he wrote we have proved ourselves inept fools on so many mortal fronts
I suspect that it’s inappropriate to strand myself on a high horse when it comes to what people eat. We have proved ourselves inept fools on so many mortal fronts — from our utter disregard of the natural world to our notions of ethnic virtue to the hellish marriage of politics and war — that perhaps we should be allowed to pick at garbage like happy crows. When I was growing up in the Calvinist Midwest, the assumption that we eat to live, not live to eat, was part of the Gospels. (With the exception, of course, of holiday feasts. Certain women were famous for their pie-making abilities, while certain men, like my father, were admired for being able to barbecue two hundred chickens at once for a church picnic.) I recall that working in the fields for ten hours a day required an ample breakfast and three big sandwiches for lunch. At the time, I don’t think I believed I was all that different from the other farm animals.
Jim Harrison in A Really Big Lunch published in the New Yorker, Aug 29, 2004.
Garrison Keillor wrote in his 1991 book, WLT: A Radio Romance, “Don’t concern yourself with things you can’t change, I say. It’s more important to make a very good cup of coffee in the morning and a very good piece of toast than it is to worry about Josef Stalin, because I can do something about breakfast and I can’t do anything about Stalin, and I’m sure he’s having a wonderful breakfast.”
can’t change that, I mean … even if I wanted to it is what it is
The Detroit Lions played the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday Night.
The Detroit Lions had a 15 point lead with just over 2 minutes to go in the game.
The Detroit Lions had a 15 point lead with just over 2 minutes to go in the game but the other team had the ball and if there was a Lions fan who hadn’t worked how the Lions were going to give up a quick score, a 2 point conversion, an onside kick, another quick score and another 2 point conversion and lose the game, that person is not a real Lions fan.
Lets be clear.
I am not in any way trying to disparage the Lions.
I am telling you how, after 60 years of following the Lions, Lions fans could feel what was going to happen.
And …
And it didn’t.
Throughout the game, an area of concern was the amount of penalties, 12 by the whole team, 7 on cornerbacks Carlton Davis III and Terrion Arnold.
With that in mind, I really enjoyed Mr. Davis III’s explanation of what was going on during the game.
“I lost my cool, I did. But it was rightfully so cause not about to — I just can’t control it. It’s an emotional game, and the stakes are high. They’re driving down the field and these PI’s are keeping them in the game. It’s extending these drives. So that’s where the passion is coming from. Like, come on man, let us play ball and if they can’t get open then it is what it is, you know what I mean?”
“I don’t want to get fined because they are sensitive about this, but honestly bro, I can’t say what I want to say, but honestly it’s just like I felt as if they were just on the Seahawks’ side today. I don’t know what I did. Maybe I should take them to dinner or something, I don’t know. Follow them on Instagram, I don’t know. But today was not my day. They were just calling PIs that’s like not even, I’m not even grabbing. It’s not even like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ It was just like touch-touch, bang-bang stuff, which is football, which is battling. And D.K. is a physical receiver, so that’s going to happen when you get a physical (corner) and a physical receiver, you got to let us play ball.”
“I mean that’s just who I am, bro, I can’t change that (expletive). I mean, even if I wanted to, but what the (expletive)? I’m not about to do that. I’m about to play my game, about to keep playing and it is what it is.”
Is this not fabulous?
I remember back in high school, my sister Lisa had to read the book, “The Caine Mutiny”.
I asked her if she liked it and she said she had some concerns.
She said there was this part where the sailors described what they did aboard a minesweeper and Lisa said she didn’t understand a word of what they said.
She said she read the passage over and over trying understand it all and finally gave up and moved on.
The next sentence in the book was about how one officer looked and another and said, “I didn’t understand a word of what they said.”
Lisa said she felt much better after that.
I can read the words of this interview.
And I understand that the reporter had a voice recorder running and that Mr. Davis III was answering questions just minutes after performing in a very high pressure environment.
But I am not sure I understand what he is saying … but there is that one word there.
walking along when out of orange colored sky flash, bam, you came by
I was walking along Mindin’ my business When out of the orange colored sky Flash, Bam, Alakazam Wonderful you came by
I was hummin’ a tune Drinkin’ in sunshine When out of that orange colored view Wham, Bam, Alakazam I got a look at you
One look and I yelled “timber” Watch out for flying glass
‘Cause the ceiling fell in And the bottom fell out I went in to a spin And i started to shout “I’ve been hit, this is it, this is it”
I was walking along Mindin’ my business When love came and hit me in the eye Flash, Bam, Alakazam Out of the orange colored sky
According to Wikipedia, “Orange Colored Sky” is a popular song written by Milton Delugg and Willie Stein and published in 1950. The first known recording was on July 11, 1950, on KING records catalog number 15061, with Janet Brace singing and Milton Delugg conducting the orchestra.
The best-known version of the song was recorded by Nat King Cole (with Stan Kenton’s orchestra) on August 16, 1950, and released by Capitol Records as catalog number 1184. It first reached the Billboard Best Seller chart on September 22, 1950, and lasted 13 weeks on the chart, peaking at number 11.[3] (Some sites list a 1945 date for this recording, but this is apparently in error.) A number of other singers have recorded it, including Cole’s daughter, Natalie.
Some where there is an interview with Natalie Cole about how as a kid, she loved this song.
Not for the way her Dad sang but for all the wonderful nonsense words.
Who wouldn’t love hearing their Dad sing out Flash, Bam, Alakazam.
It was wonderful enough for us kids to hear our Dad sit at the piano and sing Lulu’s Back in Town.
It was a wonderful life.
A little odd, maybe a lot of odd, but wonderful any way.
The picture is of the night sky over Bluffton, SC and seen while out on a walk with my wife.
call it Kuwohi Uluru and Denali … Mackinaw or nac?
