3.11.2025 – staring at stoplights

staring at stoplights
looking through the windshield of
car in front of me …

Driving to work in the dark again after the time change.

I found myself stopped at a stoplight and looking at the stoplights through the windshield of the car in front of.

The windshield of the car in front me neatly framed the four, no, five lights counting the left turn lane, that pointed in my direction from straight ahead.

The glass in the windshield made the lights into little starbursts for green when the color changed and the cars started to move.

I live in podunk little town and I drive to a resort town on a barrier island on the Atlantic Ocean.

As I stared at the stoplights, looking through the windshield of the car in front of me I had to wonder.

Four, no, five lanes counting the left turn lane for all the traffic coming on to the island.

Five lanes of traffic.

Five lanes of paved road.

In one direction.

There are five going the other way as well.

Ten lanes of traffic connecting podunk with a dead end barrier island.

It wasn’t so much that there were that many people who drove that many cars that so many lanes were needed but that we all had to be on the island at the same time.

But that’s okay.

We all leave at 5 o’clock too.

And we will need all these lanes to get off the island.

Trying to make sense of this world and I cannot even understand my commute.

In the marathon race of life, I am expected to finish my race even though the folks who won this race finished long ago.

The light was green and I drove through the light, under the green starbursts and on to another day at work.

3.10.2025 – but I shall stay the

OBSERVATION
If I don’t drive around the park,
I’m pretty sure to make my mark.
If I’m in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again,
If I abstain from fun and such,
I’ll probably amount to much,
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn”

Excerpt From
Enough Rope
Dorothy Parker
This material may be protected by copyright.

“FIRST VINTAGE CLASSICS EDITION, JANUARY 2022
Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

3.9.2025 – songs that greet sunrise

songs that greet sunrise
rain, twilight – Here I am – sing
what and where they are

Not how many different birds I’ve seen
but how many have seen me,
letting the event go unremarked
except for the quietest sense of malevolence,
dead quiet, then restarting their lives
after fear, not with song, which is reserved
for lovers, but the harsh and quizzical
chatter with which we all get by:
but if she or he passes by and the need
is felt we hear the music that transcends all fear,
and sometimes the simpler songs that greet sunrise,
rain or twilight. Here I am.
They sing what and where they are.

Geo-Bestiary, #34 as published in Jim Harrison: Complete Poems by Jim Harrison, Copper Canyon Press, 2021.

3.8.2025 – set aside to suit

set aside to suit
vanity, obstinacy, and
one man’s ignorance

In a letter to Winston Churchill, Oct. 1, 1938, during the Munich Crisis where Europe gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler in hopes that Hitler would go away, Guy Burgess wrote:

Traditional English policy since the reign of Elizabeth, the policy of Marlborough, of Pitt, of Eyre Crowe, of Vansittart, has been blandly set aside to suit the vanity, the obstinacy, & the ignorance of one man, no longer young. We shall be told he has saved the peace, that anything is worth that. This is not true. He has made war inevitable, & lost it.

Young Mr. Burgess at the time was the BBC representative at the House of Commons, responsible for the Week in Westminster program and had gone to interview Churchill about the efforts of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to placate Hitler and found Churchill, of all people, at a loss for words and unable to take part in a radio interview.

In respect to transparency, it must be mentioned that later in life, Mr. Burgess would be part of what became known as, The Cambridge Five. Five notable figures in Britain who became committed communists during their time at Cambridge and were secret agents for the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, the words, the vanity, the obstinacy, & the ignorance of one man ring loud today.

As does the warning:

We shall be told he has saved the peace, that anything is worth that.

This is not true.

He has made war inevitable, & lost it.

*As recounted in Winston S. Churchill – The Prophet of Truth (1922-1939) The Official Biography of Winston Churchill: Vol 5, by Martin Gilbert (Houghton, Mifflin, Boston, 1966).

3.7.2025 – not create any

not create any
right or benefit at law
by any party

A current Presidential Executive Order begins:

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

And ends with:

Sec 6 General Provisions, Part C: This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

As President Lyndon Johnson said, and take him for all in all, he would had the current person in office for lunch, that the goal of his programs was to write it in the books of law.

Why go to all the trouble of legislation and dealing with bills and committees and votes when you can issue an Executive Order that is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

Not making anything up, here is the order in question.

If you learn anything in TV it is the triumph of perception over reality.