they had a new first baseman named Bill Buckner.
Buckner was a good player with a decent bat but he had a bad leg and was still recovering from the original injury that would later come back to haunt him BIG TIME.
It seems he was on first and tried to stretch make to third on a hit.
Vince Lloyd and Lou Boudreau were the radio team and they about fell out of the booth describing the action.
“Outfielder bobbles the ball.”
“Buckner makes the turn at 2nd, going to try for third.”
“Here’s the throw …
Boudreau starts yelling “RUN BUCK RUN BUCK – – DIVE“
Heres the play
He is …..
HE MADE IT HE MADE IT!!!
BUCKNER SAFE AT THIRD.”
I don’t know why.
It was one of those warm, humid nights you get in West Michigan.
The car windows were open.
It was dark with the car lights showing up as big beams in the steamy air.
In the words of Bob Seger, “It was sweet summertime summertime.“
And I got bit by baseball.
I started watching and listening a lot more often.
And I discovered baseball writing as well.
Some of the best writing in America has been about baseball, both fiction and non fiction.
Bill Bryson’s father was an award sports editor of the Newspaper in Des Moines, Iowa.
A city without any major league sports.
Yet Bill Bryson, Sr. got into an anthology of his account of the famous Bill Mazeroski’s 9th inning World Series Winning Game 7 Home Run writing, “Pittsburgh’s steel mills couldn’t have made more noise than the crowd in this ancient park did when Mazeroski smashed Yankee Ralph Terry’s second pitch of the 9th inning. By the time the ball sailed over the ivy-covered brick wall, the rush from the stands had begun and these sudden madmen threatened to keep Maz from touching the plate with the run that beat the lordly Yankees, 10-9 for the title.“
I joined the Socitey for American Baseball Research long before SABRMETRICS came along to mess up the game.
Out of college I had an opportunity to interview for a research position with the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and I drove home on cloud nine when the Director told me he couldn’t offer the job but was penciling me into the lineup.
I still bear in mind the name of guy on the letter than came a few weeks later announcing who got the job.
The came the strikes.
The first one I really remember in the mid 80’s I was thrilled when it was settled.
Then came the strike in the 90s
To this day baseball folks talk about how many fans were lost in the 1994–95 strike.
I was one of them.
It wasn’t so much that when they returned to work, the two things they went out on strike over were left unsettled.
But that the 1994 season was left unfinished.
It just ended.
And still …
That fall when the season would have been over, for some reason I never been able to find or have explained, the season ending awards, MVP, Cy Young, Gold Gloves, were all made for the part the season that had played.
And that, to this day, for me, broke off my relationship with baseball.
I have not been to a major league game since.
I went often to a local minor league team in West Michigan and enjoyed watch kids playing for a chance as much as playing the game.
And the game itself, the putting the ball over the plate and taking the round bat and a round ball and try to hit it square.
I might watch a World Series game for a few minutes.
But a fan?
Baseball is still important for many, but inessential for most.
Today I read in the Guardian, “In a country where the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, the optics are tricky when a representative such as the pitcher Max Scherzer, who agreed a three-year, $130m contract with the New York Mets last November, is one of the faces of a union complaining that an annual salary of $570,500 is stingy.”
So much money.
So much greed.
I guess Mark Twain was right.
He said this in a speech at Delmonico’s, April 8, 1889.
“The very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive, and push, and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century!”
If I think about America today, Major League Baseball is indeed the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive, and push, and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming all summed up in one allegoric greedy one for me and all for me business.
No Haiku For You 