6.20.2023 – satiny dark complete

satiny dark complete
curdly clouds striped moon silent
could hear my eyes blink

That was all the instruction I ever received: two announcements and a vision of a baseball field.

I sat on the verandah until the satiny dark was complete.

A few curdly clouds striped the moon, and it became so silent I could hear my eyes blink.

From Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella, 1983, Ballantine Books.

Summer time and humidity so thick you could be under water.

Dark so deep you can feel it.

Quiet so loud, you can hear.

Life in the low country on South Carolina in June, 2023.

6.19.2023 – eating a mouthful

eating a mouthful
of afternoon winter sun
take bite of the cake

Hey wait a minute.

How can I post a haiku about the afternoon winter sun in June?

Well, see, the inspiration for today’s haiku comes from and article written in Australia where it is wintertime.

That is something I know in my head but my heart has a difficult understanding.

That it is winter in Australia along with those folks are down under and hanging upside down, attached to the world by their feet.

Anyway, this story appeared in the Guardian, which has some pretty good stories about food.

Recently, the Guardian published, ‘Lunch of suffering’: plain ‘white people food’ goes viral in China, that describes how the Chinese, sampling a traditional American Brown Bag lunch with a cold sandwich and raw veggies and a ‘lunch of suffering’ and that it must be designed to make American’s appreciate being at home even more.

Today’s haiku is taken from the article, I spent the day eating like Nigella Lawson – and lived to tell the tale where the writer, Ann Ding, describes trying to eat at the places named by someone named Nigella Lawson eats at when Ms. Lawson visits Australia.

I have never heard of Nigella Lawson.

Apparently she is a Martha Stewart type in Britain but has managed, during a long career, to fly under my radar.

Regardless, she eats great food made at great restaurants.

Though, as Ms. Ding points out, that a high end Sydney restaurant named, Bondi, “… an institution for beautiful people. I think this may be because – while the food is delicious and looks sexy – Icebergs occupies that juncture of “modern Australian dining” which mostly just means “Italian”, and I don’t really need to go to Bondi for that.“

Ms. Ding is a food writer and like art and music writers, they get to use the best word and word combinations in painting word pictures.

They also get to build in a sense of the tactile sense of taste which is really great work to have if you can get it.

Ms. Ding writes of “… a piece of lemon, almond and ricotta cake.

As we lounge at the edge of the botanic garden, I take a bite of the cake – the lemon curd and whipped cream is like eating a mouthful of the afternoon winter sun.“

And I like that.

I like that a lot.

… the lemon curd and whipped cream is like eating a mouthful of the afternoon winter sun.

Not sure I would go to Australia to get a piece.

But I will think about it.

And I will think about word pictures the next time I am eating.

6.18.2023 – blessed is the man

blessed is the man
whose quiver is full – they will
not be put to shame

Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth.

Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.

They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court.

Psalms 127:3-5 New International Version (NIV)

6.17.2023 – weary sun hath made

weary sun hath made
a golden set gives token
goodly tomorrow.

The weary sun hath made a golden set
And by the bright tract of his fiery car
Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.

Richard III: Act 5, Scene 4 by Big Bill

Drat that green spot caused by smart phone camera.

Seems that if my smart phone was so smart that green dot wouldn’t show up.

One blogger wrote: Many iPhone users see a green dot on their pictures. Although it is of negligible size yet it looks bad.

This issue is a real concern for photography lovers. They toil a lot to capture a perfect shot or selfie. But, the green dot spoils both their mood and the picture.

SO much for being so smart.

Let us focus on the words and hope for a googly tomorrow.

weary sun hath made
a golden set gives token
goodly tomorrow.

6.16.2023 – exciting drama

exciting drama
contribution lies in fabling
that it inspired

The significance of the Pony Express is not as apparent as its execution is memorable. The value of what happened during those eighteen months has transgressed the tangible effects carried in the padlocked saddle bags. The Pony Express as a cultural symbol has enjoyed a lot of traction over the years, and among the many artists, authors, journalists, and historians to depict and describe it, few have been able to resist romanticizing it. The apocryphal horseman has galloped off into the sunset so many times that exaggeration has adulterated fact. One exception is the 1930 book Six Horses, written by Captain William Banning and George Hugh Banning. William’s father was a transportation tycoon in California in the late 1800s. The book covers communication, freighting, and passenger conveyance in the West in the nineteenth century. Its title refers to a team of horses drawing a stagecoach. Banning dedicates two chapters to the Pony Express, and his observations are telling:

It did not involve more than 150 round trips. It did not cover a full nineteen months. Like a belated fragment of a storm, it came and was gone. Yet the fact remains: a more glamorous contribution to our historic West than that of this ephemeral Pony would be difficult to name.37

Banning refers to the Pony Express as an “immortal Pegasus” that was “able to identify himself with the new empire as permanently as though he had come racing up from the gold rush to the last spike driven for the Pacific Railroad.” History has lauded the Pony Express as a bold stroke of transcontinental progress, but Banning argues that the Pony Express “neither caused nor hastened the developments that followed his trail” and that “had he never existed, all must have been the same.” It was an exciting drama while it lasted, but it was little more than a drama. Its contribution to our historic West, therefore, lies in the fabling that it inspired:

From The Last Ride of the Pony Express: My 2,000-mile Horseback Journey into the Old West by Will Grant, Little, Brown and Company (June 6, 2023).

Seeming as American as any American enterprise could ever get.

According to legend, the help wanted notice read:

Wanted:

Young, skinny, wiry fellows, not over 18.

Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily.

Orphans preferred.

It should be pointed out that the Pony Express ran from April 3, 1860, to October 26, 1861.

October 26, 1861 was the day the transcontinental telegraph went into service.

It cost more money than it made.

It didn’t last longer than technology.

But it has a permaemnt place in the history of this country.

A place based on fable than fact.

But who cares.