10.4.2026 – one word to you, your

one word to you, your
children, stay together learn
the flowers – go light

For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

By Gary Snyder as published in No Nature: New and Selected Poems (Pantheon Books, 1992).

In the book, The etiquette of freedom : Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison, and The practice of the wild by Gary Snyder and Jim Harrison (Counterpoint: Berkeley, CA, 2010), Professor Scott Slovic wrote about this poem:

The last three lines of Gary’s poem “For the Children” are “stay together / learn the flowers / go light.”

“Stay together”: pay attention to the importance of community. Work with each other. Even if you have opposing perspectives, even if you come from different cultural traditions, find a way to work together to stay together.

“Learn the flowers”: notice your surroundings and learn about them. To me, “learn” implies actively studying something—not just learning what it looks like on a superficial level, but actually engaging in an energetic and deliberate effort of study. This, too, is something that I think is very important about Gary’s work: he’s not operating solely on an aesthetic level he’s made an active effort to study the cultural traditions, the languages, and the natural history that he absorbs into his poetry.

And finally, “Go light”: pay attention to your actual lifestyle, to the practical aspects of your life. Try to have a light impact on the planet and on the cultural communities that you are intersecting with. “Go light” means “live carefully.” So: stay together, learn the flowers, go light. I think many of us who work in the field of literature and environment carry these three lines around with us everywhere we go, with thanks to Gary Snyder.

stay together / learn the flowers / go light

“Stay together”: pay attention to the importance of community, work with each other

“Learn the flowers”: notice your surroundings and learn about them

“Go light” : pay attention to your actual lifestyle, live carefully

In the next century or the one beyond that,

… For the Children

Back in the day, my Dad realized I had a restless soul and was always on the lookout for something that might catch my interest.

Often he would come find me and say there was a great movie on TV.

That’s how I first got see Boom Town with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy and The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart.

That’s how I first got to see Union Pacific with Dad waiting for his favorite scene where the ruffian on the train used a bull whip to get a teddy bear down for the overhead storage racks for a young girl.

One time he came to me to tell me that the local Army Reserve unit was offering free classes for kids in learning Morse Code.

That one I avoided.

Then he offered to teach me about photography and how to use a darkroom.

Dad himself was an amateur photographer having liberated some very fine camera’s in Germany and then buying himself a Nikon as well as setting up his own photo lab in the basement.

He spent hours with me both in hands on lessons and in commentary on my finished work as well as a ton of money on this investment.

Every once in a while I would produce a print of the lakeshore or something else and he would look at if for a long time then say outloud, “That’s just how it looks.“

That was the accolade.

Dad also went out and bought me a book that I kept for years titled The Amateur Photographer’s Handbook by a Aaron Sussman that I read through more than once and returned to it over and over to re-read certain sections.

It was not only informative and complete on the subject but was engagingly written with commentary that often went beyond photography.

Here is Mr. Sussman’s open paragraphs in the chapter titled, The Picture.

There are pictures everywhere.

Can you learn to see them, or will you. like Peary’s cook, be searching forever for a point of view? The explorer’s cook is so perfect a symbol of the unseeing eye, that his story is worth repeating for that reason.

I first heard about him from Ruth Seinfel and her husband Gerald Goode. It seems that a well-meaning friend stumbled on the cook one day and decided that there was a “marvelous story in the man.” He had been with Peary through all of his historic adventures—and his point of view was so different; he saw it all against the background of food and hungry men. There was at least a book in the man, if not a whole series of magazine articles. And since Ruth and Gerald were “literary people” (they wrote stories and got them published), the friend insisted that they must do something about his “find.” Ruth was skeptical (she had once been a book-review editor) but out of courtesy to the friend she invited Peary’s cook to visit them at Croton.

