2.18.2023 – was preventable

was preventable
but in some ways was also
inevitable

The story I read, Down to Earth: The Arizona teen whose death in extreme heat is a warning of tragic things to come, by Nina Lakhani in the Guardian, is an article about the heat in Phoenix and the death in 2022 of a young man named Caleb Blair.

Caleb Blair, Ms. Lakhani writes, was a sweet talented kid with mental health struggles ended up naked and handcuffed, high and overheated, on the forecourt of a Circle K gas station.

It is an article filled with awfulness on many many levels.

Ms. Lakhani writes: His tragic death was preventable, but in some ways it was also inevitable given the US’s social, health and economic inequalities. And it signals that the climate crisis is a risk multiplier – it exposes, intersects with and amplifies existing problems such as housing shortages, inadequate mental health and addiction services, racist policing, and the lack of shade in cities, to name just a few.

His tragic death was preventable, but in some ways it was also inevitable given the US’s social, health and economic inequalities.

A terrible statement to read or say out loud.

A statement made more terrible maybe as that it mentions the US’s social, health and economic inequalities.

Social, health and economic inequalities in the United States.

The greatest country on the face of the earth.

One month after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt gave a speech that explained why America was in World War 2.

America was fighting for Democracy which, according to FDR, included economic opportunity, employment, social security, and the promise of “adequate health care”.

America, FDR said, was fighting for the four freedoms.

And just the four freedoms for the America but for the whole world.

The Four Freedoms?

Freedom of speech.

Freedom of worship.

Freedom from want.

Freedom from fear.

Joe Stalin saw the flaw here right away.

When Stalin met FDR and the Four Freedoms came up, Stalin asked if Want meant Desire.

FDR was quit to point out that he meant, WANTS or NEEDS not desires.

As an aside though, FDR was once asked what book he would have people in the Soviet Union read to help understand the differences between the USSR and the USA. The Sears Roebuck Catalog, said FDR.

Freedom from want.

Social, health and economic inequalities in the United States.

Preventable, but in some ways it was also inevitable.

Maybe as George Bailey said, “… is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?

Preventable, but in some ways it was also inevitable.

Maybe I need to include the first part of that line of George Bailey’s from It’s a Wonderful Life.

The line starts, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this town.

The living and dying in this town.

Social, health and economic inequalities in the United States.

Preventable, but in some ways it was also inevitable.

Boy Howdy, but if that isn’t the caption on the feelings of just about everything today.

Preventable, but in some ways it was also inevitable.

What happened to the promise?

2.17.2023 – when Marvin Gaye sang

when Marvin Gaye sang
whole world changed nothing nothing
was ever the same

What can I say.

What can I say but that I got chills.

What can I say but that I got chills this when I READ Marvin Gaye’s iconic NBA All-Star Game national anthem: ‘He turned that thing into his own’ (click headline for PDF) in today’s Athletic.

According to the article by David Aldridge and Marcus Thompson II, it was 30 years ago that Marvin Gaye sang his three minute version of the Star Spangled Banner.

In February 1984, I was a college student in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a city often described by people who haven’t lived there as a suburb of Detroit.

While it may not have been a suburb, it Ann Arbor did have a Detroit edge to it and Motown was the home team.

Come to think of it, growing up in Michigan, Motown was the home team.

It seems like a lot of the sound track music to my life is Motown.

And Marvin Gaye was going to start off the NBA All Star game, and please understand that in 1984, the NBA All Star game was nothing like it is today.

First of all, it was a real game and both teams wanted to win.

Second of all, that is all it was, just this one game.

No All Star week.

And Marvin Gaye was going to start it off with the National Anthem.

The story told in this article is wonderful in capturing this moment and what led up to it, how it came off, and the legacy of it all.

(Spoiler Alert – the play by play of the people in LA waiting waiting waiting for Marvin to show up and he walks into the arena with his drum track on a cassette in his hand MINUTES before he went on national TV is … well, read it for yourself)

One of the best things written in the article is the line, “No one remembers what happened in the game. No one. Including the players. “If you ask anybody about the L.A. All-Star Game, they say, ‘That’s the Marvin Gaye national anthem game,’” [Isiah] Thomas said.”

I remember watching it as it happened.

