October 9 – throughout your lifetime

throughout your lifetime
dollar amount, property
that you have taken

Question 23 on the Gwinnett County (Georgia) Sheriff Department job application.

It reads:

23. If you had to place a dollar amount on the property that you have taken throughout your lifetime, what would that amount be? This amount should also include any theft from an employer, including, but not limited to pens, paper, other office supplies. Please provide the dollar amount below and describe the items taken. If this does not apply to you then list “N/A” as your response.

Successful candidates could receive a job offer that day, the sheriff’s office said.

Deputy sheriff jailers can start with salaries ranging from $36,451 to $41,791, depending on their education level and previous law enforcement experience.

Senior deputy sheriffs can earn a starting salary of $41,538 to $53,569, depending on the same factors.

It doesn’t say if you have to give back any of the property taken over your lifetime.

October 8 – Fear as mystery

Fear as mystery
unbearable to extreme
immeasurable

As FDR said in his 1st inaugural address, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.”

Big Bill wrote in Hamlet,

But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of? (Hamlet Act III, Scene I)

George Bernard Shaw writes, “Fear will drive men to any extreme; and the fear inspired by a superior being is a mystery which cannot be reasoned away. Being immeasurable it is unbearable when there is no presumption or guarantee of its benevolence and moral responsibility.” (Preface to Saint Joan)

It goes far to explain today’s divisions in society.

We don’t vote for the best platform.

The best candidate.

The best plan.

We vote by what we fear.

We vote by what we are afraid of.

We vote by what we fear.

I don’t know if it was ever any different.

Whenever humans get involved with deciding the right path for human kind, count on humans to muck it up.

In his 1939 Christmas Broadcast, King George VI, the father of Elizabeth II (portrayed in the movie, “The King’s Speech”) quoted the poem, God Knows by Minnie Louise Haskins:

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night

October 7 – hold that ideas come

hold that ideas come
by ratiocination,
is not rational

I could say that this is a comment on that rational thinking or a reason train of thought is the source of good ideas is just plain wrong.

Had Ben Franklin rationally thought out what could happen when flying a kite in thunderstorm he would not have made his discovery that lighting was electricity.

On the other hand however, NOT FLYING a kite in a thunderstorm is a good idea and had Ben made the choice not to do it base on thinking it all through rationally, that good idea would have had its source in rational thinking.

But I digress.

I could also say that my recent discovery of ZUGZWANG would deny that there are any good ideas, only some ideas that are less worse than others.

It doesn’t make any difference as any choice, any thought, will be the wrong one so be free and make any choice you want.

As sound as that is, it is also a digression.

But the real reason for today’s Haiku.

I fell for the word ratiocination.

October 6 – The stupidities

The stupidities
of comparative dullards.
who can stand fury?

From the preface to Saint Joan, By George Bernard Shaw.

If Joan had been malicious, selfish, cowardly, or stupid, she would have been one of the most odious persons known to history instead of one of the most attractive. If she had been old enough to know the effect she was producing on the men whom she humiliated by being right when they were wrong, and had learned to flatter and manage them, she might have lived as long as Queen Elizabeth. But she was too young and rustical and inexperienced to have any such arts. When she was thwarted by men whom she thought fools, she made no secret of her opinion of them or her impatience with their folly; and she was naive enough to expect them to be obliged to her for setting them right and keeping them out of mischief. Now it is always hard for superior wits to understand the fury roused by their exposures of the stupidities of comparative dullards.

Not wanting to take sides of the argument on this Sunday Morning, because it is Sunday Morning, I put forward the thought that today’s Haiku can be embraced by either side of the argument.

October 5 – was kind of solemn

was kind of solemn
laying back looking at stars
not one thing happened

From Huckleberry Finn;

“We catched fish, and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it warn’t often that we laughed, only a kind of low chuckle. We had mighty good weather, as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that night, nor the next, nor the next.”

― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Saturday morning and I should be enjoying a sleep in.

Of late, I find I enjoy getting up and having my coffee in the quiet of the morning.

It is kind of solemn, sitting in the quiet, drinking coffee, looking out the windows as nothing happens.

I start the think.

The waves I watched this summer.

The tide coming in.

The change of seasons.

Mankind’s mark on history.

Back in college, one of my classes was given a behind the scenes tour of the Gerald Ford Library in Ann Arbor.

The curator was holding a book the size of the D volume of the World Book Encyclopedia.

It was the MINUTE-BY-MINUTE log of ONE DAY in the Ford Presidency.

Ford was President for 895 days.

895 daily logs.

Possibly the most complete accounting of any life of any one one earth.

But did it record Ford’s thoughts?

What he had for lunch?

At some point did he have to search for a pencil and open a desk drawer and lost his train of thought when he came across something else in the drawer?

And how many people get to be President?

Winston Churchill’s OFFICAL biography runs to 9 volumes and 4 volumes of letters and documents.

Here is the point.

How complete is the written record?

On quiet mornings, when I consider the number of documents, articles, books, histories and memoirs that cover the human existence against what really went on.

Mankind’s mark on history.

I would have to say, not a thing happened.