He came with what he explained were “all his notes.”’ Ruth and Gerald decided that perhaps they had been wrong about the man, invited him to stay for supper, and then took him out to see the local sights. One oi these, of course, was the Croton Reservoir. When they got there, they found some other people looking around. This seemed to trouble the cook very much. No sooner did Ruth or Gerry maneuver him over to one interesting vantage point than the cook noticed some people elsewhere looking at something else, and he had to be taken there at once to see what the others were seeing. When he got there, the others had in the meantime moved on; so the cook lost interest in that place, wondered out loud about what the others had seen, and then noticed some people off in the distance pointing at something else. Which meant that Ruth and Gerry had to take him there, too. This kept on until Gerry got bored and Ruth got tired; so they took their guest home.

After supper they started checking through his notes. Have you guessed? Yes, his notes were complete. On the day, for instance, that the North Pole was discovered, his records showed that he had prepared and the men had eaten “so many pounds of this and so many pounds of that.”” How did the men feel about the discovery, what did they do, what did Peary say? Oh, he wouldn’t know about that. He was just the cook!

Most of us are “just cooks” when it comes to seeing things around us. We need distant pastures to prove that grass is green; we need far horizons to prove that skylines have beauty; we must travel before we can shake our “picture blindness.””

But our picture sense can be developed, in two ways: (1) by looking at pictures made by others, and (2) by making an imaginative effort to create pictures of our own.*

I was probably around 14 when I read that for the first time and it had as much influence on me as anything else I ever read.

I talked to Dad about it.

That two people could look at the same scene and one person would wonder just what the other person was seeing.

As I remember Dad agreed with Mr. Sussman about picture blindness and that your picture sense could be developed.

“You got to be interested in everything,” I remember Dad saying.

And that described Dad.

He WAS interested in everything.

He knew the names of birds and could identify bird song and have a long discourse on the making of cheese with the guy in a cheese shop as well as discuss the merits Boston Whaler motorboats and the latest advances in orthodontia (something he described as a great racket).

And he could fix anything.

Once, out in the middle of nowhere on M45 past Allendale, Michigan, when a radiator hose came apart and disabled his car and a passerby stopped to help, Dad found a stick and took out his swiss army knife and whittled two plugs that he used to block either end of the engine’s coolant system where the hose connected, all while talking with the passerby about how long it might take a wrecker to arrive, provided they could get somewhere where there was a phone. With the hand whittled plugs in place, Dad turned to the guy and said that should get him to a gas station and with the passerby shaking his head, Dad drove off and made it to a gas station.

The point of all this is that, reading Mr. Snyder’s line about Learn the flowers, I told myself that I knew what he meant.

Notice your surroundings and learn about them.

That was a lesson I got from my Dad a long time ago.

Maybe most of us are “just cooks” when it comes to seeing things around us.

But I can truly say, that’s not how I was raised.

Postscript: This is one of the images I took with my Dad’s Nikon and printed with his help.

I wanted to achieve some sort of texture to the black and white print so Dad suggested we go buy some heavy lined photographic paper at Arden’s Camera store over on the west side of Grand Rapids.

I said that sounded good.

In the darkroom, I suggested something I had read about where we put a screen over the paper for a few seconds of the exposure but I didn’t know how we did that.

Dad told me to go take the screen out of my bedroom window and we put that over the paper and exposed the image for 5 seconds, then took the screen away and set the exposure for another 25 seconds.

When we were done, and I had the final print, Dad said, that is just how it looks.

I took the picture on a vacation trip from Pittsburgh Landing, Mississippi on the Tennessee River.

It is part of the Shiloh Battlefield National Military Park.

This is where Grant’s soldiers were driven back on the 1st day of battle, against the river when Grant showed up, organized a defense and on the 2nd day drove the Confederates back.

While I was taking the picture Dad was back in the parking lot where a young family was locked out of their car.

That Dad was telling my Dad he was ready to smash the window but Dad kept looking at the car and figured out a way to open they side window (levering it open enough for one of skinny kids to sneak an arm in and un latch the window) then figured away to reach inside and unscrew the window and unlock the door.

Dad always noticed his surroundings and learned about them.

He for one, wasn’t just a cook.

