1.11.2024 – I like when my team

I like when my team
gets a big lead in a game
and then pulls away

Today is (or isn’t) the anniversary of the day my Dad died.

There is debate on this because my Dad died late at night in a hospital room with my brother Paul and I at his side.

Paul had called people that the time was near and one by one, my Mom and my 9 other brothers and sisters arrived as fast as they could, but after the moment.

With this mob of people in the room, it was some time after midnight before a Doctor could verify that Dad was indeed dead, so his death certificate is dated the next day.

My Dad would have enjoyed stealing an extra bureaucratic day of life.

To make up for it, when Dad’s headstone was delivered, the stone mason had made that common January mistake and carved 1987 instead of 1988.

As my brother Steve said, “What can you do? It IS carved in stone.“

Dad would have enjoyed that as well.

Once, back when I was in college, my parents visited me and Dad enjoyed walking around campus to see what had changed since he had been there 40 years earlier.

I took them down to the ‘New’ Law Library which was built next to Law Quad.

So the new building wouldn’t mess up the esthetics of the Cambridgesque Law School, the new library was dug 7 stories down into the ground.

I led Mom and Dad down the flights of stairs and past a sign that all visitors must register.

My Mom pointed to sign and I dismissed it with a wave of my hand and my Dad said, “Mike knows what to do.”

We walked around and my Dad inspected the stacks and study carrels and we ended up standing on the stairs along side an atrium that was dug out and sided with windows to let some sunlight into the underground structure.

Mom looked at the chrome window frames and pointed out they were covered in dust.

Dad looked for a bit.

Then walked over to the rail and leaned way out and wrote with his finger:

Ashes to Ashes
Dust to Dust
If your grades don’t get you
The Devil must

“OH BOB”, my mom said, walking away.

This past fall, I got to spend a weekend in Ann Arbor with my granddaughter and its been 40 years SINCE I was in school.

I felt I could have grabbed a pad and paper and walked into a lecture without missing a beat.

I am sure when my Dad was writing in the dust, he felt the same.

Thinking of things my Dad liked, he liked his sports teams.

He like Michigan and I am sure he would have enjoyed last years undefeated season.

His favorite team was the Chicago Cubs.

He grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with the Cubs on the radio across from across Lake Michigan.

Later in life when he had a cottage in Grand Haven on the lake shore, he put giant rotating antennas to catch the TV signal from WGN so he could watch the Cubs.

At least on good days.

On bad atmospheric days or days with storms, the picture would fade in and out or get all fuzzy.

Many times we would hear Jack Brickhouse saying, “Its back back back bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.” and when the picture came back, it was a commerical.

Came the day in Grand Rapids when Cable TV came to our block.

Dad called and called or at least had his receptionist call and call (My Dad hated the phone and his receptionist, Diane, endeared herself by calling anyone he asked) to get the first available appointment on our street for the Cable Guy.

Cable Guy shows up and looks at the house and told Dad that while he, Cable Guy, could connect the house to the cable, he was not allowed to wire up a house.

Dad would have to do that.

Dad and the Cable Guy looked over the house and Cable Guy gave Dad a couple hundred feet of coaxial cable and promised that he would stop back at the end of his day.

Dad took that cable and spent the rest of day up in the attic and under the roof crawling around until he had cable running to our family room and his bedroom.

True to his word, Cable Guy showed up late in the day, approved of what Dad had wired up and went to work.

Mom came out and called Dad to dinner and he came in sat down at the table.

As I remember it, Cable Guy came with him and pulled out a chair at the table.

Mom was mom and laughed and offered to set a plate.

Cable Guy said he appreciated it but went back to work and we went on with dinner.

Halfway through dinner, Cable Guy called to my Dad, “Sir, if I can show you how this works?”

Dad was out of his chair at the head of the table and into the family room.

Dad walked in and the TV was on and Cable Guy was standing there with the Channel Selector Box (which in those days was the flat box with a slider that you used to change channels).

The Chicago Cubs, in crystal clear cable TV, were on.

Dad sat down in front of the TV.

Cable Guy handed him the box and explained how it worked.

Dad listened but didn’t hear a word.

He was in his living room and he was watching the Cubs.

