11.8.2024 – cultivate habit

cultivate habit
not being particular
about little things

Adapted from the essay, Tripping Over Trivia by Damon Runyon as published in Short Takes, Readers’ Choice of the Best Columns of America’s Favorite Newspaperman, Damon Runyon (Constable, Orange Street London, 1948.)

I am trying to cultivate the habit of not being particular about little things. I suppose that after years of being very particular, indeed, I will find it difficult to shake off some of my old exactions, but I must keep struggling. I have come to the conclusion that I have been wasting an enormous amount of time in being particular.

Take the small matter of boiled eggs. I used to be mighty particular about how long my boiled eggs should be boiled. I made a strong point of specifying that they should be boiled three minutes and a half. I had the idea that I could not even look at eggs boiled less than that time or two seconds beyond. The cooks could not fool me, either, though sometimes I suspected they exerted the most diabolical ingenuity in the effort. I could tell to a clock-tick how long they had boiled eggs the instant they were set before me.

One day I sat down and seriously contemplated the economic phases of the boiled egg situation as applied to me. I considered, through careful calculation, the hours I must have wasted in arguing with waiters that those eggs had not been boiled three and a half minutes, but only two and a half, or maybe four, and in sending them back to the kitchen and then waiting for another boiling.

When my figures showed that on being particular about my boiled eggs alone I had wasted fifteen years, I was appalled. It was then I made up my mind to cease being particular. I immediately made some progress on the boiled eggs. I began calling for them scrambled.

Mr. Runyon may be more well known for his musical Guys and Dolls, often thought to be THE American Musical ( up against Oklahoma and the Music Man).

In Guys and Dolls, the Hero Skye Masterson says:

On the day when I left home to make my way in the world, my Daddy took me to one side. ‘Son,’ my Daddy says to me, ‘I am sorry I am not able to bankroll you to a very large start, but not having the necessary lettuce to get you rolling, instead I’m going to stake you to some very valuable advice.

One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand-new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, you do not accept this bet, because as sure as you stand there, you’re going to wind up with an ear full of cider.

Friends and neighbors, I woke up Wednesday morning and let me tell you friends, I had an ear full of cider!

Time to start calling for scrambled eggs!

11.7.2024 – a grey mist sea’s face,

a grey mist sea’s face,
must go down to the seas, call
of the running tide

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

Sea-Fever By John Masefield.

This poem is forever in my mind remembered from the original Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory movie when everyone gets on board he Wonkatania and Gene Wilder gestures towards the ship and says, “And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;“

Then the boat goes through what has been considered to one of the most bizarre 3 minutes in movie history.

It has been written that, “ … you can see the abject terror plastered on the faces of children and adults alike in the scene. He didn’t tell any of the performers how Wilder would behave in character for that particular sequence, which led some of the younger actors, like Denise Nickerson (aka Violet Beauregarde), to believe Wilder was suffering a very sincere, very alarming psychotic breakdown.”

I feel like we are all about to start that boat ride.

Walking on the beach yesterday the clouds closed in to the south and you couldn’t see far down the beach or across the water to Tybee Island.

The horizon of the water and the horizon of the sky were together.

A light rain fell.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.

The mist will clear and we will see the way through.

11.6.2024 – Democracy – the

Democracy – the
recurrent suspicion that
the people are right

In July of 1943, the Writer’s War Board (According to wikipedia, the Writers’ War Board was the main domestic propaganda organization in the United States during World War II. Privately organized and run, it coordinated American writers with government and quasi-government agencies that needed written work to help win the war. It was established in 1942 by author Rex Stout at the request of the United States Department of the Treasury) reached out to E.B. White at the New Yorker Magazine and asked for a statement on the meaning of democracy.

Mr. White started out by writing, “It is presumably our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure. Surely, the board knows what democracy is.”

Mr. White continued:

It is the line that forms on the right.

It is the don’t, in don’t shove.

It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; the dent in the high hat.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right, more than half of the time.

It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths; the feeling of communion in the libraries; the feeling of vitality everywhere.

Democracy is the letter to the editor.

Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth.

It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet; a song, the words of which have not gone bad.

It’s the mustard on the hot dog, and the cream in the rationed coffee.

Democracy is a request from a War Board – in the middle of the morning, in the middle of a war – wanting to know what democracy is.

On the one hand, I feel called upon to play my part of good loser.

Fought the good fight and lost but ready to go on.

I want to admit that maybe, just maybe, Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right, more than half of the time.

But I can’t.

I feel the picture Mr. White paints of America in World War 2, believe or not, was a much sunnier place, a much more hopeful place than America today.

I wish my feeling for Democracy had the elasticity that the faith of those on other side has that allows them to bend their faith and their beliefs to embrace that guy.

I want the country to feel the feeling of vitality everywhere.

But it sure seems we are, to quote Mr. Churchill, about to enter a new dark age.

I am going to have faith in the Constituion.

And hang on and hold my breath for the next 4 years.

Still thinking about 1943 and the era Mr. White writes about that FDR won again, again and again.

I am reminded of an anecdote that I have written about before.

I like the story, but I cannot recall where I read it or the citation for it but here it is.

