1.11.2026 – stand firm for the right

my hope this tragic
incident will strengthen the
determination

stand firm for the right
which exists in this country
of peaceful dissent

This should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy.

It is my hope that this tragic and unfortunate incident will strengthen the determination of all the Nation’s campuses-

-administrators, faculty, and students alike-

-to stand firmly for the right which exists in this country of peaceful dissent and just as strongly against the resort to violence as a means of such expression.

President Richard Nixon in a Statement on the Deaths of Four Students at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, on May 4, 1970.

A two stanza haiku.

I have questioned in the past whether such a thing exists and the answer I got from my brother who teaches poetry, which you can under the heading, What is a Haiku?, and he said I could name anything I wanted to a name a haiku … not that it made a haiku.

Which is good enough for me so today’s haiku has two stanzas.

Some time ago I was talking with another one of my brothers, I have 8 so I guess I am always talking to a brother about something, and I worried about the state of affairs impacting our country.

I felt the country was teetering on the edge of the abyss.

He countered that when he was in college, the prevailing discussion was pretty much the soon.

Protests, riots and dissension were tearing the county apart in the 70’s.

Leaders from the President to Civil Rights icons and Senators were being gun downed in city streets.

And students had been shot and killed by the National Guard.

At that time, he put forward that the county came through that period of history.

And I shut up and pondered.

I was 9 years old when on May 4, 1970 when a troop of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd of Kent State University Students who were protesting the expansion of the war in Vietnam by US forces moving into Cambodia, killing 4 people and wounding 9.

I don’t remember it.

Two of my brothers were off in Ann Arbor (someone in my family was always off in Ann Arbor) and I don’t remember my parents talking about it.

It took a long time for the news and the information and the images to filter out from Ohio.

I recently read that to slow down the spread of information, Kent State asked Bell Telephone to turn off the phones in student dorms.

There were photographs that appeared on the TV news.

There were stories on the radio news.

But it really wasn’t until Life Magazine arrived in mail boxes and news stands across the Nation that story hit home.

Not in the split seconds of today but 11 days later.

And it wasn’t in a message on a phone or email, but in a magazine that demanded that you stop and take time in absorb the images and the story.

A question was asked by the father of one the student who was killed, “Is this dissent a crime? It it a reason for killing?”

We are asking that question again.

Bernard Miller, the father of Jeff Miller, the student lying dead in the famous Pulitzer prize winning photo, said in the Life Magazine article, “But shooting into a crowd of kids – THAT is violence. They say it could happen again if the Guard is threatened. They consider stones threat enough to kill children. I think the violence comes from the government.”

What do I remember about Kent State from back then?

I must have heard stories and such that come down to a 9 year old and I was inquisitive and at sometime I came across the Reader Digest magazine with an article about the shooting.

I read it and tried to understand but what stuck in brain was the story related by a Kent State student.

The student told how Kent State shut down for 6 weeks and all the students were sent home.

Traveling with his friends on the Ohio Turnpike he told how a toll booth operater leaned out to take their money, noticed their Kent State parking sticker and held up four fingers.

They asked why the four fingers?

And the toll booth operator said something along the lines of, “We got 4 of you this time.”

1.7.2026 – if not enjoying

if not enjoying
a volume, put it down and
move on to the next

Don’t force it: If you’re not enjoying a volume, put it down and move on to the next. “I am a huge advocate for not finishing a book,” says Menzies. “If you don’t like a book, no one’s judging you. You’re not failing.”

In a reading rut? How to get back into reading for fun by Madeleine Aggeler

Ms. Aggler is quoting a Morgan Menzies, who is a literary curator and social media influencer.

I am not sure exactly what a literary curator and social media influencer is or does but there you are.

Ms. Aggler closes with Make it fun Finally, make sure you’re having a good time.

And again quotes literary curator and social media influencer Menzies who says, “Reading is something that should bring you joy. There’s a lot you can gain from it.”

Make it fun?

Far be it from me to differ or question a literary curator and social media influencer, but how does one MAKE something FUN for someone else.

I recall a passage in the biography of Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr., where the author states:

The men who came to the Holmes house to tea, to dinner — Emerson, Dr. James Freeman Clarke, Mr. Lowell, Mr. Appleton — never read a book because it was the thing to do. They read with passionate interest and with passionate interest discussed what they had read.

Passionate interest.

I put it to you that if you are passionately interested in something, reading about it, be it fishing, football or how coffee was brought to the US Army on France in World War 2 (and a history of the US ARMY Coffee Service in WW2 is fascinating), will be FUN.

I started reading right off.

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t passionately interested in EVERYTHING and I wanted to read everything.

My parents bought the 1st and 2nd grade readers (real Dick and Jane books) when I was in kindergarten.

When I got to 1st grade, I asked the teacher, what else you got?

I remember in 8th grade I had to take a reading comprehension test and got called into the hall to be asked if I cheated as I scored higher on the test than mathematically anyone should have been able to score.

I will say that early on I also learned to start a book and say NOPE.

Sometimes it’s the opening language.

Sometimes the story doesn’t make it to the land of suspension of disbelief.

Sometimes it’s factual. I recently picked up a new book on the Nuremburg Trials after WW2 ( a book maybe prompted by the recent film) and on page two the author pointed out that the United States would be represented by Chief Justice Robert Jackson.

Well folks, it was Associate Justice Robert Jackson in Nuremburg and Chief Justice Harlon Fiske Stone stayed happily in Washington during the trial and that was as far as I got into the book.

So it was with some wonder when back in sixth grade I got my report card from Grand Rapids Crestview Elementary school.

The report cards at that time had three rows for marks.