“So Marvin walks out,” Thomas said. “They got his music, he grabs the mic … just as cool as ever. But the anthem music doesn’t come on. It’s another beat. The first thing you notice is, ‘Wait a minute; this ain’t the national anthem soundtrack.’”

I remember as I watched and listened, that I had to stand up.

Then I remember thinking how long can this go?

This is INCEDIBLE.

When Marvin got the sell out crowd clapping IN TIME to the National Anthem, I think I had tears in my eyes.

When the players, looking at each in disbelief, joined the crowd, I know I had tears.

In the article, Marquis Johnson said, “The first thought was something to the effect of, like, the uber-patriots, Marvin’s kind of messing with the national anthem. ‘Boy, he’s going to get some blowback for this.’ But then as he went on, and it was so iconic and funky and soulful, all that good stuff, that wasn’t the thought. I was just standing there and enjoying the moment, realizing that this is a unique, special experience that we were all a part of.”

Never forgot it.

But when I talked with other people about it, so few seemed to have any knowledge of it.

People who see other good renditions of the National Anthem and ask me about it.

Oh that Whitney …

Did you see Carrie … or Lady Gaga ..

Well, I would say, they weren’t at all like Marvin were they …

And I would get blank stares.

Staying local, I love Anita Baker (okay I love anything by Anita Baker) and Karen Newman and their renditions of the Anthem but the gold standard, heck the ONLY standard is Marvin.

As Mr. Aldridge and Mr. Thompson II write, Gaye bent the song to his will and tempo.

Working 20 years in television news, I had a standard for sports reporters based on whether on not they remembered this moment

One feller, I think in Atlanta, and I had a long email exchange over it.

I had to send him the link to YouTube.

10 minutes later, he was up in my office to thank me.

He had never even HEARD of it.

Just have to shake my head.

Can something be a defining moment if few people remember.

This song was for me at least.

It somehow made the National Anthem, well, National.

When I die, I hope someone plays this as my ashes are poured out on the beach.

What’s left of Me, the beach and Marvin Gaye singing the National Anthem.

And I know there are comments and concerns about our National Anthem.

It isn’t the greatest song in the book but it is the national song.

Andy Rooney once said something like, say what you will about the Star Spangled Banner, it sure sounds good when you hear it when you are in another country.

One song.

Lots of renditions.

But none better than one sang on February 13, 1983, in Los Angeles California by Marvin Pentz Gay Jr.

Marvelous Marvin.

And I’ll never forget it.

I hope you take the time to listen.

According to the article this 3 minute version is cut down from the 6 minute version at rehearsal.

I got chills watching this too.

2.16.2023 – time present time past

time present time past
future eternally
unredeemable

Sunset Timelapse at Bluewater Resort on Hilton Head Island

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

From Burnt Norton as it appears in Four Quartets (Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York, 1943) by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Burnt Norton opens with two lines in Greek.

τοΰ λόγου δ’έόντος ξυνοΰ ζώουσιν οί πολλοί
ώς ίδίαν έχοντες φρόνησιν.

And …

όδoς άνω κάτω μία και ώυτή

They are both quotes from Heraclitus.

“Though wisdom is common, the many live as if they have wisdom of their own”

“the way upward and the way downward is one and the same.”

But to what purpose?

Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves …

I do not know.

All time is unredeemable.

(Full disclosure, the video included with this post was created by Brett, my friend and coworker here on the Island. Brett has a pretty cool job. His is the effort to capture what it is that makes you want to spend your vacation on the island. He does a pretty good job with what he has to work with. One of the perks of this job is getting to see his stuff before the rest of the world does.)

2.15.2023 – other people’s words

other people’s words
keep me from sliding into
the canyon of doom

I was attracted by the headline, A Secret for Falling Asleep So Good It’s a British National Treasure.

I was intrigued to read when the writer wrote, “Most nights I don’t sleep well, so to relax, I often listen to audiobooks or the radio. Other people’s words keep me from sliding into the canyon of doom, where all around shouts of “you’re screwed” reverberate.“

It can be a problem reading (or listening) yourself to sleep.

I have been a reader-in-bed for as long as I can remember.

I was never a flashlight-under-the-blankets reader.

I just kept the lights on and kept quiet.

Anything that kept me quiet was okay with anyone who has ever spent time with me.

