6.3.2025 – know they’re dishonest

know they’re dishonest
almost always think there’s a
good reason for it

From the movie, The Big Chill where Michael and Sam discuss life comes this bit of dialogue.

Michael: Nobody thinks they’re a bad person. I’m not even claiming that people always think they’re doing the right thing; they may know that they’re doing something dishonest or insensitive or manipulative but they almost always think that there’s a good reason for doing it. They almost always think it will turn out for the best in the end, even if it just turns out best for them, because by definition what’s best for them is what’s best.

Sam Weber: Why is it what you just said strikes me as a massive rationalization?

Michael: Don’t knock rationalization. Where would we be without it? I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.

Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.

Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?

I first saw this movie 40 years in Ann Arbor at a special screening for film students at the University of Michigan.

I got invited through the luck of just being there.

It was the line on rationalization that I was searching for.

Don’t knock rationalization. Where would we be without it? I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations.

It stuck in my mind as I seek to explain folks who I know who support the current guy in office.

I tell my wife that for many, its playing the lottery and for the state of their career, they rationalize that if they can get close to this guy, maybe … just maybe when he dies, he might remember them in his will with a nice tip.

You know, like Charles Foster Kane and Jed Leland.

Anyone for where they are in life, cozying up to the that guy is about they best bet they can make for their future financial security so the rationalization that they are selling out their integrity of the present can be justified.

Then I came across the line leading up to the rationalization statement.

Nobody thinks they’re a bad person. I’m not even claiming that people always think they’re doing the right thing; they may know that they’re doing something dishonest or insensitive or manipulative but they almost always think that there’s a good reason for doing it. They almost always think it will turn out for the best in the end, even if it just turns out best for them, because by definition what’s best for them is what’s best.

Read that again, slowly and out loud.

Nobody thinks they’re a bad person.

I’m not even claiming that people always think they’re doing the right thing;

they may know that they’re doing something dishonest or insensitive or manipulative but they almost always think that there’s a good reason for doing it.

They almost always think it will turn out for the best in the end, even if it just turns out best for them, because by definition what’s best for them is what’s best.

Now ask yourself.

How can folks support that guy in office?

Ask them.

They will tell you they are doing the right thing and they have a good reason for it.

6.2.2025- this isn’t normal and

this isn’t normal and
markets finally, slowly
waking up to this

Based on the passage from the New York Times Opinion piece, The Vertiginous Novelty of America’s Debt Pile By Adam Tooze where Mr. Tooze writes:

What makes the country unique is that even as the economy hums along and the wealthiest prosper as never before, a party calling itself conservative is actively conspiring to cut the sinews of the fiscal state.

This isn’t normal. And markets are finally, slowly waking up to this fact.

6.1.2025 – belongs to a church …

belongs to a church …
on certain Sundays enjoys
chanting Nicene creed

This is the Nicene Creed …

I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come.

Amen.

This may be the key phrase …

He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.

Onion Days in Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg, (1916)

Mrs. Gabrielle Giovannitti comes along Peoria Street every morning at nine o’clock
With kindling wood piled on top of her head, her eyes looking straight ahead to find the way for her old feet.

Her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti, whose husband was killed in a tunnel explosion through the negligence of a fellow-servant,
Works ten hours a day, sometimes twelve, picking onions for Jasper on the Bowmanville road.

She takes a street car at half-past five in the morning, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti does,
And gets back from Jasper’s with cash for her day’s work, between nine and ten o’clock at night.

Last week she got eight cents a box, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti, picking onions for Jasper,
But this week Jasper dropped the pay to six cents a box because so many women and girls were answering the ads in the Daily News.

Jasper belongs to an Episcopal church in Ravenswood and on certain Sundays
He enjoys chanting the Nicene creed with his daughters on each side of him joining their voices with his.

If the preacher repeats old sermons of a Sunday, Jasper’s mind wanders to his 700-acre farm and how he can make it produce more efficiently
And sometimes he speculates on whether he could word an ad in the Daily News so it would bring more women and girls out to his farm and reduce operating costs.

Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti is far from desperate about life; her joy is in a child she knows will arrive to her in three months.

And now while these are the pictures for today there are other pictures of the Giovannitti people I could give you for to-morrow,
And how some of them go to the county agent on winter mornings with their baskets for beans and cornmeal and molasses.

I listen to fellows saying here’s good stuff for a novel or it might be worked up into a good play.

I say there’s no dramatist living can put old Mrs. Gabrielle Giovannitti into a play with that kindling wood piled on top of her head coming along Peoria Street nine o’clock in the morning.

I repeat, this is the key phrase …

He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.

The Jasper’s of this world can hear if they want to.

5.31.2025 – sharing few bathrooms

sharing few bathrooms
creates a suboptimal
situation … yup!

Adapted from the passage in the article in The Guardian, Are there billions more people on Earth than we thought? If so, it’s no bad thing by Jonathan Kennedy, where Mr. Kennedy writes:

“… as anyone who has crammed into one house with their extended family over Christmas knows, many people sharing few bathrooms creates a suboptimal situation.