*The Amateur Photographer’s Handbook by Aaron Sussman (Crowell: New York, 1962).

10.3.2026 – our great inventions

our great inventions
corkscrew and toilet paper
real value to man

From the book, The etiquette of freedom : Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison, and The practice of the wild by Gary Snyder and Jim Harrison (Counterpoint: Berkeley, CA, 2010).

A documentary was made of the two poets, Gary Snyder and Jim Harrison, standing in a field, talking titled The Practice of the Wild and this book, The etiquette of freedom, is the transcript of their conversation plus some extra thoughts and commentary about the thoughts expressed by these poets.

As can be imagined, their conversation was all over the place and full of deep thoughts as poets standing in fields are filled with deep thoughts of the type that deep thinking poets think when standing in a field talking with another deep thinking poet.

Lots of nuggets to dig up here but one that caught my eye this morning was this short exchange.

Gary Snyder : Captain Cook, sailing around the Pacific in order to be the very first person out of Western culture to contact a lot of different island people, said the one thing that they really got interested in was nails. It was a really good trade item.

And Ishi says that the best thing the white man invented was glue, because it makes it so much easier to finish an arrow.

Jim Harrison: Maybe our great inventions are the corkscrew and toilet paper, more so than space stations — of real value to man.

On a rainy Saturday Morning in the Low Country of South Carolina, elevation 5 feet above sea level, I find the statement hard to argue with.

Nails?

Toilet Paper?

Corkscrew?

Things of real value to man.

Maybe our great inventions!

Because its fall and thinking of football, I remember once back when I was a student in Ann Arbor.

I was with friends on what TV would call a gorgeous, sunny, fall afternoon in the State of Michigan, gathered together with 100,000 other people to watch a football game.

Down here in the south, fans still talk about ladies and their ‘game day dress’ but that’s a southern thing and may have to do with what Mark Twain was thinking about when he said sunny fall days are just June days, tuned down.

Fall in Michigan means gray rainy cold days.

Days not fit for a dress but for cold weather clothes

But back then when I was in school, it wasn’t unusual to see fans who still dressed up to go to a game in Ann Arbor..

And understand this was in the day before ‘luxury boxes’ so no matter what, if you wanted to go to a football game in Ann Arbor, you couldn’t sit anywhere else but among the plebians in the stands.

Several rows in front of me and my friends was a party of shall we say, affluent folks.

As an aside, living in a resort town, I have made the acquaintance of some law enforcement officers and am learning some of the code they use to describe the people they have to deal with in this vacation paradise. One code is EMF. It stands for Entitled M … F… (you can fill in the blanks), but I digress.

I won’t say that these folks were EMF’s as they went along with the crowd and made no special demands or anything but they were all dressed, tastefully, more for church than a football game.

They also had brought along a wicker hamper of goodies for later in the game and we did wonder how that got past the security guards so maybe they were EMFs.

As it comes to me, it seems like they had a ticket for the hamper and it sat on the bench in the middle of this group.

The afternoon wore on and as halftime approached it was time to open the hamper.

Not saying the game was boring or anything but the focus of most of us in that section of the stadium was, what did people like this, who came dressed in church clothes to a Michigan football game and bought a ticket for their wicker hamper, would pack for lunch in that wicker hamper.

One feller seemed to be the host of this outing and he took charge of the hamper.

Out came plates and napkins and boxed sandwiches and other finger foods.

The plates were passed out.

The food was offered up.

Then wine glasses came out of the hamper and passed up and down the row.

And lastly, a bottle of wine, which the host of this outing held up for all to see.

This feller then reached back in the hamper and fumbled around.

He turned and hunched over to look down into the hamper and dug and dug and fumbled, a level of frustration building up.

He sat back up and looked at the bottle of wine.

He took a breath and stood up.

He was wearing a blue blazer and light blue shirt and a striped maize and blue tie and pressed khakis.

He stretched out his arms wide in supplication and yelled to the crowd around him, “Does anybody have a corkscrew?”

Maybe our great inventions are the corkscrew and toilet paper, more so than space stations — of real value to man.

