9.9.2023 – not learn anything

not learn anything
got verification of
what already knew

“I didn’t learn anything,” Lions head coach Dan Campbell said following his team’s 21-20 win over the Kansas City Chiefs. “I got verification of what I already knew.”

As reported in the article in the Athletic, The Lions knew they could beat the Chiefs, and now a season tone has been set, By Colton Pouncy (Sep 8, 2023).

Is this the year for the Detroit Lions?

Is this the year for the Michigan Wolverines?

I would ask is this the year for the Creston Polar Bears, the Grand Rapids, Michigan, Polar Bears.

But they aren’t around any more.

Once I had to provide my High School Mascot as a security question on an account for something and when I said “Polar Bears” there was this long pause.

“I don’t think I ever heard that one before,” said the person on the phone.

I came later to football and most sports as a fan than most folks.

I really didn’t start to care until I was in High School.

But when I did become a fan, I became a fan!

In football I followed my high school, my favorite college and my favorite pro team.

My high school was the Creston Polar Bears, the team on the NORTH end of Grand Rapids.

It was known as the North End as all the street signs in the neighborhood had NE on them, though some clueless folks thought the NE stood for North East?

We knew those folks weren’t from around here.

For me, there was only one college football team.

Not that I didn’t have a choice, it was just that it was expected I would pick the best school, the one in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Otherwise, if you grew up in Michigan, you were a Detroit Lions fan.

You hated the Bears.

You hated the Vikings.

You hated Green Bay.

You laughed at Tampa Bay as there were latecomers and mostly a joke.

A joke with really cool Pirates on their helmets.

I would celebrate what I called THREE WIN WEEKENDS.

Any weekend when Creston, Michigan and Detroit all won their games.

It was problematic as Creston only played 9 times.

Then the start of the college and pro football season moved around.

But there were times when the planets aligned and it happened.

I got to thinking about it and I wondered, oh often did this happen.

Creston disappeared in 2012 so it can’t happen any more.

So I focused on the years I was in school.

I started in the fall of 1975 at Creston.

I finished in the Spring of 1984 in Ann Arbor after Grad School.

In those 9 fall seasons within that time span, Creston, Michigan and Detroit all played on the same weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday), 89 times.

In those 89 weekends, I celebrated a three win weekend, 8 times. (Click link for game by game comparison)

That’s it.

8 times.

Happy to report there were no three loss weekends.

But there were some awful misses that I remember to this day.

On October 27, 1978, Creston and Catholic Central played to a 21-21 tie and later that weekend, Michigan won the Brown Jug and Detroit beat the Bears.

In 1980 Creston and Detroit had back to back wins and Michigan lost to ND on a 51 yard kick to end the game and then the next week, still in shock, lost to South Carolina.

In 1982, there were a couple other chances, but Detroit and the NFL went on strike.

8 times in 89 games.

I continued to watch for these weekends after college and I remember one of my brothers teased me during the Rich Rod era that Michigan had become the weak link.

Then in 2008-2009, the Lions won just 2 games.

And now my high school is gone.

But the Lions look good.

Michigan looks good.

I think both teams ARE good.

But know what?

It doesn’t matter as they are my teams, win or lose.

Still, it sure does feel good to feel good.

And what have I learned from watching three games so far this season?

Nothing!

I got verification of what I already knew.

8.28.2023 – when your turn is next

when your turn is next
sometimes person went before
is Simone Biles

Watching the latest performance of Simone Biles I am reminded of Jack Buck describing Kirk Gibson’s home run in Game 1 of the Oakland Athletics 1988 World Series.

If you don’t remember, Mr. Buck said, “I don’t believe what I just saw.”

I digress but while a lot of people remember the quote I don’t believe what I just saw, they remember that Vin Scully said it and they are wrong.

Vin Scully said, “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.“

For my purposes both quotes work.

Watching Ms. Biles, I don’t believe what I just see as she makes the so improbable, the so impossible, happen.

Somewhere in this blog I relay the information that some physicist studied Ms. Biles and with the laws of physics PROVED that what she did was not possible to be done.

Something a long the lines that it takes longer to decide to swing a bat than it does for a pitched ball to reach the plate.

It must be magic.