Today, I say good night to the wife with the idea that I will spend a few minutes reading before turning out the lights.

All too often I am still reading when she comes to bed and even more often, I get up and go read in the other room so she can turn the lights out.

I get too interested in what I am reading and there it is.

Reading as an inducer of sleep has rarely worked out for me, though I have tried.

In the book, The Winds of War, Herman Wouk has a scene where one of characters can’t sleep and she looks at a wall of books saying, “What can I read? Ah, Graham Wallas – the very man. I’ll be asleep in half an hour.“

I had never heard of Graham Wallas.

According to Wikipedia, Graham Wallas (31 May 1858 – 9 August 1932) was an English socialist, social psychologist, educationalist, a leader of the Fabian Society and a co-founder of the London School of Economics and such a pedigree indeed would nominate Mr. Wallas to be the very man to induce sleep.

I thought two things when I read that line.

I thought, maybe he would put me to sleep so I should give his writing a try.

He didn’t.

One of my problems is that I have to like what I read to take the time to read it and I did not like reading Graham Wallas’ writing and I got too agitated not liking his writing to be able to get to sleep so it was a real stupid experiment.

They other thing I thought was what a great literary device to slam some one.

Put people in a novel, then have them make wonderful pithy comments about someone’s writing.

Brilliant!

As I said, I was attracted by the headline, A Secret for Falling Asleep So Good It’s a British National Treasure.

Shocked I was to read that, according to Ms. Grace Lindon, the secret for falling asleep so good it’s a British National Treasure is listening to something called the Shipping Forecast.

Not the forecast that is read out on air by the BBC at 5:02 a.m., 12:01 p.m., 5:54 p.m. and 12:48 a.m. G.M.T., with each briefing beginning with the same words: “And now the Shipping Forecast, issued by the Met Office“, but compilations of forecasts.

Productions created by pasting a bunch of forecasts together.

Ms. Linden writes, “when heard in hourlong compilations, the Shipping Forecast is poetic and hypnotic, a free-form ode to the seas.”

Click here for an example.

By chance I am very familiar with the Shipping Forecast.

I am very familiar with the Shipping Forecast for two reasons.

One is that I listen to broadcasts of Cricket Matches for the ECB or England and Wales Cricket Board on the BBC (via You Tube).

These broadcasts are often interrupted when the commenter pauses the match coverage to say, “Long Wave listeners are going away for the Shipping Forecast” and then a few minutes later, long wave listeners are welcomed back to the broadcast.

The other reason is that I know Shipping Forecast is that it is introduced by the music, Sailing By.

If anything would put anyone to sleep I would have bet is was the sound of Sailing By but nope, it is the Shipping Forecast itself, in long long recorded compliations.

Ms. Linden writes:

Vastness, as such, is appealing, and the world is so very vast.

Long-wave broadcasts travel far, hugging the planet as they make their way overseas.

Like the sea itself, the Shipping Forecast is a reminder of the larger, more elemental forces at play, those things that are much more powerful than any of our individual worries or wants.

For eons, there was nothing but the stars and estuaries, the winds, the shore.

After making his way out of the mythical cave, man set off to the sea, where the water proffered new realms for exploration.

And so, like the ancient mariners before me, I am often awake in the middle of the night, falling asleep to the mysteries of the deep.

Since moving to the coast, lines like the one, Like the sea itself, the Shipping Forecast is a reminder of the larger, more elemental forces at play, those things that are much more powerful than any of our individual worries or wants.

I like that.

I like that a lot.

I will say it out loud the next time I am walking along the beach and watch those elemental forces at play.

Those things that are much more powerful than any of our individual worries or wants.

It’s what I get to do on my lunch hour and it is one of those things that keeps me from sliding into the canyon of doom.

2.14.2023 – while I am I, and

while I am I, and
you are you, so long as the
world contains us both

Escape me?
Never —
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear:
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.
But what if I fail of my purpose here?
It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one’s eyes and laugh at a fall,
And, baffled, get up and begin again,
So the chase takes up one’s life, that’s all.
While, look but once from your farthest bound
At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope goes to ground
Than a new one, straight to the self-same mark,
I shape me—
Ever
Removed!

Life in a Love by Robert Browning