2.4.2024 – reading with Tony

reading with Tony
shared book old friends together
like he is right here

We married sisters.

I can say that about a lot of guys.

My wife had 8 sisters.

Though they are the husbands of my wife’s sisters, I think I am correct in saying they are my brothers-in-law.

The Oxford English Dictionary says of using ‘in-law’ that it is Sometimes extended to the husband of one’s wife’s (or husband’s) sister.

broth·er-in-law (brr-n-lô) n. pl. broth·ers-in-law (brrz-)

The brother of one’s spouse.
The husband of one’s sister.
The husband of the sister of one’s spouse

I guess that is good enough for me and I am digressing from my story.

Last summer my wife returned from a visit up north and brought me back a book as a gift from one of her sisters.

The book had belonged to my brother-in-law Tony and my sister-in-law thought I would like to read it.

Tony and I shared a relationship of scholarly interest in the history of the United States in general and the American political scene back to the 1930s.

We had taken a lot of the same type of classes in college and read a lot of the same books.

For us, nothing was more fun then to find a quiet corner of a family gettogether and converse over the past mistakes of Harry Truman and the triumphs of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

I remember one 4th of July when someone came by and asked if we had settled World War 2 yet and Tony replied, “No, but we just finished up the Neutrality Acts of 1939.”

Tony died back in 2019 and I miss him and his conversation.

We had not had much opportunity to talk since moving south but Tony and I had a history, one of those friendships that Julian Fellows describes in his fun book, Snobs (Downton Abby in the 20th century), when Mr. Fellows writes:

“nothing is more agreeable than the renewal of such a friendship after several years’ interlude, as there is no need for the preamble to intimacy. It is already in place. One may immediately pick it up, like a piece of unfinished tapestry, where one left off ten years before.”

With this in mind, I appreciated the gift very much.

I started reading, it was a book on FDR, and about 100 or so pages into the book, I came to passage that made me say, boy this is stupid.

I sat back in my rocker and with the book open on my lap and said out loud to no one, “Wonder what Tony would say to that?”

I returned to my reading and turned the page to finish the passage.

On the next page, Tony had taken a pencil, underlined the last line of the passage and wrote, “Nope!“

It was a nice little gift.

A few words, a pencil line, and he is right here.

I think we were discussing Woodrow Wilson and his 14 Points at Versailles – Tony looks to have carried his point though I felt his views on Wilson had a suspect animus …

2.2.2024 – here we are again

here we are again
the days of the long shadows
were we ever here?

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

My wife and I try to walk around out in the neighborhood everyday, twice if the weather and my schedule work out.

It is an exercise regime that works with my outlook on physical exercise.

I have noticed that several times a year (it really should be only twice a year but the time change throws a curveball into the mix) the sun lines up low in the sky with a length of sidewalk and produces these long shadows.

From the picture, you can see we are some minutes or maybe a day or two away from the shadow lining up exactly with the sidewalk but you can’t count on sunny days even here in the low country of South Carolina so I thought I better grab the image while the grabbing was good.

I have, by the calendar, seen these shadows stretch out and line up about 16 times since we moved here.

The sidewalk is the same.

The street ahead is the same.

The shadows pretty much look the same thought the bulky of our clothes changes from early spring to late fall.

The sun is the same.

What has changed in the last four years?

Truly the more things change the more they stay the same.

With this in mind though, I agree with Delwin Brown, who in his 1994 book, Boundaries of Our Habitations: Tradition and Theological Construction, (State University of New York Press) wrote, “There must be some continuity with the past, “or else the world is a madhouse.” Hence, the more things change, the more they stay the same; the more things stay the same, the more they change.”

Full disclosure I am not familiar with this book but when I looked up the the saying to get the french spelling of Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, I came across Mr. Brown’s quote in the lazy man’s best friend, Wikipedia.

I am reminded of snow.

If you grew in the western part of the State of Michigan in the back half of the 20th century like I did, you saw a lot of snow.

Early in your life, your learned from your Mom or your brothers or your sisters or your kindergarten teacher that NO TWO SNOWFLAKES are the same.

I put it to you that NO TWO OF ANYTHING are the same.

No two snowflakes.

No two days.