OLD Michigan Stadium – If you wanted to go to a game, you sat with all the rest of us. No Luxury Boxes – No Private Potties – No Mr. Brightside

9.19.2026 – sausage corn and shrimp

sausage corn and shrimp
cover with butter, old bay
life don’t get better

Growing up in Grand Rapids, on the west side of the State of Michigan, seafood was a treat.

At the end of our street where I grew was a little seafood shop with the odd name of Sanitary Seafoods.

While the words in the name combined to be less than inspiring about eating seafood, the old guy who ran the shop served up quality goods.

The holiday season in our house always had huge iced bowls of cocktail shrimp from Sanitary Seafoods and occasionally my Dad would stop and bring home huge slabs of Lake Superior White Fish that my Mom would broil.

Despite the lack of supply, my Dad loved seafood and I cannot tell you why.

In his personal history, there was the never-told-in-depth story of a post graduation from Dental School trip that Dad made with three classmates where they spent a week in New Orleans.

A week in New Orleans with 4 guys who just graduated from Dental School in 1942 and all 4 had their letter from Franklin Roosevelt welcoming them into the armed forces of the United States.

Like I said, the story was never-told-in-depth but I filled in lots of blanks on my own.

But maybe that’s where Dad came about his love, his personal enjoyment of seafood.

So it was a great day for Dad when Charley’s Crab opened up in Grand Rapids.

Charley’s Crab was a Chuck Muer restaurant.

If you grew up, like I did, in West Michigan, then you grew up knowing that you went to Detroit to see the Detroit Tigers for baseball, the London Chop house for steaks … and Chuck Muer’s for seafood.

There was also a Chuck Muer restaurant in Ann Arbor called The Gandy Dancer.

IYKYN, but the restaurant was in the old Ann Arbor train depot and a Gandy Dancer was someone who worked on the Railroad, repairing ties and spikes and track by hand with a pick and sledge hammer.

If you were in my family and ended up going to school in Ann Arbor, which most of did (9 of 11 kids), at some point, Dad and Mom would show up for a visit and most likely take you to The Gandy Dancer for lunch.

Dad was always happy to see us and tour the campus to see what had changed but he really came to eat at The Gandy Dancer.

We all learned to order Scrod and catch the small fish bones with our teeth and move them to side of our mouth and descretely remove them and place them on the side of the plate.

Dad had grown up taking the train to Ann Arbor and I wish I had asked him more about those days when I had the chance but one story I remember is that I asked him how he got his laundry done back in 1940.

“Simple,” Dad said.

He had a big pasteboard box with his name on it and every two weeks he filled it with his dirty clothes and took it down to the train station and sent it off to his mother in Grand Rapids and a day or two later, the box would come back filled with freshly laundered clothes.

“You’re kidding me,” I remember saying, “What did the other kids in Ann Arbor say about that?”

“There was nothing to say”, said Dad, “that’s what we all did.“

Ever see those stories about the Tiffin Lunch delivery men in India?

BUT I DIGRESS.

Charley’s Crab in Grand Rapids became the Hoffman family place to go for special occasions, celebrations and just plain eating out.

Dad didn’t need much of excuse to eat there and would pretty much go at the drop of a hat and would drop it himself if need be.

Once when Mom was out of town for the birth of a grand child or something, I got a call at work from Dad and he said if I could get home, he would take all of us, which would have Me and my brothers, Steve and Al, to Charley’s for dinner … provided we could make early menu.

Early menu was about half off the regular price and half the options but it had all our favorites and it ended at 5 p.m.

I was on my way in a split second, got home and we packed off and sat down at a table at 5:01 p.m.

Our waitress came up and dropped four huge, leather bound, full menu’s on the table and Dad looked at her and said we were here for early menu.

The waitress shook her head and said sorry, it was after 5.

Dad replied that we weren’t staying and got up and led us out of the dining room.

Dad had, for lack of better term, this presence about him.

