11.10.2023 – change the world and have

change the world and have
hell of a good time – planning
my day’s difficult

I took this image of the sunrise on Thursday as I drove over the Cross Island Parkway Bridge on Thursday.

I have to point out that had I waited another one or two seconds I would have reached the top of the bridge and the sun was the much more spectacular above the flat line of the Atlantic Ocean.

As I quote Alice Walker so often from her book the Color Purple, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

I have to append that to read, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by a sunrise somewhere and don’t notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

After taking the photo, I needed a quote on sunrise or getting up in the morning and I found this online, “I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.”

It was attributed to E. B. White.

That made me think, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

It sounded familiar but I checked the wording and I had never used it before.

I checked online for the source and I checked and I checked and I checked until my checker was sore.

And then I found that Andy White never said “I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.”

But he did say:

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy.

If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem.

But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world.

This makes it hard to plan the day.

I cited E. B. White: Notes and Comment, interview with Israel Shenker, July 11, 1969; New York Times; quoted in E. B. White: A Biography, by Scott Elledge, p. 3

And I did use that quote back in May.

And I used it one another haiku about sunrise viewed on a drive to work.

In May, I said:

rise in morning torn
desire improve, enjoy world
makes day hard to plan

Versus

change the world and have
hell of a good time – planning
my day’s difficult

I sure can imagine Mr. White having and saying he was having a hell of good time.

And I know of one scholar who says getting a quote kind of close but not word for word shows that maybe you didn’t memorize but that the thought certainly stuck in your head was more important.

Change the world and have one hell of a good time.

I might as well try.

11.9.2023 – lead a private life

lead a private life
mostly because nobody
is interested

Up until two years ago when he had met Shelley he had led a totally private life, mostly because, he now supposed, nobody was interested. There was a specific sorrow and yearning to find a truly remote deer cabin, and trade the off-season rent of it for some maintenance.

From the Brown Dog Novellas by Jim Harrison.

In all those dystopian worlds, taking the definition of the word from the online dictionary which is, relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice, one of the underlying themes is that the state or for lack of better term, Big Brother, is watching you.

In 1984, the hero has to get up and perform calisthenics in front of a ‘view-screen’ that can never be turned off.

Every once in awhile the on screen group leader will yell at the hero to get his butt in gear.

I could never get my arms around that part of dystopia.

If you have cameras watching everybody, you need someone to watch the cameras.

As Henry Kissinger said of Richard Nixon’s White House tapes, 10,000 hours of tapes will take 10,000 hours to listen to.

Why, how, could or would any one single person be worth tracking if you have a Government that is totally in control of everything.

Today someone can steal my identity.

Someone can steal my list of books that I have read.

Someone can get an image of the house where I live and sometimes that image has my car in the diveway.

Well, who wants to know?

Anyone who goes to the trouble of stealing my identity will have to deal with my credit history and my credit score along with the fact that they most likely will start getting letters from the University of Michigan Alumni Association asking for money.

Good luck dealing with all that.

Reminds me of a TV cop show where some kid walked off with someone’s stainless steel silverware and the cop told him that if brought that to a pawn shop, he would have to pay the pawnbroker to take it off his hands.

Back when I was going to Riverside Junior High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan where I grew up, I volunteered to work in the school library.

One day, sitting at the desk, I started opening drawers and found a stapled together bunch of papers.

Written on top were the words, “MASTER LIST – ALL STUDENTS.”

What it was was a mimeographed list of all the students at Riverside with their name, address, phone number as well as parents names.

I looked at for a minute and said to myself, “this is cool,” and I slipped the pages into a notebook and took it with me when I left that day.

Boy of boy, I felt like I had power.

I had everyone’s name.

I had everyone’s parent’s names.

I had their phone numbers and addresses.

And there was nothing I could do with it.

If I showed to anyone I knew it would get out that I had it.

Aside from looking at the information on some friends about who I already knew all that information.

It started to gnaw at me that I had the pages and I started thinking someone might notice they were gone from the library.

Then the pages started beating like the tell tale heart in the Poe short story.

I finally said to myself, ‘SO NOW WHAT? WHAT MIGHT YOU DO WITH ALL THIS INFORMATION?”

And the next shift I had in the library, I put it back.

SO much information.

I guess I depend on there being so much information out there that my life can remain private.

Not so much that it isn’t out there, but, gee whiz, who would be interested in me?

