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

9.30.2026 – money cannot buy

money cannot buy
happiness – having enough
is still essential

Adapted from the article, These are the happiest states in America. See where your state ranks by Anthony Thompson in USAToday where Mr. Thompson writes (quoting WalletHub’s annual Happiest States in America report):

“It’s also important to note that while the adage that money can’t buy happiness has a lot of truth to it, having enough money to live comfortably is still essential. But anything beyond that won’t necessarily enhance happiness as much as having fulfilling hobbies, relationships and opportunities for personal growth.”

That line, It’s also important to note that while the adage that money can’t buy happiness has a lot of truth to it, having enough money to live comfortably is still essential got me to wondering about something so I opened up Gemini, Google’s AI Bot and asked:

In America today, how much money is needed so that you have enough money to live comfortably?

I got a very well reasoned report, nicely documented (click here for the complete Gemini Response) that in short said:

Living “comfortably” in the United States depends heavily on household size, geographic location, and lifestyle expectations. Financial studies utilizing the standard 50/30/20 budget framework (allocating 50% of income to necessities like housing and groceries, 30% to discretionary spending, and 20% to savings and debt repayment) establish key baseline income thresholds for comfortable living across the nation.

Gemini then broke out some numbers.

Income Needed by Household Size – Household Type

Average National Threshold
Single Adult: $85,000 – $100,000
Family of Four (2 adults, 2 kids): $210,000 – $240,000

Low-Cost States (e.g., WV, MS)
Single Adult: ~$81,000 – $86,000
Family of Four (2 adults, 2 kids): ~$187,000 – $195,000

High-Cost States (e.g., HI, MA, CA)
Single Adult: $124,000 – $129,000
Family of Four (2 adults, 2 kids): $300,000 – $330,000

I then asked, “How many American’s meet this level of Income right now?

The summary response I got was:

Summary Takeaway
For Single Adults: Only about 1 in 7 single Americans earns enough to meet the formal 50/30/20 definition of a “comfortable” lifestyle on a single income.

For Families of Four: About 1 in 5 families earns the combined $210,000+ necessary to cover necessities, non-essentials, and consistent 20% savings without financial strain.

That got me to thinking so I asked one more question.

I asked “How many American’s met this level of income in 2015?”

I got this response …

Single Adults (2015): Roughly 1 out of 6 to 1 out of 7 single-person households earned above the ~$60,000–$71,000 mark in 2015 dollars (~14% to 16%).

Families of Four (2015): Roughly 1 out of 4 to 1 out of 5 married families with two kids earned above the ~$150,000 mark in 2015 dollars (~19% to 23%).

Not much different but what got me was this statement:

Adjusting for inflation using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index (CPI), cumulative inflation between 2015 and today is approximately 41%.

This means that $1.00 in 2015 had roughly the same purchasing power as $1.41 today. Deflating the current thresholds back to 2015 values yields the equivalent income needed to live “comfortably” in 2015.

So many many many numbers.

I am reminded of that old saying:

A recession is when someone is out of money.

A depression is when I am out of money.

Thinking of that line of having enough money to enhance happiness as much as having fulfilling hobbies, relationships and opportunities for personal growth as thinking about enough money to put food on the table and that remined of that line out of the depression when FDR put a man named Harry Hopkins in charge of relief efforts and according to legend, Hopkins found an office on Inauguration day and began funding programs to start emergency food distribution.

Someone in Washington told Hopkins that giving government money away like that wouldn’t work in the long run.

“People don’t eat in the long run,” said Hopkins, “they eat every day.”

Photos from the Resettlement and Farm Security Administrations and the Office of War Information 1935-1943 by the great Walker Evans.

9.29.2026 – through a glass darkly

through a glass darkly
unreliability
of eyewitnesses

There is this thing called the Rashomon Effect.

According to the Wikipedia: The Rashomon effect is the phenomenon of the unreliability of eyewitnesses. The effect is named after Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 Japanese film Rashomon, which itself is based on Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short story “In a Grove”, in which a murder is described in four contradictory ways by four witnesses. It has been used as a storytelling and writing method in cinema in which an event is given contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved, thereby providing different perspectives and points of view of the same incident.

An event is given contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved, thereby providing different perspectives and points of view of the same incident.

This is a photo a friend of mine posted on Facebook of the end of last weekend’s Michigan-Iowa football game.

That the photo is of the game is incidental, as is the outcome of game (an outcome I am used to – they wouldn’t be the Amazin’ Blues if they didn’t break your heart) but look at the people looking not at the game, but at their devices.

