Category: Life

3.26.2020 – not wins or losses

not wins or losses
or how you played the game
still sports without sport

For when the One Great Scorer comes To write against your name,
He marks-not that you won or lost-
But how you played the game.

From perhaps Grantland Rice’s most famous poem, “Alumnus Football,” which he wrote for a gathering of the Vanderbilt Alumni Association in 1908.

I get up and have coffee and still start my day with the Detroit Free Press sports page.

I have been doing this at least high school days when the Free Press was delivered every morning to our house in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The pages were filled by the writings of Joe Falls and George Puscas, Jim Hawkins, Drew Sharp and later Mitch Albom.

I read about great Michigan wins and awful to contemplate, Michigan losses.

The Tigers won and lost championships.

The Red Wings climbed out of the depths of sloth to the peaks of glory and back down again.

The Detroit Pistons ELECTRIFIED the newsprint before my eyes.

People like Bo Schembechlor, Woody Hayes, Sparky Anderson, Joe Dumars, Al Bubba Baker and David Hill filled the the columns of type.

Dexter Bussey, Billy Sims and Barry Sanders run across the pages.

I wanted to know WHO won.

I needed to know WHO lost.

I had to know the score.

I admired how they played the games.

Then the games stopped.

Then the scores stopped.

Then nobody won.

Somehow we all seem to lose.

Yet.

And yet.

The sports pages are still filled.

I still turn to the sports page first.

Never thought you could have sports without sport but there you are.

As Mr. Rice also wrote:
“You’ll find the road is long and rough, with soft spots far apart,
Where only those can make the grade who have the Uphill Heart.“

3.25.2020 – true of all evils,

true of all evils,
true of plague, It helps people
rise above themselves

In 1947, Albert Camus wrote in his book, “The Plague” that, “What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves.”

According to Wikipedia, “The Plague represents how the world deals with the philosophical notion of the Absurd.

In philosophy, “the Absurd” refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and the human inability to find any in a purposeless, meaningless or chaotic and irrational universe. The universe and the human mind do not each separately cause the Absurd, but rather, the Absurd arises by the contradictory nature of the two existing simultaneously.“

In the Otto Preminger movie about a murder trail in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Anatomy of a Murder, Prosecutor Mitchell objects saying, “This testimony is incompetent, hearsay…irrelevant, immaterial, inconclusive…”

This brings defense attorney Paul Biegler to say, “That’s too much for me.”

If the absurd absurd is about the human inability to find any in a purposeless, meaningless or chaotic and irrational universe …

Well, that’s too much for me.

But hard to find a better word to describe life today other than absurd.

Maybe.

Just maybe, we can rise above ourselves.

3.24.2020 – You’ll say to yourself

You’ll say to yourself
scared of life, more of dying
life at any price

Sitting this morning drinking coffee, listen to my neighborhood come awake.

The loudest noise was birdsong.

Brown Thrashers, Cardinals, maybe red wing blackbirds.

Then the garbageman.

It was early for the garbageman but I had read that that job was a little easier as traffic was so sparse in the mornings.

I listened to the noise of the garbageman and I said to myself, “The Garbageman cometh.”

Which made me say out loud, “The Iceman cometh.”

My next thought was of the NBA great George Gervin who was nicknamed, “The Iceman”.

Whenever his team, the San Antonio Spurs, played on TV, the announcers would say, “The Iceman Cometh.”

As I sat this morning with all this going through my head, I realized I had no idea what the “The Iceman Cometh” was.

In the back of my mind I was pretty sure it was a play.

It was up in my memory down the same hallway with “Death of Salesman” so maybe it was by Arthur Miller.

I did the google and found out it’s a Eugene O’Neil play.

The play, “The Iceman Cometh” is something I have never read.

I scanned the wikipedia article on Iceman Cometh.

I read some of the lines of the play.

I took the lines of today’s Haiku from one of lines.

Words from yesterday still have messages for today.

Mr. O’Neil is someone I have never read.

Maybe it is time I did.

