4.25.2023 – can miss, ride the wave

you can miss the wave,
ride or be crushed by the wave …
a matter of tide

Not another seaside inspired haiku.

Honest.

I was picking my way through the pieces of the FOX News coverage and in the story, The Tragedy of Fox News (NYT 4/25/2023) by Bret Stephens, I loved this paragraph where Mr. Stephens wrote:

“All this makes Fox’s business challenge approximately the same as for the surfers at the Portuguese beach at Nazaré: miss the wave, ride the wave or be crushed by the wave. For Fox, riding the wave will no longer come easy: Angry populism is a force that can only be stoked, never assuaged.

Not that I cared that much about FOX but I loved the line, miss the wave, ride the wave or be crushed by the wave and having moved to the Atlantic Coast, I am much more aware of how waves are influenced by the tide that comes in and out two times day since time began.

Talk about a new tide sweeps clean, the beaches here are power washed twice a day leaving behind an untouched canvas for thoughts, ideas and beach chairs.

And I was reminded of my brush with Rupert Murdoch.

I got my start in Web Work when I was hired to be the ‘Corporate Librarian’ at Zondervan Publishing House in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Zondervan was known, then and now, as the publisher of the New International Version of the Holy Bible or NIV.

Through the office of Corporate Librarian, I kinda of ran wild over Zondervan.

They had no real plan for the position and I had no real plan of what to do.

I was included in Human Resources and had easy access to the Vice President of HR and once hired, I kept pestering the VP as to what they wanted me to do as Corporate Librarian.

Out of frustration with my pestering that VP looked at me and said, “Mike, your role is to foster reading throughout the company.”

I went back to my office and puzzled about this for a day.

What did it mean?

Foster reading throughout the company.

Then I thought, what doesn’t it mean!

And I drove a truck a through it!

After that, anything I did, I justified by saying, I am fostering reading throughout the company.

And it worked, oh boy let me tell you.

I got away with murder.

I had a room for the corporate library.

I had no furniture.

I knew the Cascade Township Library, where I had been working, was being refurbished and I offered them a deal that they could come to Zondervan and select as many books as they wanted in exchanged for their old library tables.

When Zondervan folks asked how I made the deal, I said I was just fostering reading throughout the company.

Also as Corporate Liberian, I did research for anyone who had a question about anything or fact checked any fact that needed checking.

To do this, I needed access to that new World Wide Web.

It was little known at the time and even to this day, that Zondervan is owned by Harper Collins in New York.

Harper Collins is owned by News Corp.

That’s right.

The feller who runs Fox News and owns Bart Simpson also publishes the NIV Bible.

And at the time I was at Zondervan, News Corp. also had an online service provider.

This company was known as Delphi and it was Rupert Murdoch’s big plan to be THE (read out loud as THEE) Internet Service Provider to the world.

If you worked for Zondervan and needed to be online, you got a Delphi Account.

I would get to my desk, turn on my computer, connect my modem and DIAL INTO the Delphi Network and after some sqawks and squeals and I would be online.

I was online so much that when it came time to create a Zondervan Website, the committee in charge decided that I should be a part of that team.

After the first meeting I had with the team, I found that all the other team members would be very happy if I took over the web effort and they would not have to worry about this latest ‘fad’.

It wasn’t so much that I took over as that they asked for a volunteer to be webmaster and I raised my hand to ask, “What did you say?”

Now 30 later, I am a webmaster dinosaur.

One of those people with 30 years experience in web design but no college degree in HTML.

There was no HTML when I was in college.

I have to say there is a certain je ne sais quoi to the quality of one’s web coding when one learned to code and create websites when 20k was the considered HUGE for an online image.

But back to Mr. Murdoch.

As I said, Mr. Murdoch had visions of Delphi being the largest internet service provider in the world.

Ol’ Rupert was going to ‘OWN’ the World Wide Web.

According to legend, Rupert came into work and asked for the Delphi balance sheet and then asked when could he expect his number of users to match, then pass, AOL.