No two nothing.

But besides being different, all snowflakes are snowflakes.

They are all the same.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The more things stay the same, the more they change.

Then again, there is the shadow.

Here and gone.

Dark and bold in its outline in bright sun and a cloud comes along and covers the sun and the shadow is gone.

Was it really there?

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The more things stay the same, the more they change.

Maybe we weren’t really here in the first place.

1.31.2024 – lights red lights green lights

lights red lights green lights
stop lights go lights caution lights
on streets, not on life

Rules of the road.

Stop on red.

Go on green.

Caution, warning, take care, changing soon on yellow.

This works really well at the moment as I drive to work, as I have driven to work for almost half a century and it hasn’t been improved on.

But who is to say this will last?

I always thought that one of the first signs of the final decent for mankind would be a disregard for the basic fairness of a four way stop.

Four way stops work if everyone behaves, shows some respect and follows the rules.

You take your turn.

Sometimes you wait to take your turn.

Once someone decides to not follow the rules, the implied momentary contract between drivers to follow the rules is dissolved and chaos follows.

Roundabouts are the coming better solution to the problem of how to get people to take turns yet I find it difficult to grasp how this is an improvement.

Roundabouts work if everyone behaves, shows some respect and follows the rules.

Proponents state that the data shows that T bone accidents, accidents where cars crash at a 90 degree angle to one another have dropped 95%.

It is data likes this that gives breathe to the concept of lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Most folks think Mark Twain said that but Mr. Twain said that Benjamin Disraeli said it but I digress.

Is it true that T bone accidents dropped 95%?

Yes, you bet.

Is it also true that in a circle, cars are no longer approaching each other at a 90 degree angle making the CHANCE of a T bone accident drop 100%?

Yes, you bet.

Lets go back to the four way stop.

The rule of thumb is that the driver on the right has the right of way.

Makes it easy to remember doesn’t it?

I put it to you that had someone back in time had decided that drivers on the left had the right of way, that culture today would have rejected this as leftist woke theology and four ways stops in Florida would have been outlawed

With round about going counter clockwise, they would have been outlawed as counter culture.

I am not sure what people if Florida would have been left with in the way of traffic control as obviously red lights are pinko, green lights are, well, green and therefore a myth and yellow lights must lead into some sort of peril.

Better to just buy a gun and park the car in the garage is where this line of thinking will take you.

Red lights.

Green lights.

Yellow lights.

Pretty simple stuff.

Until someone decides it isn’t.

Simple as it implies a basic social contract.

We have to agree together to make it work.

Some one will get to the corner first and will have to agree that that is how it is.

Not a lot of interpretation there.

Some one gets to go and someone, well, someone has to wait.

We all have to take our turn to make this work.

Regulated cooperation?

Goodness but that sounds so …

1.27.2024 – when there is nothing

when there is nothing
nothing to read, nothing new
headline changes, same news

Since forever my Saturday mornings, for as long as I have had Saturday mornings (there was a too long period in my life where I worked weekends and Saturday mornings were more like any other morning just more so) I start my day with coffee and newspapers.

Back, back, back in the day, that meant going downtown in Grand Rapids, Michigan where I grew up to Elliott’s New Stand, next to the bus station, where the out-of-town newspapers came in by bus and went on sale.

I would grab a New York Times, a Chicago Tribune and then whatever other city sounded exotic at the moment.

The Detroit Free Press was already waiting as we had a paper boy, A PAPER BOY, deliver the Freep to our doorstep every morning.

Maybe that’s why I cannot get excited much about door dash and get grub and uber eats.

What is new about that?

We used to get daily home delivery of a newspaper that had been printed 300 miles away.

Try to do that in your social media era world!

Now my Saturday starts with my tablet and newspapers from around the world and a large Café au lait.

I fill my favorite biggest coffee mug half full of almond milk (lactose … gee whiz) and microwave it for 45 seconds (oh brother I know – but then I recall a story of a Chef who somehow got the ‘hint of mint’ in a salad and shocked the world when he revealed it was crushed altoids – find me a way to create my own minty dust and I’ll use it, the chef said) and then fill the mug with fresh perked Cafe Bustolo coffee.

Presto Chango – Café au lait!

