11.8.2024 – cultivate habit

cultivate habit
not being particular
about little things

Adapted from the essay, Tripping Over Trivia by Damon Runyon as published in Short Takes, Readers’ Choice of the Best Columns of America’s Favorite Newspaperman, Damon Runyon (Constable, Orange Street London, 1948.)

I am trying to cultivate the habit of not being particular about little things. I suppose that after years of being very particular, indeed, I will find it difficult to shake off some of my old exactions, but I must keep struggling. I have come to the conclusion that I have been wasting an enormous amount of time in being particular.

Take the small matter of boiled eggs. I used to be mighty particular about how long my boiled eggs should be boiled. I made a strong point of specifying that they should be boiled three minutes and a half. I had the idea that I could not even look at eggs boiled less than that time or two seconds beyond. The cooks could not fool me, either, though sometimes I suspected they exerted the most diabolical ingenuity in the effort. I could tell to a clock-tick how long they had boiled eggs the instant they were set before me.

One day I sat down and seriously contemplated the economic phases of the boiled egg situation as applied to me. I considered, through careful calculation, the hours I must have wasted in arguing with waiters that those eggs had not been boiled three and a half minutes, but only two and a half, or maybe four, and in sending them back to the kitchen and then waiting for another boiling.

When my figures showed that on being particular about my boiled eggs alone I had wasted fifteen years, I was appalled. It was then I made up my mind to cease being particular. I immediately made some progress on the boiled eggs. I began calling for them scrambled.

Mr. Runyon may be more well known for his musical Guys and Dolls, often thought to be THE American Musical ( up against Oklahoma and the Music Man).

In Guys and Dolls, the Hero Skye Masterson says:

On the day when I left home to make my way in the world, my Daddy took me to one side. ‘Son,’ my Daddy says to me, ‘I am sorry I am not able to bankroll you to a very large start, but not having the necessary lettuce to get you rolling, instead I’m going to stake you to some very valuable advice.

One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand-new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, you do not accept this bet, because as sure as you stand there, you’re going to wind up with an ear full of cider.

Friends and neighbors, I woke up Wednesday morning and let me tell you friends, I had an ear full of cider!

Time to start calling for scrambled eggs!

11.5.2024 – build triumphal arch …

build triumphal arch …
build it out of bricks – something’
convenient to throw

Based on the line, “When ye build yer triumphal arch to yer conquering’ hero, Hennessy, build it out of bricks so the people will have something’ convenient to throw at him as he passes through,” attributed to Mr. Dooley.

Sorry but I cannot find a better citation.

According to Wikipedia, Mr. Dooley (or Martin J. Dooley) is a fictional Irish immigrant bartender created by American journalist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne. Dooley was the subject of many Dunne columns between 1893 and 1915, and again in 1924 and 1926. Dunne’s essays contain the bartender’s commentary on various topics.

Also according to Wikipedia, Finley Peter Dunne (born Peter Dunne; July 10, 1867 – April 24, 1936) was an American humorist, journalist and writer from Chicago. In 1898 Dunne published Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War, his first collection of the nationally syndicated Mr. Dooley sketches.[1] Written as though speaking with the thick verbiage and accent of an Irish immigrant from County Roscommon, Dunne’s fictional “Mr. Dooley” expounded upon political and social issues of the day from behind the bar of his South Side Chicago Irish pub.

I just feel like throwing bricks today.

I have also been looking for a specific snap shot of history and while looking for it, I came across this other snippet.

This is reported in the diary of John Colville, one of Winston Churchill’s private secretary.

This happened in May of 1940 just a week after Churchill took over as Prime Minister and led the showdown against Nazi Germany.

Mr. Colville writes that: Mrs Churchill who said that the preacher at St Martin-in-the-Fields had preached such a pacifist sermon that morning that she got up and left.

“You ought to have cried ‘Shame’,” said Winston, “desecrating the House of God with lies!”

I love that but that wasn’t the story I was looking for even though it fits a bit.

The story I wanted was in the Prophet of Truth.

Book V in Martin Gilbert’s multi volume biography of Mr. Churchill.

On the day Neville Chamberlin brought back the infamous Munich agreement, an agreement that allowed Germany to take over Czechoslovakia, an agreement that Mr. Chamberlin waved from his balcony, Mr Gilbert writes that:

Throughout the morning the British Government urged the Czechs to accept the ‘Munich’terms; at noon Beneš agreed to do so. That afternoon Chamberlain flew back to London. ‘Vast crowds in the streets,’ Oliver Harvey recorded in his diary, ‘hysterical cheers and enthusiasm. PM on balcony at Buckingham Palace. But many feel it to be a great humiliation.’

In an unpublished note written ten years later Churchill recalled how, that day, ‘My wife and Lord Cecil solemnly discussed marching themselves with a select band to Downing Street and hurling a brick through the windows at No 10.’

I have been thinking about bricks today.

How there are some people and some windows I would love to throw a brick through.

Instead, I voted.

And I have to say that when I fed my ballot into the machine, unlike any other time I have ever voted, I felt like I had thrown my brick.

I hope he felt it.

11.3.2024 – that time of year when

that time of year when
yellow leaves, none or few, hang
shake against the cold

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Sonnet 73 by William Shakespear, 1609.

According to Wikipedia, Sonnet 73 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the rhyme scheme of the English sonnet form, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. It is composed in iambic pentameter, a poetic metre that has five feet per line, and each foot has two syllables accented weak then strong. Almost all of the lines follow this without variation.

The organization of the poem serves many roles in the overall effectiveness of the poem. Yet, one of the major roles implied by this scheme revolves around ending each quatrain with a complete phrase. Given the rhyme scheme of every other line within the quatrain, as an audience we are to infer a statement is being made by the end of every four lines. Further, when shifted toward the next four lines, a shift in the overall thought process is being made by the author.

While I find the commentary fascinating, I have to admit I really don’t know what it means.

What I do know is I like the flow – the sounds – the thoughts and the idea that fall in 1609 England and the feelings that fall might bring aren’t too far from thoughts and feelings today.

Like a review I came across of a new biography of a much chronicled John Adams and the reviewer … nothing new here … but arranged and presented in a nice way.

As for how to read Shakespeare … have you seen this clip on the proper way to say, To Be of Not to be from Hamlet?

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.