The Hoffman kids skipping stones on the beach at the Straits
The U.S. Board of Geographic Names this week approved a formal request by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. to change the name of the highest peak in the sprawling Great Smoky Mountains National Park from Clingman’s Dome to Kuwohi.
Kuwohi, pronounced “ku-whoa-hee,” is one of the most popular sites in the park, with more than 650,000 visitors per year. It is the tallest point in Tennessee, the third-highest summit east of the Mississippi River.
I do want to point out that Clingman’s Dome was NOT named after a General in the Confederate States Army but it was named after a feller who went on to become a General in the CSA. Not that this makes any difference but I was happy to learn that back in the day geographer Arnold Guyot was not trying to honor anyone connected with the Confederates but a fellow geographer. A small, and now moot, point.
This is not something that has been proposed or something that has been set in motion, this is a done deal starting last Wednesday.
Who knew the U.S. Board of Geographic Names could move so fast?
The highest mountain in the Smokies is now Kuwohi.
And aside for the need for lots of new signs and maps in the National Park, the matter has been settled.
And I think that’s fine.
When the Australians changed the name of Ayers Rock to Uluru, Bill Bryson wrote that Uluru was “its more respectful Aboriginal name.”
When President Obama changed the name of Mount McKinley back to Denali, not much more than some odd Ohioans even seemed to notice.
I have to point out that Denali is a perfectly beautiful name and that opinion has nothing to do with that I have a beautiful Grand daughter by that name.
I grew up in the Great Lakes State of Michigan.
The road map of Michigan is filled with Anishinaabe names that carry over from the days before Europeans got to the place.
Consider the names of Michigan rivers like Potagannissing and Sebewaing.
In his book about traveling around the United States, Blue Highways (Boston, Little, Brown, 1982), William Least Heat Moon writes, “On a map, lower Michigan looks like a mitten with the squatty peninsula between Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron forming the Thumb. A region distinctive enough to have a name was the only lure I needed, but also it didn’t hurt to have towns with fine, unpronounceable names like Quanicassee, Sebewaing, Wahjamega, or other names like Pigeon, Bad Axe, Pinnebog, Rescue, Snover, and—what may be the worst town name in the nation— Freidberger.”
Then there is the Mackinaw region of Michigan that includes upper lower Michigan and lower upper Michigan in an area called ‘The Straits of Machinaw” or is Mackinac or Michilimackinac?
Michigan’s own, Bruce Catton, in his book, Michigan: A Bicentennial History (New York, Norton, 1976) put it this way:
Michilimackinac is a stumbling block for anyone who writes or talks about Michigan. There are innumerable ways to spell it, there is argument over its meaning, and there is no logic whatever to its pronunciation; on top of which, it does not stay put properly as a historic place should. Before Marquette’s time, the name was applied to the entire Straits area, which was the Michilimackinac country. Today, mercifully abbreviated to Mackinac, the name is applied only to the island out in the Straits — a beautiful place, the only spot in the state of Michigan where no automobiles are allowed. South of the island, at the tip of the lower peninsula, there is a village named Mackinaw City; perversely, here the name is spelled the way the name of the island is pronounced. In any case, when Marquette and his charges arrived, the great name was being applied to a more or less intermittent and informal trading center that had come into existence around a little bay on the east side of a point on the north shore of the Straits. Later, it meant the Mackinaw City area, where a notable fort was built, and still later it meant the island, where there was another notable fort. Men said that Michilimackinac meant “great turtle,” in the Ottawas’ language, but an Ottawa chief in the nineteenth century said that this was not so at all; the name came, he insisted, from a small tribe that originally lived on the island, a folk called the Mi-shene-mackinaw-go; and anyone who wants to go into it more deeply is quite free to do so.
Kuwohi.
Uluru.
Denali.
Anyone who wants to go into it more deeply is quite free to do so.
BTW: My sister and brother in law just sent us a care package of Mackinac Island Fudge – I can attest … there is nothing like in the world 🙂
fear, uncertainty among consumers businesses and among investors
It was the line after the line that was the source for this haiku that caught me eye and that line being:
Truly the hat-trick.
This is from the article, With the best glasses donor money can buy, surely Starmer can see that this week has been a total disaster by Marina Hyde in the Guardian.
I hate finding facts based on ‘polls’ but when the polls show that the only British Prime Minister to have lower poll popularity numbers that Mr. Keith Starmer (on the job now for about 44 days) was the Prime Minister one before the last one, Liz Truss.
I think Ms. Truss WAS Prime Minister for about 44 days and got to oversee the funeral of Queen Elizabeth which really was a nice bookend.
The funeral of the worlds longest reigning Monarch was during premiership of Britain’s shortest term Prime Minister.
Not sure what the over-under on that bet would have been.
Anyway … Ms. Hyde writes:
Labour took office and immediately declared things to be so dire that they were going to have to do awful and painful things to combat them – but will have left it three months before they finally explain what those awful and painful things are. This, as the former chief economist to the Bank of England Andy Haldane and many others have pointed out, has created a sense of “fear and foreboding and uncertainty among consumers, among businesses, and among investors”.
Truly the hat-trick. The current freebies row taking place during that particular information vacuum consequently feels even worse. It suggests that Starmer is a guy who talks to the public like an undertaker but in private likes the finer things in life. More than that, he feels entitled to them. That is no one’s favourite combination.
The new government in Britain, in 44 days has been able to create a sense of fear and foreboding and uncertainty among consumers.
Among businesses.
And among investors.
Truly the hat-trick.
That is no one’s favourite combination.
I kept the anglicized spelling.
Seems more posh you know that way, and it is almost a comfort that some other country seems to be as messed up as we are.