Yes, I said perked as I got a new percolator for Christmas!

Today I clicked on and scrolled through the online front page of three or four newspapers and didn’t click on a single story.

All the headlines in all the newspapers were the same.

And they have been the same for the past week if not weeks.

Nothing new.

Nothing new to read.

Same, same, same, what a shame, shame, shame.

The only story that looked mildly interesting was ‘A wolf killed the EU president’s precious pony” but the headline was too crafted for me to believe it meant what it said and that the article would end up just being one more ad to sell me a time share.

Gaza.

Middle East.

Trump.

Border.

Weather.

Maybe that’s it.

The news has become just like the weather in that everyone talks about these things, Gaza, Middle East, Trump, Border and the weather … but no one does anything about it.

Well, the Lions play for the championship of the National Football Conference of the National Football League tomorrow.

On that topic I could offer 2,197 links to articles explaining how the Lions will win.

Or I could offer 3,197 links to articles explaining why the Lions will lose.

And I could offer 12,197 links to articles explaining how to bet the game and how to manage the odds, the over-under, the plus-minus as well as how to bet if it rains.

I’ll save you the trouble of reading all that.

The Lions will win.

Betcha a quarter!

1.25.2024 – briefest moments can

briefest moments can
have explosive power that
overwhelm the times

Back to Jim Harrison, but then I am driving to work so Mr. Harrison is much on my mind when I sit down at me desk.

In the sometimes painful book True North (Grove Press, 2005), Mr. Harrison writes:

The easily perceptible linear thread through our lives causes a basic misunderstanding when we tend to give the same weight to years, months, and days.

The briefest moments can have an explosive power that overwhelms the time around them including what preceded them.

It occurred to me that my own point of view was unique on earth but this was not a comforting idea. Wherever I stood and looked I was the only one there.

The easily perceptible linear thread I thought was very good especially on a warm humid morning in January in the Low Country of South Carolina.

I drove the east towards the ocean into a thick fog bank that reduced my world to about 10 feet in front of me and 10 feet behind.

Nothing was easily perceptible.

Everything was hidden, even the great Atlantic Ocean that covers 20 percent of the earth’s surface.

I got to work and parked in the quiet of a gray, wet morning in January in a summer resort town.

Quiet.

But there was this sound in the background as I walked the path to my office.

I couldn’t place it.

I figured out that through some freak of acoustics in the fog, I could hear the ocean.

Couldn’t see it, but I could hear it.

Moments that can change lives can cause a basic misunderstanding when we tend to give the same weight to years, months, and days.

Our own point of view is unique on earth.

Wherever you stand and look, you are the only one there.

But keep in mind this.

In one of Anthony Bourdain (if there was ever a literary complimentary combination like that of bacon with eggs it would be Bourdain and Harrison) shows, Mr. Bourdain spent the day with taggers, those folks who decorate subway cars in New York City.

These fellers described how they would paint a car in a certain pattern and then sit in a certain location with their buddies, a place were their point of view was unique on earth, and wait for hours and hours for that specific car with that specific pattern to come by.

Sometimes, when a train with car showed up, it would be going the wrong way and the pattern would be on the side away from that their point of view was unique on earth.

The briefest moments can have an explosive power that overwhelms the time around them including what preceded them.

And sometimes, those moments are facing the wrong way.

The truly goofy part of my illustration of the taggers is that THEY KNOW they missed the moment as they say the other side of the car.

How many moments, explosive moments, come and go, never revealed.

Can you march to a different drummer when you don’t hear the drum?

Lots of thoughts for a foggy morning.

To be honest, I just liked the painting Mr. Harrison did with his words.

I continued down the beach past the path to my tourist cabin toward the estuary of the Sucker River a mile or two distant. The moon’s sheen on the water followed me as I walked for reasons not clear to me. It occurred to me that my own point of view was unique on earth but this was not a comforting idea. Wherever I stood and looked I was the only one there. The few sounds of the village diminished, and I mostly heard my feet in the damp sand, and then a loon call ahead in the estuarine area. To the left far out in Lake Superior the lights of a freighter made their slow passage to the west. I heard a coyote out on a forested promontory called Lonesome Point and single dog.