This author was a kid during WW2 and grew up in the Republican strong hold of Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

He reminded a spring evening once where all the people in the neighborhood built bonfires and danced in big circles, joining hands around the fires to celebrate.

Looking at a calendar, he puzzled out that this had to have happened in April or May of 1945 and he asked his mother if she remembered and was the celebration for VE, Victory in Europe, Day, the day Germany surrendured.

“OH NO,” said his mother, “We danced because Roosevelt was dead.”

11.5.2024 – build triumphal arch …

build triumphal arch …
build it out of bricks – something’
convenient to throw

Based on the line, “When ye build yer triumphal arch to yer conquering’ hero, Hennessy, build it out of bricks so the people will have something’ convenient to throw at him as he passes through,” attributed to Mr. Dooley.

Sorry but I cannot find a better citation.

According to Wikipedia, Mr. Dooley (or Martin J. Dooley) is a fictional Irish immigrant bartender created by American journalist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne. Dooley was the subject of many Dunne columns between 1893 and 1915, and again in 1924 and 1926. Dunne’s essays contain the bartender’s commentary on various topics.

Also according to Wikipedia, Finley Peter Dunne (born Peter Dunne; July 10, 1867 – April 24, 1936) was an American humorist, journalist and writer from Chicago. In 1898 Dunne published Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War, his first collection of the nationally syndicated Mr. Dooley sketches.[1] Written as though speaking with the thick verbiage and accent of an Irish immigrant from County Roscommon, Dunne’s fictional “Mr. Dooley” expounded upon political and social issues of the day from behind the bar of his South Side Chicago Irish pub.

I just feel like throwing bricks today.

I have also been looking for a specific snap shot of history and while looking for it, I came across this other snippet.

This is reported in the diary of John Colville, one of Winston Churchill’s private secretary.

This happened in May of 1940 just a week after Churchill took over as Prime Minister and led the showdown against Nazi Germany.

Mr. Colville writes that: Mrs Churchill who said that the preacher at St Martin-in-the-Fields had preached such a pacifist sermon that morning that she got up and left.

“You ought to have cried ‘Shame’,” said Winston, “desecrating the House of God with lies!”

I love that but that wasn’t the story I was looking for even though it fits a bit.

The story I wanted was in the Prophet of Truth.

Book V in Martin Gilbert’s multi volume biography of Mr. Churchill.

On the day Neville Chamberlin brought back the infamous Munich agreement, an agreement that allowed Germany to take over Czechoslovakia, an agreement that Mr. Chamberlin waved from his balcony, Mr Gilbert writes that:

Throughout the morning the British Government urged the Czechs to accept the ‘Munich’terms; at noon Beneš agreed to do so. That afternoon Chamberlain flew back to London. ‘Vast crowds in the streets,’ Oliver Harvey recorded in his diary, ‘hysterical cheers and enthusiasm. PM on balcony at Buckingham Palace. But many feel it to be a great humiliation.’

In an unpublished note written ten years later Churchill recalled how, that day, ‘My wife and Lord Cecil solemnly discussed marching themselves with a select band to Downing Street and hurling a brick through the windows at No 10.’

I have been thinking about bricks today.

How there are some people and some windows I would love to throw a brick through.

Instead, I voted.

And I have to say that when I fed my ballot into the machine, unlike any other time I have ever voted, I felt like I had thrown my brick.

I hope he felt it.

11.4.2024 – irrelevant? how

irrelevant? how
bad does it have to be to
be irrelevant?

I like to start my Sunday newspapers reading two sports columns in the online USA Today.

One is a column that tracks the winners and losers, those college football teams that came out as winners the previous Saturday and those college football teams that came out as losers.

My team lost and lost big to the Number One team in the nation.

Oddly though neither team made this column.

My team lost, was expected to lose and I guess as such, was not listed among the losers.

The other team, just be a loser of a team, and I guess as such, was not listed among the winners.

The other column is the College Football Misery Index.

This column tracks which college football team’s fans feel the worse.

Your team can win and you still feel lousey like last week, Ohio State beat Nebraska, but no one felt that good about it.

This week the five top teams whose fans are in Misery, all lost.

The next group of fans are listed as being Miserable but not miserable enough.

Georgia won their game but with their QB throwing 3 INT’s, their fans still feel not so great.

But here is the point.

My team didn’t make either list.

They are so awful, that there no longer even figure in the conversation of teams whose fan’s feel awful.

My team had a very good year last year.

I should be able to manage a bad year this year.

But who planned on being … irrelevant.

My team has been here before.

We hired this feller known as the Morgantown Miracle Worker as head coach and he was reverse Amish.

He did less with more than almost any coach known in the history of the game.

My team didn’t lose often, at least until Rich Rod came along.

He even lost to the University of Toledo.

Lost to Toledo and then an odd thing happened.

Toledo had a bad season, beat my team but had a bad season.

Almost any other time in history, any team from the state of Ohio that beat my team was a reason to give the coach a better contract.

This year though was different.

Beating my team didn’t matter and that Toledo coach got fired.

My team was irrelevant to the conversation that season..

Much like my team was this past weekend.

Winner?

Loser?

In Misery?

In the wrap up conversation about the weekend of football, my team had again become, irrelevant.

Are we back in those bad old days so soon?

Oh well, there was always last year.