10.6.2025 – one hurricane I

one hurricane I
lived through, other was different
and lasted longer

It didn’t behave
like anything you had
ever imagined. The wind
tore at the trees, the rain
fell for days slant and hard.
The back of the hand
to everything. I watched
the trees bow and their leaves fall
and crawl back into the earth.
As though, that was that.
This was one hurricane
I lived through, the other one
was of a different sort, and
lasted longer. Then
I felt my own leaves giving up and
falling. The back of the hand to
everything. But listen now to what happened
to the actual trees;
toward the end of that summer they
pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.
It was the wrong season, yes,
but they couldn’t stop. They
looked like telephone poles and didn’t
care. And after the leaves came
blossoms. For some things
there are no wrong seasons.
Which is what I dream of for me.

Hurricane By Mary Oliver as published in A Thousand Mornings: Poems. (New York: Penguin Books, 2013).

Standing by the storm surge pole on Tybee Island I got to thinking about how nice it would to have something like this to indicate the depth of political despair in the country right now.

This comes close from this mornings NYT article: We Asked 50 Legal Experts About the Trump Presidency Before the election, we surveyed the legal establishment about what a second Trump term could mean for the rule of law. A year later, they’re very, very worried.

For some things …

there are no wrong seasons.

Which is what I dream of for me

10.5.2025 – she predicts either

she predicts either
a war or the end of the
world in October

I know how she feels.

So I had to add another “a” to make it work.

Thurber, depending on the time of day, might have forgiven me.

More Thurber here at formuggsandrex.com.

Reading some odd stuff online I came across in review of the book of Thurber Letters titled The Thurber Letters: The Wit, Wisdom and Surprising Life of James Thurber , edited by Harrison Kinney,

In a reviewer states, Thurber never warmed to William Shawn.

Shawn took over as Editor of the New Yorker when Harold Ross died.

I also recently came across the fact that after three years, Shawn dropped out of the University of Michigan and went to New York to find his fortune.

Thurber never graduated from Ohio State after being a student there for five years.

Both institutions wrestled with how to handle these famous but non-degree holding alums.

But did it also sprout the roots of a non-working relationship?

Some one’s PhD dissertation is waiting to be written.

10.4.205 – integrity so strong

integrity so strong
to defend the Constitution
govern their actions

Plaque in Constitution Corner at United States Military Academy at West Point, NY.

A plaque states:

The USMA Class of January 1943
dedicates this
Constitution Corner
to our classmates who died
in combat (shown by *) or in military accidents

They supported and defended the Constitution
as, here on the Plain, we together swore to do.

2 Cadets and 74 of our 409 graduates died in the sequence below …

Plaque Seven states:

The United States boldly broke with the ancient military custom of swearing loyalty to a leader. Article VI required that American Officers thereafter swear loyalty to our basic law, the Constitution.

While many other nations have suffered military coups, the United States never has. Our American Code of Military Obedience requires that, should orders and the law ever conflict, our officers must obey the law. Many other nations have adopted our principle of loyalty to the basic law.

This nation must have military leaders of principle and integrity so strong that their oaths to support and defend the Constitution will unfailingly govern their actions. The purpose of the United States Military Academy is to provide such leaders of character.

We can always hope ..

10.3.2025 – news unstoppably

news unstoppably
not by week and day but by
the hour and minute

During the Second World War, the volume of information dispensed by what were beginning to be called the media — newspapers, magazines, books, movies, and, a few years later, TV — multiplied to an extent that nobody has been able so far to make an accurate reckoning of.

It was a change so great that even the remotest illiterate hermit could not fail to be altered by it; for the first time, with astonishment and sometimes with dismay, one sensed that a Niagara of news was flooding unstoppably in upon us, not by the week and day but by the hour and minute.

People sat by their radios and listened with satisfaction to news bulletins, infinitesimally rewritten as they were repeated, about victories and defeats throughout the world, and then went out and bought newspapers and magazines and gorged themselves on the same information for a tenth or twentieth time.

From Here at the New Yorker by Gill, Brendan, (New York: Viking Press, 1975).

Can you imagine such a world?

One sensed that a Niagara of news was flooding unstoppably in upon us, not by the week and day but by the hour and minute.

Let’s repeat that.

Not by the week.

Not by the day.

But by the hour

But by the minute.

People gorged themselves on the same information for a tenth or twentieth time.

Flooding unstoppably.

Unstoppably!

What a great word, but I digress.

A change so great that even the remotest illiterate hermit could not fail to be altered by it.

1941.

The state of news once the United States got into World War 2.

Looking back at the change wrought in the “media”, Mr. Gill wrote in 1975 that “nobody has been able so far to make an accurate reckoning of.”

On the one hand … no kidding.

On the other, how long will it take to make an accurate reckoning of the social media age?

Will anybody care?

10.2.2025 – a corner of the

a corner of the
deserted beach solitary sea
loudly claps its hands

Midday. A corner of the deserted beach.
The huge, deep, open sun on high
Has chased all the gods from the sky.
The harsh light falls like a punishment.
There are no ghosts and no souls,
And the vast, ancient, solitary sea
Loudly claps its hands.

Midday by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen as published in Obra Poética (translated by Richard Zenith) I. Lisbon: Caminho, 1990.