3.22.2025 – what gets me going

what gets me going
what wakes me up and alert
trigger frustration

Anyone who reads these posts will know that I do not like getting up in the morning.

Of late it isn’t the getting up anymore that gets me.

I live in the low country of South Carolina where I found that I am sensitive to the spring pollen that coats the landscape for months down here and after a night of being vertical in bed, trying to sleep, it is with some relief that I get up in the morning so my sinuses will drain and I can breathe.

This morning, up early to breathe, I got to think’in.

My Dad was always bringing home odd things.

He was a dentist and he filled his waiting room with good magazines like Smithsonian, The New Yorker and American Heritage along with the usual waiting room magazines.

Famously one of us kids once left a copy of Mad Magazine in the waiting room once while waiting for Dad for something.

The next day Dad’s patients ripped out all the subscription blanks and one old guy telling Dad, it was the best magazine he had ever read.

In off hours Dad would page though these magazines and these odd ads would catch his eye and he would tear out these odd offers and send off checks and later come home with these odd things.

In my desk drawer I have a little telescope that is also a microscope which I always thought was some little toy thing until I used The Google and found that it was a MULTIFUNKTIONALE KLEINOPTIK EMOSKOP or a combined telescope, magnifier and microscope made by Seibert-Wetzlar, one of the finest optical manufactures in history.

I had to read the Google page to learn how to use it.

But where Dad found it and bought it, I have no idea.

Dad loved bird calls and had a drawer full.

One was the little red spool with a turn key that when turned, made different squeaking squawking noises which were supposed to call birds.

Not sure it worked but he carried one every where.

One time Dad came up with a skull.

Not just any skull mind you.

But a completely prepared medical training skull.

The jaw was spring loaded and on one side of the face the top layer of bone was removed to reveal what was below and on the other the surface bone was in place, but sections were hinged so they could lifted to show what was underneath.

The skull cap could be removed and all arteries, veins and nerve connections were marked out.

Why?

Why did Dad order this and bring it home?

I mean who looks through a magazine, there was no online shopping, and sees an ad for a prepared human skull and says, “I want that” or “My wife would love that”?

The skull didn’t sit out on the table or shelf like a lot of his stuff, but we would get it out to amaze our friends or to bring to school for show and tell.

You never knew what Dad might bring home.

There was this time I was watching TV with my brothers and Dad came in through the front door of the house, not the back door off the garage.

He noticed Mom was upstairs.

He left the door open, walked over and uplugged the TV in front of us and took it away to his car.

Dad came back in struggling to carry a much bigger TV, which he put in place and reconnected and turned on.

He looked at us and said, “Don’t say anything” and went back out the front door.

We had a new big TV and we didn’t say anything.

Dad came back after parking his car in the garage and sat down as if nothing had happened and enjoyed his new TV and didn’t say anything.

No one would have noticed but the next morning my baby brother Al looked at the TV for bit then found Mom and asked, “How do you turn the new TV on?”

You never knew what Dad might bring home.

He would have loved Amazon.

So why am I telling you all this.

I was thinking about that skull.

From this skull, I learned where the sinuses are in my head.

On bad pollen days down here in the low country, I could take a sharpie pen and outline on my face where it hurts and in my mind, I can see that skull, and I am outlining my sinuses.

Under my eyes, right under my cheek bones and above my eyes in my forehead, right under my eyebrows.

I get out of bed in the morning, and in my mind I can see my sinuses in my face tip as if I was tipping a sand glass, and feel the pollen drain away and air start to seep through.

So I get up.

I get up though I don’t want to, so I can breathe.

That is not to say, I wake up.

That takes some doing.

It takes coffee and a lot of coffee.

Since getting a new coffee maker with a bigger pot, I am back to 4 or 5 mugs of coffee, not sipped, but poured into my body.

And it takes my morning reading which takes less time than it did as I now gloss over any headline with the current president’s name in it.

After The Google News, the Guardian and the New York Times, I am starting to feel awake and more alert.

Time for the games and I start with the New York Times Connections.

It is 16 random words that you have to fit into 4 groups of 4 words over something they have in common in four guesses.

How the words are connected are rated into 4 categories.

The yellow grouping is easy.

The green grouping is less easy.

The blue grouping is hard.

And the purple grouping rarely makes any sense and you assemble these words because they are the only ones left.

I find that when I finish with Connections I am pretty much awake and alert.

I was thinking about this this morning after playing Connections as I was very much awake.