Back then there were still people who dared to tell Rupert about reality land.

And someone told Rupert that not only would Delphi never pass, let alone catch AOL, Delphi was not even playing in the same league as AOL.

Rupert listened to this report, looked at the balance sheet and then said, “Shut it down.”

In 2 weeks Delphi ceased to exist.

And I got Microsoft Internet Explorer added to my computer for the first time.

Miss the wave, ride the wave or be crushed by the wave.

It is just a matter of tide.

4.24.2025 – suspended between

suspended between
the bottom of the sea and
the top of the sky

Men who ache all over for tidiness and compactness in their lives often find relief for their pain in the cabin of a thirty-foot sailboat at anchor in a sheltered cove. Here the sprawling panoply of The Home is compressed in orderly miniature and liquid delirium, suspended between the bottom of the sea and the top of the sky, ready to move on in the morning by the miracle of canvas and the witchcraft of rope. It is small wonder that men hold boats in the secret place of their mind, almost from the cradle to the grave. —

“The Sea and the Wind That Blows,” 1963; Essays of E. B. White, pp. 205–206.

Part of the series of Haiku inspired by from In the Words of E. B. White: Quotations from America’s Most Companionable of Writers (2011, Cornell University Press) by Mary White. This book was compiled by Mr. White’s grand daughter and while I am grateful she pulled all these together in one book, I am not sure I don’t consider this cheating.

4.23.2023 – if you are going

if you are going
into a food fight, always
come with the most food

Not making a statement on either side, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times made me laugh when in her opinion piece, DeSantis’s Puddin’ Head Campaign, she quoted David Axelrod saying, “If they’re going to get into a food fight, Trump always comes with more food.”

First, though I have to recognize Ms. Dowd for the homage Mark Twain’s The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (please read if you haven’t – you won’t regret it) where the assembled crowd notes that, after the man (Mr. David “Pudd’nhead” Wilson) in question said something dumb, was a … “Perfect jackass — yes, and it ain’t going too far to say he is a pudd’nhead. If he ain’t a pudd’nhead, I ain’t no judge, that’s all.”

Then let me go to the simple wisdom of the Axelrod quote which I boiled down to today’s haiku.

if your are going
into a food fight, always
come with the most food

Is there a better description of our current political system as it now stands?

Back in the day I went to college in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Due to many and various reasons, I was starting in the Winter term, not in the fall like most folks.

Due to this, finding a place to live was a problem but through a kind hearted brother-in-law, I wound up ‘boarding’ at a frat house.

Living and dining at a frat while not a part of it.

It was a good deal.

I had a room, laundry facilities and meals.

When I signed my papers, it was explained to me that if I took a kitchen job to help out, I would get a break on the dining fees which is how I ended up making Sunday Noon Dinner for 40 guys but that’s another story.

We ate family style at 3 long tables.

The dishes for the meal where set down at the end of each table and then passed along and we helped ourselves.

There was this one kid who managed to arrive late for dinner one or two times a week.

The empty seats were always the furthest from the food and he would rush in late, sit down at the far end of a table and immediately ask for everything to be passed his way.

One night, this feller ran in and sat down, late, next to me at the end of the table, but before he could say anything, one of the other guys yelled out, “Pass the meat, please!”

Someone else yelled out, “Pass the potatoes, please!”

“Pass the bread, please!”

Then they stopped saying things and just passed everything on the table, napkins, salt & pepper shakers, dirty plates, everything was passed down.

Desserts had just been set out and the dessert was passed down and I found an entire banana cream pie sitting on the table in front of me.

The feller in question was oblivious to all of this but on the other side of me sat Bob.

Bob was a frat boy.

Bob was, in the most 1980’s way, preppy, stuffy, spoiled and insufferable.

I looked at the pie in front me.

A banana cream pie that could have come from the kitchens of the Three Stooges I am telling you.

