time present time past
future eternally
unredeemable

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

From Burnt Norton as it appears in Four Quartets (Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York, 1943) by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Burnt Norton opens with two lines in Greek.

τοΰ λόγου δ’έόντος ξυνοΰ ζώουσιν οί πολλοί
ώς ίδίαν έχοντες φρόνησιν.

And …

όδoς άνω κάτω μία και ώυτή

They are both quotes from Heraclitus.

“Though wisdom is common, the many live as if they have wisdom of their own”

“the way upward and the way downward is one and the same.”

But to what purpose?

Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves …

I do not know.

All time is unredeemable.

(Full disclosure, the video included with this post was created by Brett, my friend and coworker here on the Island. Brett has a pretty cool job. His is the effort to capture what it is that makes you want to spend your vacation on the island. He does a pretty good job with what he has to work with. One of the perks of this job is getting to see his stuff before the rest of the world does.)

other people’s words
keep me from sliding into
the canyon of doom

I was attracted by the headline, A Secret for Falling Asleep So Good It’s a British National Treasure.

I was intrigued to read when the writer wrote, “Most nights I don’t sleep well, so to relax, I often listen to audiobooks or the radio. Other people’s words keep me from sliding into the canyon of doom, where all around shouts of “you’re screwed” reverberate.“

It can be a problem reading (or listening) yourself to sleep.

I have been a reader-in-bed for as long as I can remember.

I was never a flashlight-under-the-blankets reader.

I just kept the lights on and kept quiet.

Anything that kept me quiet was okay with anyone who has ever spent time with me.

Today, I say good night to the wife with the idea that I will spend a few minutes reading before turning out the lights.

All too often I am still reading when she comes to bed and even more often, I get up and go read in the other room so she can turn the lights out.

I get too interested in what I am reading and there it is.

Reading as an inducer of sleep has rarely worked out for me, though I have tried.

In the book, The Winds of War, Herman Wouk has a scene where one of characters can’t sleep and she looks at a wall of books saying, “What can I read? Ah, Graham Wallas – the very man. I’ll be asleep in half an hour.“

I had never heard of Graham Wallas.

According to Wikipedia, Graham Wallas (31 May 1858 – 9 August 1932) was an English socialist, social psychologist, educationalist, a leader of the Fabian Society and a co-founder of the London School of Economics and such a pedigree indeed would nominate Mr. Wallas to be the very man to induce sleep.

I thought two things when I read that line.

I thought, maybe he would put me to sleep so I should give his writing a try.

He didn’t.

One of my problems is that I have to like what I read to take the time to read it and I did not like reading Graham Wallas’ writing and I got too agitated not liking his writing to be able to get to sleep so it was a real stupid experiment.

They other thing I thought was what a great literary device to slam some one.

Put people in a novel, then have them make wonderful pithy comments about someone’s writing.

Brilliant!

As I said, I was attracted by the headline, A Secret for Falling Asleep So Good It’s a British National Treasure.

Shocked I was to read that, according to Ms. Grace Lindon, the secret for falling asleep so good it’s a British National Treasure is listening to something called the Shipping Forecast.

Not the forecast that is read out on air by the BBC at 5:02 a.m., 12:01 p.m., 5:54 p.m. and 12:48 a.m. G.M.T., with each briefing beginning with the same words: “And now the Shipping Forecast, issued by the Met Office“, but compilations of forecasts.

Productions created by pasting a bunch of forecasts together.

Ms. Linden writes, “when heard in hourlong compilations, the Shipping Forecast is poetic and hypnotic, a free-form ode to the seas.”

Click here for an example.

By chance I am very familiar with the Shipping Forecast.

I am very familiar with the Shipping Forecast for two reasons.

One is that I listen to broadcasts of Cricket Matches for the ECB or England and Wales Cricket Board on the BBC (via You Tube).

These broadcasts are often interrupted when the commenter pauses the match coverage to say, “Long Wave listeners are going away for the Shipping Forecast” and then a few minutes later, long wave listeners are welcomed back to the broadcast.

The other reason is that I know Shipping Forecast is that it is introduced by the music, Sailing By.

If anything would put anyone to sleep I would have bet is was the sound of Sailing By but nope, it is the Shipping Forecast itself, in long long recorded compliations.

Ms. Linden writes:

Vastness, as such, is appealing, and the world is so very vast.

Long-wave broadcasts travel far, hugging the planet as they make their way overseas.

Like the sea itself, the Shipping Forecast is a reminder of the larger, more elemental forces at play, those things that are much more powerful than any of our individual worries or wants.

For eons, there was nothing but the stars and estuaries, the winds, the shore.

After making his way out of the mythical cave, man set off to the sea, where the water proffered new realms for exploration.

And so, like the ancient mariners before me, I am often awake in the middle of the night, falling asleep to the mysteries of the deep.

Since moving to the coast, lines like the one, Like the sea itself, the Shipping Forecast is a reminder of the larger, more elemental forces at play, those things that are much more powerful than any of our individual worries or wants.

