Category: Series

8.5.2024 – day was rainy dark

day was rainy dark
rain fell on the barn roof and
dripped steadily

4 o’clock in the afternoon in the sunny south

The next day was rainy and dark.

Rain fell on the roof of the barn and dripped steadily from the eaves.

Rain fell in the barnyard and ran in crooked courses down into the lane where thistles and pigweed grew.

Rain spattered against Mrs. Zuckerman’s kitchen windows and came gushing out of the downspouts.

Rain fell on the backs of the sheep as they grazed in the meadow.

When the sheep tired of standing in the rain, they walked slowly up the lane and into the fold.

From Charlotte’s Web by EB White.

It has been raining all day here in the Low Country of South Carolina and it is supposed to rain for another 2 days.

I have been told to work from home tomorrow and we will see about Wednesday when Wednesday comes.

The rain falls on the roofs of the buildings here in the apartment complex and it drips off the eaves.

We wait for worse things.

Tidal surges.

Power outages.

Mandatory evacuations.

What fun.

We watch and we wait.

Do we have everything powered up if the power goes down?

What do we do without power?

Go to bed early I guess but I don’t want to find out.

For a bit of hope, the passage from Mr. White describes a big day for Wilbur the pig.

After a distressful day of rain and cold and boredom, Wilbur meets Charlotte.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

It will be Thursday before we know it, I hope.

And the rain, rain will have gone away.

8.1.2024 – we will all wake some

we will all wake some
morning to learn that there is
not one decent man

We doubt that there ever was a time in this country when so many people were trying to discredit so many other people. About a year ago, we started to compile a handbook of defamation, showing who was disemboweling whom in America, but the list soon got too big for us and we abandoned the project as both unwieldy and unlovely. Discreditation has become a national sickness, for which no cure has so far been found, and there is a strong likelihood that we will all wake some morning to learn that in the whole land there is not one decent man. Vilification, condemnation, revelation—these supply a huge part of the columns of the papers, and the story of life in the Unit.

From the essay, Discredit of Others, published on October 4th, 1952 in the New Yorker Magazine and republished in On democracy / E. B. White; edited by Martha White; foreword by Jon Meacham, New York, Harper Collins, 2019.

In the forward to the book is this quote from Mr. White.

To hold America in one’s thoughts is like holding a love letter in one’s hand—it has so special a meaning.

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