They will have there own personal proof of being there at something they didn’t watch because they were watching their phones.

They are eyewitnesses to history, yet their proof if being an eyewitness proves they took their eye off history.

I was at several moments worth remembering in Michigan Stadium.

Anthony Carter into the endzone with no time on the clock to beat Indiana.

Desmond Howard flying 20 yards into the end zone to win the Heisman Trophy.

All remembered WITH ADVANTAGES as Mr. Shakespeare would say and without the need for a device.

In one of the last books about Queen Elizabeth II, a book about her travels around the world, she was asked what changed the most in her exerience.

The Queen responded along the line that she used to see people, now all she saw were … little black boxes.

And I put it to you that even with the scene recorded and safely in your hand … any event is given contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved, thereby providing different perspectives and points of view of the same incident.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose inded.

9.26.2026 – clock stopped 5:30

clock stopped 5:30
now always time to quit work,
have drink, cook dinner

The clock stopped at 5:30 for three months.

Now it’s always time to quit work,

have a drink, cook dinner.

From Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry by Jim Harrison as published in Jim Harrison: Complete Poems by Jim Harrison (Copper Creek Press: 2021).

Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry is pages of seemingly unconnected, random thoughts expressed in three lines.

Every three lines is a thought unto itself and no connection to the previous or following lines.

Not sure what Mr. Harrison meant by a conversation in poetry, but there it is.

Reading through the poem, this triplet caught my imagination.

For no greater reason, I just like the concept.

I was reminded of the story of how the Marx Brothers would be on a movie set in Los Angeles and at 2 p.m., one of them would yell, “It’s quitting time in New York!”

I am reminded of the old drinking saying, “it’s five o’clock somewhere”.

Which is not just a saying but, according to Wikipedia, is a song performed by Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett, and written by Jim “Moose” Brown and Don Rollins. It was released in June 2003 as the lead single from Jackson’s 2003 compilation album Greatest Hits Volume II. It spent eight non-consecutive weeks at #1 on Billboard Hot Country Songs in the summer of 2003, and ranked #4 on the year-end chart. In addition, the song peaked at #17 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September, and ranked #65 on the year-end Hot 100, making it the biggest pop hit for Jackson and the first top forty hit for Buffett since the 1970s.

On November 5, 2003, it won the Country Music Association (CMA) Award for Vocal Event of the Year. It was Buffett’s first award in his 30-year career. It also won two Academy of Country Music awards for Single Record of the Year and Vocal Event of the Year. The song became the #3 song of the decade on Hot Country Song.

WOW.

And I have never heard of this song!

https://youtu.be/kfqtO88ZlBQ?is=esSS71u_55j4mVv_

Also according to Wikipedia, The title refers to a popular expression used to justify drinking at any time of day, given that somewhere in the world, it is 5:00 p.m., the end of the workday for a traditional “nine-to-five” worker. The narrator states that he has not had a day off in over a year and that he wants to leave work and relieve his stress by drinking alcohol. The lyrics include the phrase, “It’s only half-past twelve but I don’t care. It’s five o’clock somewhere”: even though it is not 5:00 in the narrator’s time zone, it is in another part of the world. For example, a time of 12:30 p.m. in Newnan, Georgia, Jackson’s hometown, usually translates to a time of 5:30 p.m. in London, England. Even though it would not exactly be 5:00 p.m. in London, one can still assume that it is five o’clock in London. If Jackson is narrating in the Pacific Time Zone, a time of 12:30 p.m. there coincides with a time of 5:00 p.m. in Newfoundland.

That may be the most bizarre passage of wikipedia I have ever read.

Do I reply with a loud, “Reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllly?”

Or … “NO KIDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDING.”

It’s just goofy that things that come across my screen to my fingertips somedays.

First of all, it’s based on the assumption of Standard Time as if Daily Savings Time (EDT) or British Summer Time (BST) then the Eastern US is 5 hours different from UTC.

Also, I love to tell folks that I listen to an online radio station from London because it is 5 hours ahead so I know, somewhere, someone has made it through the next 5 hours.

Then the selection of Newfoundland and 12:30 p.m. (Pacific) is 5:00 p.m. in Newfoundland which just cracked me up.

See, when I was in college in Ann Arbor, Michigan I listened to the Canadian Broadcasting Company or CBC for their music.

AS an aside, thinking of Ann Arbor and Canadian Radio, back in the day, Univ of Michigan Football used to be broadcast by CKLW in Windsor.

Folks who didn’t know would comment how odd it was that that feller who invented the modern Collegiate Athletic Corporation, Michigan Athletic Director Don Canham, would choose a canadian radio station.