He somehow managed to fit in where ever he was in a way said he belonged where he was, Restaurant, Church Meeting, on the dock at Felix’s Marina, talking with Felix about outboard motors or in the stands at Wrigley Field.

No one ever questioned what Dad was doing or why he was at someplace, any place in time as he … just fit.

And rarely did anyone want to cross with him and this self assured but benign, air of authority.

The hostess watched this man lead his three sons OUT of the restaurant and knew she had to respond.

She had a quick word with the waitress and came RUNNING after us, calling SIR, SIR if you want early menu, you can have early menu.

Dad turned around and nodded and she led us back to our table and the same waitress, who just saw her tip cut in half, brought out the paper printed early menu, and apologized saying she didn’t have the authority to make the early menu decision.

Dad said that was okay and ordered extra bread (Charley’s Bread was one of the reason you went to Charley’s) and we enjoyed our meal.

I will say that I am pretty sure in the end that Dad made good on the tip.

But AGAIN I digress.

The point of the story is that I also loved Charley’s Crab.

It’s where I took my dates both to impress them and to get to eat at Charley’s.

I took my wife there for coffee and dessert after our first date and while the wait staff told us not to worry about the time, we figured that when they pulled out all the other tables and started vacuuming, it was time to go.

I loved the restaurant and could have and often did make a meal of just the bread and Charley’s Chowder, a tomato base fish soup rather than the cream based new England clam chowder.

I would dare myself to try the swordfish or the tilapia or stay with the ever faithful scrod or a lake trout.

But there was one item on the menu I never had any desire to try.

It was there in big letters and a couple of paragraphs explaining what it was.

It was called Charley’s Bucket.

The menu explained that Chuck Muer wanted to recreate the beachside clam bake’s he had grown up with New England and he and his chef came up with The Bucket.

The bucket came in a bucket that contained all the different food items that went into a clam bake.

Clams, of course, crabs, lobsters, mussels, red skin potatoes and corn on the cob all covered together with melted butter.

Understand this was back in the day and Charley’s Crab was the type of place where maybe a jacket and tie wasn’t required, it was the uniform of the day.

Sure you got a bib if you got a lobster (something that has always kept lobster off my list) but it was a fancy place.

And you were going to order a bucket of seafood (sorry, I always thought of a bucket of the Colonel’s 11 herbs and spices), including corn and the cob and covered with butter and eat it then and there in the middle of the restaurant?

I didn’t get the concept and I never got it.

Fast forward some 20 years and now living in Altanta, Georgia, the folks we hung out with all talked about some place called Tybee Island.

We weren’t aware of Georgia’s Atlantic Coast at all and that includes Savannah.

But that’s were folks in The ATL went, so one spring, I took a couple of days off from work and the wife and I went off exploring.

And we discovered what is called The Low Country / Coastal Empire and I came across restaurant menu’s that listed something The Low Country Boil.

You take shrimp, red skin potatoes, smoked sausage AND corn on the cob and boil it all up, cover it will melted butter and a spice called Old Bay and put it on the table.

For years, on our trips to Tybee, that was what I ordered in resautants.

Restaurants that were as far away in time and distance and ambiance from Charley’s Crab as was possible.

Once place in particular on Tybee, Bubba Gumbos (not kidding), stands out as we thought we should eat fast before the place collapsed into the river.

I took back everything I ever thought about Charley’s Bucket and today wish that I had ordered it at least once.

For all the trouble to creating this dish, I wish I had tried it.

Then came a job change and we didn’t visit The Low Country any more, we lived there.

And the wife looked at what was available in the local grocery stores and adjusted her menu’s.

What was an odd menu item in Grand Rapids and a vacation treat when we lived in Atlanta has become one of my wife’s go-to dishes for our table.

She cleans the shrimp so we don’t have to do that and covers a sheet pan with foil and on goes the corn on the cob, the sausage (andouille if its in the store or any smoked sausage – when a place down here wants to sound exotic they will say they use kielbasa like that would be something new to someone from west michigan) the shrimp and the redskins.