I like that.

I like that a lot.

I will say it out loud the next time I am walking along the beach and watch those elemental forces at play.

Those things that are much more powerful than any of our individual worries or wants.

It’s what I get to do on my lunch hour and it is one of those things that keeps me from sliding into the canyon of doom.

everyone has their
pet theory but everyone
has different pet

When I work in the office I have to drive over the series of bridges that connect Hilton Head Island with the mainland of the South Carolina Low Country.

Between the mainland and Hilton Head Island is another piece of land known as Pinckney Island.

A bridge takes you over Mackay Creek between the main land and Pinckney and then over Skull Creek to Hilton Head.

There is a two lane bridge going out and another two lane bridge coming in for a total of four bridges.

3 of the four bridges were built in the 1980’s.

The oldest section, the first bridge going from the mainland to Pinckney Island was built in 1957.

While the bridge has passed its end-of-life service date there is no truth to the rumor that the United States Corps of Engineers has condemned the bridge.

There is no truth to the rumor that the United States Corps of Engineers issued an unsafe-to-use certificate for the bridge.

What is true is that since the high tides of Hurricane Matthew so severely undercut the mainland anchorage of the bridge, the United States Corps of Engineers has refused to issue a safe-to-use certificate for the bridge.

The City of Hilton Head, the Country of Beaufort and the State of South Carolina have been researching, planning and projecting a new bridge since 2018.

Everyone agrees they bridge needs to be replaced.

That is where the agreement stops.

And there has been little agreement since.

Somehow, the plan to create a six lane bridge with a bike and pedestrian lane is going to make Hilton Head Island look like Los Angeles.

Somehow the new bridge will scare the turtles.

Want to stop anything down here in the low country, play the turtle card.

Recently the Beaufort County announced it was their bridge and they were going ahead regardless of what the town of Hilton Head said.

The wheels are in motion.

Beaufort County announced they are taking bids on their time and traffic study and hope to have that in place soon and what the study is studied, final construction plans will be open for bidding.

I doubt this new bridge will be built in my lifetime.

I know Hilton Head is a special case and South Carolina is a special case.

What I mean by that is hard to explain if you don’t live here or haven’t been following the Murdaugh Murder case.

Still I read with interest the opinion piece, The Great Construction Mystery, By Ezra Klein (NYT 2/5/2023), that started:

Here’s something odd: We’re getting worse at construction. Think of the technology we have today that we didn’t in the 1970s. The new generations of power tools and computer modeling and teleconferencing and advanced machinery and prefab materials and global shipping. You’d think we could build much more, much faster, for less money, than in the past. But we can’t. Or, at least, we don’t.

Mr. Klien quoted a Mr. Ed Zarenski who runs the market analysis firm Construction Analytics.

Mr. Zarenski said:

And behind all that is paperwork, and paperwork, and more paperwork. “The work we do today takes hundreds more people in the office to track and bring to completion,” he told me. “The level of reporting that you have to send to the government, to the insurance companies, to the owner, to show you’re meeting all the requirements on the job site, all of that has increased. And so the number of people you need to produce that has increased.”

This, Syverson said, was closest to his view on the construction slowdown, though he didn’t know how to test it against the data. “There are a million veto points,” he said. “There are a lot of mouths at the trough that need to be fed to get anything started or done. So many people can gum up the works.”

I have a brother in law who is involved in all sorts of building projects.

At one time, he was part of the group that built that then Sears Tower in Chicago under the Richard Daley regime.

I asked him about the changes in building and he referenced Daley.

He claimed that for the Sears Tower, all it took was one meeting, a meeting with Daley, to get the OK on the project.

Once Daley said yes all other questions, issues and problems went away.

To put up a super market in Livonia, I had to go to 17 zoning meetings he told me.

There are a lot of mouths at the trough that need to be fed to get anything started or done.

So many people can gum up the works.

Everyone has their pet theory.

But everyone has a different pet.

And I get to drive on that bridge to get to work.

left our eyes untouched
but took our sight silently
song from our throats

Adapted from The Fog by E. J. Pratt (1882-1964) as it appeared in Collected Poems of E. J. Pratt (1944).

It stole in on us like a foot-pad,
Somewhere out of the sea and air,
Heavy with rifling Polaris
And the Seven Stars.

It left our eyes untouched,
But took our sight,
And then,
Silently,
It drew the song from our throats,
And the supple bend from our ash-blades;

For the bandit,
With occult fingering,
Had tangled up
The four threads of the compass,
And fouled the snarl around our dory.

Three Photos from about the same spot

there is another
sky ever serene fair and
another sunshine

Based on the sonnet, There is another sky, by Emily Dickinson

There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields –
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!

If I am honest, I have to ask the question, did I like the sonnet or did I go looking for something that I could use with a picture from my lunchtime walk to show off that I walk along the ocean at lunch time.

I think we all know the answer.

I just happen to like Ms. Dickinson …