12.3.2025 – cups of coffee

three cups of coffee
warm brown and caffeine filled
starting the morning

He poured himself a cup of coffee, fumbling in the darkness, and sipped at it. Scalding hot, too hot to drink despite its long journey up from the wardroom. But the taste and the smell of it were sufficient to start his digestive processes working again. He longed for that coffee; he was accustomed to drinking eight big cups every day of his life and had always guiltily put aside the self-accusation that he was a coffee-hound dependent on a drug.

It was coffee; the inevitable set-up with the cream and sugar that he never used, but he viewed it as Galahad would have viewed the Holy Grail. Krause tugged off his gloves and snatched at it. His hands were numb and trembled a little as he poured: He swigged off the cup and refilled and drank again. The warmth as the coffee went down called his attention to the fact that he was cold; not acutely, perishingly, cold but chilled through and through as if nothing would ever quite warm him again.

Then a third cup of coffee, not swigged down madly like the first two, but drink more at leisure, savouring it like a true coffee-hound, with the added pleasure of knowing that there was a fourth cup yet to be drunk.

From The Good Shepard by CS Forester (Little, Brown: Boston, 1955).

A couple of days every week I work in the office which, for me, means getting up at 6 a.m. to try and get on the road to work around 6:45 a.m. and beat the traffic.

Goofy to say as I moved from Metro Atlanta with 10 million people to a seaside community with a scattered 100,000 people but we still have traffic problem and the problem is that almost everyone lives in one part of the county but works out on the coast island and we all go to work at the same time and there is only one bridge to the island.

Most days I get up at 7 a.m. and me and coffee and my morning reading of newspapers on my tablet have a comparatively leisurely start.

But when I am in the office, I get my clothes out the night before, I plan my lunch and I get the coffee ready.

Café Bustelo and the timer set for 5:45 a.m.

I wake up before the alarm and here the gurgling of the coffee maker and into the shower where I expect to have gallons of HOT FRESH WATER delivered to me at the touch of a hand – if that doesn’t set the USA off from 95% of the world … well, boy howdy!

Then out to the kitchen and my mug and the first sip.

The warmth as the coffee went down

I pour that fourth cup too.

As I get squared away, keys, sun glasses, back pack … I look at that fourth cup sitting on the counter.

I put aside the self-accusation that he was a coffee-hound dependent on a drug and know that I might get caught in traffic without access to a bathroom and I leave it there.

12.2.2025 – every question has

every question has
a cousin, and suddenly
they’re multiplying

Going back to the roots of these essays and admiring wordplay in the news of the day, I want to recognize Dianna Russini who in her Nov. 26, 2025 article in the Athletic headlined, What I’m hearing about J.J. McCarthy, Jerry Jones’ trade steal and more, wrote:

So now what? Delay McCarthy again? I’ve been told there were some concerns about how another year sitting on the bench would affect him. And would it even help? Every question has a cousin, and suddenly they’re multiplying. Can a raw but talented quarterback grow fast enough to match a team built to win yesterday?

I think that’s pretty good.

Good enough to repeat.

Every question has a cousin, and suddenly they’re multiplying.

Can a raw but talented quarterback grow fast enough to match a team built to win yesterday?

Applying to other topics … Can a Saturday Morning TV Anchor run something else like the Frosty Boy Ice Cream Stand in Grand Rapids, Michigan or, just wondering out loud, the Department of Defense?

Every question has a cousin, and suddenly they’re multiplying.

More Thurber at For Muggs and Rex.

12.1.2025 – will bring you big things

will bring you big things
the colors of dawn-morning
beauty of rose leaves

A Wooing

I will bring you big things:
Colors of dawn-morning,
Beauty of rose leaves,
And a flaming love.

But you say
Those are not big things,
That only money counts.

Well,
Then I will bring you money.
But do not ask me
For the beauty of rose leaves,
Nor the colors of dawn-morning,
Nor a flaming love.

The collected poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes, , 1902-1967 (New York : Knopf, 1994)

11.30.3035 – mystery of trees

mystery of trees
and water and all living
things borrowing time

Salt Marsh on Pinckney Island, SC at Sunset, Nov 28, 2025

They used to say we’re living on borrowed
time but even when young I wondered
who loaned it to us? In 1948 one grandpa
died stretched tight in a misty oxygen tent,
his four sons gathered, his papery hand
grasping mine. Only a week before, we were fishing.
Now the four sons have all run out of borrowed time
while I’m alive wondering whom I owe
for this indisputable gift of existence.
Of course time is running out. It always
has been a creek heading east, the freight
of water with its surprising heaviness
following the slant of the land, its destiny.
What is lovelier than a creek or riverine thicket?
Say it is an unknown benefactor who gave us
birds and Mozart, the mystery of trees and water
and all living things borrowing time.
Would I still love the creek if I lasted forever?