You won’t be able to shower exactly when you want – and you’d better make it a short one. But this hardly amounts to the end of civilization.

In fact, compromise and sharing is probably closer to most people’s idea of a good life than having the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want.”

I will admit, right off the bat, I got nothing to complain about.

I grew up in a big family, 11 kids though 10 at time was the most who called home, home.

But I grew up in a big house.

There were seven kids when we moved into The Big House on Sligh Blvd. in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I grew up, then I showed up and then my three little brothers.

That house was BIG.

It was a split level and there were three floors plus a huge basement so big, we played floor hockey down there.

It had six bedrooms but two and half bathrooms (not counting the now-a-days so called en suite bathroom off my parents bedroom.

For some reason, the upstairs bathroom had a tub and a shower, but for most of my life, Mom refused to put a shower curtain over the tub as that’s where so would throw us four little boys for our Saturday Night baths all at once and Mom would sit on the side of the tub and scrub our hair with soapy smelling Breck Shampoo.

There was a shower stall in the laundry room but never once did I ever see anyone use it.

By the time I could remember things, Mom had put a closet rod in there and hung up clean laundry that was waiting to be distributed to the bedrooms.

With 4 places where you could take care of things, even when 12 people in the house, I can’t complain.

My wife’s family had 12 kids, nine of them girls and for a good chunk of their lives together, made due with one bathroom.

We all managed quite nicely and then would come the holiday season.

As my older brothers and sister got married and moved out, they all came back at Christmas time and as their families grew, the big house would get filled up.

Sometimes other relatives would show up at the same time and we would be spread out on sofas and floors with blankets or sleeping bags.

I will repeat and agree with Mr. Kennedy when he states: “… anyone who has crammed into one house with their extended family over Christmas knows, many people sharing few bathrooms creates a suboptimal situation.”

It seems like it was my brother Paul, who almost every year made the drive at Christmas time from his home on east coast with his wife and four kids, who said that “It wasn’t difficult to take a shower with hot water. It was just a matter of timing.”

Needing the bathroom for bathroom business and bathing was one thing.

Growing up, my family brought the suboptimal situation to a whole other level as we always managed to come down with what we called “The Stomach Flu.”

Norovirus, The 24 Hour Bug or my favorite from Great Britain, Winter Vomiting, it all came down to the fact that at some point, when the house full to bursting, between Christmas and New Years, some one would announce, I GOT TO THROW UP.

Your first thought was anger at the person who got sick first and who we blamed for bringing the bug into the house and your second thought was, who will be next and your last thought was, when will it be my turn.

Because, at some point, it would be your turn.

Was it better to be first, get it over with despite having everyone mad at you?

Or to be last and worry that every twinge, every stomach growl was the beginning of something worse.

We had buckets and bowls and pans.

The first person who came down with the bug would get into bed along with an old revere-wear stainless steel double boiler pot that was indestructible and also known as the barf bowl.

I came home from school once to find Mom making brownies and melting chocolate squres in that double boiler and I would not eat any of those brownies.

Mom made lots of brownies but if I didn’t SEE her make them in that bowl, I was fine.

It is hard for me to imagine the production line of buckets and bowls and soiled bedding that Mom had to deal with during these outbreaks.

Not only was she in charge of housekeeping but chief nurse as well as dietician.

She would monitor all the sick ones as well as encourage the ones who had yet to fall sick and she comforted those on the comeback.

At some point you would be offered a milkshake (with a raw egg in it to help get ‘some weight back on’ that Mom added without telling us) and you knew the worst was over.

I remember one year giving in to the inevitable when I came down with it late at night.

Knowing I wouldn’t be sleeping, I made a log of all the times I barfed and later graphed it out.

It was then that I noticed that the times between barfing decreased – you threw up more and more often – until it didn’t and once you had a period of time longer between barfing than the previous time, the barfing peaked and you were over the worst and maybe had just one or two more times to go.

After learning this I tried to ‘game’ the stomach flu by trying to throw up fast and furious to get to that magic peak but I learned it had to happen when it had to happen.

For some reason, I never got my family interested in my research but when I became a parent I always kept an eye on things and could tell when one the kids had made the turn.

I was older and I had my own family but I still knew that many people sharing few bathrooms creates a suboptimal situation.

I might not be able to shower exactly when I want – and I’d better make it a short one. But this hardly amounts to the end of civilization.

In fact, compromise and sharing is probably closer to most people’s idea of a good life than having the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want.”

It certainly can get worse.

5.30.2025 – despairing, hopeless

despairing, hopeless
inevitability
deliciously so

Looking up the word hopeless in the Online Oxford Dictionary, it said:

ADJECTIVE

1 Feeling or causing despair about something:

Jessica looked at him in mute hopeless appeal his situation was obviously hopeless.

Or …

That delicious uncertainty has been replaced by despairing, hopeless inevitability.

2 Mainly British English Inadequate; incompetent:

When will governments learn they are hopeless at running businesses?

I really liked those examples.