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.
it is October shall remember loans of the sun to you in June
Silver leaves of the last of summer. Poplar and elm silver leaves.
Leaves not least of all of the Lombardy poplar, Standing before the autumn moon and the autumn wind as a woman waits in a doorway for some one who must be coming.
All you silver leaf people, you I have seen and heard in a hundred summer winds,
It IS October, it is a week, two weeks, till the rain and frost break on us and the leaves are washed off, washed down
In January when the trees fork gray against a clear winter blue in the spare sun silver of winter or the lengthened frost silver of the long nights—
I shall remember then the loans of the sun to you in June, I shall remember the hundred winds who kissed you
Poplar and Elm by Carl Sandburg as published in Good Morning America in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (Harcourt, Brace: New York, 1970).
Not Poplar or Elm … but a grove of Live Oaks … so live they look alive with the wind in their branches
the trees’ destruction satisfied something in soul of man who felled it
On a hillock back of the girls’ dormitorv there was a nice stand of second-growth hardwoods, mostly maples and beeches — the same in which I played the part of Daniel Boone with my trusty broomstick rifle. In the middle of this little woodlot there was one towering tree that had somehow escaped the ax and saw when the village was built. I do not recall what sort of tree it was except that it was a hardwood, and it was a noble tree, rising far above all the other trees, a landmark visible from any¬ where in town. Now there lived in Benzonia a man who served in some official capacity; member of the county road commission or the county surveyor’s crew, or something similar. This man looked upon this tree every day, and apparently it offended him. It had survived, the only tree in the whole township that dated back to the original forest, and he seems to have felt that he ought to do something about it. He consulted the blueprints on which the village had been platted and discovered that this tree grew right in the center of what had been marked out as a highway. The highway had never been built, and never would be built, because it would be a dead-end street at each end, it led neither to nor past anything of consequence, and to build it would have required the builders to cross two deep ravines. It was wholly impractical, and everybody knew it, and to this day it remains unconstructed. But the plat said there was a roadway there, and the big tree was a trespasser. So this petty official got a few men with saws and axes, went up to the hillock, and cut the tree down.
It came down with a soul-satisfying crash and it lay, butt-end upward, on a steep hillside, leaving a flat stump as broad as a dining room table. It stayed where it fell, slowly rotting. Nobody cut it into logs or did anything else with it; nobody had ever intended to do anything with it, it was just a big tree that deserved to be laid low. A number of people shook their heads and made noises of disapproval, and my father, thinking that the tree was on ground owned by the academy, lodged a protest. But there was the plat, the tree grew in the middle of what had been laid out as a public highway, and nothing could be done. Presumably its destruction satisfied something in the soul (if that is the word for it) of the man who felled it. Anyway, what was one tree more or less in Michigan? It was gone, and my small sister found that the big flat stump made a fine place for her to play house with her dolls.
From Waiting for the Morning Train: A Michigan Boyhood by Bruce Catton (Doubleday: Garden City, N.Y., 1972).
But the plat said there was a roadway there, and the big tree was a trespasser. So this petty official got a few men with saws and axes, went up to the hillock, and cut the tree down.
Presumably its destruction satisfied something in the soul (if that is the word for it) of the man who felled it.
For decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was the undisputed global leader in public health. Its scientists helped train health officials worldwide. In the United States, it was the primary source of guidance for prevention and treatment of diseases, including diabetes, H.I.V. and the seasonal flu.
But after a year and a half in the cross hairs of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s drive to remake public health policy, the agency is a skeleton of the powerhouse it was.
The changes have hindered the C.D.C.’s ability to respond to outbreaks as measles spreads at home and Ebola abroad, and to issue timely guidance on vaccinations as cooling temperatures kick off the respiratory season, according to current and former employees. State and local health departments, which rely on the C.D.C. for resources and technical advice, have been stymied by delays. Entire divisions have been shuttered, including teams that worked on smoking, sexual violence, child abuse and falls among older adults.
From the very first day of Mr. Trump’s second term, when he withdrew the country from the W.H.O., his administration has sought to upend the nation’s health policies and align them with his political priorities.
Last year, an H.H.S. official directed the C.D.C. to award a no-bid contract — a rarity for the agency — to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to explore whether immunizing pregnant women would lead to autism in their children, a theory that Mr. Kennedy has espoused but that has been debunked by numerous studies. To pay for the research, the C.D.C. took $362,000 from a program that provides free vaccines to about half of American children.
The agency’s dysfunction is alarming public health experts even outside the country, who had long relied on the C.D.C.’s expertise during global crises. At a recent meeting of global flu experts, Dr. Jernigan said, “people truly believe that we are less prepared now and less capable of having a coordinated response than we were before the pandemic.”
I asked myself, what was it about the CDC being the undisputed global leader in public health that offended the man running the United States Deptartment of Health and Human Services?
Where was this plat that said there was a roadway there in place of the CDC, and the CDC was a trespasser. So that this petty official could get a few men with saws and axes and cut the CDC down?
And now that the CDC has been ‘zombified’, does it its zombification satisfy something in the soul (if that is the word for it) of the man who felled it?
I mean, who wouldn’t want to upend a nation’s health policies and align them with political priorities.