I am content to leave it there and just enjoy it except that might just not be fair to not recognize the toughness of mind, body and training Ms. Biles has to go through to reach this level of magic.

But an odd thought came to me as I watched a clip of Ms. Biles in action.

As she finished, she ran off the mat and hugged another gynmast.

A gymnast watching the same performance.

A gymnast watching the same performance knowing it was her turn next.

To stand there and NOT SAY, NOPE – NOT ME – SOME ONE ELSE – GOTTA TIE MY SHOE – JUST TAKE THE NEXT PERSON … that alone also takes a lot of magic or something.

What could that next gymnast be thinking?

In the case of Ms. Biles, it does seem that there teammates are some of her biggest fans.

It happens often I guess.

Probably just as bad for the gymnast who went before Ms. Biles.

I remember once hearing a talk by a lawyer about how to handle difficult moments in court.

This lawyer said the dumbest thing you could do was try to hide something that everyone just saw.

You drop your files.

You tip over your coffee.

Don’t act like it didn’t happen, look at the jury and look at the judge and shrug or something.

This lawyer said tell the jury everything, especially as a young lawyer.

He took a question and someone asked what do you do if you are a young lawyer and the opposing attorney was Edward Bennett Williams(at the time a big name), what do you do?

The lawyer said tell the jury.

The lawyer said, tell the jury that you are a brand new, just starting attorney.

Then point to the other lawyer say to the jury, DO YOU KNOW WHO THAT IS?

THAT is Edward Bennett Williams!

Edward Bennett Williams!

DO YOU KNOW WHO THAT IS?

Make sure, the lawyer said, the jury knows who is David and who is Goliath.

The audience had a follow up question.

In that situation, if you are Edward Bennett Williams, what do you do?

Oh, said the lawyer, if you are Edward Bennett Williams, you will know what to do.

I for sorry for those of us who aren’t the Simone Biles of this world.

The race is not always given to the swift.

But in the case of gymnastics …

Like so many things in my life, if I can’t do, I will just enjoy watching those that can.

8.26.2023 – night and day sometimes

night and day sometimes
we live without noticing
or overtrying

Based on the poem Carpe Diem by Jim Harrison

Night and day
seize the day, also the night —
a handful of water to grasp.
The moon shines off the mountain
snow where grizzlies look for a place
for the winter’s sleep and birth.
I just ate the year’s last tomato
in the year’s fatal whirl.
This is mid-October, apple time.
I picked them for years.
One Mcintosh yielded sixty bushels.
It was the birth of love that year.
Sometimes we live without noticing it.
Overtrying makes it harder.
I fell down through the tree grabbing
branches to slow the fall, got the afternoon off.
We drove her aqua Ford convertible into the country
with a sack of red apples. It was a perfect
day with her sun-brown legs and we threw ourselves
into the future together seizing the day.
Fifty years later we hold each other looking
out the windows at birds, making dinner,
a life to live day after day, a life of
dogs and children and the far wide country
out by rivers, rumpled by mountains.
So far the days keep coming.
Seize the day gently as if you loved her.

“Carpe Diem” by Jim Harrison from Dead Man’s Float, (Copper Canyon Press, 2016)

I enjoy this poem.

Carpe Diem.

Or Seize the Day or more accurately Seize the Present!

And why?

Quam minimum credula postero.

For tomorrow, a new day comes.

Sunset on the May River from the bluff in Bluffton, SC 8/26/2023

8.19.2023 – but cannot in good

but cannot in good
conscience support candidate
unworthy unfit

I shall continue to affiliate with the Republican Party, but I cannot in good conscience support for President a candidate who was not the real choice of his party and whom I regard as unworthy and unfit to be the Chief Executive of this nation by the tests of ability, public policies, official record and independence of character.”

The above quote from Illinois Politician Harold Ickes appeared in the New York Times today, but 103 years ago in the article, H.L. ICKES DESERTS HARDING AS ‘UNFIT’. (NYT, August 19, 1920)

103 years ago, political parties were pushing candidates unworthy and unfit to be the Chief Executive.

Mr. Ickes was talking about Warren Gamaliel Harding, who had just been nominated by the Republican party for their candidate for President of the United States at the 1920 convention.

