1.13.2024 – intellectual

intellectual
acuity invented
that does not exist

Some speculate that Trump is engaging in Richard Nixon’s deliberately staged “madman” theory of intimidating people into accepting his terms, whatever those might be. Still others wonder if it’s all performative to keep his masses entertained with the show. His grandiosity is certainly a constant expression of his malignant narcissism. Attributing his atavisms of imperialism and blunt-force tariffs to a thought through theoretical exercise to return to the 19th century invents an intellectual acuity that does not exist.

From the article, “Donald Trump isn’t even in office yet and silly season has already begun” by Sidney Blumenthal in The Guardian.

Mr. Blumenthal’s mastery of multi syllable words must be saluted.

I also like the idea that adding Greenland and Canada will add multiple, more likely Democratic Party based, states with their Senators and Representatives to Congress.

Maybe once the GOP figures that out, they will be as excited about adding these new states as they are about adding the States of DC and Puerto Rico.

On the whole, how did this guy end up President.

As Mr. Mencken said in his book, In Defense of Women in 1918, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

12.31.2024 – aptly remarked if …

aptly remarked if
he could have been here today …
he wouldn’t have been here

At the funeral for E.B. White, his step son, Roger Angell is reported to have … aptly remarked that … “If he could have been here today, he wouldn’t have been here.”

So ends 2024.

A lot happened.

A lot had to happened to have things happen.

I got a new grand daughter.

I read a lot.

I turned 64.

And here I sit, in the low country of South Carolina.

The fireworks are starting and will boom and bang for the next 6 hours.

I am here today!

Would I have been here today if I could have been somewhere else?

12.9.2024 – all men kill the thing

all men kill the thing
they hate, too, unless, of course,
it … it kills them first

The Crow and the Scarecrow

Once upon a farm an armada of crows descended like the wolf on the fold. They were after the seeds in the garden and the corn in the field. The crows posted sentinels, who warned them of the approach of the farmer, and they even had an undercover crow or two who mingled with the chickens in the barnyard and the pigeons on the roof, and found out the farmer’s plans in advance. Thus they were able to raid the garden and the field when he was away, and they stayed hidden when he was at home. The farmer decided to build a scarecrow so terrifying it would scare the hateful crows to death when they got a good look at it. But the scarecrow, for all the work the farmer put in on it, didn’t frighten even the youngest and most fluttery female. The marauders knew that the scarecrow was a suit of old clothes stuffed with straw and that what it held in its wooden hand was not a rifle but only a curtain rod.

As more and more corn and more and more seeds disappeared, the farmer became more and more eager for vengeance. One night, he made himself up to look like a scarecrow and in the dark, for it was a moonless night, his son helped him to take the place of the scarecrow. This time, however, the hand that held the gun was not made of wood and the gun was not an unloaded curtain rod, but a double-barrelled 12-gauge Winchester.

Dawn broke that morning with a sound like a thousand tin pans falling. This was the rebel yell of the crows coming down on field and garden like Jeb Stuart’s cavalry. Now one of the young crows who had been out all night, drinking corn instead of eating it, suddenly went into a tailspin, plunged into a bucket of red paint that was standing near the barn, and burst into flames.

The farmer was just about to blaze away at the squadron of crows with both barrels when the one that was on fire headed straight for him. The sight of a red crow, dripping what seemed to be blood, and flaring like a Halloween torch, gave the living scarecrow such a shock that he dropped dead in one beat less than the tick of a watch (which is the way we all want to go, mutatis, it need scarcely be said, mutandis).

The next Sunday the parson preached a disconsolate sermon, denouncing drink, carryings on, adult delinquency, front page marriages, golf on Sunday, adultery, careless handling of firearms, and cruelty to our feathered friends. After the sermon, the dead farmer’s wife explained to the preacher what had really happened, but he only shook his head and murmured skeptically, “Confused indeed would be the time in which the crow scares the scarecrow and becomes the scarescarecrow.”

MORAL: All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.

Published in Further Fables for Our Time by James Thurber Hamish Hamilton Ltd, London, 1956.

Denouncing drink, carryings on, adult delinquency, front page marriages, golf on Sunday, adultery, careless handling of firearms, and cruelty to our feathered friends.

There used to be a time when conduct might be called into question.

