boxes on beach are empty shake ’em nails loosen they have been somewhere
Adapted from the poem Sand Scribblings by Carl Sandburg in Smoke and Steel as published in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, by Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1950.
The wind stops, the wind begins. The wind says stop, begin.
A sea shovel scrapes the sand floor. The shovel changes, the floor changes.
The sandpipers, maybe they know. Maybe a three-pointed foot can tell. Maybe the fog moon they fly to, guesses.
The sandpipers cheep ‘Here’ and get away. Five of them fly and keep together flying.
Night hair of some sea woman Curls on the sand when the sea leaves The salt tide without a good-by.
Boxes on the beach are empty. Shake ’em and the nails loosen. They have been somewhere.
This is special to me today as I know the boxes on the beach are empty.
They are empty because we emptied them.
We know they have been somewhere, because we filled them and moved them to the island … were we now live.
Got to go ride my bike to the NEARBY beach and scribble in the sand.
“Teleporting is no fun,” he said “You know it’s happening, but you can’t do anything about it, and so you just go, you just go with the ride. And wow, what just an incredible adventure it all was.”
When you don’t have to make stuff up, what chance does fiction and humor have?
always same story always kids and nothing you can do about it
Adapted from the passage in the novel, The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth where Mr. Forsyth writes:
Behind him they lit up a weird spectacle which could have been drawn by Dor6 in one of his blacker moods. The floor of the aircraft was carpeted with sodden and fouled blankets. Their previous contents lay writhing in rows down both sides of the cargo space, forty small children, shrunken, wizened, deformed by malnutrition. Sister Mary Joseph rose from her crouch behind the cabin door and began to move among the starvelings, each of whom had a piece of sticking plaster stuck to his or her forehead, just below the line of the hair long since turned to an ocher red by anemia. The plaster bore in ball-point letters the relevant information for the orphanage outside Libreville. Just name and number; they don’t give rank to losers.
In the tail of the plane the five mercenaries blinked in the light and glanced at their fellow passengers. They had seen it all before, many times, over the past months. Each man felt some disgust, but none showed it. You can get used to anything eventually. In the Congo, Yeman, Katanga, Sudan. Always the same story, always the kids. And always nothing you can do about it.
The dogs of war is a phrase spoken by Mark Antony in Act 3, Scene 1, of William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar: “Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war.“
Ms. Sauma quotes Salman Rushdie describing the movie, “as his “very first literary influence.”
Ms. Sauma writes, “In all of western cinema, is there a more recognisable image than Dorothy in her blue gingham dress, arm in arm with the Scarecrow, the Lion and the Tin Man, skipping down the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, so that the Wizard can fulfil their dreams? It’s somehow cheering that this chaotic, surreal musical about a teenage girl, her dog and her three weird friends running away from a witch, searching for a wizard, and trying to become their best selves is so influential.”
I have long enjoyed thinking about this article since I first quoted from it back when it came out in 2019.
Everyone has seen the Wizard of Oz.
And, as Ms. Sauma writes, “This is the key to its influence: the fact that everyone watches it in childhood. It seeps into your unconscious and stays there.”
I had to wonder.
Was it true?
In all of western cinema, is there a more recognisable image than Dorothy?
Has everyone has seen the Wizard of Oz?
I happened to be in a Pat Conroy cycle.
Pat Conroy, the author of the Low Country.
His books (and movies of his books) include The Great Santini and Prince of Tides.
And the book about his year teaching on Dafuskie Island, about 5 miles from where I am sitting.
That book, The Water is Wide, written in the early 70’s, about how, instead of joining the Peace Corps, Conroy takes a job teaching in a two room school house where he would have the 4th through 8th graders.
These kids were Gullah kids.
Born and raised on a barrier island with little contact to the rest of the world.
Conroy writes of his first day:
At the end of the day I had compiled an impressive ledger of achievement.
Seven of my students could not recite the alphabet.
Three children could not spell their names.
Eighteen children thought Savannah, Georgia, was the largest city in the world.
Savannah was the only city any of the kids could name.
Eighteen children had never seen a hill—eighteen children had never heard the words integration and segregation.
Four children could not add two plus two.