She covers it with melted butter and old bay and into the oven for 15 minutes at 400 degrees and folks, let me tell you, life don’t get much better.

Add an ice cold beer and forget about it.

And when I say it, as in forget about IT, I mean forget anything else on your mind that is bothering you and just enjoy.

Someday I will get a bucket we can serve this in and when I do I will think of Dad and Charlie’s and Charlie’s Bucket and once again remember I am one lucky guy.

I wasn’t kidding about the recipe above, that is just what my wife does.

It’s that simple.

I don’t have many regrets in my life but not having Dad over for dinner to share this dish with us is one of the them.

For contrast, here is the Charlie’s Bucket Recipe from the Chuck Muer cook book.

CHARLEY'S BUCKET

Charley's Crab's signature entree was designed by Chef Larry to be a complete meal — appetizer and main course — and to be an entertaining experience that breaks down inhibitions.

Yield: 2 servings

1 1/2 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
2 ears of fresh corn; leave in husk, trim silk and outer leaves
Two 1 1/4-pound live Maine lobsters
1/2 Dungeness crab, or 1/2-pound king crab legs (thaw if kept frozen)
4 redskin potatoes, precooked
10 mussels, cleaned (see page 17)
10 steamer clams, cleaned (see page 16)
1/2 cup Clarified Butter (see page 12)

1. In a large kettle with a tight-fitting lid, place water and salt. Bring to a boil.

2. Place corn into water, followed by lobsters and crab. Set potatoes alongside the seafood. Cover tightly.

3. Return water to a boil. Cook for 7 minutes. The lobster is fully cooked when the shell is completely red. If dark areas are present, continue to cook.

4. Remove lid and add the mussels and steamers. Cover and steam for 5 additional minutes.

5. Remove lid from kettle and if the mussel and clam shells have opened, the Bucket is done. If shells have not opened, cover and continue steaming until they do.

6. Serve with Clarified Butter for dipping shellfish and crustaceans.

6.30.2026 – loved true things but

loved true things but
knew it could be a very
dangerous mistress

It took Doc longer to go places than other people.

He didn’t drive fast and he stopped and ate hamburgers very often.

Driving up to Lighthouse Avenue he waved at a dog that looked around and smiled at him.

In Monterey before he even started, he felt hungry and stopped at Herman’s for a hamburger and beer.

While he ate his sandwich and sipped his beer, a bit of conversation came back to him.

Blaisdell, the poet, had said to him, “You love beer so much. I’ll bet some day you’ll go in and order a beer milk shake.”

It was a simple piece of foolery but it had bothered Doc ever since.

He wondered what a beer milk shake would taste like. The idea gagged him but he couldn’t let it alone. It cropped up every time he had a glass of beer.

Would it curdle the milk? Would you add sugar?

It was like a shrimp ice cream.

Once the thing got into your head you couldn’t forget it.

He finished his sandwich and paid Herman.

He purposely didn’t look at the milk shake machines lined up so shiny against the back wall.

If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he’d better do it in a town where he wasn’t known.

But then, a man with a beard, ordering a beer milk shake in a town where he wasn’t known—they might call the police. A man with a beard was always a little suspect anyway.

You couldn’t say you wore a beard because you liked a beard.

People didn’t like you for telling the truth.

You had to say you had a scar so you couldn’t shave.

Once when Doc was at the University of Chicago he had love trouble and he had worked too hard. He thought it would be nice to take a very long walk.

He put on a little knapsack and he walked through Indiana and Kentucky and North Carolina and Georgia clear to Florida.

He walked among farmers and mountain people, among the swamp people and fishermen. And everywhere people asked him why he was walking through the country.

Because he loved true things he tried to explain.

He said he was nervous and besides he wanted to see the country, smell the ground and look at grass and birds and trees, to savor the country, and there was no other way to do it save on foot.

And people didn’t like him for telling the truth.

They scowled, or shook and tapped their heads, they laughed as though they knew it was a lie and they appreciated a liar.

