with holiday pomp autumn Saturdays present a vivid pageant
In the third week in October, the football season opens with the pomp of a major holiday. On these autumn Saturdays the population is sometimes trebled, and the town presents a vivid pageant.”
A description of Ann Arbor from The WPA Guide to Michigan Federal Writers’ Project, 1941.
During the 1930s in the United States, the Works Progress Administration developed the Federal Writers’ Project to support writers and artists while making a national effort to document the country’s shared history and culture. The American Guide series consists of individual guides to each of the states. Little-known authors—many of whom would later become celebrated literary figures—were commissioned to write these important books. John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison are among the more than 6,000 writers, editors, historians, and researchers who documented this celebration of local histories. Photographs, drawings, driving tours, detailed descriptions of towns, and rich cultural details exhibit each state’s unique flavor.
Alistair Cooke would later write in the preface the companion book to his 13 part TV series, America, that:
“On all my trips, from the late 1930s on, I packed in an orange crate in the trunk of my car the federal guides to all the states I was likely to drive through. These had been written by penurious writers and local historians enlisted under the Writers Program of the government’s Works Projects Administration during the Depression. America, which had had no guidebooks worth the name, suddenly had a library of the best; and it was these unsung historians who put me on to hundreds of places along the road that few tourists had ever heard about.”
there’s thought and no thought paleness and bloom and bustle and pleasure and gloom
A Character by William Wordsworth, 1800.
I marvel how Nature could ever find space For so many strange contrasts in one human face: There’s thought and no thought, and there’s paleness and bloom And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure and gloom.
There’s weakness, and strength both redundant and vain; Such strength as, if ever affliction and pain Could pierce through a temper that’s soft to disease, Would be rational peace—a philosopher’s ease.
There’s indifference, alike when he fails or succeeds, And attention full ten times as much as there needs; Pride where there’s no envy, there’s so much of joy; And mildness, and spirit both forward and coy.
There’s freedom, and sometimes a diffident stare Of shame scarcely seeming to know that she’s there, There’s virtue, the title it surely may claim, Yet wants heaven knows what to be worthy the name.
This picture from nature may seem to depart, Yet the Man would at once run away with your heart; And I for five centuries right gladly would be Such an odd such a kind happy creature as he.
As printed in The complete poetical works of William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth, 1770-1850 Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin company, 1904.
I was walking through the Mall of Georgia a few years ago and this young woman came out of a store and told me she had something to show me.
I was with some time on my hands so I went along and she had me sit in a chair and held a mirror in front of me and asked wouldn’t I want to look 10 years youngers.
It was funny as she had asked me to take my glasses off and I had to ask her to hold the mirror in front of my nose so I could see myself.
That was how I always saw myself without glasses.
If I wanted to look at myself in a mirror and if I took my glasses I became an impressionistic painting.
Old man in mall could have been the title of the painting.
Either that way or as an extreme closeup so I no idea really of what I look like without glasses.
I looked at myself in the mirror and said to the young woman that I was pretty much at home with my age and my face so no, I didn’t want to look 10 years younger.
She screwed up her face like no one had every told her what to do if someone said no or that they were at home with their face.
But she played a good game and asked if I wanted to see what I would look like.
I shrugged having nothing better to do.
She picked up a tube and squeezed a dab of this cream onto her finger and the she rubbed that stuff all around my right eye.
She said to wait and all the wrinkles would be gone so we waited and she kept looking at my face.
The stuff burned a little bit and I said I wasn’t that thrilled with the process, especially when she got a little more and rubbed it under my eye.
She stood back and grabbed the mirror for me to see myself and again I couldn’t see without my glasses.
“Sir”, she said, “almost all your wrinkles are gone.”
Then she look hard at under my eye.
“Except for this one here, I don’t get it,” she said.
Oh that, I said.
“That’s not a wrinkle. That’s a scar.“
She jumped back and looked at me.
“A scar?”
“Really?”
“Really.“
That took even more off her game but she came back and tried to tell me how much better I looked but I wasn’t buying it.
Especially something at $300 a tube and wore off in a couple of hours.
But I quoted the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson that when a person gets old, they get the face they deserve.
She thought about that and looked at me and look at my scar and kind shook her head.
“You really aren’t interested are you?” she asked.
And we chatted for a few minutes.
She was a recent immigrant from Russia and she loved America and Americans and now she had met someone who was a little bit different.
But she had other people to grab out of the mall and I had to be some where and I got up andI was walking out of the store when she called me back.
“Sir“, she said, holding out the tube of stuff and pointing at my other eye.
“Don’t you at least want to match?”
I marvel how Nature could ever find space For so many strange contrasts in one human face:
a moral duty maybe … it fails to invoke a legal duty
“Mr. Arredondo has contended that he was not the incident commander, and his lawyers said it does not matter in the context of the indictment. “Such an allegation may invoke a moral duty to perform his job well, but it fails to invoke a legal duty,” the lawyers argued in their filings.”
From the article, “Former Uvalde School Police Chief Asks Court to Toss Charges” By Edgar Sandoval.
The article sub headline is, “Investigations have singled out Pete Arredondo for the delayed police response to a 2022 school shooting in Texas. He is expected to appear in court for the first time on Monday.”
I hate to say it but I guess I see the point the lawyers are trying to make.
Chief Pete Arredondo MAY have had a moral duty to perform his job well and protect the lives of those little kids in Uvalde but that doesn’t mean he had a legal duty to do anything about it and just because he let a little thing like … a lack of morals I guess … that and the ability to live with himself should not leave him open to legal prosecution for not performing his job well and not protecting those kids.
While I can see their point, those lawyers lose me along the way there somewhere.
But I have to ask, would I have been any different?
Had I been Chief of School District Police … goodness but I hope so.
sometimes don’t care for nothin’, sometimes search heads for meanings, stories, stars..
For Labor Day, 2024, a haiku based on the poem Work Gangs by Carl Sandburg as published in his book of poems, Smoke and steel, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920.
Box cars run by a mile long. And I wonder what they say to each other When they stop a mile long on a sidetrack. Maybe their chatter goes: I came from Fargo with a load of wheat up to the danger line. I came from Omaha with a load of shorthorns and they splintered my boards. I came from Detroit heavy with a load of flivvers. I carried apples from the Hood river last year and this year bunches of bananas from Florida; they look for me with watermelons from Mississippi next year.
Hammers and shovels of work gangs sleep in shop corners when the dark stars come on the sky and the night watchmen walk and look.
Then the hammer heads talk to the handles, then the scoops of the shovels talk, how the day’s work nicked and trimmed them, how they swung and lifted all day, how the hands of the work gangs smelled of hope. In the night of the dark stars when the curve of the sky is a work gang handle, in the night on the mile long sidetracks, in the night where the hammers and shovels sleep in corners, the night watchmen stuff their pipes with dreams— and sometimes they doze and don’t care for nothin’, and sometimes they search their heads for meanings, stories, stars. The stuff of it runs like this: A long way we come; a long way to go; long rests and long deep sniffs for our lungs on the way. Sleep is a belonging of all; even if all songs are old songs and the singing heart is snuffed out like a switchman’s lantern with the oil gone, even if we forget our names and houses in the finish, the secret of sleep is left us, sleep belongs to all, sleep is the first and last and best of all.
People singing; people with song mouths connecting with song hearts; people who must sing or die; people whose song hearts break if there is no song mouth; these are my people.
No Haiku For You 