6.10.2022 – day age we live in

day age we live in
you’re entitled to hate them
you know what I mean?

“And I think that the day and age that we live in now, it’s just so negative that you see it in everything. Sport, politics, whatever it is, it’s like if you disagree with someone you just feel that you’re entitled to like hate them and talk bad about them and just bash their decision, when everybody’s entitled to their own opinion, you know what I mean?”

PGA Golfer Justin Thomas commenting on the pro golfers who opted to play in the new Saudi backed golf league … and about life in the United States in general.

Back in the day, I think there were just as many opinions and just as many thoughts but if you wanted to express them to the world at large you wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper or called AM talk radio.

Since few people read editorials and fewer people listened to AM talk radio, the opinions were muffled.

Today, all anyone has to do is voice their opinion on social media and their opinions are amplified beyond the wildest imaginations.

Of all the emotions available, it seems that giving into rage, giving into hate, are the most embraced by social media.

I don’t watch the Simpson’s often but I saw the one where Homer went on a work’s outing to the local minor league baseball team and was warned by his wife to not make a drunken fool of himself.

Homer replied that he ‘ … had a ticket! A ticket which gives me the right … no … the OBLIGATION to make a drunken fool of myself.’

As Mr. Thomas said, today we feel ‘entitled to hate.’

The only thing that is left is for when we are obligated to hate.

Sounds stupid until it is remembered that this was not beyond anyone’s wildest imagination and in the book, 1984, by George Orwell, every day all the employee’s gather in the lunch room for the required ’10 minute hate.’

It’s the day and age that we live in now.

You know what I mean?

6.9.2022 – with increased demand

with increased demand
please expect shipping delays
summer of firearms

With the number of shootings across America that have been reported again and again and again in the past weeks, I have to point out that a local gun shop has summoned up the gumption to apologize.

That’s right, apologize.

They offer daily deals that, “… aim to provide our customers with new products and best sellers at amazing prices. Daily Deal product offerings include American Made firearms, AR-15 parts and accessories, 9mm pistols, bulk ammo, magazines, optics, and so much more.”

They also sell flame throwers with the pledge, “Flamethrower ownership is generally legal in the United States without requiring any sort of background check. This is America, and freedom is something we stand for.”

But they include the disclaimer, “As the product name states, it is simply a long range torch. However, Maryland and California do have restrictions regarding such devices. The city of Warren, Michigan also prohibits possession via local ordinance.”

As I said, of late, on their webage is an apology.

They are sorry but to increased demand, shipments may be taking more time than usual.

It should also be mentioned that their products have a lifetime guarantee.

They don’t say whose lifetime.

6.8.2022 – has nearly worried

has nearly worried
the life out of me at times
I should be sorry

Sometime history can come alive for me and I have to talk about it.

I have been fighting my way through the Civil War campaigns of Ulysses S. Grant this summer.

I started Chattanooga and have worked backwards in time through Vicksburg and am now in the middle of the Shiloh campaign.

In my reading, I came across a minor character by the name of Col. Thomas Worthington, of the 46th Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

By all accounts the Colonel, a graduate of West Point in 1827, was a perfect pest of a person.

General Sherman especially found the man to be beyond belief and took pains to describe him in ways so that others would understand how unbelievably bad the feller was.

The accounts in the books I was reading were so overwhelming in both their statements on the man’s inability and the total agreement of all the authors that the man was useless and his own worst enemy that I had to stop for a minute.

Could this Colonel Worthington have been such a jerk?

Or, after the passage of time, when history revealed that General’s Grant and Sherman were great officers, that it became open season on anyone who didn’t recognize their virtue at the time and everyone is just jam piling on poor Colonel Worthington.

I had never heard of the guy to be honest and I thought could he really have been so bad?

So I searched him out.

With the wonder that can be the World Wide Web, I found copies of two letters about the Colonel that were written back in 1864.

The first one is hand written and states simply:

“Today I verbally told Col Worthington that I did not think him now fit for a Colonel; and now upon his urgent request, I put it in writing.”

The note is on letter paper printed with the heading, EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington.

It is dated, March 31, 1864.