And some, afraid for their daughters or their pigs, told him to move on, to get going, just not to stop near their place if he knew what was good for him.

And so he stopped trying to tell the truth.

He said he was doing it on a bet—that he stood to win a hundred dollars.

Everyone liked him then and believed him.

They asked him in to dinner and gave him a bed and they put lunches up for him and wished him good luck and thought he was a hell of a fine fellow.

Doc still loved true things but he knew it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.

From Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (Viking Press: New York, 1945 – There is a note in the frontpiece that states: THIS EDITION IS PRODUCED IN FULL COMPLIANCE WITH ALL WAR PRODUCTION BOARD CONSERVATION ORDERS).

People didn’t like him for telling the truth.

And so he stopped trying to tell the truth.

Doc still loved true things but he knew it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.

If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he’d better do it in a town where he wasn’t known.

Way back when I lived through the summer of Mark Fydrich.

IYKYK.

It was the summer of 1976.

Also known as the bicentennial.

A local guy from Grand Rapids who had graduated from my Mom’s old high school, was President of the United States.

And it was the summer of Mark Fydrich.

He was this kid who pitched for the Detroit Tigers who would have ordered a beer milkshake regardless of where he was if that was what he wanted.

He pitched and just acted like he would have if he had been playing catch on a beach or in Tiger Stadium and because he won, the crowd fell in love with him.

He ran to mound and got down on his hands and knees and smoothed out the dirt.

He ran around and thanked everyone for everything.

He talked to himself constantly on the mound and since no one else was around to be talked too, it was reported in the papers that he must be talking to the ball.

He would say things that he didn’t like using a ball that had been hit.

He wanted that ball to go back in the ball bag and goof around with the other balls and loose the desire to be hit.

Back then, growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, my Dad subscribed to the Detroit Free Press.

Though the paper was written and printed in Detroit, 150 miles and 3 hours away by car, it was somehow written and printed and driven to Grand Rapids where our local paperboy had it on our front porch by 7 A.M.

I fail to see how the digital age has improved on this.

Dad’s routine was to get up, start the coffee then open the front door and take a deep breath of outside air, regardless of season.

He said it cleansed his lungs and got him ready for his day.

That was the extent of his exercise regime.

Then he would step out on the porch and pick up the paper.

He would get his coffee and go through the paper and who ever else was up would wait for him to finish and it wasn’t until he announced, “here you go”, did we have a shot at the sports section.

This one summer morning it was my brother Pete who got the paper first.

Most likely Dad had already announced that Fidrych won again last night but we needed details.

I was 16 and drinking coffee by that time so I would have poured a cup and maybe I grabbed the front section of the Free Press while I waited for the Sports Section.

I always suspected Pete of reading extra slow with me sitting there, including going over ever line of the box scores so I made a big deal of being interested in the front page and the editorials.

We were sitting next to each other on high stools along the kitchen counter.

Pete finally sat back and folder the sports section back together and slid it over to me.

“It say’s,” said Pete slowly, looking at me, “that after a game, Fidrych can’t wait for his favorite post game meal.”

I looked at him and waited, a little perturbed that he was telling me something I would soon read for myself, but still listening and looking at him.

Dad, looking over back sections of the paper with his coffee, paused and looked over from where he sat at the table.

“It say’s, said Pete slowly, looking at me, “that his favorite post game meal is a bottle of ice cold beer and a glass of ice cold milk.”

For some reason that statement hit me, Pete and Dad just the right way that morning and we all burst out laughing.

Milk and Beer!

Only that Fidrych.

It was one of those summer mornings where nothing was wrong and everything was funny both between ourselves and the whole world.

Miss mornings like that.

It was just normal, the way it was the day before and the next day.

They don’t seem to happen anymore.

Is it me?

Is it this crummy news cycle?

Maybe I need to order a beer and some ice cold milk.

If a man ordered a beer milk shake, I thought, he’d better do it in a town where he wasn’t known.

Doc still loved true things but he knew it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.

And so he stopped trying to tell the truth.