Mr. Ickes would later go one to serve as United States Secretary of the Interior for nearly 13 years from 1933 to 1946 under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry S Truman.

The 1920 Republican convention was the one that made the term ‘smoke filled rooms’ famous.

The convention took 10 ballots to nominate Mr. Harding, who according to legend, was called into a meeting with the Party Bosses, in a smoke filled room and the Party Bosses asked Mr. Harding if there was anything … ANYTHING … in his background that might cause problems if he was nominated.

Mr. Harding, according to that legend, asked for 1 hour to think about it and came back and said nope, nothing in my background.

About Mr. Harding’s acceptance speech, Mr. Ickes said, “He proclaims himself a reactionary. He would turn back the hands of the clock and satisfy the aspirations of men’s souls by talking of a full stomach. No more uninspired and uninspiring utterance from a public man is on record in American political history.”

You remember Mr. Harding?

Even he himself felt the he was in over his head as President.

President Harding once said, “Somewhere there must be a book that tells all about it, where I could go to straighten it out in my mind.

But I don’t know where the book is, and maybe I couldn’t read it if I found it!

There must be a man in the country somewhere who could weigh both sides and know the truth. Probably he is in some college or other.

But I don’t know where to find him. I don’t know who he is, and I don’t know how to get him.

My God, this is a hell of a place for a man like me to be!”

According to Wikipedia, “In 1923, Harding died of a heart attack in San Francisco while on a western tour, and was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge.

Harding died as one of the most popular presidents in history, but the subsequent exposure of scandals eroded his popular regard, as did revelations of extramarital affairs. Harding’s interior secretary, Albert B. Fall, and his attorney general, Harry Daugherty, were each later tried for corruption in office. Fall was convicted though Daugherty was not. These trials greatly damaged Harding’s posthumous reputation. In historical rankings of the U.S. presidents during the decades after his term in office, Harding was often rated among the worst.

We, as a country, are once again in a cycle where the election mantra might be I cannot in good conscience support for President a candidate whom I regard as unworthy and unfit to be the Chief Executive.

Seems like folks who should be saying this, are not saying this.

For us and this country, my God, this is a hell of a place for us to be!

8.13.2023 – kind of joy you get

kind of joy you get
when stop hitting yourself on
head with the hammer

Don’t ask me why but I was thumbing through the books of Ernie Pyle the other night.

Ernie Pyle, according to wikipedia, was a Pulitzer Prize–winning American journalist and war correspondent who is best known for his stories about ordinary American soldiers during World War II.

If you want a first hand account of life in the Army of the United States during World War 2, Mr. Pyle’s book’s are a great place to start.

In his book, Last Chapter, published posthumously (he was killed while on assignment on the island of Okinawa), I came across this story.

This book is famous for his word pictures of life aboard an aircraft carrier where the enemy was monotony which was fought with clean clothes, clean sheets and good food.

Mr. Pyle contrasted that lifestyle with the lifestyle of soldiers he was with in Italy and France and couldn’t quite get his arms around the differences.

As I said, I came across this story.

Thomas had been in the Pacific thirty- three months.

When it began to look as though he might as well count on settling down for life, he had married a Scottish girl some months back in Honolulu.

Shortly after that he was shipped on out here, and he hadn’t seen her since.

The morning of the day I sat in Thomas’s barber chair the Army was sending a few Japanese prisoners back to Hawaii by airplane and they had to have guards for them.

One of Thomas’s officers told him he would put him down for the trip so that he could get a couple of days in Hawaii to see his wife.

The officer meant to keep his word, but he had a bad memory for names. When he went to write down Thomas’s name for the trip, he wrote another guy’s name, thinking it was Thomas.

By the time Thomas found it out, it was too late. “I could have cried,” he said.

And I could have too.

I felt so terrible about it I couldn’t get it off my mind, and was talking about it to an officer that evening.

“Oh,” he said. “I happen to know about that. I’ll go and tell Thomas right away and he won’t feel so bad. We got orders not to send the prisoners after all, so the whole thing was called off. Nobody went.”

Which is the kind of joy you get when you stop hitting yourself on the head with the hammer, but at least it’s better than if you kept on hitting it.

Last chapter by Ernie Pyle, New York, H. Holt and Co., 1946