Canham would then explain that CKLW was outside of the US and did not have to comply with FCC regulations on signal strength and it had 50,000-watt a clear-channel signal (“blowtorch signal”) that reached numerous U.S. states.

But I digress.

In Ann Arbor, I would listen to the CBC and they would announce an upcoming show saying that it would be on at 10 a.m. in Ontario, 7 a.m. in the Pacific, 11 a.m. in the Atlantic .. and then they would always add …. one half hour earlier in Newfoundland.

Pronouncing it New FOUND land.

I heard that so often than for the longest time, when making plans to meet with friends and a time would be settled on, I would add …. one half hour earlier in Newfoundland, which made my friends smile, as they moved a little further down the bench.

ANYWAY, I was tickled to see that someone, whoever wrote that wikipedia article on 5 o’clock somewhere picked on poor old NT or Newfoundland Time.

Then whoever wrote the wikipedia article picked out little old Newnan, Georgia.

I have been there!

I have friend in who live there.

When I lived in Lawrenceville, Ga we used to joke that Newnan and Lawrenceville was about as far away two places could be (70 miles) where you could live and STILL say, you were from Atlanta.

I did not know Alan Jackson was from Newnan but I bet my friends did.

What I knew about Newnan was that was where the a spur of the railroad broke off and went to Warm Springs, GA where Franklin Roosevelt built a house.

There was no turn around in Warm Springs so when the FDR took the train, the train had to turn around in Newnan, and the back all the way down the 80 miles to Warm Springs.

An interesting footnote to history that got messed up, as in her book, No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin, a book about Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt, either Ms. Goodwin or her editor watched too much Seinfeld as in the book the town is identified as Newman, GA.

TO get back to the point.

The clock stopped at 5:30 for three months.

Now it’s always time to quit work,

have a drink, cook dinner.

I like the concept and it appeals to me greatly.

And that is all I wanted to say.

Lastly, of late, I have had lots of queries on ‘how do I write these essays’ with, as a professor of mine in Ann Arbor might say, a touch of a suspect animus that I got the feeling folks wonder how much of these are written with help of AI.

Happy to say, none of it.

I cannot explain it, but these just spill out of my brain like cider out of spigot on a barrel.

This morning I sat down with that bit of Mr. Harrison in mind and now I look down and its 4 pages and 1200 words later.

One thought led to another and it came out my finger tips.

And believe me, this was planned as a quick in and out – type out the lines of the poem and say i liked the thought and be done … but nooooo – the way my brain works kicked in and the horse was out of the barn!

Sometimes in the middle of these things I think of an Aunt of James Thurber who, according to a Thurber story, set out to prove she could fix some mechanical device and after hours of trying yells, “Won’t someone take this G*DD*MN thing away from me!”

As Harold Ross of the New Yorker might say, “There you are.”

9.25.2026 – pay no attention

pay no attention
to man behind the curtain …
life’s better that way

Of late, one aspect of my life has been put under a magnifying glass and it is terrifying to live with.

Not hungry and eat too much.

Can’t sleep but always sleepy.

All because I can see under the ice as it gets thinner.

Prior to this, for all I cared, the ice was thick and opaque and I skated smoothly over the surface.

Now the ice is transparent and getting thinner.

Not there is anything under the ice that wasn’t there before.

It is three months to Christmas.

The world will be different in those three months.

This country will have gone through it’s most contentious mid terms elections since the Civil War DID divide the country into two parts.

Artificial Intelligence will have had another three months to kill all of us.

Maybe my personal crisis will be resolved.

And maybe a hurricane will come and wipe out the barrier island I live on.

There all sorts of unforeseen changes coming that if I could FORESEE would mean they would not be unforeseen.

But maybe it’s better NOT foreseeing.

There is nothing new under the ice.

It’s just that I can see through the ice and see what’s down there.

Herman Melville, in his book Moby Dick, described life this way:

. All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit—strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?—Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman’s nooses; and, like the six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing the crew pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every neck, as you may say.

Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for those repeated whaling disasters—some few of which are casually chronicled—of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by the line, and lost. For, when the line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat, is like being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you. It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning; and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself could never pierce you out.

Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual play—this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.

But why say more?

All men live enveloped in whale-lines.

All are born with halters round their necks;

but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.

And if you be a philosopher,

though seated in the whale-boat,

you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker,

and not a harpoon, by your side.

What does he mean?

Well, summing it all up, I think Mr. Melville is saying, Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.

Life’s better that way.