It is signed, A. Lincoln.

Okay.

So maybe the Colonel was unwell and was requesting permission for sick leave and that is what Mr. Lincoln meant when he told him he was ‘not fit for a Colonel.”

Yeah, maybe.

The Colonel came back later to see Mr. Lincoln a few months later and this time, the President tried send him off to someone else.

The other letter is actually a transcription of a telegram:

It is dated: (Recd Cipher – 6:30pm) City Point, 3:10pm August 29, 1864.

It is addressed to:

His Excellency., A Lincoln, President of the US.

It states:

Your dispatch of 1.40 p.m. in relation to permitting Col. Worthington to come here is received.

I should be very sorry to see the Colonel. He has nearly worried the life out of me at times when I could not prevent an interview.

It is signed, US Grant, LT General.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I can imagine Mr. Lincoln laughing as he sent off his message to the General.

I can hear him say, “Grant will love this.”

It took the General less than 2 hours to get the telegram from the President, think about it and dictate his reply and get the reply encoded and say, nope, not me, don’t send him here.

That those two guys took time out from the Civil War to play guess who’s coming to dinner made me laugh.

It made them a little more real.

All respect to Colonel Thomas Worthington, but if Abraham Lincoln and US Grant felt this way I have to feel that the verdict of history has been just.

Colonel, you must have been one world record of a pest.

6.7.2022 – Belle Riviere –

Belle Riviere –
the french named it – a woman
easy to look at

We crossed the Ohio River again recently.

I was reminded of the poem, Whiffs of the Ohio River at Cincinnati, by Carl Sandburg from the collection, Good Morning, America.

The part in particular that goes:

When I asked for fish in the restaurant facing the Ohio river, with fish signs and fish pictures all over the wooden, crooked frame of the fish shack, the young man said, ‘Come around next Friday — the fish is all gone today’

So, I took eggs, fried, straight up, one side, and he murmured, humming, looking out at the shining breast of the Ohio river, ‘And the next IS something else, and the next is something else’

The customer next was a hoarse roustabout, handling nail kegs on a steamboat all day, asking for three eggs, sunny side up, three, nothing less, shake us a mean pan of eggs

And while we sat eating eggs, looking at the shining breast of the Ohio river in the evening lights, he had his thoughts and I had mine thinking how the French who found the Ohio river named it La Belle Riviere meaning a woman easy to look at.

6.6.2022 – findings are challenged

findings are challenged
most people don’t hear stories
are less appealing.

Reading the morning paper recently, I came across the story, ‘People may be overselling the myth’: should we bring back the wolf? by Phoebe Weston, a biodiversity writer for the Guardian.

The story deals with the complex of idea of the benefits derived from the re-release of near extinct predator animals back into the wild.

What I found somewhat refreshing in the article was one, its use of language and word along with the near blasphemous concept that science might be and maybe should be questioned.

Question the science?

Gosh!

This haiku is one of a couple or more in a series based on this same article.

There were so many good word combinations that I couldn’t pass them up.

And readers of this blog will know that from time to time I struggle with the weight of effort of producing a daily Haiku and any thoughts I may have about the words and time that went in the Haiku that day.

This daily schedule of missing a day can bring on a personal mental paralysis wherein writing these entries becomes impossible.

I learned to deal with this by not dealing with it and let it go.

Then when I look at my register of entries and see blank days with no post, I will grab a topic or book or poem for a source and produce a series of Haiku to fill in those blank dates.

This is one of the great benefits of this effort being my blog and my blog, my rules.

It IS cricket because I say it is.

It is ‘according to Hoyle’ because I say it is.

Thus I have this series of haiku based on this article and the Ms. Weston’s word choices.

I should also mention that this ‘lack of output’ coincided with a trip up to see our son and being away from a computer keyboard for a long weekend and I am playing catch-up.

Other haiku from this passage include:

6 17 2022: being brave enough to

6 16 2022: need to look at the

6 13 2022: enthusiastic

6 6 2022: findings are challenged

6 23 2022: when findings appear

6 21 2022: a landscape of fear

6 20 2022: overselling that

4 30 2022: there are factors that