I had been thinking that this game had to be stimulating and really got my brain working.

I had been thinking that this game got me to think and to wake up.

This morning it hit.

All 16 words started with T.

I used up all my guesses quickly.

I lost and lost fast.

The answers were revealed and I read them over saying OH COME ON again and again.

Who, I thought, would make those connections.

Who, I thought, knew what that word could mean …

Who, who, who and what, what what …

Boy Howdy, was I mad.

Boy Howdy!, was I frustrated.

Boy! Howdy!, was I … awake.

That’s the trigger that starts my day.

Frustration.

Boy! Howdy!

3.5.2025 – hearing history

hearing history
sounds of summer times long past
… was another time

Years and years ago, my Dad took us kids on a spring trip and we traveled south.

When I was 9, my brother Paul got married and moved to the suburbs of Washington DC so our usual spring trip destination was to see Paul and his family and visit Washington.

But one year, my brother took a short-term posting to California and my Dad said we were going south.

This was a small group of just me and my sister Lisa and my little brothers Pete, Steve and Al.

It was a trip marked by breakfasts in the pre-Egg-McMuffin era at little local diners with us kids saying, I am not eating those grits.

We went to Shiloh Battlefield and the Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky and stopped at Mammoth Cave.

It was in an odd little gift shop near Mammoth Cave that my mom found The Gong.

The gong was the ugliest wind chime ever made with two hollow mishappen brass cylinders suspended on either side of a lump of iron the size of a golf ball.

It had an Alexander Calderesque quality to it and it gave off the deepest, loudest … GONG SOUNDS you ever heard.

The chime was hung from the ceiling in the kitchen of the cottage where my family spent our summers.

Lucky for us, it took a near hurricane to get it to move at all so we rarely heard it.

It rang more often when the grand kids would reach out from the stairs and take a swing at it to make it GONG.

But when there were storms, we knew it.

And that is where I am today.

I inherited the chime and it has traveled with my family and hung from porches and balconies all the Atlanta area and now, here in South Carolina.

Last night, the county schools were closed down here due to a forecast of ‘HIGH WINDS’ and storms.

As I sat by the window this morning with my morning coffee, I could hear the wind and, from time to time, a soft gong.

The sound echoed in my head to my heart.

Closing my eyes I was back 40 years ago.

On the shore of Lake Michigan.

I was hearing the sound of my family history.

The sound of summer times long past.

Boy Howdy but it was another time.

(You cannot see it, but the chime hung back in the upper left corner just in front of the side of the stairs – those stairs, by the way, were completely open on the bottom with a 20 foot drop to the basement, with no rails and open on one side and spaced vertical poles on the other – that you could reach through and push the chime – parents worried for lots of crawling babies but so far as I remember only my little brother Al every fell through)

2.15.2025 – be different

be different
from other people – easy …
being different

Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.

So writes Carl Sandburg in his poem, “A Father To His Son.”

It was Dale Carnegie, a man who knew how to win friends, who said, “If you want to be interesting, be interested.”

My Dad was interested in everything.

If that made him a little different, then it was natural and easy for him to be different.

He bought books by the armload and filled our house with books.

He bought records and made tape recordings of music and filled our house with music.

He bought stereo record players and speakers by the boxful and wired up speakers around the house and filled our house with sound.

He bought art by the square yard and covered the walls of our house with original paintings and prints of his favorite Andrew Wyeth.

He wrote in a letter home during World War 2 to his future wife that he ‘liked to live in the WHOLE house,’ no rooms just for show and that is how he lived.

My Dad was interested in everything and to me it made him different from other people.

It was a difference that came natural and easy to Dad.

And for me, he encouraged me to be interested and by extension, different.

(In that respect, he succeeded beyond any dreams.)

But, he didn’t push his interests on me.

He made interesting things available and if I showed interest, he would encourage that interest.

Dad liked historical venues.

He wanted to see them, so we got to see them.

He wanted to see Hartwick Pines State Park up in northern lower Michigan.

So we got to see Hartwick Pines State Park up in northern lower Michigan.

Dad wanted to pose us on a display of the BIG WHEELS used to cart giant White Pines to the lumber yard.

So we posed on the BIG WHEELS as a family.

Some years later, when we were all a little older, Dad thought that a visit to see Hartwick Pines State Park up in northern lower Michigan would be a nice summer day trip.

So we all went to see Hartwick Pines State Park up in northern lower Michigan for a nice summer day trip.

Dad wanted us to pose on the BIG WHEELS.

