Month: January 2024

1.31.2024 – lights red lights green lights

lights red lights green lights
stop lights go lights caution lights
on streets, not on life

Rules of the road.

Stop on red.

Go on green.

Caution, warning, take care, changing soon on yellow.

This works really well at the moment as I drive to work, as I have driven to work for almost half a century and it hasn’t been improved on.

But who is to say this will last?

I always thought that one of the first signs of the final decent for mankind would be a disregard for the basic fairness of a four way stop.

Four way stops work if everyone behaves, shows some respect and follows the rules.

You take your turn.

Sometimes you wait to take your turn.

Once someone decides to not follow the rules, the implied momentary contract between drivers to follow the rules is dissolved and chaos follows.

Roundabouts are the coming better solution to the problem of how to get people to take turns yet I find it difficult to grasp how this is an improvement.

Roundabouts work if everyone behaves, shows some respect and follows the rules.

Proponents state that the data shows that T bone accidents, accidents where cars crash at a 90 degree angle to one another have dropped 95%.

It is data likes this that gives breathe to the concept of lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Most folks think Mark Twain said that but Mr. Twain said that Benjamin Disraeli said it but I digress.

Is it true that T bone accidents dropped 95%?

Yes, you bet.

Is it also true that in a circle, cars are no longer approaching each other at a 90 degree angle making the CHANCE of a T bone accident drop 100%?

Yes, you bet.

Lets go back to the four way stop.

The rule of thumb is that the driver on the right has the right of way.

Makes it easy to remember doesn’t it?

I put it to you that had someone back in time had decided that drivers on the left had the right of way, that culture today would have rejected this as leftist woke theology and four ways stops in Florida would have been outlawed

With round about going counter clockwise, they would have been outlawed as counter culture.

I am not sure what people if Florida would have been left with in the way of traffic control as obviously red lights are pinko, green lights are, well, green and therefore a myth and yellow lights must lead into some sort of peril.

Better to just buy a gun and park the car in the garage is where this line of thinking will take you.

Red lights.

Green lights.

Yellow lights.

Pretty simple stuff.

Until someone decides it isn’t.

Simple as it implies a basic social contract.

We have to agree together to make it work.

Some one will get to the corner first and will have to agree that that is how it is.

Not a lot of interpretation there.

Some one gets to go and someone, well, someone has to wait.

We all have to take our turn to make this work.

Regulated cooperation?

Goodness but that sounds so …

1.29.2024 – Campbell’s aggression

Campbell’s aggression
is fun … breaks with the norms .. but
pragmatism struck

Campbell’s aggression is fun. It breaks with the norms. It’s because of that aggression – because of the fourth-down decision-making; because of his belief in Goff – that the Lions found themselves in the NFC title game to begin with. Still, it’s tough to square Campbell’s decision to kick a field goal at the end of the first half rather than push for a touchdown with his refusal to kick field goals in the second half. Pragmatism struck Campbell when there was a chance to take a three-score lead into the break, only for the swashbuckler to return in the second half.

From Miscues, bad luck and ladybugs: how the Lions blew their best chance at a Super Bowl by Oliver Connolly.

This article was slugged: Detroit had a 24-7 lead at half-time of the NFC Championship Game, and still lost. But they should have no regrets about the aggression that took them that far.

Pragmatism struck.

As Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, “thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.“

Near the end of the movie, The Madness of King George, there is an incredible bit of acting within acting when the King, with the help of some courtiers, is reading aloud from Big Bill’s play King Lear.

They finish the bit in one of the mostest bestest renditions of the scene where Cordelia wakes up the King with a kiss that has have ever been put on film.

All the participants are so moved that no one speaks until someone breaks in with, “Is that the end your Majesty?”

To which George III responds with some angst, “Oh, good Lord, no. Cordeli is hanged, and the shock of it kills the king. So they all die.”

The King looks around then yells in frustration trying to make sense of it all, “It’s a tragedy.”

That was the game last between the Detroit Lions and the San Francisco 49ers.

A tragedy as in the meaning of the genre of the theatre!

The dictionary defines this type of tragedy as “a play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, especially one concerning the downfall of the main character.“

If that doesn’t define that game, no other single word will.

If that doesn’t define the continued ongoing existence of the Detroit Lions Professional Football Club, no other single word will.

So close.

What might have been.

Oh Fortuna!

I can hear the greek chorus.

Let me tell you, it had to happen this way.

All the breaks had to break the wrong way.

The Lions had to get the early lead.

They had to be able to wedge the door open to let us peak through.

Let us peak through and say … NOPE!

That is not who the Lions are.

Losing that game, and the way it was lost, that is who the Lions are.

As for me?

How does I feel after watching it?

After waiting for this moment for 30 years?

And knowing this may be the last time they will get this close in my lifetime?

Wouldn’t have it any other way.

I am a Lions fan.

Don’t look for me to cry.

My head is high.

I am a Lion’s fan!

As King Lear said:

“Pray do not mock me, I am a very foolish, fond old man.

You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.

Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like molten lead.”

Have to play my part.

It’s a tragedy you see.

