5.7.2025 – there was a star danced

there was a star danced
and under that was he born …
Happy Birthday El!

Adapted from the line: “There was a star danced, and under that was I born.” from Much Ado About Nothing (Act 2, Scene 1) by William Shakespeare.

Ellington Hoffman at The Lincoln Theater, Columbus, Ohio, 2024

Back in 2001 we got a call that there was another baby for us.

Lots of decisions had to made, not least of which was a new name and I got to work.

Our last son to date had been born in 1997, the 50th anniversary year of the Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball.

That baby was supposed to be a girl so my wife didn’t care about a boys name and agreed that in the event the baby was boy, which wasn’t supposed to, we would go with that for a name.

When a boy showed up, my wife called from the hospital and said, “Well … Jackie Robinson Hoffman is here.”

With that in mind, I thought I would be really cool to name the next boy after the last black major league player before the rules were changed.

Had to go back to 1889 to find Moses Fleetwood Walker and what a great name it was.

That Mr. Walker had also played baseball for the University of Michigan was also a point in the names favor and I offered up Moses Fleetwood Walker Hoffman.

To be safe, I decided I better come up with a second name and by chance I had just watched Jazz, a 10 episode document on the history of Jazz by Ken Burns.

Now those who have read this blog know that me and Mr. Burns do not get along but I do appreciate some things he did along the way though I question the body of his work.

To that point I will say that I feel that fate rewarded Mr. Burns by having him produce the bulk of his work in 4×3 format in the era JUST BEFORE HD 16×9 TVs were available but I digress.

I have always liked music of all kinds and by chance I had come across the music of Edward Kennedy Ellington, AKA Duke, at an early age and loved it.

Watching the Ken Burns series, I made sure to catch the episode about Duke Ellington and I was pleased that Mr. Burns did himself proud by finishing the episode with the words …

Edward Kennedy Ellington … considered by many …the greatest of all American
composers, died on May 24, 1974.

Did you catch it?

Read it out loud and see if you notice anything almost perfect about that sentence.

Did you catch it?

So Duke Ellington was on my mind when we heard about the new baby and it came to me that Ellington would make a fine first name.

For a middle name, I thought that using my Father-in-Law’s first name would round out the very fine name of Ellington Bernard Hoffman.

That his initials would be E. B. and a homage to E.B. White was also a point in the names favor.

But how to decide?

We called in the other six kids and explained the situation and I gave them the two names and explained about the names and then, we let them vote.

I think the vote was 4-2 and you know how it turned out.

After 24 years, I cannot imagine any other name.

To close, Duke Ellington was once asked how he got his start and he replied:

My story is a very simple story. You know, it’s like, once upon a time, a very pretty lady and a very handsome gentleman met, fell in love and got married. And God blessed them with this wonderful baby boy. And they held him in the palm of their hand, and nurtured him and spoiled him until he was about seven, eight years old. And then he put, they put his feet on the ground, and the minute they put his feet on the ground, he ran out the front door, out across the front lawn, out across the street. Anyway, the minute he got on the other side of the street, somebody said, “Hey Edward , up this way.” And the, the boy was me incidentally. And he got to the next corner, and somebody says, “Hey Edward , right. Go up there and turn left. You can’t miss it.” And it’s been going on there ever since. That’s the story, that’s my biography.

Hey Ellington, up this way, go up!

Go up and turn left.

You can’t miss it and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Happy birthday!

Love.

Dad.

5.5.2025 – we are such stuff as

we are such stuff as
dreams are made on, little life
is rounded with sleep

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Tempest (Act IV, Scene 1) by William Shakespeare.

Or for further thoughts on a new born grand daughter …

But among the reeds and rushes
A baby girl was found
Her eyes as clear as centuries
Her silky hair was brown

Never been lonely
Never been lied to
Never had to scuffle in fear
Nothing denied to
Born at the instant
The church bells chime
And the whole world whispering
Born at the right time

From Born at the Right Time by Paul Simon.

For myself, a teeny, tiny little girl, less than a few days old, hadn’t known her for more than a few hours … and I cannot imagine a life without her being in it.

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.