stars of my birthday favor me lucky star born nothing can stop me
Sunrise over Hilton Head Island – July 17, 2025
Come on, superstition, and get my goat I got mascots The stars of my birthday favor me The numbers from one to ten are with me I was born under a lucky star and nothing can stop me The moon was a waxing moon and not a waning moon when I was born Every card in the deck and both of the seven-eleven bones are with me So you hear them tell it and they mean if it works it’s good and if it don’t it costs nothing
From The People, Yes (53) as published in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, by Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1950.
According to my drivers license, I was born today … 65 years ago.
Some years back, my Boss had my team work through an exercise where we come up with THEEE word that best described ourselves and my word came up as lazy.
Today, I would choose another word and that word would be lucky.
The stars of my birthday favor me.
Oh so lucky.
I was born under a lucky star and nothing can stop me.
I was born in a big family and never ever knew the fear of want or need or poverty.
I was raised in a home where God and the love of Jesus was just a part of life.
Nothing was pounded into you, it was just accepted and while questions might come and go over the years it was always there as the simple faith of a child and I thank God for it.
I am lucky in life, relationships, work, schooling and the numbers from 1 to 10 are with me.
I don’t understand my luck.
But, Boy Howdy, do I appreciate it.
The moon was a waxing moon and not a waning moon when I was born and have enjoyed my luck.
I can’t explain it, so I don’t try.
Every card in the deck and both of the seven-eleven bones are with me.
Not that I haven’t screwed up, screwed up a lot and often but let me tell, it’s on me that I screwed up and caused my own problems and most of the problems I created for myself would not have existed had I not created them.
So you hear me when I tell it.
I mean if it works it’s good and if it don’t it costs nothing.
Born lucky and still trying to figure out how I got to 65,
accroche-toi ton rêve you see ship go sailing … hold … on tight to your dream
Okay, the line in french is Accroche-toi à ton rêve and I had take out the à or to to fit into my definition of a haiku and I also used ellipsises in within the haiku but that is all part of the fun of writing in the 21st century.
My blog, my rules.
Debate at leisure if you will but there it is though I am hoping for a comment from a French teacher I know in Kansas City for her opinion.
Why am I using a 1981 song, Hold On Tight, sung by the Electric Light Orchestra as the basis of today’s haiku?
(Emphasis/accent on the WHY)
That’s a good question and I’ll ask it again.
Why am I using a 1981 song sung by the Electric Light Orchestra as the basis of today’s haiku?
(Emphasis/accent on the AM)
Not sure that changing the emphasis accent but it makes for an interesting vocal excercise.
I have more songs on my iPhone than I can keep track of or collate so I just set my play list to random.
Somewhere along the line I downloaded a folder of ‘Greatest Songs of the ’80s or was it the 1900’s and dumped them onto my phone.
Driving to work today, the day before I turn 65, crossing over a bridge to an island while it was raining as sun rose out of the Atlantic Ocean to shine in my face and light up the storm clouds, that song was randomly selected and played over the car speakers by my iphone.
Now I can’t get it out of my head.
When I got to work I had to get online to find out what the ELO was singing when they switched over to singing in French, especially as ELO was known for hiding secrets in their music that affected the minds of young college kids, which I would have been back in 1981 when the song was released.
Both relieved and disappointed, I learned that the lyrics in French were just that, the lyrics in French.
Mmm, hold on tight to your dream, yeah Hold on tight to your dream, yeah When you see your ship go sailing When you feel your heart is breaking Hold on tight to your dream
Accroche-toi à ton rêve Accroche-toi à ton rêve Quand tu vois ton bateau partir Quand tu sens ton coeur se briser Accroche-toi à ton rêve
At work early, the vacuums are going, the storm is passing, I am alone in the office for a few hours.
The radio is on and by chance The Bluebird is playing.
And get this, The Bluebird is written by Alexis FFRENCH.
(Don’t know much about Mr. Ffrench, but I plan to.)
All this leads to much introspection and thought.
Maybe too much.
I grew up and live in a world where I don’t worry about where my next drink of cold water is coming from, let alone where my next meal might be or where I might sleep tonight.
I can’t do much about that but I do what I can.
I DO appreciate it.
I DO know how lucky I was to be born when and where I was born.
I DO appreciate it.
What else?
Well …
Mmm, hold on tight to your dream, yeah Hold on tight to your dream, yeah When you see your ship go sailing When you feel your heart is breaking Hold on tight to your dream
Accroche-toi à ton rêve Accroche-toi à ton rêve Quand tu vois ton bateau partir Quand tu sens ton coeur se briser Accroche-toi à ton rêve
Have a good night and hold on tight.
Wikipedia says that when this MUSIC VIDEO (HA!) was made, it was the single most expensive music video ever recorded … that was in 1981 before the world went a little nuts …
I knew coming home wouldn’t be easy. As the plane from Ho Chi Minh to London descended, I looked out over England’s patchwork fields and was unsure what I was returning to or for. Those first few months were spent flitting between my family home and more pet-sitting stays. Friends and family wanted to know “my plan” and I felt more diminished each time I told them I didn’t know. The reverse culture shock was acute. I discovered that people don’t ask about your travels because the experiences are too unrelatable. Plus, a relationship I had formed overseas, and was trying to maintain, was nosediving and it was hard to discuss it with friends, since they didn’t know the person or the context. I was disoriented, but also felt as if I had never been away.