Above expectation was row one.

Satisfactory was row two.

Unsatisfactory was row three.

We just used the short hand of saying did we get row 1 or row 2 or the dreaded row 3.

My Mom came home from Parent / Teacher conferences and handed me my card from Mr. Vanderwheel.

Behavior and all that was pretty much row three but the classroom work, English, Social Studies and Math were all Row 1 and Row 2.

At the bottom was one heading that was circled in red.

Reading.

I got a third row.

Mom let me look at at for a bit.

Then she said, “Mr. Vanderwheel says you spend most of the day with you nose in a book.”

I held out the card with my face one big question mark,

“But,” she said, “You have yet to turn in any book reports.”

Book reports?

We had to turn in two book reports a marking period.

One pagers with title, author, short synopsis and what you learned.

Well, what did that I have to do with reading I wanted to know.

It wasn’t my first time my lack of devotion to just-do-the-work and my outlook on education came into conflict.

All a book report, a REQUIRED Book report, did was rob my reading of all passion and made it work and took all the fun out it.

By this time I had read Tom Sawyer and when Tom whitewashes the fence and Mr. Twain wrote, ” … he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do,” I knew exactly what Mr. Twain was saying.

If the point was reading, what more did Mr. Vanderwheel want?

I mean, boy howdy.

From then on, once a month, I would grab the first book I found in the library, get a piece of paper and as fast I could, write the title, author, a paragraph about what the book looked like it might be about and what I liked about it.

Meet George Washington by Joan Heilbroner – this book was about George Washington and the many things he learned while growing up in Virginia and building his home at Mount Vernon that helped him as he fought in the Revolutionary war and was the 1st President. My favorite part was when he took his army in boats across the river to attack the Hessians at Trenton and Princeton. It is a good book and we should all read it.

I got 1st rows in reading.

There was something to be learned from this and I learned a lot in school but often the lessons I learned weren’t in any lesson planner.

1.5.2026 – much emotional

much emotional
content occurs before we
are nineteen, twenty

Probably everyone feels this on their first true flight from whatever nest, but it is no less real for being so universally shared!

We all have mothers and fathers, and what sweet anguish, sometimes terror, there is in those names.

If you give it much thought, the skeleton of life is stupendously ordinary.

So much of the emotional content of our lives seems to occur before we are nineteen or twenty, doesn’t it?

After that, especially by our age, we seem like stone walls, mortared together by scar tissue.

The whole point is not to be.

From all my reading done in construction camps throughout the world, the main point or challenge is to stay as conscious as possible, absurd as that seems.

Sundog: a novel : the story of an American foreman, Robert Corvus Strang, as told to Jim Harrison by Jim Harrison (Washington Square Press: New York, 1989).

1.4.2025 – there’s a gallon of

there’s a gallon of
milk from 1908 that’s
aged better than that

This thing of writing these essays started as an effort to recognized use of words in today’s media.

With that in mind, I cannot recall the last time I read anything like the line, “There’s a gallon of milk from 1908 that’s aged better than that.”

From the New York Times story, What we got right — and wrong — in weird NFL season: Concern for Bills, belief in Chiefs by Saad Yousuf where, under the heading, “Things we got wrong,” Mr. Yousuf writes:

The “genuinely mediocre” teams: Back in Week 3, we took on the task of categorizing the 12 teams that split their first two games and sat at 1-1. One of the categories was “genuinely mediocre,” and it included three teams: the Patriots, Denver Broncos and Jacksonville Jaguars. That’s right. The only three teams that enter Week 18 with a chance to clinch the top seed in the AFC were labeled as “genuinely mediocre.” There’s a gallon of milk from 1908 that’s aged better than that.

I have to say that based on what was going on in Week 3, Mr. Yousef’s choices looked pretty safe but who could have known how the NFL, through their officiating proxies, would ordain that the season play out?

Back in the day I was sitting in a pre-election meeting at a TV station in Atlanta, Georgia and the News Director put on the table the idea of creating a list of the greatest un kept election year promises in Georgia history.

I banged the table and yelled, “Sherman will never cross the border!“

I’d have to say that there are gallons of milk for 1864 that aged better than that one.

No one could come up with anything better, though ‘Izzy will be loved by generations of Atlantan’s‘ came close.

1.3.2025 – I guess I mean this

I guess I mean this
if lived well … then just as true …
is the peace you feel

Adapted from the book, I See You’ve Called in Dead – A Novel by John Kenney (Zibby Publishing: New York, 2025), where Mr. Kenney writes: (Tim, the landlord and friend of Bud, the hero of the novel, is speaking)

I don’t really know what I mean either.

I guess I mean this.

That at the end — and I’ve had the privilege to be in the room with a few people now, my parents, two friends—I think, and it’s just a guess, but I think we let go of everything and the true nature of experience falls over us.

This … miracle that is existence.

Which we layer with so much.

With anxiety and fear and greed and smallness and what’s next and hurry up and I’ve got a meeting and all the … stuff … that gets in the way.

I’m not saying we should all go live like a monk.

I’m saying that if you haven’t lived the life you want, if you haven’t loved life, then at the end, I think a deep and very sad regret comes over you.

But if you have, if you’ve lived well … friends and family and … if you’ve lived … then just as true is the peace you feel. I’ve seen it.

Does this make any sense or do I sound mad?

With anxiety and fear and greed and smallness and what’s next and hurry up and I’ve got a meeting and all the … stuff … that gets in the way.

Does this make any sense or do I sound mad?

Mad, not meaning angry but crazy.

I think the passage makes, if anything, too much sense.

Maybe that’s the craziest part of the passage.

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.