People didn’t like him for telling the truth.

6.21.2026 – my father paints the

my father paints the
summer, caught summer always
an imagined time

A smoky rain riddles the ocean plains,
Rings on the beaches’ stones, stomps in the swales,
Batters the panes
Of the shore hotel, and the hoped-for summer chills and fails.
The summer people sigh,
“Is this July?”

They talk by the lobby fire but no one hears
For the thrum of rain. In the dim and sounding halls,
Din at the ears,
Dark at the eyes well in the head, and the ping-pong balls
Scatter their hollow knocks
Like crazy clocks.

But up in his room by artificial light
My father paints the summer, and his brush
Tricks into sight
The prosperous sleep, the girdling stir and clear steep hush
Of a summer never seen,
A granted green.

Summer, luxuriant Sahara, the orchard spray
Gales in the Eden trees, the knight again
Can cast away
His burning mail, Rome is at Anzio: but the rain
For the ping-pong’s optative bop
Will never stop.

Caught Summer is always an imagined time.
Time gave it, yes, but time out of any mind.
There must be prime
In the heart to beget that season, to reach past rain and find
Riding the palest days
Its perfect blaze.

My Father Paints the Summer by Richard Purdy Wilbur in The Poems of Richard Wilbur (Harcourt, Brace: New York, 1947).

About Mr. Wilbur, Wikipedia says, “Richard Purdy Wilbur (March 1, 1921 – October 14, 2017) was an American poet and literary translator, and one of the foremost poets of the World War II generation. Wilbur’s work, often employing rhyme, and composed primarily in traditional forms, was marked by its wit, charm, and gentlemanly elegance. He was acclaimed in his youth as the heir to Robert Frost, translated the verse dramas of Moliere, Corneille, and Racine into rhymed English, collaborated with Leonard Bernstein as the lyricist for the opera Candide, and in his old age acted, particularly through his role in the annual West Chester University Poetry Conference, as a mentor to the younger poets of the New Formalist movement. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987 and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice, in 1957 and 1989.”

About the photo, if I think about my Dad, I cannot but think of my Dad at what we called ‘The Cottage.”

In the Spring of 1964, when I was 4 years, my Dad but a piece of property on the shore of Lake Michigan, a straight drive out M-45 to the lake from Grand Rapids where we lived.

It became our summer place and our place for summer time and it is where my Dad painted the summer.

In a letter written home from Europe during World War 2, my Dad told the woman who would become my Mom that “He liked to live in the whole house” which I took to mean that in his home, there would be nothing for show, no rooms reserved for company, he would live in the WHOLE house.

You could not have described life at our cottage any better.

My Dad lived in the whole place.

Every inch of property, cottage and beach was set aside to be used and used pretty much for anyone’s personal enjoyment.

I have never been any where else in the world that I experienced such freedom to live, explore, read, think or do anything that came to mind.

There was a lot of trust involved here and for the most part, we repaid that trust and just LIVED the heck out of this place.

Look at the photo.

A large, ungainly structure covered with windows for viewing the lake, chairs for sitting, towels drying, toys scattered all over for playing, a grill for cooking, sails for the sailboat propped up against the stairs and thousands of footprints of the 100s of people that made up our summers at the lake.

All in a place provided by my Dad.

My father painted the summer with a big thick brush and broad strokes.

The year after my Dad died, Mom sold the place.

She said, and understand the entire time we had the cottage it was the Hotel Lorraine and everyone was welcome, she said, “It was my place to be with Dad.”

Caught Summer is always an imagined time.

Time gave it, yes, but time out of any mind.

There must be prime

In the heart to beget that season, to reach past rain and find

Riding the palest days

Its perfect blaze.

Forgive but I have to repeat that line again where Mr. Wilbur writes, Caught Summer is always an imagined time.

Was it real?

Could it have been that way?

Caught Summer is always an imagined time.

I am here to tell you, it was all too real and when I think about it, I think of my Dad and I say thank you for the gift of all those summers you painted for us.