I looked at Bob in his pink izod, dockers and duck shoes.

Bob looked at the pie and he looked me dead in the eye and started to say, “Don’t even think about it!”

He got as far as “Don’t …”

Bob later told me that he counted to ten before he reacted.

If that was true, he counted by banging my head against the table.

I had picked up the pie with both hands, without turning, and with one fast motion, lifted the pie to my left and into Bob’s face.

As Mr. Twain (again) would write about dropping a watermelon on someone’s head from a third floor window, “I doubted the judiciousness of this, and I had some compunctions about it, too, because so much of the resulting entertainment would fall to my share and so little to the other person.”

To this day I doubt the judiciousness of this, and I had some compunctions about it but it was, above all else, really funny.

I was laughing all the time Bob was banging my head on the table.

When Bob stopped I sat back with tears coming down my face, making streaks in pie smears.

Bob, himself covered in pie, grabbed double handfuls of pie and threw it in my face and then rubbed his hands through my hair for good measure and left the room, slamming a door.

It was not until then that I noticed that the explosion of pie had led to a general food fight in the dining room.

Rolls, handfuls of potatoes, jello (a real accomplishment if you ever tried to throw jello) and whatever else was left from dinner was all flying through the air.

I had read about such things but, truly, this was the only food fight I ever experienced.

The place was a mess and after things calmed down, the guy who functioned as frat steward stood up and asked everyone to leave and that I would be staying until the place was completely clean.

I stood up, accepted the responsibility for the moment and apologized for the mess and got to work on the clean.

Then a goofy thing happend.

I would guess about 10 or 12 other guys pitched in and helped me with the clean up.

Afterward we went somewhere and I bought them all a beer and thanked them.

I made a toast of thanks and then I had to ask, why did they help me?

They all laughed and one guy spoke for all of them.

“Are you kidding?” he asked?

“You got Bob!”

4.22.2023 – Kool Aid, Cool Kool Aid

Kool Aid, Cool Kool Aid
where oh where is my Kool Aid
look for red mustache …

I grew up in a Kool Aid family.

There wasn’t a lot of pop around the house except at holidays.

We had Welch’s grape juice because my Mom believed in a weekly dose of Cod Liver Oil.

We would line up in the kitchen on Saturday nights and my Mom would set out two shot glasses.

One at time we would get a shot of Cod Liver Oil chased by a shot of Welch’s to cover up the taste.

Then Mom would refill the shot glasses for the next person in line.

This aspect of home wellness did not continue long into my lifetime, I was 8th of 11 kids and I think my Mom just gave up, but those shot glasses stayed in the kitchen cupboard forever.

For years when someone new to the family was directed to the cupboard to find a glass, they would find the shot glasses and grab one and ask, “What it is this for?”

And we would tell them.

I will also say that a shot glass of grape juice after Cod Liver Oil made me look at Communion with what is called a suspect animus.

Of course we always had OJ and Lemonade from frozen concentrate.

To this day, the rules for cans of concentrate are the same and I bet you can recite them.

Three cans of cold water for OJ.

Four and 1/3 cans of cold water for Lemonade.

I have never understood that in the century since the invention of frozen lemonade concentrate, no chemist has come up with a way to produce a product that needs the same three cans of water as OJ.

Doesn’t this call out for consistency?

Three cans of water regardless?

But no and forever we go one guessing at how much is four and 1/3 cans of water.

BUT I DIGRESS.

In the summer time the drink was Kool Aid.

Mom would unpack the brown bags of groceries and down at the bottom of one bag would be an assortment of Kool Aid packets.

Mom would get the standards of orange, grape, lemon lime.

I could not stand strawberry or watermelon.

I think because the goto drink for Youth Meetings at my church were those two flavors.

And at church it was an off brand Kool Aid Kool Aid kind of beverage that was provided, as I recall, with double the requested amount of water and half the amount of sugar.

That and how we all got red mustaches from drinking the stuff.