At that moment, all was as good as was ever going to get in his world and he enjoyed that moment.

(A corollary to this story is when VHS recorders came on the market and we were after Dad to buy so we could rent movies. One Saturday morning my brother Tim pointed out that if we had one, we could tape the Michigan-Notre Dame that afternoon and Dad could watch the tape all week long. Dad got down the Witmark catalog and picked out a machine and gave Tim his credit card and sent Tim and me out to buy one – Michigan and Rick Leach beat ND 28-14 and that tape floated around box of tapes forever.)

Along with the Cubs, Dad kind of followed the Bears.

At least the 1985 Bears.

I think he followed the Bears just to tease the rest of us.

The rest of us followed the Lions.

We would watch every Sunday and there were games where the Lions would be ahead.

There were games when we thought, the Lions were going to win.

Dad would sit back and predict how the Lions would lose.

We would be hopefull.

Dad would say that Lions were once again going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

We would yell NO NO NO! in exasperation.

But Dad had seen this team before.

The Lions, we thought, are going to win this one.

After the Lions lost, Dad would quote Harry Caray and say, “Victory had one thousand fathers while defeat is an orphan.”

He seemed somehow, to enjoy losing or, at least, to enjoy being right that the Lions were so wrong.

I got so mad once at Dad’s black outlook that I asked, “What do you like about Sports?”

Dad looked at me and without hesitation he said, “I like when my team gets a big lead in a game, … and then pulls away.”

1.10.2025 – culture easy to

culture easy to
identify difficult to
define – a rare skill

Culture is easy to identify but difficult to define. You know a good one when you see it, when you feel it. Understanding the specifics of what it takes to build one? That is a rare skill.

Harbaugh has changed the Chargers’ culture in one season. The Chargers went from 5-12 in 2023 to 11-6 in 2024. They are in the playoffs and will play at the Houston Texans in the wild-card round on Saturday afternoon.

How did he do it? The trust exists in the moments. In doing up-downs in front of the team. In reciting Black Eyed Peas lyrics. In wearing Jordan cleats to every practice while doing drills with his players. In wearing powder blue gloves on game day while catching passes from Herbert.

The process cannot be faked. It cannot be rushed. This culture was built day by day, brick by brick, steady and gradual. It was proven and reinforced by, as Slater put it, “Coach Harbaugh being Coach Harbaugh.”

“You don’t really get buy-in if people don’t look at you and say, ‘He’s being authentic. He’s being real,” Slater said. “He’s so vulnerable and OK with just being goofy like that — because that’s just how he is — that you have no choice but to respect it.”

From How Jim Harbaugh built the Chargers culture: Black Eyed Peas, blue-collar gifts, authenticity by Daniel Popper, Jan 9, 2025, in the Athletic (click here for PDF).

I hear you Mr. Popper.

I agree with you Mr. Popper.

Still, in the early years of Mr. Harbaugh coaching on the University of Michigan, I got my Doctor to write, Suffers from Harbaugh on my chart (he was a Notre Dame Grad) but my insurance refused to cover it.

I went to school with Jimmy Harbaugh.

Saw him often in the hallways of buildings of the University of Michigan.

Doubt he ever saw me.

I admit he can make athletes achieve things they didn’t know they could and as long as you win, the show works.

And I enjoyed that Championship season very much and thank you.

But in my book, you will always be, Jim “I lost the Brown Jug” Harbaugh.

Time can’t change that.

1.9.2024 – waking, more awake

waking, more awake
awaker, mostly awake
ready for the day

Beeping, buzzing from the clock wakes me up.

I sit on the edge of the bed, feet on the cold floor, ands on either side of me on the bed and I say to myself I’m awake.

I stumble out to the kitchen as quiet as I can be and get the coffee going.

The night before I get ready for making coffee by fitting a coffee filter into the basket of the percolator.

I don’t fill it with water or coffee since moving back to a old fashioned metal percolator.

I fill the pot with water and then spoon coffee into the basket, reassemble everything, get the lid on and plug it in.

If I am going into the office which I do three days a week, I then make my lunch and once that it is packed away, more awake I am into the shower.

I hope I never lose the appreciation for the truly luxurious expectation that a shower of of fresh, clean, steaming hot water is available to me.