Notice, this year, Dad is in the picture.

This year, I had shown some in interest in photography.

Dad encouraged my interest.

I had my own camera, a little Kodak.

Dad had his Nikon.

I wanted to use the Nikon.

Dad let me, and I took this family picture on the BIG WHEELS.

I got to use the Nikon.

Dad trusted me.

Though my brothers and sisters look a little bit of the oh-brother-brother-mike-again, I don’t think Dad minded too much.

Even when the picture came back from the lab and it was evident that I need to work on my focus skills.

He would have found that interesting.

Happy birthday to my Dad.

105 today!

Here is the complete poem by Mr. Sandburg.

A Father To His Son

A father sees his son nearing manhood.
What shall he tell that son?
“Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.”
And this might stand him for the storms
and serve him for humdrum monotony
and guide him among sudden betrayals
and tighten him for slack moments.
“Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.”
And this too might serve him.
Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.
A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives.
Tell him too much money has killed men
and left them dead years before burial:
the quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
has twisted good enough men
sometimes into dry thwarted worms.
Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.
Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools.
Tell him to be alone often and get at himself
and above all tell himself no lies about himself
whatever the white lies and protective fronts
he may use against other people.
Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is born natural.
Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.
He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own.

Carl Sandburg, in The People Yes as published in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, by Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1950.

1.11.2024 – I like when my team

I like when my team
gets a big lead in a game
and then pulls away

Today is (or isn’t) the anniversary of the day my Dad died.

There is debate on this because my Dad died late at night in a hospital room with my brother Paul and I at his side.

Paul had called people that the time was near and one by one, my Mom and my 9 other brothers and sisters arrived as fast as they could, but after the moment.

With this mob of people in the room, it was some time after midnight before a Doctor could verify that Dad was indeed dead, so his death certificate is dated the next day.

My Dad would have enjoyed stealing an extra bureaucratic day of life.

To make up for it, when Dad’s headstone was delivered, the stone mason had made that common January mistake and carved 1987 instead of 1988.

As my brother Steve said, “What can you do? It IS carved in stone.“

Dad would have enjoyed that as well.

Once, back when I was in college, my parents visited me and Dad enjoyed walking around campus to see what had changed since he had been there 40 years earlier.

I took them down to the ‘New’ Law Library which was built next to Law Quad.

So the new building wouldn’t mess up the esthetics of the Cambridgesque Law School, the new library was dug 7 stories down into the ground.

I led Mom and Dad down the flights of stairs and past a sign that all visitors must register.

My Mom pointed to sign and I dismissed it with a wave of my hand and my Dad said, “Mike knows what to do.”

We walked around and my Dad inspected the stacks and study carrels and we ended up standing on the stairs along side an atrium that was dug out and sided with windows to let some sunlight into the underground structure.

Mom looked at the chrome window frames and pointed out they were covered in dust.

Dad looked for a bit.

Then walked over to the rail and leaned way out and wrote with his finger:

Ashes to Ashes
Dust to Dust
If your grades don’t get you
The Devil must

“OH BOB”, my mom said, walking away.

This past fall, I got to spend a weekend in Ann Arbor with my granddaughter and its been 40 years SINCE I was in school.

I felt I could have grabbed a pad and paper and walked into a lecture without missing a beat.

I am sure when my Dad was writing in the dust, he felt the same.

Thinking of things my Dad liked, he liked his sports teams.

He like Michigan and I am sure he would have enjoyed last years undefeated season.

His favorite team was the Chicago Cubs.

He grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with the Cubs on the radio across from across Lake Michigan.

Later in life when he had a cottage in Grand Haven on the lake shore, he put giant rotating antennas to catch the TV signal from WGN so he could watch the Cubs.

At least on good days.

On bad atmospheric days or days with storms, the picture would fade in and out or get all fuzzy.

Many times we would hear Jack Brickhouse saying, “Its back back back bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.” and when the picture came back, it was a commerical.

Came the day in Grand Rapids when Cable TV came to our block.

Dad called and called or at least had his receptionist call and call (My Dad hated the phone and his receptionist, Diane, endeared herself by calling anyone he asked) to get the first available appointment on our street for the Cable Guy.

Cable Guy shows up and looks at the house and told Dad that while he, Cable Guy, could connect the house to the cable, he was not allowed to wire up a house.

Dad would have to do that.

Dad and the Cable Guy looked over the house and Cable Guy gave Dad a couple hundred feet of coaxial cable and promised that he would stop back at the end of his day.