“It’s also important to note that while the adage that money can’t buy happiness has a lot of truth to it, having enough money to live comfortably is still essential. But anything beyond that won’t necessarily enhance happiness as much as having fulfilling hobbies, relationships and opportunities for personal growth.”
That line, It’s also important to note that while the adage that money can’t buy happiness has a lot of truth to it, having enough money to live comfortably is still essential got me to wondering about something so I opened up Gemini, Google’s AI Bot and asked:
In America today, how much money is needed so that you have enough money to live comfortably?
Living “comfortably” in the United States depends heavily on household size, geographic location, and lifestyle expectations. Financial studies utilizing the standard 50/30/20 budget framework (allocating 50% of income to necessities like housing and groceries, 30% to discretionary spending, and 20% to savings and debt repayment) establish key baseline income thresholds for comfortable living across the nation.
Gemini then broke out some numbers.
Income Needed by Household Size – Household Type
Average National Threshold Single Adult: $85,000 – $100,000 Family of Four (2 adults, 2 kids): $210,000 – $240,000
Low-Cost States (e.g., WV, MS) Single Adult: ~$81,000 – $86,000 Family of Four (2 adults, 2 kids): ~$187,000 – $195,000
High-Cost States (e.g., HI, MA, CA) Single Adult: $124,000 – $129,000 Family of Four (2 adults, 2 kids): $300,000 – $330,000
I then asked, “How many American’s meet this level of Income right now?
The summary response I got was:
Summary Takeaway For Single Adults: Only about 1 in 7 single Americans earns enough to meet the formal 50/30/20 definition of a “comfortable” lifestyle on a single income.
For Families of Four:About 1 in 5 families earns the combined $210,000+ necessary to cover necessities, non-essentials, and consistent 20% savings without financial strain.
That got me to thinking so I asked one more question.
I asked “How many American’s met this level of income in 2015?”
I got this response …
Single Adults (2015): Roughly 1 out of 6 to 1 out of 7 single-person households earned above the ~$60,000–$71,000 mark in 2015 dollars (~14% to 16%).
Families of Four (2015): Roughly 1 out of 4 to 1 out of 5 married families with two kids earned above the ~$150,000 mark in 2015 dollars (~19% to 23%).
Not much different but what got me was this statement:
Adjusting for inflation using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index (CPI), cumulative inflation between 2015 and today is approximately 41%.
This means that $1.00 in 2015 had roughly the same purchasing power as $1.41 today. Deflating the current thresholds back to 2015 values yields the equivalent income needed to live “comfortably” in 2015.
So many many many numbers.
I am reminded of that old saying:
A recession is when someone is out of money.
A depression is when I am out of money.
Thinking of that line of having enough money to enhance happiness as much as having fulfilling hobbies, relationships and opportunities for personal growth as thinking about enough money to put food on the table and that remined of that line out of the depression when FDR put a man named Harry Hopkins in charge of relief efforts and according to legend, Hopkins found an office on Inauguration day and began funding programs to start emergency food distribution.
Someone in Washington told Hopkins that giving government money away like that wouldn’t work in the long run.
“People don’t eat in the long run,” said Hopkins, “they eat every day.”
Photos from the Resettlement and Farm Security Administrations and the Office of War Information 1935-1943 by the great Walker Evans.
through a glass darkly unreliability of eyewitnesses
There is this thing called the Rashomon Effect.
According to the Wikipedia: The Rashomon effect is the phenomenon of the unreliability of eyewitnesses. The effect is named after Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 Japanese film Rashomon, which itself is based on Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short story “In a Grove”, in which a murder is described in four contradictory ways by four witnesses. It has been used as a storytelling and writing method in cinema in which an event is given contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved, thereby providing different perspectives and points of view of the same incident.
An event is given contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved, thereby providing different perspectives and points of view of the same incident.
This is a photo a friend of mine posted on Facebook of the end of last weekend’s Michigan-Iowa football game.
That the photo is of the game is incidental, as is the outcome of game (an outcome I am used to – they wouldn’t be the Amazin’ Blues if they didn’t break your heart) but look at the people looking not at the game, but at their devices.
They will have there own personal proof of being there at something they didn’t watch because they were watching their phones.
They are eyewitnesses to history, yet their proof if being an eyewitness proves they took their eye off history.
I was at several moments worth remembering in Michigan Stadium.
Anthony Carter into the endzone with no time on the clock to beat Indiana.
Desmond Howard flying 20 yards into the end zone to win the Heisman Trophy.
All remembered WITH ADVANTAGES as Mr. Shakespeare would say and without the need for a device.
In one of the last books about Queen Elizabeth II, a book about her travels around the world, she was asked what changed the most in her exerience.
The Queen responded along the line that she used to see people, now all she saw were … little black boxes.
And I put it to you that even with the scene recorded and safely in your hand … any event is given contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved, thereby providing different perspectives and points of view of the same incident.
down dark path changing shape of our nation perhaps irrevocably
Adapted from the Opinion Piece by the Detroit Free Press Editorial Board that was headlined: Michigan can’t send an extremist to the U.S. Senate: Our endorsement.
The Editorial Board stated:
Everything you’ve heard about Michigan’s U.S. Senate race is true:
An extremist is asking voters to send him to Washington, masking an agenda far out of step with Michigan’s mainstream under the pretense of normalcy.
If elected, this man would urge America down a dark path, changing the shape of our nation, perhaps irrevocably.