1.28.2024 – a cleat, an anchor

a cleat, an anchor
fasten, secure, clamp …
hang on to something

I like to sit on the Calhoun Street Dock on the May River at the foot of the bluff that gives Bluffton, South Carolina its name.

The fact that Calhoun Street is named for John C. Calhoun is for another time and another day.

The Calhoun Street dock is a tidal dock and it floats on the water and goes up and down with the 8 feet of ocean tide that reaches this far up the May River.

Anyone can tie their boat up the dock and leave the boat there while they boat owners enjoy beautiful downtown Bluffton.

Boats can be left tied up for three hours which is all anyone needs to enjoy beautiful downtown Bluffton.

The dock is lined with deck cleats.

We sit on the dock and watch boaters tie up to the dock.

There are the weekend boat owners or maybe those who have found themselves driving a boat that weekend, who slowly maneuver closer and closer to the dock and then have some jump over with a rope and pull the boat in.

Those folks take ropes from the bow and the stern and wind the ropes around and around the cleats until there is a great wad of rope wrapped around the cleat and the boat is made fast.

And the boat owners hopes it is secure.

Then there are those boat owners who come in fast, back down at the last moment, swing the bow away and drop the boat right next to the dock at a dead stop.

They step over to the dock and take the bow line and with a quick slick twist of their hand, drop a ring of rope around the cleat in such a way that when pulled tight, the rope locks itself over and under the cleat.

Not only is the boat secure, but with another flick of the wrist, the loop comes undone and the rope is free of the cleat.

And the boat owner knows it is secure.

I have watched this 100 times.

I have practiced this (at home with a make shift cleat) 100 times.

I still can’t get it.

And I guess you get it or you don’t.

I have studied United States History most of my life.

At one point the plan was to teach the wonderful history of this country that thought maybe they were different than the rest of the world.

When all other governments came crashing, smashing down, the United States of America and its Constitution, THE OLDEST continuously in user written Constitution in the World today, was an anchor, something to hang on to, something to secure the hope of the world.

There was such promise in the history of the United States.

A promise for a future.

You either get it or you don’t.

Now I am not so sure.

There sure seems to be a threat to all we held dear and cared for.

It also seems that if there are any folks who can do anything about these threats, they are busy renting rooms in the front of hotel that is on fire in the back.

Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.

So says the Bible in the Book of Psalms.

I would like an anchor.

I would like something in these times to hand on to.

Paul (or maybe not Paul) wrote about God’s promises in his letter to the Hebrews, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”

Once more, you either get it or you don’t.

Faith in the United States and a hope.

Faith in God and much more than a hope.

1.27.2024 – when there is nothing

when there is nothing
nothing to read, nothing new
headline changes, same news

Since forever my Saturday mornings, for as long as I have had Saturday mornings (there was a too long period in my life where I worked weekends and Saturday mornings were more like any other morning just more so) I start my day with coffee and newspapers.

Back, back, back in the day, that meant going downtown in Grand Rapids, Michigan where I grew up to Elliott’s New Stand, next to the bus station, where the out-of-town newspapers came in by bus and went on sale.

I would grab a New York Times, a Chicago Tribune and then whatever other city sounded exotic at the moment.

The Detroit Free Press was already waiting as we had a paper boy, A PAPER BOY, deliver the Freep to our doorstep every morning.

Maybe that’s why I cannot get excited much about door dash and get grub and uber eats.

What is new about that?

We used to get daily home delivery of a newspaper that had been printed 300 miles away.

Try to do that in your social media era world!

Now my Saturday starts with my tablet and newspapers from around the world and a large Café au lait.

I fill my favorite biggest coffee mug half full of almond milk (lactose … gee whiz) and microwave it for 45 seconds (oh brother I know – but then I recall a story of a Chef who somehow got the ‘hint of mint’ in a salad and shocked the world when he revealed it was crushed altoids – find me a way to create my own minty dust and I’ll use it, the chef said) and then fill the mug with fresh perked Cafe Bustolo coffee.

Presto Chango – Café au lait!

Yes, I said perked as I got a new percolator for Christmas!

Today I clicked on and scrolled through the online front page of three or four newspapers and didn’t click on a single story.

All the headlines in all the newspapers were the same.

And they have been the same for the past week if not weeks.

Nothing new.

Nothing new to read.

Same, same, same, what a shame, shame, shame.

The only story that looked mildly interesting was ‘A wolf killed the EU president’s precious pony” but the headline was too crafted for me to believe it meant what it said and that the article would end up just being one more ad to sell me a time share.

Gaza.

Middle East.

Trump.

Border.

Weather.

Maybe that’s it.

The news has become just like the weather in that everyone talks about these things, Gaza, Middle East, Trump, Border and the weather … but no one does anything about it.

Well, the Lions play for the championship of the National Football Conference of the National Football League tomorrow.

On that topic I could offer 2,197 links to articles explaining how the Lions will win.

Or I could offer 3,197 links to articles explaining why the Lions will lose.

And I could offer 12,197 links to articles explaining how to bet the game and how to manage the odds, the over-under, the plus-minus as well as how to bet if it rains.

I’ll save you the trouble of reading all that.

The Lions will win.

Betcha a quarter!