Dad took that cable and spent the rest of day up in the attic and under the roof crawling around until he had cable running to our family room and his bedroom.

True to his word, Cable Guy showed up late in the day, approved of what Dad had wired up and went to work.

Mom came out and called Dad to dinner and he came in sat down at the table.

As I remember it, Cable Guy came with him and pulled out a chair at the table.

Mom was mom and laughed and offered to set a plate.

Cable Guy said he appreciated it but went back to work and we went on with dinner.

Halfway through dinner, Cable Guy called to my Dad, “Sir, if I can show you how this works?”

Dad was out of his chair at the head of the table and into the family room.

Dad walked in and the TV was on and Cable Guy was standing there with the Channel Selector Box (which in those days was the flat box with a slider that you used to change channels).

The Chicago Cubs, in crystal clear cable TV, were on.

Dad sat down in front of the TV.

Cable Guy handed him the box and explained how it worked.

Dad listened but didn’t hear a word.

He was in his living room and he was watching the Cubs.

At that moment, all was as good as was ever going to get in his world and he enjoyed that moment.

(A corollary to this story is when VHS recorders came on the market and we were after Dad to buy so we could rent movies. One Saturday morning my brother Tim pointed out that if we had one, we could tape the Michigan-Notre Dame that afternoon and Dad could watch the tape all week long. Dad got down the Witmark catalog and picked out a machine and gave Tim his credit card and sent Tim and me out to buy one – Michigan and Rick Leach beat ND 28-14 and that tape floated around box of tapes forever.)

Along with the Cubs, Dad kind of followed the Bears.

At least the 1985 Bears.

I think he followed the Bears just to tease the rest of us.

The rest of us followed the Lions.

We would watch every Sunday and there were games where the Lions would be ahead.

There were games when we thought, the Lions were going to win.

Dad would sit back and predict how the Lions would lose.

We would be hopefull.

Dad would say that Lions were once again going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

We would yell NO NO NO! in exasperation.

But Dad had seen this team before.

The Lions, we thought, are going to win this one.

After the Lions lost, Dad would quote Harry Caray and say, “Victory had one thousand fathers while defeat is an orphan.”

He seemed somehow, to enjoy losing or, at least, to enjoy being right that the Lions were so wrong.

I got so mad once at Dad’s black outlook that I asked, “What do you like about Sports?”

Dad looked at me and without hesitation he said, “I like when my team gets a big lead in a game, … and then pulls away.”

10.26.2024 – high school I went to

high school I went to
does not exist any more …
but it is still there

Grand Rapids Creston – 1968? (note the Christmas Tree Lot)

Came across this old photo and as I remember it, Grand Rapids Creston High School was built in 1927 as the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan, spread north and started to wrap around the far away from downtown, Kent Country Club.

Enough families now lived north of Leonard Street a new high school was needed.

A community effort was made to choose a suitable mascot for the new high school and as it was on the North End of the city, the community picked out Polar Bears and the Creston Polar Bears joined the Grand Rapids City League Athletic Conference.

When opened, there were classes from 7th to 12th grade in the new high school.

My Dad grew up on the North End and graduated from Creston in 1936.

He had been bumped up two grades along the way at Plainfield Elementary and was only 16 years old and had been moved up into the same class has his sister, Marion.

For the rest of his life, my Dad was against any kid being bumped up a grade or two.

For sure, it guaranteed he was the smallest kid in class, which was something most of us Hoffmans did not need any help understanding.

But it also meant that he graduated from Dental School in Ann Arbor in the Spring of 1942 (he was on a fast track of two years at Grand Rapids Junior College and then three years in Dental School without needing an undergraduate degree).

Which made him available for service in the Army of the United States.

He always thought that had he not been bumped ahead in elementary school, he might have been allowed a deferent to finish Dental school and entered the army later or maybe have missed all of WW2 which would have suited him just fine.

My Dad had a pretty good WW2, being the Dental Officer in a headquarters unit in Europe for 3 years but for the rest of his life, camping or spending time in a tent held no attraction for him.

After the war, my Dad returned to the North End, moved his practice from Leonard Street, to Plainfield Ave. and set up housekeeping with my Mom just east of Riverside Park.

They had 11 kids and all of us went to Creston.

By the time I started at Creston, it was a HIGH school of 10th to 12th grade and there were four city high schools, Central, Creston, Ottawa and Union, in Grand Rapids.

My Dad’s office was just down the street so we had a ride to school but a long walk home.

