11.2.2024 – he knew no jury

he knew no jury
darken honest man’s future
with unjust verdict

When the charge of election bribery was brought against an Illinois senator, he replied, “I read the Bible and believe it from cover to cover”

When his accusers specified five hundred dollars of corruption money was paid in a St Louis hotel bathroom, his friends answered, “He is faithful to his wife and always kind to his children”

When he was ousted from the national senate and the doors of his bank were closed by government receivers and a grand jury indicted him, he took the vows of an old established church

When a jury acquitted him of guilt as a bank wrecker, following the testimony of prominent citizens that he was an honest man, he issued a statement to the public for the newspapers, proclaiming he knew beforehand no jury would darken the future of an honest man with an unjust verdict

Implications by as printed in Good morning, America, by Carl Sandburg, Harcourt Brace, New York, 1928.

Mr. Sandburg titled this poem, Implications.

The online Oxford Dictionary defines implications as “the conclusion that can be drawn from something although it is not explicitly stated.”

Mr. Sandburg published his poem, Implications, back in 1928.

I am startled not by the implications, the laundry list of wrongs or implied wrongs, that has been going on forever.

But that the Senator in question was backed and continued to be backed, regardless or in spite of evidence to the contrary, by ‘prominent citizens‘ and the Senator’s self assurance in his knowledge beforehand that the jury would be swayed by the testimony of the ‘prominent citizens.’

You could bet cash money this poem had been written yesterday, not 100 years ago.

Who needs social media?

Who needs influencers?

PS: 3 days out of the last 4, I have turned to Mr. Sandburg. If he were alive today, he wouldn’t stop throwing up.

10.30.2024 – money buys everything

money buys everything
‘cept love, personality,
freedom, or peace

Money is power so said one
Money is a cushion so said another
Money is the root of evil so said still another
Money means freedom so runs an old saying
And money is all of these – and more
Money pays for whatever you want — if you have the money
Money buys food, clothes, houses, land, guns, jewels, men, women, time to be lazy and listen to music
Money buys everything except love, personality, freedom, immortality, silence, peace

Carl Sandburg in The People, Yes as published in the Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, Harcourt Brace and Company, New York, 1957.

Such cheek on my part to adapt Carl Sandburg and change around his words but there it is.

When Mr. Sandburg died in the summer of 1967, the office of President Lyndon Johnson issued this statement in his name.

THE ROAD has come to an end for Carl Sandburg, my friend

Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America. We knew and cherished him as the bard of democracy, the echo of the people, our conscience, and chronicler of truth and beauty and purpose.

Carl Sandburg needs no epitaph. It is written for all time in the fields, the cities, the face and heart of the land he loved and the people he celebrated and inspired.

With the world, we mourn his passing. It is our special pride and fortune as Americans that we will always hear Carl Sandburg’s voice within ourselves. For he gave us the truest and most enduring vision of our own greatness.

At a memorial service for Mr. Sandburg held in front of the Lincoln Memorial later that fall of 1967, President Johnson closed his remarks with:

He knew that always in America “the strong men keep coming on.”

I will miss him; we will all miss him. There will not be one like him again.

But that line of Mr. Johnson’s, “For he gave us the truest and most enduring vision of our own greatness.“

And I read … Money buys everything except love, personality, freedom, immortality, silence, peace.

I will miss him; we will all miss him. There will not be one like him again.

10.17.2024 – tell me, what is it

tell me, what is it
you plan to do with your one
wild and precious life?

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

“The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver as published in New and Selected Poems, Volume One, Boston, Beacon Press; Reprint edition (April 15, 2004)

Thoughts for the end of summer days on the beach while thinking about my sister in October.

My sister is the person who got me into reading Mary Oliver in the first place.

She knows how to pay attention.

I know how to fall down.

She knows how to stroll through the fields,

I know how to be idle

We both know what it is to be blessed.

Some questions are too hard.

10.14.2024 – The Detroit Lions

The Detroit Lions
made a statement to the league …
NFL’s best team

My Monday morning started as my fall Monday mornings have started for the last 40 years.

I get my coffee and review the weekend’s pro football games.

