2.21.2026 – you think you’re exempt

you think you’re exempt
world handed on a platter
therefore it’s all yours

” … struck me as a typical sports hero.

I know the type, because I was once one myself, or so the sports pages kept informing me.

You get to the point where you expect people to do whatever you want because they’ve been lucky enough to breathe the same air you breathe.

When you pass by people who are talking, you assume they’re talking about you.

You think you’re exempt from the rules of ordinary conduct, since the world has been handed you on a platter, and therefore it’s all yours.

Money?

There wasn’t much money in football forty years ago, the way there is now, although then, like now, you were likely to take the money mainly to show everybody how wonderful you were.“

From the book A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, 1998).

These words are delivered by the Charlie Croker, the main character or Tom Wolfe’s book about the Atlanta Developer in the midst of a financial crisis of his own making.

Mr. Croker got an edge to his start in Atlanta business due to being a star of the Georgia Tech football team and he played those connections into a world of fabulous wealth.

And how did he get there?

You get to the point where you expect people to do whatever you want because they’ve been lucky enough to breathe the same air you breathe.

When you pass by people who are talking, you assume they’re talking about you.

You think you’re exempt from the rules of ordinary conduct, since the world has been handed you on a platter, and therefore it’s all yours.

Any reading of history and you see these people from the get go.

You might say that back in the book of Genesis, Cain, even though when God told Cain, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”, Cain felt exempt from the rules of ordinary conduct and went his own way.

From the get go.

We should be and I guess for the most part, we are used to these people being in the world.

It happens to sports stars, rich people … presidents.

What also survives from the get is that warning.

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door.

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Offerings of Cain and Abel,

*Genesis Chapter 4:

2.18.2026 – eh, it comes to

eh, it comes to
money people stop being
human pretty quick

Anyway, now he’s up there in bed watching them cart out the furniture from under him.

It won’t go that quickly, they have laws about it, and they must be only human after all.

When it comes to money, people stop being human pretty quick.

What’s going to happen to the building?

They’ll chase out the ghosts.

But what if they’re good ghosts?

Still. How can anyone end up in that much debt, eh?

Because people don’t know what they’re doing.

They all run around with their pressed shirts and gold fountain pens, thinking they’re important and not even realising they’re carrying around their own disaster in their briefcases.

From The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler, English translation by Katy Derbyshire (Canongate Books Ltd: Edinburg, 2025).

2.17.2026 – world so full should be

world so full should be
happy as kings, and you know …
how happy kings are

One sweet morning in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and thirty-nine, a little old gentleman got up and threw wide the windows of his bedroom, letting in the living sun. A black-widow spider, who had been dozing on the balcony, slashed at him, and although she missed, she did not miss very far. The old gentleman went downstairs to the dining room and was just sitting down to a splendid breakfast when his grandson, a boy named Burt, pulled the chair from under him. The old man’s hip was strained, but it was fortunately not broken.

Out in the street, as he limped toward a little park with many trees, which was to him a green isle in the sea, the old man was tripped up by a gaily colored hoop sent rolling at him, with a kind of disinterested deliberation, by a grim little girl. Hobbling on a block farther, the old man was startled, but not exactly surprised, when a bold daylight robber stuck a gun in his ribs. “Put ‘em up, Mac,” said the robber, “and come across.” Mac put them up and came across with his watch and money and a gold ring his mother had given him when he was a boy.

When at last the old gentleman staggered into the little park, which had been to him a fountain and a shrine, he saw that half the trees had been killed by a blight and the other half by a bug. Their leaves were gone and they no longer afforded any protection from the skies, so the hundred planes which appeared suddenly overhead had an excellent view of the little old gentleman through their bombing sights.

Moral: The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings, and you know how happy kings are.

Further Fables VIII by James Thurber as was printed today, February 17, in the New Yorker Magazine back in 1940.

The first 2 stanzas of the moral are from the Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem Happy Thought (XXIV) from Mr. Stevenson’s Child’s Book of Verse.

The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

The final part, and you know how happy kings are, was a favorite Thurber quote.

Oh how I wish for a Thurber or a Mencken to experience this era …

But then, I wouldn’t wish this era on anyone.

As Mr. Thurber said, The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings, and you know how happy kings are.

The fable must have been too dark as it wasn’t picked to be the either Fables for Our Time, published in 1939 or Further Fables for Our Time published in 1955, but had to wait for the Collected Fables which didn’t come around until 2019.

2.15.2026 – worst of times, age of

worst of times, age of
foolishness, the epoch of
incredulity

La barricade ferme la rue mais ouvre la voie!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,

it was the age of wisdom,

it was the age of foolishness,

it was the epoch of belief,

it was the epoch of incredulity,

it was the season of Light,

it was the season of Darkness,

it was the spring of hope,

it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us,

we had nothing before us,

we were all going direct to Heaven,

we were all going direct the other way –

in short, the period was so far like the present period,

that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil,

in the superlative degree of comparison only.

The opening to A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

Mr. Dickens was trying to portray life in the era of the French Revolution.

Something the Brits must have viewed with a bit of relief.

See the French had a law about leaving France to go to the new world.

You had support the government, had to support the King and you had to be a Catholic in good standing with the Church.

The Brits took the line of ‘if you don’t like it here, you can go to America and complain there.’

So those PROTESTing PROTESTants did and when the time came for a British revolution, it was far from home.

In France, they kept all the rabble rousers home and when they had their revolution it was in the front yard.

Mr. Dickens was writing a little more than 50 years after the events of revolution in France.

Here is almost 225 years later.

And it is the worst of times …

The age of foolishness …

The epoch of incredulity …

The season of Darkness …

The winter of despair …

Nothing before us …

We were all going direct not to Heaven, but the other way …

Still …

Remember, the barricade blocks the street but opens the way.

PS: By chance I put this haiku together from the book and was thinking about a picture to use and I checked my Thurber database to see that this drawing with the caption, See you at the barricades, Mr. Whitsonby! was first published in the New Yorker Magazine on February 15, 1936. 90 years ago today! And as we all remember, to the barricades is the motto of the French Revolution or as history has it, La barricade ferme la rue mais ouvre la voie! or The barricade blocks the street but opens the way.

2.14.2026 – let it, love, go on

let it, love, go on
heartbeats are measured out with
a measuring glass

Let it go on; let the love of this hour be poured out till all the answers are made, the last dollar spent and the last blood gone.

Time runs with an ax and a hammer, time slides down the hallways with a pass-key and a master-key, and time gets by, time wins.

Let the love of this hour go on; let all the oaths and children and people of this love be clean as a washed stone under a waterfall in the sun.

Time is a young man with ballplayer legs, time runs a winning race against life and the clocks, time tickles with rust and spots.

Let love go on; the heartbeats are measured out with a measuring glass, so many apiece to gamble with, to use and spend and reckon; let love go on.

Let Love Go On by Carl Sandberg as published in Smoke and Steel in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandberg (Harcourt, Brace and Company: New York, 1950).