Eighteen children did not know we were fighting a war in Southeast Asia.
Of course, eighteen children never had heard of Asia.
One child was positive that John Kennedy was the first President of the United States.
Seventeen children agreed with that child.
Eighteen children concurred with the pre-Copernican Theory that the earth was the center of the universe.
Two children did not know how old they were.
Five children did not know their birth dates.
Four children could not count to ten.
The four oldest thought the Civil War was fought between the Germans and the Japs.
Do you get they picture here?
The year was 1973 but it might have been 1773.
Conroy digs in a makes the effort to expose his class to the rest of the world and encourages discussion on topics on levels that would bring in his students.
One day had a discussion, by chance after watching an old movie of the TV Show You Are There with Walter Cronkite (Conroy had discovered a movie projector in a store room and took all the movies he could get from the County School System) about The Salem Witch Trials and that led to questions and statements from the students on witches.
From here, I will let Pat Conroy tell the story.
Big C screwed his face up into his question-mark look. “It true if you throw water on a witch, she disappear?”
Suddenly every eye in the room was riveted on me. Only the pigs grunting and rooting on the schoolyard disturbed the silence created by this single question. And there was something about the question itself, something ancient and primordial, something that disturbed the hidden and oft lost mythology of my own youth; I felt something stir as I thought about the wet witch, and knew that a feeling in my subconscious was rising like an air bubble to the surface. Then I had it.
“Big C, you’ve seen the Wizard of Oz.”
Eighteen voices shouted hosannas to the trembling faker of Oz. Cindy Lou broke off into an impromptu rendition of “Over the Rainbow.” Others pretended they were cowardly lions. Richard stood up and walked like a scarecrow suspended from his stake. Each member of the class had memorized the movie classic, had watched it religiously each time it appeared on television and had added personal interpretations to the bizarre forces rampant in the spirit-haunted land over the rainbow. And if the Yamacraw children knew about Oz, then I was convinced a hell of a lot of other children in America knew about it, too. My jeremiads against television since my first days on the island had continued undiminished, fed with the plentiful food of my students’ ignorance about people, events, and the world. Now, in a single moment, I had to retract my sweeping indictment of TV: it had not failed completely, only partially. Every child in the room knew the legend of Oz by heart, the importance of the yellow-brick road, the incarnate evil of the wicked Witch of the West, and the ultimate hypocrisy of the great wizard himself. Oz, it seemed, had entered into the consciousness of American children, and not just a selected few, but almost every child in every situation. I considered Yamacraw a touchstone: if the Yamacraw children knew about it, then the chances were excellent that the vast majority of American children had been reached. The Wizard of Oz, through the medium of television, had become part of American mythology as important and relevant to the children of America as the Homeric legends were to the children of Athens.
So Big C’s question was the catalyst for a great and memorable afternoon, one of those rare moments generated by chance, planned by no one, spontaneous and joyful, transcending the need for a teacher or a classroom, and making me once more think of education as something alive and helpful, instead of as a withered dream in need of formaldehyde. Oz took over the rest of the day. For a couple of minutes it was utter pandemonium. Fred introduced a moving argument in incomprehensible Fredese in favor of the proposition that water could evaporate witches. Prophet thought this was crap. He told Fred so. Fred told Prophet he would kick his butt if he continued to think it was crap. Mary mumbled something into her left hand about fire being better than water. Saul said that there ain’t no sure way to kill a witch.
Cindy Lou’s voice finally broke through the general upheaval of noise and offered to recite her King James Version of the story.
“O.K.,” said I.
“There was this little girl who got blown away in a rainstorm,” she started.
“That ain’t the way it was,” said Jimmy Sue.
“How was it then, you old ugly self?” Cindy Lou shot back.
“Ain’t no rainstorm, sister.”
“Damn right it was a rainstorm.”
“No, girl, it was a tor-nay-do.”
“Yeah,” the class agreed, “it was a tornado.”
“Same thing,” claimed Cindy Lou.
“No, girl. Tor-nay-do take your head clean off,” offered Mary.
“You tellin’ the story, girl?” Cindy inquired menacingly of Jimmy Sue.
“No.”
“Then you keep your mout’ out of it.”