11/8/2023 – literally good

literally good
at nothing but for winning
it’s ridiculous

Adapted from the line, “They’re literally good at nothing, other than winning the game,” Dan Graziano, an NFL insider, said on ESPN. “It’s ridiculous.” in the story, 17 years, zero losing seasons: Mike Tomlin’s coaching genius rumbles on by Dave Caldwell in the Guardian.

I am reminded of the baseball player/manager, Eddie Stanky about whom Leo Durocher once said:

Can’t hit.

Can’t run.

Can’t field.

He just knows how to win.

Legend has it that a Coach once said to Michael Jordan that there was no “I” in team.

Mr. Jordan replied, ‘There is in win.“

Winning.

Coach Lombardi is supposed to have said that ‘Winning isn’t everything … it’s the only thing.‘

Sports, politics, life itself.

Winning.

But off in the wings in Mr. Shakespeare.

As Big Bill put it when he has Banquo (Macbeth Act 1, Scene 3) say:

But ’tis strange.

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

The instruments of darkness tell us truths,

Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s

In deepest consequence.

Big Bill back in 1606 and he describes the American political theater of 2023.

‘Tis strange … and most ridiculous.

11.7.2023 – apparent that there

apparent that there
was a lot going on but
he wasn’t sure what

Not since the student riots in Chicago that took place while Brown Dog was a very casual student at the Moody Bible Institute had he seen this many people going to and fro.

It was apparent that there was a lot going on but he wasn’t sure what.

Another big crowd in his life had been the Ishpeming Bugle and Firefighters Convention a few years before but there the purpose had been quite specific.

Brown Dog had stood in the garage parking lot waiting for the head gasket of his van to be replaced and had watched several hundred buglers take turns doing their best.

This turned out to be more than enough bugling to last a lifetime.

From the novella, “Westwood Ho” originally published in Julip by Jim Harrison, Grove Press, 2000.

Westwood Ho is a Brown Dog story.

One of five Brown Dog novella’s written by Jim Harrison.

Against my better judgement I am listening to the complete Brown Dog collection from Audible on my drive to work.

I don’t mind … so much … how the reader uses affectations for different characters.

Though the number of fake Native American accent’s in the storyline does push the reader and my tolerance to the limit.

Why can’t they just read the book?

But no, its not the accents or the phraseology that gets me.

It’s the lack of research they put into to pronounce place names in Michigan’s Upper Pennisula that drives me first to laugh and then shake my head in disbelief.

MUN-Sing?

MUN-Sing for Munising?

Oh come on.

es CANA ba for Escanaba.

Ojibwa and Anishinaabe get so mangled I couldn’t figure out what the reader was saying.

Menominee, Ishpeming and Negaunee all get the treatment.

Oh come on.

The feller got a bye on Sault Ste. Marie as Mr. Harrison refers to it as just ‘The Soo’ but I was ready for Salt Saint Mary’s.

Still the sentiment from today as I drove to work emerged from the words.

The focus being It was apparent that there was a lot going on but he wasn’t sure what.

I read the papers.

I watch the news.

It was apparent that there is a lot going on but I am not sure what.

Is it New Year’s yet?

PS … a couple of day later it happened … Salt Saint May’s …. 🤷🏽‍♂️

11.6.2023 – are inflexible

are inflexible
on policy, flexible
on morality

Three days after the House elected Johnson speaker, Mike Pence dropped out of the Republican presidential primary. The most recent Republican vice president had become a polling afterthought, and the reason isn’t hard to discern. He’s every bit as faith-forward as Johnson, he was every bit as loyal to the Trump policy agenda as Johnson, and yet — when push came to shove — he could not participate in the Big Lie. He paid an immediate and permanent price for his honesty, with his approval among G.O.P. voters plunging after the attack on the Capitol.

This is precisely indicative of the political ruthlessness that’s overtaken evangelical Republicans. They are inflexible about policy positions even when the Bible is silent or vague. They are flexible about morality even when the Bible is clear. One Christian man tells the truth, and it kills his career. Another Christian man helps lead one of the most comprehensively dishonest and dangerous political and legal efforts in American history, and he gets the speaker’s gavel.

From the NYT opinion piece, ‘MAGA Mike Johnson’ and Our Broken Christian Politics by David French.

According to the NYT, David French is an Opinion columnist. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator.

This is precisely indicative of the political ruthlessness that’s overtaken evangelical Republicans.

They are inflexible about policy positions even when the Bible is silent or vague.

They are flexible about morality even when the Bible is clear.

I don’t understand this one bit.

I reminded of the passage, Matthew 7:15-20.

Watch out for false prophets.

They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.

By their fruit you will recognize them.

Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?

Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.

A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.