September 23 – Fall’s first days? Not here!

Fall’s first days? Not here!
90 degree days for weeks
no frosty pumpkins …

Hotlanta (oh wait, media is forbidden to use that term) usually has 37 ninety-degree-plus days per year.

In 2019, there are have already been 79.

Hoping for some relief to this heat fatigue, I look forward to fall.

My mind has turned to pot roast, pies and other eatables that use the oven.

Looking forward however, the march of ninety-degree-plus days continues.

Comfort food on hold while the air conditioning stays on to keep us comfortable.

September 22 – Unexplainable?

Unexplainable?
Unexcuasable? Michigan?
Writers saw same team.

Michigan, as a football team, stunk up the joint yesterday.

Michigan, as a football team, stinks.

Michigan, until about 2PM Saturday afternoon was thought to be one of the best teams in the county.

A top ten team.

Michigan changed everyone’s minds with their game play at Wisconsin.

Their performace was unexplainable.

Their performance was unexcusavke.

They were pretenders.

They were a fraud.

Now wait just a minute.

The only reason most of us had any idea that Michigan was a top ten team was because the people who are paid to know such things told us such things.

Like Will Rodges, all I know is what I read in the papers.

What, where, who, how and why did the collective sports world think Michigan was so good?

And because the sportwriters thought so and wrote so and said so, it is Michigan’s fault that the team is not as good as the sportwriters thought?

How dumb and I to listen to sports writers?

At the end of the day, I am a Michigan Man, so called.

A winning football team would be better than a losing football, but I do not consider myself a Michigan Man because OF the football team.

While in no way comparable, I am reminded of the Iron Brigade in the Civil War.

The Iron Brigade was the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of the 1st Corps of the Army of the Potomac.

The wore distinctive black hats called a Hardee Hat which looked like a Lincoln stovepipe hat with a wide brim, pinned up on one side, aussie style.

This in the Army of the Potomac, the army of the Eastern United States, was made up of regiments from Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan.

It was recognized as one of the hard fighting units in the army and was famous throughout both the armies if the North and South.

At Gettysburg, when the Iron Brigade came into view, Confederate soldiers were heard to say, ‘It’s those Black Hat fellers again.’

It was at Gettysburg that the Iron Brigade was wrecked.

In the first day at Gettysburg, the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of the 1st Corps of the Army of the Potomac lost two thirds of its effective strength of 1800 men.

“And,” wrote Bruce Catton in Glory Road, his thee volume history of the Army of the Potomac, “for the rest of the war, it existed as a shadow, always a great name but never again a mighty force in battle.”

Like I wrote, the state of Michigan Football cannot in anyway be compared to the Iron Brigade.

But the simply poetry of the phrase, always a great name, appeals to me.

I hope I am wrong.

I hope the eggheads in the Athens of the West can collectively come up with a Coach who can prepare a team of athlete’s to compete on the big stage.

If not, win or lose, always a great name.

I can live with that.

September 20 – AJC part time

AJC part time
packaging associate positions
once were paper boys

Today in the AJC, or the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper, there was a job posting for part time packaging associates.

When I grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, my father subscribed to both the Detroit Free Press for the morning and The Grand Rapids Press in the evening and both were delivered by paper boys with paper routes.

Made the news, somehow, more human.

Can’t wrap fish in yesterday’s website.

September 18 – moment beyond words

moment beyond words
Grand daughter and James Thurber
being read to me

After saying it was a moment beyond words, I am going to try and put my feelings into words.

Very inadequate words.

I asked my Grand Daughter if she wanted a story before bedtime and I picked up my copy of Thurber Carnival and found the fable, The Moth and Star.

Azaria said she would like a story but she grabbed the book and read to me.

My first grade grand daughter, working her way through James Thurber, sounding out the words like ‘impressionable’ and ‘singed’. pausing to look up to me for the occasional definition, was such stuff as dreams are made from.

My hope for the today is that everyone, anyone should have such a moment in their life.

The Moth and the Star

A young and impressionable moth once set his heart on a certain star. He told his mother about this and she counseled him to set his heart on a bridge lamp instead. “Stars aren’t the thing to hang around,” she said; “lamps are the thing to hang around.” “You get somewhere that way,” said the moth’s father. “You don’t get anywhere chasing stars.” But the moth would not heed the words of either parent. Every evening at dusk when the star came out he would start flying toward it and every morning at dawn he would crawl back home worn out with his vain endeavor. One day his father said to him, “You haven’t burned a wing in months, boy, and it looks to me as if you were never going to. All your brothers have been badly burned flying around street lamps and all your sisters have been terribly singed flying around house lamps. Come on, now, get out of here and get yourself scorched! A big strapping moth like you without a mark on him!”

The moth left his father’s house, but he would not fly around street lamps and he would not fly around house lamps. He went right on trying to reach the star, which was four and one-third light years, or twenty-five trillion miles, away. The moth thought it was just caught up in the top branches of an elm. He never did reach the star, but he went right on trying, night after night, and when he was a very, very old moth he began to think that he really had reached the star and he went around saying so. This gave him a deep and lasting pleasure, and he lived to a great old age. His parents and his brothers and his sisters had all been burned to death when they were quite young.

Moral: Who flies afar from the sphere of our sorrow is here today and here tomorrow.

from Further fables for our time by James Thurber, New York : Simon and Schuster, 1956.

September 17 – history names place

history names place
poetry of Antietam
fitting and proper

On Sept 17, 1863, the Civil War battle of Antietam Creek or just, Antietam, took place.

It is known as the bloodiest day in US History.

yearly Memorial Illumination – 23,000 candles

The term “Antietam” is thought to derive from an Algonquian phrase meaning “swift-flowing stream” according to Wikipedia.

Sometimes the word, the name and the place all come together.

Antietam works.