“This girl got blown away by a wind and the house she was in hit a bad witch on the head and kill her dead. Then the girl and her little dog go marchin’ down this yellow-brick road ’til they meet this chicken lion who try to act tough.”
“No,” a chorus of voices shouted.
“No, what?” Cindy Lou asked.
“That girl don’t meet no lion,” said Samuel, in one of his first vocal contributions of the year.
“Sure she meets a lion.”
“No, girl, first she sees the scarecrow. Ain’t got no brains.”
“Yeah, scarecrow first,” the class agreed, acting out the chorus in this impromptu drama.
“You tell the story, cockeye.”
“Call me cockeye and I bust your head,” Samuel shouts, clenching his fists.
“Don’t call Samuel cockeye, Cindy Lou.”
“He is cockeye.”
“Yeah, he cockeye,” the chorus agrees.
“No,” I say.
“I bust your head,” Samuel warns the whole class.
“You cockeye,” the class chants.
“The scarecrow first,” says Richard. “Let me tell the story.”
“Oh boy, Richard, give it to us.”
So Richard rendered his version of Oz. Then Oscar, then Frank, then Mary, then Sidney, each adding their own peculiar interpretations, each emphasizing a different part of the story, and each feeling perfectly free to combine incidents from the Wizard of Oz with incidents that occurred in other television programs. Sidney got Oz confused with an episode from “Bonanza.” Hoss Cartwright battling the witches of the Purple Sage. According to Oscar, Oz and Disneyland were somehow related. Richard somehow got Captain Kangaroo confused with the wizard, and Mr. Greenjeans confused with the scarecrow.
Ethel, a purist in the group, strutted to the microphone and began a long, precise, but monotonous epic, which was technically unflawed and accurate except that everyone in the class believed she was making the stuff up. In the middle of her story, Top Cat got up and started singing a new song just released by swing-man James Brown. He hopped and swayed what he called a “new jive” while the kids clapped their hands and tapped their feet until the great head of Mrs. Brown appeared in the window, flashing a look the Romans must have worn on their faces when turning thumbs down on some prostrate Christian. But even though the kids quit responding and reverted back to their classical pose of scholars erect in their desks and lusting for knowledge, Top Cat gyrated on, a grin like a jack-o’-lantern carved on his face and eyes raised in adoration of some muse deep within him.
When Top Cat finally subsided and sank back into his desk, Prophet of the unknown tongue continued the interrupted marathon of Oz, an untranslatable potpourri of grunts and monosyllables, punctuated only by Prophet’s beautifully effusive smiles.
When the afternoon was over and the bus ambled into the schoolyard, and the kids had filed out of the room, I had on tape the story of Oz as it had never been told before—a new Oz, a land that Judy Garland had never entered, but one especially created on a December afternoon by children of an island ruled by a river, and possibly another wizard, with perhaps a greater claim to credibility.*
Ms. Sauma writes, “Everyone has their own Oz.”
You know what?
I think that’s true.
Ms. Sauma closes her 2019 article writing, “The Wizard of Oz doesn’t sugar-coat the truth: there are monsters out there, and the only things that matter are fellowship and home, wherever you find them – a message as relevant now as it was in 1939.”
I agree.
Got to end this now as it has gone on long enough and I want to check under the bed for flying monkeys.
*The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy (Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1972).
eventually weekends end reality sparks the sunday scaries
White Rainbow, Folly Beach, Hilton head Island, SC 3.7.2026
Readers of this blog will remember that on Saturday I enjoy the Guardian column, Blind Date, where the newspaper sets up a blind date between two volunteers at some posh (always wanted to use that word) dining establishment (can’t say just restaurant because the blind date might be at a pub, bistro, brasserie or just plan diner) and then the two volunteers are asked to answer questions about the blind date.
As this takes place in Britain, I enjoy the language and the menus of the dining establishment.
As for the menus, yesterdays Blind Date took place at the Cargo Cantina in Bristol.
Their website says, “CARGO Cantina is inspired by the authentic Cantinas of Mexico, traditionally forbidden to women, children and men in police or military uniform, where hombres used to drink around the bar and have some botanas (bar snacks).”