I remember once being in the car with my sister, Lisa, with my Dad driving and he says all of sudden to my sister, “Is it your birthday?”

Lisa said yes it was.

Dad then said, “The sun was in my eyes just like this that day when I drove Mom to the hospital when you were born.“

As little kids we would go to events at Creston starring our big brothers and sisters in plays and choir concerts, so we were familiar with the building.

Most of my brothers and sisters where in the Creston Choir or Madrigals and back then, the thing to do was make a record that they could sell to raise money for who knows what.

I remember this as we at least two of each album in our stacks of records because we usually had at least two kids in the choir at any time so my Mom had to buy two albums.

Every Christmas, a forest appeared in front of the high school for the Athletic Club Christmas Tree Sale fund raiser.

We got our Christmas trees there for years and as a little kid, I thought they grew there.

Creston was a building built like they built buildings in 1927.

Designed to be bright inside, there were lots of windows in the classrooms and hallways.

Tall, tall ceilings in the hall ways.

Tall, tall wood framed windows that magically slid in and up and over so that the top and bottom of the windows were open for air flow.

The floors were hardwood and each room had a built in closet for the teacher.

Some rooms had little platforms for the teachers desks.

By the time I got there I knew my way around pretty good but I learned more.

In my junior year I was on the school paper but due to scheduling conflict, Mr. Eikenhout, the teacher in charge, let me work by myself during 1st hour, in the newspaper office while the rest of the class met during 4th hour.

I would often have to seek him out before class and find him in the teachers lounge and he would throw me his keys and I would let myself in.

So there I was with keys and all by myself.

I took it upon myself to really search out Creston High School.

I found my way into the 4th floor attic.

I found my way into the storage rooms behind the auditorium stage that could only be reached by a ladder bolted to the wall that went past interior windows on the air shaft so I could look down in the metal shop.

I found my way into the old coal bins under the gym and back parking lot from the days when Creston had a coal fired furnace.

I ran around so much that a security guard grabbed me one day and asked, “Just who are you anyway?”

I even got an A in Newspaper.

I was smart enough to not do anything stupid.

Well, too stupid anyway.

I admit dumping the bucket of water out the third floor window when the band was marching up the driveway was stupid.

Especially 5 minutes later when the Band teacher kicked the door of the Newspaper room open and demanded to know who did that … and I was the only one in there.

The gym was small and cramped and had to be shared between boys and girls.

The gym was so small that league basketball games were played at North East Jr. High.

The locker rooms were small and cramped (about 7 feet of brick vaulted clearance as I remember.

And there was no swimming pool for athletics.

Back then, the folks of the North End had some clout and the decision was to modernize and enlarge Creston.

A new gym and pool complex was planned and the old neighborhood next door was bought out and demolished.

One of my odder assignments came when I was called into the Principals office along with Mr. Eikenhout and I was told to go through the old neighbor and take photographs to show what it looked like.

With the Principals assignment in my pocket, I walked through the now abandoned neighborhood and went in and out of all those homes and took several rolls of film of streets and rooms and views out windows.

I gave the film to the Principal and never saw them again.

Years later, married with children, I moved back to the North End.

My oldest two boys went to Creston.

There were a little bit surprised how well I knew my way around.

But it wasn’t the same.

Sure there was the huge gym and pool but there were other changes.

Due to risk of fire, the big stairwells were all enclosed with fire doors.

The ceilings in the hallways had been lowered and most of the light from the interior air shafts was cut off making the hallways gloomy.

The floors were all carpeted and you couldn’t run and slide in your socks any more.

Instead of smelling of floor wax, the rooms and halls smelled of carpet disinfectant.

The rooms had modern tables and teachers had been supplied with new cabinets that, sadly, were made of particle board and most were chipped with doors hanging at odd angles.

The windows were sealed as a modern HVAC system had been installed.

They had modernized all the charm, for what it was, out of the place.

Just a few years later, as online education came into play and more and more people moved out the North End and the City overall, Grand Rapids no longer needed 4 high schools and the decision was made to close Creston High School.

The building and grounds had somewhat of a re-birth as Grand Rapids City High and Middle School but Polar Bears no longer.

But the name lives on.

A few years ago I was locked out of my online banking and I called customer service to restore access.

“No problem”, she said, “just let me ask you a few security questions.”

“What was your high school mascot?”

“POLAR BEARS,” I answered proudly.

There was a long pause.

“I don’t think I ever heard that one before,” she said.

And most likely, never will again.