Confused indeed would be the time in which the crow scares the scarecrow and becomes the scarescarecrow.

12.5.2024 – New ways – live longer

New ways – live longer
but years added at the end
not in the middle

The news abounds with stories of how folks are living longer and as there are more and more people (hard to believe that the population of the United States has doubled since World War 2), more and more people are living longer.

Looks like getting off cigarettes and caffeinated coffee is working.

There is a catch.

Much like the people who go jogging for sixty minutes every day and claim it adds 15 years to their life.

Well, those years were spent … jogging.

Live to be 65 and not jog.

Or live to be 80 and spend 15 years jogging.

Almost sounds like a prison sentence.

Back to the point there are lots of actions we can take, things we can do and things we can avoid and add years to life.

But … those years are added at the end.

What if we can add years in the middle?

What if somehow the years between 30 and 50 could be doubled.

The years when I felt good or at least better.

The years when going to the beach where nothing but fun and not filled with anxieties not the least of which is how far will we end up from the restrooms.

That might be worth considering …

Add those 20 years to my life when I am 70 and live to 90?

Makes me appreciate the age I am and enjoy the years I have and not live with an eye on how what I am doing or eating may or may not add to my years.

It can become an obsession.

Consider what JRR Tolkien wrote in The Two Towers, the middle book of his The Lord of the Rings.

Death was ever present, because the Nmenoreans still, as they had in their old kingdom, and so lost it, hungered after endless life unchanging.

Kings made tombs more splendid than houses of the living, and counted old names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of sons.

Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; in secret chambers withered men compounded strong elixirs, or in high cold towers asked questions of the stars.

And the last king of the line of Anarion had no heir.

Hungered after endless life unchanging.

Life changes.

As Jim Harrison once wrote (or words to this effect) “Eat that delicious fat with your Prime Rib. Then take a long walk to justify it.”

11.6.2024 – Democracy – the

Democracy – the
recurrent suspicion that
the people are right

In July of 1943, the Writer’s War Board (According to wikipedia, the Writers’ War Board was the main domestic propaganda organization in the United States during World War II. Privately organized and run, it coordinated American writers with government and quasi-government agencies that needed written work to help win the war. It was established in 1942 by author Rex Stout at the request of the United States Department of the Treasury) reached out to E.B. White at the New Yorker Magazine and asked for a statement on the meaning of democracy.

Mr. White started out by writing, “It is presumably our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure. Surely, the board knows what democracy is.”

Mr. White continued:

It is the line that forms on the right.

It is the don’t, in don’t shove.

It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; the dent in the high hat.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right, more than half of the time.

It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths; the feeling of communion in the libraries; the feeling of vitality everywhere.

Democracy is the letter to the editor.

Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth.

It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet; a song, the words of which have not gone bad.

It’s the mustard on the hot dog, and the cream in the rationed coffee.

Democracy is a request from a War Board – in the middle of the morning, in the middle of a war – wanting to know what democracy is.

On the one hand, I feel called upon to play my part of good loser.

Fought the good fight and lost but ready to go on.

I want to admit that maybe, just maybe, Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right, more than half of the time.

But I can’t.

I feel the picture Mr. White paints of America in World War 2, believe or not, was a much sunnier place, a much more hopeful place than America today.

I wish my feeling for Democracy had the elasticity that the faith of those on other side has that allows them to bend their faith and their beliefs to embrace that guy.

I want the country to feel the feeling of vitality everywhere.

But it sure seems we are, to quote Mr. Churchill, about to enter a new dark age.

I am going to have faith in the Constituion.

And hang on and hold my breath for the next 4 years.

Still thinking about 1943 and the era Mr. White writes about that FDR won again, again and again.

I am reminded of an anecdote that I have written about before.

I like the story, but I cannot recall where I read it or the citation for it but here it is.

This author was a kid during WW2 and grew up in the Republican strong hold of Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

He reminded a spring evening once where all the people in the neighborhood built bonfires and danced in big circles, joining hands around the fires to celebrate.

Looking at a calendar, he puzzled out that this had to have happened in April or May of 1945 and he asked his mother if she remembered and was the celebration for VE, Victory in Europe, Day, the day Germany surrendured.

“OH NO,” said his mother, “We danced because Roosevelt was dead.”