For me, the gold standard. the best flavor, Kool Aid at its finest was black cherry.

I find it hard to say why as I was no big fan of cherry flavor or cherry pie or cherry pop tarts.

We lived in the heart of farmers fresh produce stands and in the summer time, there were often bowls of fresh from the tree cherries and black cherries in our fridge but they weren’t on my list.

But BLACK CHERRY KOOLAID?

SIGN ME UP.

My Mom believed in Dixie Cups and the Dixie Cup dispenser.

To come in from playing in the what I was led to believe was the HOT summer of West Michigan (which would amount to a warm winter afternoon where I now live in the Low Country of South Carolina) and open the fridge to see a tupper-ware plastic pitcher of black cherry Kool Aid was the ultimate reward for playing outside in the hot summer of West Michigan.

I would take out the pitcher and reach up to the dispenser and pull out a dixie cup that I would fill TO THE BRIM and then standing there, with the pitcher in one hand, I would pour that Kool Aid down my throat in one or two gulps and slam down the dixie cup like I was Wild Bill Hickok in the Girl of the Golden West Saloon in Dodge City.

“I’ll have another,” I would yell to no one in particular and I fill up the cup again with the purest, bestest, coldest, sweetest drink on the face of this planet.

Black Cherry Kool Aid.

Over the years I may have lost the appeal of Kool Aid over all, maybe being a parent with 7 kids and dealing with the special staining aspects of Kool Aid had something to do with it, but I never lost the taste … or at least the memory of the taste of ice cold Black Cherry Kool Aid.

My kids will tell you that whenever any discussion of favorite foods and drinks took place in with my family, I would say, “This is good, but …” and the kids would answer, “It’s not Black Cherry Kool Aid”

Alas, while it is still made, it rarely shows up in stores and my kids only know about it from my stories.

Recently my son Jackie was getting ready to make a run to Walmart and he asked, “Need anything?”

And out of the blue I said, “See if they have any Black Cherry Kool Aid.”

He laughed and said okay but when he returned he had to report that he did look all over, but nope, no Black Cherry.

I said that I didn’t expect it as it was around much anymore.

Then my son said, “Dad, there is place called Amazon …”

I had not thought of that.

Then I did think of about it.

Then I thought, why not?

And I placed an order for 15 packets with the purest, bestest, coldest, sweetest drink on the face of this planet.

The order was accepted and I was told I would have my delivery in one week via the United States Postal Service.

I waited and thought about Black Cherry Kool Aid.

One week later I got notified that the package had been delivered to my mailbox!

I was at work and I waited and thought about Black Cherry Kool Aid.

I got home from work, took a walk with my wife and ended the walk at the mail boxes for our Apartment Compled.

Got out the key, opened the box and looked in … to see … nothing.

I checked my messages again and it stated – VERFIED DELIVERY – Left in buyers mailbox.

But it had not been left, at least, it had not be left in MY mail box.

So the process of tracking down the package has started.

The Mail Service here in the Low Country is, well, like the posted hours of restaurants, more of a suggestion.

That the mail carrier did track my package and beeped whatever tracking was on the package, the number of open slots that the mail carrier had to choose from was too much and the wrong slot got my package.

That means someone else got my Kool Aid.

Some else, disregarded my name and address on the package, even though I am just a few yards away from where they live.

Some else is mixing up and drinking my Black Cherry Kool Aid.

Some else in this apartment complex has a dark red mustache across their upper lip.

And I am looking for you.

To Be Continued …

4.21.2023 – eyes that often seem

eyes that often seem
capable seeing things not
visible to men

Any sort of disturbance, whether man-made or elemental, is of immense interest to a goose, and geese watch the world through eyes that often seem capable of seeing things not visible to men. I have always envied a goose its look of deep, superior wisdom. I miss the cordiality of geese, the midnight cordiality. And they are the world’s best drinkers, forever at it. —

Postscript to “The Eye of Edna,” April 1962; Points of My Compass, p. 14