9.16.2024 – cannot read papers

cannot read papers
as they no longer reflect
the world I perceive

Adapted from the passage:

“After twenty years of studying them I am no longer able to read newspapers.

Why?

It’s because they no longer reflect the world I perceive.

I will have to go along with the way I see it even if wrong.

And if they are right, it lacks interest.”

Written by Jim Harrison in the novella, The Man Who Gave Up His Name, published in the collection titled, “Legends of the Fall” by Jim Harrison, New York, Grove Press, 2016.

I still try to read The Guardian and the New York Times every morning with my morning coffee.

I used to try and read USA Today but it’s website defies any real effort to read the stories without a lot of perseverance.

I am speaking of perseverance, of course, from a technical point of view.

Oh to handle all the ads and popups and pop downs and such that make reading online news such a challange.

But of late I am having more and more issues with what I am reading.

I keep asking, what world are these people living in.

The world described more and more in newspapers does not reflect the world I percieve.

One side of the paper can decry the end of the world and those dire portents in the next elections and how if we all could really care about what was happening, we could stop it.

And on the other side of the paper are heart felt discussions of the clothes people wore on the red carpet of the Emmy’s and how the Emmy’s was rigged and whole lot of other stuff that is supposed to be of interest to me.

Maybe it is getting older.

I recently went to a major college football game and while there was much I recognized from when I went to this college as a student, there was much that did not reflect on college football as I perceived it.

I chatted with the lady next to me and she said that they were searching for ways to make if fun for kids.

I guess getting together with your friends along with a keg of beer and going someplace where you could drink in public and yell your head off is no longer fun enough.

Reading this as I type it I decided I better check my drivers license and it says I was born in 1960.

I think I am right on schedule.

9.4.2024 – I was self-appointed

I was self-appointed
surveyor of forest paths
keeping them open

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility.

Sometimes the non conformity is living in the Hilton Head area … but wearing a Tybee Island T Shirt

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men’s, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint “No Admittance” on my gate.

Inspecting my salt marshes and the Broad River, looking towards Parris Island US Marine Corps Recruit Depot

For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their own reward.

Path not taken … maybe – Lemon Island, South Carolina

For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation.

All passages from Walden by Henry David Thoreau (Boston, Ticknor and Fields, 1854).

Wikipedia quotes EB White on Mr. Thoreau, that to write Walden, “Henry went forth to battle when he took to the woods, and Walden is the report of a man torn by two powerful and opposing drives— the desire to enjoy the world and the urge to set the world straight.”

Mr. Thoreau was in his mid 30’s when he went forth to battle.

I am in my mid 60’s and my urge to set the world straight is waning.

My desire to enjoy the world is growing.

That last line I quote from Walden happens to be the very last line of the book.

I can tweak it to read, “For over two thousand years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation.“

It was Jim Harrison who once wrote along the lines that the United States had passed some 1.5 million laws … trying to enforce the 10 commandments.

It was Mr. Churchill who said in a speech in 1947, “Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

If Mr. Churchill is correct, BOY HOWDY, but do I feel sorry for all those other countries.

Is it any wonder that I embrace my role as a self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms and reporter for my own journal of small circulation.

However, in this case my pains are their own reward.

PS: Thank you to my wife and co-self-appointed-inspector for the photos of our adventure on Widgeon Point, South Carolina.

7.25.2024 – people never know

people never know
more than vaguely where they are
in the scheme of things

People can be truly amazing …

I got this little theory, an utterly unimportant theory, that most people never know more than vaguely where they are, either in time or in the scheme of things.

People can’t read contracts or time schedules or identify countries on blank maps.

Why should they?

I don’t know.

There’s a wonderful fraudulence to literacy.

Yet these same people have emotional lives as intricate as that Bach piece …

From the book Sundog by Jim Harrison.

7.17.2024 – will you still need me?

will you still need me?
feed me? Who could ask for more?
when I’m sixty-four

Not sure how this happened, which seems to be a common feeling, but I start my 64th year today.

Because of family history and often told family stories, I know that was I born around noon so as I write this, I still have 5 hours to go.

I know it was around noon because I was born on a Sunday and my Mom planned a family dinner after church and while I interrupted her day, my Aunt Marion came over and pulled the dinner together so all my brothers and sisters were sitting around the table when my Dad came home from the hospital to announce it was a boy.

All the boys cheered and my sisters all cried as it would have been a tie game had I been a girl.

I was 8th in what would be a family of 11 kids.

When I was 4, my Dad got a place on the shore of Lake Michigan just south of Grand Haven where we spent out summers so my birthday was almost always celebrated out at the lake.