3.23.2020 – says keep warm, well fed

says keep warm, well fed
but does nothing about their needs
words, but no action

If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? James 2:16 (NIV)

In the King James English, the message is more clear.

Notwithstanding ye give them NOT those things which are needful to the body.

Ye Give Them NOT.

What is the deal with our representatives in Congress in both the House and the Senate.

I know it the argument can easily become simplistic as both sides want to do ‘The Right Thing’ but cannot agree on what the right thing is.

I guess you can take someone to Congress back you can’t make them think.

I am reminded of a joke about a guy who went fishing.

He would like a stick of dyamite and toss it into the lake and net up dead fish after the explosion.

Along came a Game Warden who told the guy he couldn’t fish like that.

The guy lights a stick of dynamite, hands to the Game Warden and says, “You want to talk or do you want to fish?”

How do we get the message across to Congress.

The kind words are great.

The words without action will not pay the rent or buy groceries.

In 1932, when Franklin Roosevelt was elected President, Will Rogers said, “The whole country is with him, just so he does something. If he burned down the Capitol, we would all cheer and say, well, we at least got a fire started anyhow.”

3.22.2020 – opportunity

opportunity
do something not do nothing
make a difference

My wife and I tried to make Saturday as normal as possible.

I was feeling blue as we had tickets to the Atlanta Symphony concert for that night but it had been postponed.

The tickets were a Christmas gift from my wife.

It would have been our first time of going out on the town in downtown ATL in a long long time.

Something that was incredibly thoughtful of my wife.

Something I had been looking forward too since Christmas.

I don’t think I have to say that the concert has been ‘postponed.’

We went for a walk in one of favorite parks.

We stopped at our favorite local coffee shop.

I ordered my favorite cup of coffee, the Ho-Chi-Minh-City, a Vietnamese drink of expresso, sweetened condensed milk and steamed milk.

My wife asked about the Pumpkin Spice Latte listed as a special and the kid behind the counter said, “It is very good. I came up with the recipe.”

While we were waiting the phone rang and we listened in to one side of the conversation that went like this.

“Yes, we are open.”

“Yes, our menu is available.”

“No, sorry, no eating in, the dining area is closed.”

“Sorry, Ma’am, but there isn’t a restaurant that is open for dining in Suwanee.”

He hung up and looked at us and we shook our heads and laughed.

Then another couple came in, new to Cafe Amica.

The kid asked if they wanted to order and they asked for a minute to look at the menu.

‘Ho-Chi_Minh-City ….. hmmmmm,” said the guy looking at the menu.

I couldn’t stop myself.

Following social distancing guidelines, I leaned and said, “that is the best cup of coffee in Gwinnett County. It is what I always order here.”

We all laughed together and my wife chimed in to say, “That’s true, he won’t try any of the other drinks,”

I then quoted Bogart in Casablanca and said, “I stick my neck out for nobody but I will for this.”

The couple looked at each other and laughed and ordered the Ho-Chi-Minh.

We got out coffees and said our goodbyes and went out the Towncenter Park.

The park is a great place to walk.

It is made up of a oval green space with intersecting circles of sidewalks and a perimeter sidewalk.

The green space was filled with families with footballs, soccer balls, frisbies and kites.

The sidewalks were filled with walkers, runners and bikes.

Signs lined the sidewalks asking everyone to follow social distancing guidelines and we did.

Walking the perimeter we passed the couple from the coffee shop and they raised their coffee cups and smiled and said the coffee was great and we smiled and went on our way.

It was almost normal.

We felt better.

Thinking over this I was struck by this passage in an article I read online.

Active coping is vital. “Trying to do something rather than doing nothing is extremely important for resilience. This is a real opportunity, and we need to recognise it as such. And don’t forget that coronavirus isn’t the only thing that’s contagious: happiness is contagious too, as well as fear. If you go outside, smile at people. Be really friendly. It can and will make a huge difference.*

In the little bit I have been out and about I am happy to report that the people where I live HAVE BEEN friendly.

And from my personal experience, I can say it does make a huge difference.