problems forgiving
others or ourselves, because
life herself has not

From Jim Harrison in his book, The Road Home.

The primary focus of the book, I would say hero but once you read the book you don’t look at him that way, John Wesley Northridge II, reviews some of the things he has done in his life and says, “We may have problems forgiving others or ourselves because life herself has never forgiven anyone a single minute’s time.”

No muiligans.

No do overs.

You don’t get that second chance.

Maybe that is why movies like ‘A Wonderful Life‘ or ‘Christmas Carol‘ have such an appeal because those hero’s get a 2nd chance.

They get to find their way home all over again.

In life though, life herself has never forgiven anyone a single minute’s time.

So we can bitch and moan and woe is us.

Or look, no one has ever got a 2nd chance or do over minutes.

Get it right the first time and if you don’t, fix it best you can.

But don’t make it worse for beating yourself up over it.

Forgive yourself.

Forgive others.

And go on.

There is no 2nd chance.

Never has been.

Never will.

I also encourage you to read The Road Home and its 2nd volume, Dalva.

Though Dalva came out first, I don’t think you need to read it first.

There is a lot of Harrison to like in these two novels.

One scene where the long lost grandson who was adopted out, finds his Grand Mother.

The Grand Son cannot bring himself to tell her who he is.

When the Grandmother looks at him and says, “Young man, don’t you have something to tell me?”

Another one of my favorite passages is when Mr. John Wesley Northridge II comes across his journals written 50 years earlier.

As Mr. John Wesley Northridge II reads through the journals, he mutters again and again to himself, ‘My God, what will the fool do next?”

I read back over my Haiku’s.

Some, well most, I have no clear memory writing.

Sometime, to be truthful, I say to myself, “My God, what will the fool write next?”

the dense essence of
my entire past: Rugs, chicken,
lysol, dust, cigars

From the poem, In and Out – A Home Away from Home, 1947, by L. E. Sissman.

I searched out this poem for one reason and one reason only.

I was looking for a quote about baseball and sports by EB White.

As I was scanning through the Letters of EB White, I came across this note in a letter to Roger Angell.

Roger Angell covered baseball for The New Yorker.

Mr. Angell was also the son of EB White’s wife, Katherine Angell White.

I cannot recall if he was ever officialy adopted by EB but they had a close relationship.

EB wrote to Roger that he had enjoyed his article on the Houston Astro’s along with his comments on Texas and Texans.

EB then writes, ” … you were in the same issue with Sissman’s “In and Out,” which to my mind is the best poem we [The New Yorker] have published since they invented poets.”

With that as a recommendation, I had to find the poem.

And thanks to the Google, I did.

I have read several times and maybe I will read it again later.

But the best poem ever published by The New Yorker?

Lets get one thing straight.

If there was anyone who could refer to The New Yorker using the imperial WE, it would be EB and Katherine Angell White.

And if there was anybody whose judgement I would defer to without reservation on any thing literary, it would be Elwyn Brooks (Andy) White.

But in the back of my mind is another quote of Mr. White.

Something along the lines that the most beautiful sound at 5:00PM is the tinkle of ice.

Maybe a martini in hand, and I will see In and Out with eyes that recognize it as one of the greats.

I will with hold judgement until then.

But I don’t drink martini’s so it may be awhile.

where college football
deemed indispensable
as blood to the heart

Steve Hummer of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote in his article, Bad day for college football could reverberate in the South, of the overall awfulness of a fall with out college football.

He wrote, “That has to deeply, on a gut level, concern those who live in warmer latitudes and in like-named cities. Places where college football is deemed as indispensable to the fall as helium is to the party balloon or blood is to the heart.

Huge dominoes have fallen. Are they crashing our way?

Know that it’s really big news when the coronavirus pushes back football in the Big Ten and the Pac-12. But also understand that if those in the SEC and ACC eventually are compelled to do the same, that would represent a seismic culture shock. Then we’d be talking about a family crisis.

Of course they love their college football in those other precincts, too. But Southerners have elevated the sport to a way of life. Some would say we have made it too important, but lose a season’s worth of games and then tell me that it didn’t hurt.

Perspective isn’t absent here. We know it has been close to seven months since the first case of the coronavirus was confirmed in the U.S. and that we’ve lived through far graver things than the putting off of a little tackle football. This disease has picked and picked and picked at the fabric of life, badly fraying it. Denying a Southerner his or her college football would be just another colorful thread pulled loose. Just so happens to be a thread tied at one end to the soul of the South.“

Before I could get up on mount my high horse to shout out a loud OH BLESS YOUR HEART I ran across this in a letter by EB White.

He was writing in the spring of 1957 to a friend of his who had just experienced the death of his father.

Mr. White wrote a warm, chatty letter about what traits we inherit from our parents and what traits we pass along.

He added a postscript, “It is also necessary at this season to establish firm emotional connections with a major league ball club, to share in the agonies of their defeats and the ecstasies of their triumphs. Without these simple marriages, none of us could survive.“

If Mr. White could feel that way, can Mr. Hummer be far off.

I, for myself, am not in a position to argue.