In 1966, my Mom and Dad took me into Grand Haven to WT Grants and said I could pick out anything I wanted for my birthday.

In my mind the toy aisle stretched out sight to the left and right and towered over me.

I am not sure how long it took as my Father was generous but not real patient, a buyer not a shopper, and I selected an orange truck with a working steam shovel type crane that I could raise and lower and scoop up sand.

I am sure I had Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel in mind when I picked out as I always liked Mike as we shared a first name.

Which, as I am sure I have mentioned before, brings me to the topic of my name.

See, Mike had already been used as a first name in my family.

My brother Tim was born back in 1956 and was named Mike … for about 3 days.

Then my Dad said, ‘Nope, he doesn’t look like a Mike‘ and when the paper work was filled, he became Timothy John.

4 years later when I showed up, my Dad decided I did look like a Mike and Michael James Hoffman was listed on my paperwork.

Not sure what that says or means, but it had to have messed up paperwork in the global accounting of life somewhere.

The moment I got my truck home was captured on film by my Dad with his Nikon camera.

I posed with an army shovel and my new truck, ready to take on the world and all the dirt and sand I could find.

Scrapes and bruises that any 6 year old would have acquired over a summer and one shoe untied, that’s me.

Behind me in the picture are my three sisters, Mary, Lisa and Janet, who are plainly thrilled by my new truck and that it was my birthday.

That was 58 years ago and with the help of the photos, I can feel it, I can smell it.

As Jim Harrison writes in his book, Sundog, “So much of the emotional content of our lives seems to occur before we are nineteen or twenty … “

Now I am 64.

And by chance as I type this out at my desk near the ocean, the 3rd movement of Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 2 starts playing on the radio and it is one of my favorites.

A piece of music impossible to listen to and not feel light and light hearted.

I will take it as a good omen for things yet to come.

It is my birthday.

What can I do but, and when will I ever get the chance again, to quote Sir Paul?

When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a Valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine

If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four

You’ll be older too
And if you say the word
I could stay with you

I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride

Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four

Every summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck and Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away

Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four

will you still need me?
feed me? Who could ask for more?
When I’m sixty-four

6.22.2024 – his uniform fit

his uniform fit
better than everybody
else’s uniform

“You would stay on the bench during batting practice simply to watch him — and just watching him walk, even that was special,” said Cleon Jones, who grew up in Alabama idolizing Mays and ended up sharing the outfield with him when the Giants traded Mays to the Mets in 1972.

“I’m telling you, even his uniform seemed to fit better than everybody else’s uniform,” Jones said. “The players held him with a reverence that felt almost spiritual.”

From the article, Remembering Willie Mays as Both Untouchable and Human by Kurt Streeter.

Not much to say but I think of Jim Harrison in his book The Road Home when his lead character meets Sioux Lakota warriors, veterans of the wars with Custer.

Mr. Harrison writes, ” … warriors with a lineage that owed nothing to the white man. We did not live upon the same earth that they did and we flatter ourselves when we think we understand them. To pity these men is to pity the gods.”

I also want to point out that Mr. Mays did not play in the Major Leagues until he was 20 years old.

Al Kaline and Robin Yount both started when there were 18.

I think of the record book with two more seasons added to it.

Mr. Streeter writes, “How great was he?

Six hundred sixty. That is how many home runs bolted off Mays’s bat during his career. When the Say Hey Kid retired at the end of the 1973 season, only Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron had more.

Mays ended 23 major league seasons with a total of 3,293 hits and held a .301 lifetime batting average, eye-popping for a player with such power. Twenty-four times, he was named to the All-Star team. Twelve times, he won the Gold Glove Award. Ten times, he drove in more than 100 runs.

He was named the National League’s most valuable player twice. If it were not for a need to spread the award among players, some experts say, he could have been the M.V.P. seven more times.

Numbers and accolades tell only part of his story. For it was how Mays played — the way he bent the confines of baseball to his will with his smarts, his speed, his style and his power — that set him apart as the most deeply beloved of stars.”

Mr. Mays also missed a season due to having to fulfill his military service.

And it should be pointed out I guess that Jackie Robinson was rookie of the year, his first year, …when he was 28.

The New York Times closes its Obituary with:

When he was selected for the Hall of Fame, Mays was asked to name the best ballplayer he had ever seen.

“I think I was the best ballplayer I’ve ever seen,” he replied. “I feel nobody in the world could do what I could do on a baseball field.”

Not too many could argue.

I mean, to quote Cleon Jones once more, “I’m telling you, even his uniform seemed to fit better than everybody else’s uniform.”