fear, uncertainty among
consumers businesses and
among investors

It was the line after the line that was the source for this haiku that caught me eye and that line being:

Truly the hat-trick.

This is from the article, With the best glasses donor money can buy, surely Starmer can see that this week has been a total disaster by Marina Hyde in the Guardian.

I hate finding facts based on ‘polls’ but when the polls show that the only British Prime Minister to have lower poll popularity numbers that Mr. Keith Starmer (on the job now for about 44 days) was the Prime Minister one before the last one, Liz Truss.

I think Ms. Truss WAS Prime Minister for about 44 days and got to oversee the funeral of Queen Elizabeth which really was a nice bookend.

The funeral of the worlds longest reigning Monarch was during premiership of Britain’s shortest term Prime Minister.

Not sure what the over-under on that bet would have been.

Anyway … Ms. Hyde writes:

Labour took office and immediately declared things to be so dire that they were going to have to do awful and painful things to combat them – but will have left it three months before they finally explain what those awful and painful things are. This, as the former chief economist to the Bank of England Andy Haldane and many others have pointed out, has created a sense of “fear and foreboding and uncertainty among consumers, among businesses, and among investors”.

Truly the hat-trick. The current freebies row taking place during that particular information vacuum consequently feels even worse. It suggests that Starmer is a guy who talks to the public like an undertaker but in private likes the finer things in life. More than that, he feels entitled to them. That is no one’s favourite combination.

The new government in Britain, in 44 days has been able to create a sense of fear and foreboding and uncertainty among consumers.

Among businesses.

And among investors.

Truly the hat-trick.

That is no one’s favourite combination.

I kept the anglicized spelling.

Seems more posh you know that way, and it is almost a comfort that some other country seems to be as messed up as we are.

wouldn’t know where to go
if didn’t have somebody
that knowed where to go

From the line “I thought I’d go and get something to eat some place, only I wouldn’t know where to go if I didn’t have somebody with me that knowed where to go.” from the play, June Moon, a play by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner. Based on the Lardner short story “Some Like Them Cold.”

Back when I was a kid growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan in a family of 11 kids, it was rare to find myself alone in the family room with the TV.

But that’s where I was one night when I was about 12 years old.

It was bedtime and I should have been in bed but I wanted to stay up, I always wanted to stay up, and watch TV.

My Mom came in and looked at the clock and looked at me and I played my secret card.

Can we just see what is on public television?

Educational or Public TV had just arrived in our area and my Mom would never deny access to something educational.

See I would watch anything if it was on TV and I would even watch educational television if it meant not going to bed.

And you never knew what you might see our the light local PBS station.

She rolled her eyes and said okay, just for a few minutes.

I turned the TV to UHF and then turned the dial the channel 35 and sat on the floor.

What ever was on had already started and we missed the introduction.

It seemed to be a television production of a play but it was just two people, a man and woman who had just met and where on a train and talking.

The dialogue was nothing and everything at the same time and the timing of the two actors was so quick that while nothing was really happening I got drawn into their conversation.

The odd thing was, so was my Mom.

First she turned to watch for a bit.

Then she sat on the edge of chair.

And then she sat back and just took in the play.

There was a quality to the writing, the words and the acting that you could not ignore and we watched the whole play WITHOUT COMMERICIALS.

We watched the entire play together and when it was done, we looked at the clock and it was past 11 p.m.

“Get to bed,” Mom said, “that was fun.”

And she gave me hug a off I went.

Years later I can still remember parts of the dialogue and the other day I started to try and search out the play based on what I could remember.

It turns out what we had watched was a special presentation of the play, June Moon, by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner and when I learned that so many lights clicked on.

The pacing the timing of Mr. Kaufman famous for his Broadway hits.

The dialogue and words of Mr. Lardner famous for his short stories.

Stories about the new kid from the small town arriving in the big city.

Stories where the kid would say, “I thought I’d go and get something to eat some place, only I wouldn’t know where to go if I didn’t have somebody with me that knowed where to go.”

If you haven’t read Mr. Lardner I encourage you to do so, especially the short story, Golden Honeymoon where Mr. Lardner writes, “After dinner we made them come up to our house and we all set in the parlor, which the young woman had give us the use of to entertain company. We begun talking over old times and Mother said she was a-scared Mrs. Hartsell would find it tiresome listening to we three talk over old times, but as it turned out they wasn’t much chance for nobody else to talk with Mrs. Hartsell in the company. I have heard lots of women that could go it, but Hartsell’s wife takes the cake of all the women I ever seen. She told us the family history of everybody in the State of Michigan and bragged for a half hour about her son, who she said is in the drug business in Grand Rapids, and a Rotarian.”

Its as if you have to read that paragraph in one breath.

Reading Lardner is like getting on a train and you can’t get off until the next station.

I thought I’d go and get something to eat some place, only I wouldn’t know where to go if I didn’t have somebody with me that knowed where to go.

Just something charming about those words as well as the memory of the first time I heard them.

cannot read papers
as they no longer reflect
the world I perceive

Adapted from the passage:

“After twenty years of studying them I am no longer able to read newspapers.

Why?

It’s because they no longer reflect the world I perceive.

I will have to go along with the way I see it even if wrong.

And if they are right, it lacks interest.”

Written by Jim Harrison in the novella, The Man Who Gave Up His Name, published in the collection titled, “Legends of the Fall” by Jim Harrison, New York, Grove Press, 2016.

I still try to read The Guardian and the New York Times every morning with my morning coffee.

I used to try and read USA Today but it’s website defies any real effort to read the stories without a lot of perseverance.

I am speaking of perseverance, of course, from a technical point of view.

Oh to handle all the ads and popups and pop downs and such that make reading online news such a challange.

But of late I am having more and more issues with what I am reading.

I keep asking, what world are these people living in.

The world described more and more in newspapers does not reflect the world I percieve.

One side of the paper can decry the end of the world and those dire portents in the next elections and how if we all could really care about what was happening, we could stop it.

And on the other side of the paper are heart felt discussions of the clothes people wore on the red carpet of the Emmy’s and how the Emmy’s was rigged and whole lot of other stuff that is supposed to be of interest to me.

Maybe it is getting older.

I recently went to a major college football game and while there was much I recognized from when I went to this college as a student, there was much that did not reflect on college football as I perceived it.

I chatted with the lady next to me and she said that they were searching for ways to make if fun for kids.

I guess getting together with your friends along with a keg of beer and going someplace where you could drink in public and yell your head off is no longer fun enough.

Reading this as I type it I decided I better check my drivers license and it says I was born in 1960.

I think I am right on schedule.