Down and out semi poet who is down and out in the Low Country of South Carolina after living in Atlanta which is not to be confused with the south, the old south or the new south. Atlanta was a global metropolis with all the pluses and minuses that comes with that. The low country, low because it is low, 8 feet above sea level, is not Podunk but once you get to Podunk, turn left. I try to chronicle a small part of all that through my daily haiku for you.
Comedy that is so often discussed and then closed off, “They couldn’t do that today.”
And if they try to do it today, how would some of the comedy be made politically correct.
As I write, the Department of Veteran’s Affairs are and are not in the process of removing the famous Life Magazine photo of the Sailor Kissing the Girl in White on VE day (by Alfred Eisenstaedt who said he notice the sailor and saw the Nurse and hoped for the best) as the photo is of forced perhaps unwanted contact.
I don’t know what to say about that but I digress.
I was struck by the line in the article where Mr. Logan wrote:
What they made clear is that these theatrical jaunts down memory lane aren’t primarily about making us laugh.
They’re about nostalgia,
about reconnecting us with our younger selves.
What you lose of the surprise on which comedy depends,
you gain in the golden glow of recollection as simpler,
more joyful times are spirited back to life.
I can relate to this statement as I DO have a younger self that had a pretty good time on earth and I can get a golden glow recollecting simpler more joyful.
I have to understand that not everyone does.
Just one more way I have been lucky in this lifetime.
confused and distraught this will have to serve – face it these loom large these days
Driving to work this morning, I was listening to a collection of articles by Jim Harrison in a book posthumously published titled, A really big lunch (New York : Grove Press 2017).
It is a collection of Mr. Harrison’s articles about food, cooking and eating,
In the introduction by Mario Batali, Mr. Batali wrote of Jim Harrison, “…and nothing makes a cook quite so happy as someone who exists entirely to eat — and when not eating, to talk about eating, to hunt and fish for things to eat, or to spend time after eating talking about what we just ate.”
Mr. Batali also wrote that Mr. Harrison was someone … “who wrote sentences that stretched beyond the wildest poetry of my imagination” and I could appreciate that.
Still these are essays about eating, hunting and fishing for things to eat, and talking about what Mr. Harrison just ate.
Maybe not the best thing to listen to first thing in the morning especially for someone who still gets by on just coffee please until I wake up enough around lunch time to think about putting food in my system.
I made it through Mr. Batali and then through the first essay titled, Eat Your Heart Out, a discussion of commercially available hot sauces (in 1981), the rain was pouring down, I couldn’t see and much as I enjoy Mr. Harrison’s prose, I said to myself, “… time for some music” and as the car eased off the bridge onto the island where I work, I reached over to switch from audio books to music.
In that second before the click registered on my handheld, the next essay (Food for Thought as published in Smoke Signals 1982) in the queue stated to play.
I heard the first two words of that essay before it stopped.
I heard, “Dear Mike ...”
And it went off.
Well, boy howdy but that kind of freaked me out.
I had to hear what Mr. Harrison was writing to me.
I switched my device back to audio books and hit play.
I heard the last bit the previous article that I had just heard and then once more I heard, “Dear Mike …”
“I am so confused and distraught …”
And I hit stop.
That’s all I needed to hear.
Confused and distraught.
Like Castor and Pollux, the twins of the Gemini, confused and distraught.
The full sentence, I later looked up is, I am so confused and distraught that this will have to serve as my food letter for the upcoming issue. Let’s face it, the twin specters of food and politics loom large these days.
Food I am not so much worried with.
But politics?
And of much else in life?
Confused and distraught.
Remember Potiphar in the Bible?
According to the Genesis 39:6. Potiphar … “did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate.“
Did not concern himself with anything … ANYTHING, except the food he ate.
a people’s contest unfettered start, a fair chance in the race of life
This is essentially a people’s contest.
On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men;
to lift artificial weights from all shoulders;
to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all;
to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.
President Abraham Lincoln’s special message to Congress, July 4, 1861.
Known as the The Fourth of July that Could Have Wrecked the Country, Mr. Lincoln explained his views and plans to keep the United States with Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.
Oddly prescient, Mr. Lincoln said:
It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion;
that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets,
and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided there can be no successful appeal back to bullets;
that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections.
Such will be a great lesson of peace,
teaching men that what they can not take by an election neither can they take it by a war;
teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.
hopefully readers find this tolerable trying better figuring
It was after the election in 2000 that then President, Bill Clinton said something along the lines of “America has spoken. Now we have to figure out what America said.”
The article was slugged. “Why the latest NYT/Siena College survey on Saturday will include those who started the survey but didn’t finish it.” and Mr. Cohn tried herd to explain how the New York Times was working to present the best polling information possible.
What he meant was he was trying to explain how asking 1,000 different people to take 15 minute telephone quiz could be expanded in a definitive way that explained how 300+ Million Americans were thinking.
I have professionally designing websites since 1995.
I am often asked for a statistical analysis of web traffic.
Folks want to know “What the number show.”
It did not take me long to learn to immediately ask, “What do you want the numbers to show?”
Because of the way web analytics are created I can prove almost any point you want to make, pro or con, about any website all using the same data.
When I read Mr. Cohn’s paragraph:
You may notice the most obvious change:
There are 157 fewer respondents to the second half of the survey than the first half. But there’s more to it:
The demographic makeup of the 823 respondents will be ever so slightly different from the full sample, since even weighting doesn’t force a perfect alignment between the characteristics of a poll and the intended population.
Hopefully readers find this tolerable; if not, there may be other options we can adopt in the future.
This is, after all, the first time we’re trying this.
I expect we’ll gradually get better at figuring out how to present these results, especially once we see what other people notice.
I had to take my hat off again to these folks.
Noting adds authority more to explanatory statements better than colons and semicolons except maybe a split infintiive.
As I read this Mr. Cohn has admitted that “weighting doesn’t force a perfect alignment between the characteristics of a poll and the intended population.”
And, Hopefully readers find this tolerable …
if not, there may be other options we can adopt in the future.
Mr. Cohn expects they will get better at figuring how to present these results.
Especially once they see what other people notice!!!!
Now was any of this even of this mentioned when other news Media around the world presented the information in the latest NTY Sienna College polls?
Nope not that I heard.
But that is the trick isn’t.
It isn’t what the poll said, but what you heard it say isn’t it??
Polling, oh well.
The only thing Mr. Cohn didn’t say is that in the future they will ask folks what they want the polls to say.
I could use that old Abraham Lincoln never conducted a poll to find out what he should do, he just did the right thing as he saw it.
On the other hand, maybe Mr. Lincoln was wrong.
Maybe you CAN fool all of the people all of the time.
No Haiku For You 