Gradually, the idea of having a space that was mine, neighbours to get to know, regular exercise classes to attend and a coffee shop where they knew my name felt exciting. I had once laughed in the face of routine; now, I knew it was crucial if I wanted to build a life worth living.
Perversely, many digital nomads end up doing a global tour of Starbucks. “It was the one place with reliable wifi,” says Matt, 25, a fellow British writer and on-off nomad since 2019. “I hated that I was in there, but finding somewhere to work was always difficult.”
Lots and lots of thoughts here.
But the phrase that comes to hit home for me was I discovered that people don’t ask about your travels because the experiences are too unrelatable.
I thought back to a party where I found myself, to use Tom Wolfe’s term, in a ‘conversational bouquet’ where the discussion between the two other guys focused on, one, which side of Italy was better to drive down … the Adriatic Side or the Mediterranean side? – and, two, – was it better to rent a car when in Europe or BUY a car when in Europe and use a broker to sell it once your trip (which I guess was at least a month long … I hope) over.
I had little to contribute aside from historical commentary on the Appian Way and the Campaigns of World War 2 that were fought on those roadways.
Needless to say I discovered that people didn’t ask about my travels because the experiences were too unrelatable.
I tried to interject my thoughts on driving down the east coast versus the west coast of the State of Michigan … Alpena through the Thumb to Port Huron or The Long Blue Edge of Summer as we called the Lake Michigan coast, but I found no traction in the conversation.
I had a real guilty pleasure that to read that these world travelers, these digital nomads, found themselves doing a global tour of Starbucks because it was the one place with reliable wifi,
Well, I can do that.
I mean, I can sit in any number of Starbucks and use the wifi and have the same view of the world as these digital nomads.
Oh well.
I don’t travel much.
If offered the chance to travel, I would most likely ask if I could take the time to go visit and play with the grand kidz.
I do do this though.
My office is about 5 blocks from the Atlantic Ocean.
At lunch, I’ll change into shorts and T Shirt and walk down to the beach for a bit.
Often I am stuck in a group waiting to cross the street to the beach walkway and someone will say to me, “What a great week to be here!”
I look them in the eye and agree and smile then say, “I’m here on my lunch.”
But back to the article.
Routine.
I have long said that one of the things I loved about college was the 4 month length of the term and the syllabus that was handed out at the start of the term.
The syllabus would list the 100 books I had to read, the term paper I had to write and the dates of the mid term and final.
I had no idea how I would get all that done.
But I knew, that by the end of the term, it would be done.
It was … great.
Out of college no one hands out a syllabus.
I get quarterly goals but in all the years I have been working, I can’t remember anything that was considered a quarterly goal at the start of the quarter, that was around at the end of the quarter.
Something else would have replaced it of course, but that points to the syllabus and lack of routine.
Most Professors had taught their courses for years and the syllabus was un changeable.
You could depend on it.
You could get into … a routine, a rhythm.
Working for the last 40 years, boy howdy, do I miss it.
The current administration pushes something they call, strategic uncertainty.
a different man altogether than one who began the journey
In his 1st book, The Coming Fury, of his three book centennial history of the United States Civil War, Bruce Catton wrote about Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee:
In a singular way, Lee began his journey more in the mood of Lincoln than in the mood of Davis. Davis had fewer doubts than either of the others.
He knew, broadly, what he was supposed to do, and he knew how to set about it, and he neither knew nor cared what it might cost him.
Lincoln and Lee took more doubts with them — doubts not only about the future but about the precise parts they themselves might have to play.
Each man would say things, in the early stages of this journey, that he would not have said later.
Each man would find the dimensions of the crisis enlarging as he came closer to it, his own probable role growing as the crisis grew; and each man would grow with the crisis itself, shaped by it but at the same time giving shape to it, becoming finally larger than life-size, a different man altogether than the one who began the journey.
The capacity to grow in office is a trait long discussed of American Presidents after leaving office.
Did they grow into the office or … did they fail?
Like so much of accepted historical practices, this question seems to have gone out the window.
What did it all matter if it came to this?
Being President of the United States used to mean something here at home and around the world.
The current administration has lowered the expectations of the office to the level of the Cook County Sheriff as described by Mike Royko in his biography, Boss, of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley when he wrote:
The Cook County Sheriff’s Department was a notorious money pot.
The sheriff’s police were supposed to patrol the roads and residential areas in the sizable unincorporated parts of the suburbs and were empowered to enter any town if local police weren’t doing their job.
They spent most of their time, however, shaking down motorists and making collections at suburban bars and brothels.
Since a sheriff couldn’t succeed himself, most of them got in, got it, and got out.
Few left without being the subject of scandal.
Catton would add of Lincoln and Lee, “Each man would find the dimensions of the crisis enlarging as he came closer to it, his own probable role growing as the crisis grew; and each man would grow with the crisis itself, shaped by it but at the same time giving shape to it, becoming finally larger than life-size, a different man altogether than the one who began the journey.”
The current man if office will also be different.
A lot richer for one thing.
He has got in.
He is getting it.
He will get out … someday.
Different?
Doubt it.
But how about us?
We certainly will be different than we were when we started this journey.
No Haiku For You 