5.6.2025 – alter? redefine?

alter? redefine?
To this court, answer to each of
those questions is ‘no’

In the article, Federal judge says Democrat’s North Carolina election win must stand by Sam Levine in the Guardian, Mr. Levine rights:

Richard Myers II, a district judge and Trump appointee, agreed with Riggs and said that Griffin was essentially trying to change the rules of the election after election day.

“This case concerns whether the federal constitution permits a state to alter the rules of an election after the fact and apply those changes retroactively to only a select group of voters, and in so doing treat those voters differently than other similarly situated individuals. This case is also about whether a state may redefine its class of eligible voters but offer no process to those who may have been misclassified as ineligible,” Myers wrote in his opinion. “To this court, the answer to each of those questions is ‘no.’”

How far that little candle throws its beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

5.5.2025 – we are such stuff as

we are such stuff as
dreams are made on, little life
is rounded with sleep

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Tempest (Act IV, Scene 1) by William Shakespeare.

Or for further thoughts on a new born grand daughter …

But among the reeds and rushes
A baby girl was found
Her eyes as clear as centuries
Her silky hair was brown

Never been lonely
Never been lied to
Never had to scuffle in fear
Nothing denied to
Born at the instant
The church bells chime
And the whole world whispering
Born at the right time

From Born at the Right Time by Paul Simon.

For myself, a teeny, tiny little girl, less than a few days old, hadn’t known her for more than a few hours … and I cannot imagine a life without her being in it.

5.4.2025 – black hats tilted down

black hats tilted down
the rifle barrels sparkling
in the morning sun

Flag of the 24th Michigan of the Iron Brigade – Regiment had 82% casualty rate at Gettysburg

As this brigade approached Gettysburg, Meredith or someone else ordered the flags uncased and set the fife-and-drum corps playing at the head of the column, and the Westerners fell into step and came swinging up the road, their black hats tilted down over their eyes, rifle barrels sparkling in the morning sun. There were eighteen hundred fighting men in this brigade, and the men were cocky. Officially they were the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of the I Army Corps, and they figured that if the army were ever drawn up in one long line for inspection they would stand at the extreme right of it, which somehow was cause for pride. On the ridge to the west there was a crackle of small-arms fire and a steady crashing of cannon, with a long soiled cloud of smoke drifting up in the still morning air, and at the head of the column the drums and the fifes were loud—playing “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” probably, that perennial theme song of the Army of the Potomac, playing the Iron Brigade into its last great fight.

From The Army of the Potomac: Glory Road by Bruce Catton Doubleday & Company, New York, 1962

Like that master storyteller of Lincoln biography, Carl Sandburg, historian Bruce Catton passed his boyhood in a small Midwestern town, where he was entranced by the hypnotic yarns spun by elderly veterans of the Civil War. These men transfixed Catton, who listened as stories “out of the history books” came alive in the “flower-bed of Civil War veterans,” as he called his Northern Michigan home. Catton exulted: “They had been there”—and their reminiscences made him feel “as if the whole affair had taken place in the next county just a few years ago.” As a historian, Catton made his readers feel the same. Harold Holzer in the Wall Street Journal Book Reviews (Oct. 21, 2022).

5.3.2025 – be joyful in hope

be joyful in hope,
patient in affliction and
faithful in prayer

When you start your day with your tablet on the online Bible Gateway and the verse of the day is Romans 12:12, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer” and all I have to do is add the word ‘and’ to get to a 5 – 7- 5 syllable ratio (which I know is not the true definition of a haiku – see my section on ‘What is …’ ) it was too good to not use.

Be joyful in hope.

Patient in affliction.

Faithful in prayer.

In a time of oh-what-can-i-do-oh-what-can-i-do, it kind of sums it up.

As I already added an ‘and’ might I suggest to add a snippet from the Psalms?

Be joyful in hope.

Patient in affliction.

Faithful in prayer.

Be still, and know that I am God.

5.2.2025 – it is an earth song,

it is an earth song,
a body song, a spring song,
have been waiting long

It’s an earth song,—
And I’ve been waiting long for an earth song.
It’s a spring song,—
And I’ve been waiting long for a spring song.

Strong as the shoots of a new plant
Strong as the bursting of new buds
Strong as the coming of the first child from its mother’s womb.

It’s an earth song,
A body song,
A spring song,
I have been waiting long for this spring song.

Earth Song as printed in The collected poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes (Knopf, News York, 1994).

Another sign of spring is kite guy on Hilton Head Island.

Shows up the first 2 weeks of May and spends his morning getting these kites into the air and then spends his afternoons taking them down and winding up the cords.

I used to wonder about kite guy’s outlook on life.

Who would spend their vacation flying kites?

I decided that when someone flies kites with the flag of The United States of America AND the flag of the Republic of Ukraine … and a flag with the peace symbol from the Vietnam War era … you can make some assumptions.

I am reminded of the spring concerts at my elementary school back in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

One year must of raised the level of conversation between school and parents when we sang songs like Bob Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind, John Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane and S&G’s 59th Street Bridge Song and If I Could (El cóndor pasa).

This would have at the height of the Hippie / Anti War era in America when several of my older brothers and sisters were off in college in Ann Arbor.

Not sure what was said and by who or to who.

But the next spring we sang nothing but songs from Disney and Let’s Go Fly a Kite sticks out as the song my class sang,

For the haiku, I had to edit Mr. Hughes and change it’s to it is to get my 5 – 7 – 5.

Such cheek on my part.

I should go fly a kite.