Debtor by Jim Harrison as published in Songs of Unreason (Copper Canyon Press; 2011).

What is lovelier than a creek or riverine thicket?
Say it is an unknown benefactor who gave us
birds and Mozart, the mystery of trees and water
and all living things borrowing time.

Walking on Pinckney Island, the day after Thanksgiving at stopped at this spot, looking west, where I have stopped hundreds of times.

I have stopped hundreds of times but I have never stopped time other than by capturing a moment using the phone on my camera.

Back it the day, it might have been called a still shot, I guess from the painters, still life.

Nothing about this picture is really still.

The tide is moving the water out at 6 knots.

The Sun is spinning away at 1,000 miles per hour.

The earth tips 1 degree north of south each day depending on the season.

The clouds and marsh grass move with the wind.

Everything is in motion.

All by accident.

No Artificial intelligence.

No photoshop.

Say it is an unknown benefactor who gave us
birds and Mozart, the mystery of trees and water
and all living things borrowing time.

I might have captured the moment but the time is borrowed.

11.29.2025 – hail victors valiant

hail victors valiant
raise next generation right
sing to the colors

I am pretty sure that I have related the story of the night I got a phone call from my brother Paul that opened without a hello or greeting, but the words, I AM INCENSED.

This was kinda startling for two reasons.

One was that my brother Paul, so far as I know, never called anyone in his life.

And, Two, my brother Paul, so far as I know, had never been incensed about anything in his life.

Paul had just paged through the latest Michigan Today Alumni Magazine and found an article that recognized some family that had 6 siblings who had all earned degrees from the University of Michigan.

This was not right, Paul, declared and he called me and he told I had to do something about it.

So I got in touch with the Alumni Association and let them know that the Hoffman Family had a little bit more history to recognize.

Started with Grandpa Robert Karl Hoffman, the 1st Hofman born in the US and the 1st to change his last name to Hoffman, he was the 1st one to graduate from Michigan with a DDS in 1911.

Then our Dad, Robert Paul Hoffman, who graduated with a DDS in 1942.

Then the siblings.

Paul, Jack, Mary, Janet, Tim, Lisa, Me, Steve and Al graduated from Michigan stretching out over the 1960s. 70s and 80s.

Growing up, I knew there was only one college for me and I was so focused on accomplishing graduating from Michigan that when I finally DID graduate, I was at a bit of loss of what to do next and maybe still am.

My roommates knew the story of me getting into Michigan and they all agreed that the school changed the rules so it would never happen again.

And there were more graduates to come.

The spouses of Paul, Janet, Lisa and Al who graduated from Michigan.

Then the nieces and nephews of the 4th Generation who graduated from Michigan.

A couple of editions later, the Alumni Magazine ran an article that stated simply, they didn’t know what they were getting into when they recognized that family with 6 graduate siblings.

They didn’t know what they were getting into as they heard from so many other families, who I guess, were incensed.

The heard from several families also with 6 sibling graduates.

The heard from several families with 7 sibling graduates.

The heard from a couple of families with 8 sibling graduates.

But they only heard from 1 family, the Hoffman Family of Grand Rapids, with 9 sibling graduates.

If we act like we own it, at least we are acting honestly.

Work is starting on that 5th generation.

Me and grandson Ian – it’s his 1st time for the game with that team … class of 2047?

If you been to a game in Ann Arbor and listened to the crowd sing The Yellow and Blue with the band you know that 95% of the crowd knows one word, HAIL!.

We had a family tradition of singing The Yellow and Blue at family gatherings if the mood was right and by unspoken agreement, we would all drop out and let Dad sing the HAIL by himself.

With that memory in mind:

Sing to the colors that float in the light;
Hurrah for the Yellow and Blue!
Yellow the stars as they ride through the night
And reel in a rollicking crew;
Yellow the field where ripens the grain
And yellow the moon on the harvest wain;
-Hail!
Hail to the colors that float in the light
Hurrah for the Yellow and Blue!

Win or lose today, Hurrah for the Yellow and Blue!