up, down beaches, lost … freedom, exhilarating indescribable
Beach on Hilton Head Island as storm front comes up from behind me …
Adapted from a passage in the book, The Racketeer by John Grisham (Doubleday: New York, 2012), where Mr. Grisham writes:
I stare at the moon over the ocean.
I breathe the salty air and listen to the waves gently roll ashore.
Freedom is exhilarating, and indescribable.
I can’t wait to feel sand between my toes.
There are a few early birds on the beach, and I hustle down there.
No one notices; no one cares.
People who roam aimlessly up and down beaches are lost in their own worlds, and I am quickly getting lost in mine.
Obviously I think of the priceless moments I get on my lunch to breathe the salty air and listen to the waves gently roll ashore and I feel the sand between my toes.
But that one phrase there.
Freedom is exhilarating, and indescribable.
Are there any other words that can better describe what makes America great?
With the all the effort being put into making America great again, why do I find my freedoms less exhilarating and less free.
Mr. Trump’s war, now nearly two weeks old, is already reshaping travel patterns, energy dependencies, living costs, trade routes and strategic partnerships. Countries typically shielded from regional conflict, like Cyprus and the United Arab Emirates, have faced retaliatory Iranian fire. The fallout could disrupt midterm elections in the United States, tilt the war calculus in Ukraine and force China into a major economic pivot.
Those effects may compound if Mr. Trump presses ahead with the war, particularly if Iran escalates its counterattacks and blocks ship traffic through the critical oil passage of the Strait of Hormuz. Some economists are already invoking a dreaded memory for any U.S. president — the specter of oil-shock-induced stagflation, with growth stalling and prices roaring upward.
“I’m old enough to remember the events of the ’70s, and a world in which oil price spikes were a significant issue both economically and for a president who might be facing elections,” said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution. “That doesn’t seem to have been priced into the decision making,” she added.
What happened in the ’70s?
Two things.
There was the Oil Crisis of 1973 and the Oil Crisis of 1979.
It’s that first one in 1973 I want to talk about.
I was 13.
Inflation at the grocery store was 14%.
According to Wikipedia:
On 6 October 1973, the Yom Kippur/October War began when Egypt attacked the Bar Lev Line in the Sinai Peninsula and Syria launched an offensive in the Golan Heights.
Israel took heavy losses in men and materiel during the fighting against Egypt and Syria, and on 18 October 1973, Meir requested $850 million worth of American arms and equipment to replace its materiel losses
On the afternoon of 19 October 1973, Faisal was in his office when he learned about the United States sending $2.2 billion worth of weapons to Israel.
The arms lift enraged King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. Faisal was angry that Israel had only asked for $850 million worth of American weapons, and instead received an unsolicited $2.2 billion worth of weapons, which he perceived as a sign of the pro-Israeli slant of American foreign policy.
On 20 October 1973, he retaliated by placing a total embargo on oil shipments to the United States, to be joined by most of the other oil-producing Arab states.
The embargo imposed on the United States led to shortages of oil in the United States, which set an inflationary spiral.
Nixon later boasted in his memoirs that the US Air Force flew more sorties to Israel in October 1973 than it had during the Berlin Airlift of 1948–49, flying in a gargantuan quantity of arms, though he also admitted that by the time the arms lift had begun, the Israelis had already “turned the tide of battle” in their favor, making the arms lift irrelevant to the outcome of the war.
In an interview with the British historian Robert Lacey in 1981, Kissinger later admitted about the arms lift to Israel: “I made a mistake. In retrospect it was not the best considered decision we made”.
Why do I have this feeling that, old as I am, I will live to hear on some documentary or read in some book that someone from this current administration will talk about this current war and say, In retrospect it was not the best considered decision we made.
Why do I have this feeling that this current war won’t be the only topic about which someone from this current administration will talk about and say, In retrospect it was not the best considered decision we made.
Why do I have this feeling that this current administration won’t be the only topic about which someone from this current generation of voters will talk about and say, In retrospect it was not the best considered decision we made.
frame Constitution no man hold power bring this oppression on us
Adapted from a passage in a letter from Abraham Lincoln to William Herndon, dated Feb. 15, 1848, where Mr. Lincoln writes:
Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object.
This, our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.
Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 1 [1824-Aug. 28, 1848]. In the digital collection Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/lincoln1. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed March 1, 2026.
tired of stupid testing should be required stupid, can’t fix it
I am reminded of the Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man.”
The story line is that Kanamits, aliens from another planet come to earth and with their advanced technology, according to wikipedia, that can easily and inexpensively solve all energy and food shortages and prevent international warfare.
The Kanamits prove their goodwill, turn the world into a paradise and further promise that their home planet is even nicer.
The Kanamits urge everyone on earth to enjoy the new abundance of food and when ready, sign up for a trip to the home planet.
The people here on earth embrace the plan and they eat and eat and then line up for the trip to the new world.
The twist is that the whole time, code breakers have been working on a book left by the Kanamits to see if they can understand the Kanamits language.
They finally crack code, realize the book, To Serve Man, is a cookbook and that the Kanamits are using earth as farm and to fatten up and harvest the people to eat back on the home planet.
My point is, the people lining up for the trip to home planet, DON’T KNOW THEY ARE GOING TO BE SERVED UP FOR LUNCH.
They line up, freely, expecting a trip to a better world.
It seems to me that a lot of people today are lining up, expecting a trip to a better world, KNOWING FULL WELL that THEY ARE GOING TO BE SERVED UP FOR A FREE LUNCH.
We can see into the kitchen.
We can pursue the menu.
And a lot of people STILL GET IN THAT LINE.
I think of an exchange in the Ron Reiner movie, The American President.
The Press Secretary tells the President, “They want leadership, Mr. President. They’re so thirsty for it, they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.”
The President responds, “We’ve had Presidents who were beloved, who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don’t drink the sand, ’cause they’re thirsty … they drink it ’cause they don’t know the difference.”
I guess the President is in on the joke and the joke is on us.
We know what’s at the end of the trip.
And we are getting on the spacecraft.
We know what sand is.
And we are drinking it anyway.
Is there a solution?
An answer to the question that we in America, have a good thing.
Something to embrace.
To protect.
Something that does not have to be made great …. again.
To think otherwise is stupid.
What can be done?
I came across the short story, Chef’s Night Out, by Anthony Bourdain, published in the book Rovers Return in 1998.
Mr. Bourdain, with his unique grasp of the English language, tells the story of a chef in a restaurant trying to deal with the fact that a chef in a restaurant has to serve folks who do not deserve to be in his restaurant.
The chef in the story loses it in a rant labelled Truth and be prepared for bad words.
I think people should be licensed to eat in a good restaurant.
Yeah.
That’s right …
A long, and unnecessarily irritating process of testing and certification should be required of every would-be diner.
To thin out the herd. All the well-done eating, low-sodium, egg-white omelette nibbling, crystal worshipping, holistic vegan cocksuckers, the sauce-on-siders, the low-cholesterol, no butter, no cream, can you take that off the bone split for two geeks, the slack-jawed, bedwetting, mouth-breathing, fanny-pack wearing scumpigs and rubes, with their Hard Rock T-shirts and their wall-eyed, no-necked, overfed monster offspring in tow . . . they can get the fuck out of my dining room.
Now.
The Space X rocket ship for the Kanamits’ home planet is boarding now.
Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee whiz, but you can’t fix stupid.
No Haiku For You 