An expectation that is so confirmed that if this shower of fresh, clean, streaming hot water is NOT available, it is considered a maintenance emergency.

Out of the shower and in my robe, coffee mug in hand, again steaming hot, I sit with my tablet and read my newspapers I feel awaker.

Growing more and more alert as I page through the news.

I page faster than I used to as I pretty much ignore any story about the incoming Presidential Administration as there are all the different story.

Every since this feller has come on the scene, so much of the news has been of a nature that says …. ooooooooooh now he has crossed the line and he is going to get it when Mom comes home.

But Mom never comes home and no matter what the former game show host does, he never gets it.

People have been pointing out for years, he as no clothes on and no one cares so I am starting to not care as well.

Maybe if I ignore him, he will just go away.

I am reminded of the old movie, The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen where the ‘elected official of the people’ tells everyone not to go outside the city walls because ‘The turk is out there” so no one leaves.

The Baron finally goes outside the walls and looks … and no one is there.

Is Trump the problem?

It worrying about Trump, regardless, the problem?

Anyway it sure made reading the papers faster.

Done with the papers, I am mostly awake.

It is time for wordle and connections.

Sure sure sure but it gets my brain going and I fill like the guy on the bicycle inside my head is getting into a rhythm and up to speed.

Got another long streak of wordle going.

Engaging my brain a little bit more and finally … finally … I am ready for the day.

PS Today on the way into work, I stopped by the beach and walked down to the ocean to see the sunrise. If I had checked to see that sunrise was still 10 minutes away I might have gone on straight to work but here is what it looked liked today, the 9 day of January just before sunrise on Hilton Head Island.

1.8.2025- call this a govment!

call this a govment!
Why, just look at it and see
man can’t get his rights

“Call this a govment!

Why, just look at it and see what it’s like. …

They call that govment!

A man can’t get his rights in a govment like this.

Sometimes I’ve a mighty notion to just leave the country.

… Says I, for two cents I’d leave the blamed country and never come a-near it agin.

… I says, I’ll never vote agin.

Them’s the very words I said;

they all heard me;

and the country may rot for all me — I’ll never vote agin as long as I live.”

So said Pap Finn … better known as the no account father of one Huckleberry Finn in the book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Gulf of America?

Buy Greenland?

Re-Take the Panama Canal?

Annex Canada?

I will say one thing for the incoming Govment ….

Nobody … and I mean NOBODY is asking about plans for improving the overall economy, lowering inflation or the cost of groceries.

Everyone seems to be focusing on the date of D-Day for the invasion of Greenland.

Call this a Govment?

1.7.2024 – remember … our sons

remember our sons
grandsons going to do things
that would stagger us …

Make no little plans.

They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized.

Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.

Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us.

Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.

Think big.

Sitting on the cusp?

Standing on the cusp?

Waiting for the 2nd era of Presidential Administration that defies comprehension.

In the ‘Baseball Speech’ in the movie, Field of Dreams, James Earl Jones has the line:

America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again.

We all listen and we nod and say yes, thats true.

But that army of steamrollers, that army of erasers, come with an eye on the future.

A look to rebuild better.

A plan to move forward.

We sit at the start of another 4 year effort to turn back the clock.

No vaccines.

No education.

No progress.

Go back.

They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized.

It will be rough.

I hope we survive.

I think of my grandchilden.

The ones who will rebuild this country.

I hope they will stagger us with what they do.

I am making no small plans.

My watchword be order.

My beacon beauty.

Thinking BIG and hoping for the best.

The quote is from architect Daniel Burnham, the man who rebuild Chicago. According to wikipedia, “A proponent of the Beaux-Arts movement, he may have been “the most successful power broker the American architectural profession has ever produced.” A successful Chicago architect, he was selected as Director of Works for the 1892–93 World’s Columbian Exposition, colloquially referred to as “The White City”. He had prominent roles in the creation of master plans for the development of a number of cities, including the Plan of Chicago, and plans for Manila, Baguio and downtown Washington, D.C. He also designed several famous buildings, including a number of notable skyscrapers in Chicago, the Flatiron Building of triangular shape in New York City, Washington Union Station in Washington D.C., London’s Selfridges department store, and San Francisco’s Merchants Exchange.”