With online news, I can flip through the New York Times Athletic, The Guardian, USA Today Sports, The Detroit Free Press and the Detroit news.

This morning I read sentences made up of words I never thought I would ever see in anyone’s lifetime, let alone my life.

I read …

The Lions arrived in Dallas looking for a win — their first in three tries under Dan Campbell. They’ll leave with not only that, but a statement win. This was an all-out dismantling of the Cowboys. The offense never punted and put up 47 points. The defense forced five turnovers and held the Cowboys to three field goals. You could make a strong argument this is the most complete win of the Campbell era.

Defensively, Detroit suffocated the Cowboys (3-3) offense.

The manner of the defeat on Sunday is more impactful than the loss itself. Detroit bullied the Cowboys, on offense and defense.

Losing is one thing. Being humiliated at home – again – in a season that the Cowboys entered with championship expectations is something bleaker.

A run defense that has struggled all season had no shot against the best offensive line in the NFL.

Sunday’s 47-9 drubbing at the hands of the Lions may have felt more like watching The Substance than Love Is Blind, but seeing the Cowboys being beaten on their own home turf remains must-watch TV.

In the nearly 30 years since the Cowboys last won the Super Bowl, there have been plenty of lows. Sunday’s defeat, though, felt like a nadir. It was the team’s worst loss since 2010 – and the worst at home since before the days of Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith.

The Cowboys have lost three straight since, all in embarrassing fashion. They were routed 44-19 by the Saints in Week 2, fell 28-25 to the Ravens in Week 4 in a game that was never really close, and on Sunday were dismantled by the Lions 47-9, the franchise’s worst loss since 2010 and worst at home going all the way back to 1988.

Detroit spent the remainder of the game playing with their food, trying, in vain, to draw up a touchdown for one of their offensive linemen. It almost felt like bullying.

The best division in football — which was the AFC North not all that long ago — is now unquestionably the NFC North. For the first time since the 2002 realignment, all four teams in a single division have at least four wins six weeks into the season. The Bears and Packers are 4-2, and the Lions are 4-1, trailing the 5-0 Vikings, who were on a bye.

The Lions made a statement to the league that they should be viewed as the NFL’s best team

I decided I had to be dreaming and I went back to bed.

If I was dreaming, I really didn’t want to wake up.

PS: Terrible news about the injury Hutchinson but I was intrigued that Dallas QB Dak Prescott said that he tried to talk to Hutchinson as he was taken off the field but Prescott was pretty sure that Hutchinson wouldn’t remember. Prescott said that he planned to talk to the Michigan guys who played for Dallas so he could get Hutchinson’s phone number. I was struck that Prescott was aware Hutch played at Michigan. I was struck that Prescott knew who on his team, had played at Michigan. And I was struck that Prescott sounded pretty confident that those guys had each others phone numbers and kept in touch. For some reason, a window on the pro game I hadn’t thought about.

10.8.2024 – good luck kisses you

good luck kisses you
quick, flies away – bad Luck sits
and brings her knitting

Good luck is the gayest of all gay girls,
Long in one place she will not stay;
Back from your brow she strokes the curls,
Kisses you quick and flies away.

But Madame Bad Luck soberly comes
And stays, – no fancy has she for flitting, –
Snatches of true love-songs she hums,
And sits by your bed, and brings her knitting.

Good And Bad Luck by John Hay as printed in The Norton book of Light Verse edited by Russell Baker, New York, Norton, 1986.

At age 23, John Hay, graduate of Brown University and native of Illinois, was selected to be one of the two men who made up the entire White House staff of Abraham Lincoln.

Mr. Hay used that line on his resume to create a career in Government as a diplomat, Ambassador to Great Britain and Secretary of State in the McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt administration.

I was interested to read the other day that during the Civil War, Mr. Hay took a break from the White House in January, 1863 and went to, where else, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

The Hilton Head / Port Royal Sound area had been built into a base of Military Operations for the Union forces in the area and a 1,000 bed hospital had been built on the beach.

The imagery of the words in this short poem of Mr. Hay’s was too good to pass up.