The first click on the menu, much like and online menu here in the USA, lands you on a page that says, ORDER BY GET GRUB or UBER EATS.
Again, as this is in Britain, you are invited to place your order via … Deliveroo!
Not kidding.
Deliveroo!
Is that not faboulous?
In a country where the bathroom is referred to as a loo, the online food delivery service is deliveroo.
Just gets you mind going doesn’t it.
Usually I find really goofy food choices on the menu like Singing Hinnies or Cullen Skink but this menu was straight forward Mexican with tacos, burritos and such but with a twist like Smoked Carrot Tostadas.
There was a nice note at the bottom of the menu that stated, 50p from each sale of our TORTILLA CHIPS + SALSAS are given to support Casita de Barro in Puebla. This is an educational project which creates sustainable living opportunities for communities in the local area.
There was also a warning that Cargo Cantina was a CASHLESS venue, meaning they only accept plastic which is different as we are seeing more and more restaurants here going cash only.
But enough about Casa Cantina as I DIGRESS.
Yesterdays Blind Date was with Harry, 24, an ecologist, and Freya, 24, a theatre-maker and cook.
The first question asked of the volunteers is “What were you hoping for?”
Harry responded, Some tasty food, and a nice evening with good company to block out the Sunday scaries.
The Sunday Scaries?
The Sunday Scaries?
Hadn’t heard of that one.
I have heard of “The Mondays”.
As in the movie, Office Space where Peter says “I gotta get out of here. I think I’m gonna lose it.”
And Nina, a co-worker says, “Uh oh. Sounds like somebody’s got a case of the Mondays.”
Later Peter asks his next door neighbor Lawrence (who he talks to through the paper thin walls of their side-by-side apartments, “Let me ask you something. When you come in on Monday and you’re not feeling real well, does anyone ever say to you, “Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays?”
Lawrence replies (through the wall), “No. No, man. Shit, no, man. I believe you’d get your ass kicked sayin’ something like that, man.”
So I was thinking that somehow the Sunday Scaries could be related to having a case of the Monday’s but on the side of the Atlantic.
I open The Google and typed in Sunday Scaries and there it was …
If you’re a Monday-to-Friday worker, your two favorite days of the week probably begin with the letter S. Fun thrives on Saturday and Sundays, after all. It’s a two-day stretch with no job responsibilities.
But weekends eventually end — and as a new work week closes in, that looming reality can spark a growing dread known as the “Sunday scaries.”
As in the Cleveland Clinic about which Wikipedia states: Cleveland Clinic is an American nonprofit academic medical center based in Cleveland, Ohio. Owned and operated by the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, an Ohio nonprofit corporation, Cleveland Clinic was founded in 1921 by a group of faculty and alumni from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Cleveland Clinic is consistently ranked as one of the best hospitals in the United States.
The Cleveland Clinic, one of the best hospitals in the United States, recognizes the Sunday Scaries as a real malady.
The Cleveland Clinic says:
“The transition from weekend relaxation to work mode can be a tough 180-degree turn,” she continues. “In that way, Sunday scaries are a normal reaction to adjusting to a different role and change.”
Plus, let’s be honest here: Work can be nerve-wracking. In fact, 83% of employees in the United States report feeling workplace stress.
“Work is one of those things people get anxious about because we don’t have control over so much of it,” adds Dr. Prewitt. “That can lead to negative thoughts and fears and worries about what’s ahead.”
And the Cleveland Clinic offers these 10 suggestions to chase away your worries about Monday.
Adopt a positive mindset: Negative thoughts can fuel the Sunday scaries. So, instead of thinking, “I don’t want to go to work tomorrow,” fill your mind with encouraging affirmations like, “I can do this” or “I’m ready to get back to it.” Keep busy: Schedule a fun activity on Sunday. Running errands or crossing tasks off your to-do list can help keep your mind off Sunday, too. Either can leave you feeling satisfied. Break a sweat: Exercise releases feel-good endorphins that can brighten your mood. Heading to a park for some hiking or the gym for a lifting session can give you the strength to take on Monday. Clear your head: Practicing mindfulness can be calming and help put you in the moment during the weekend. Try meditation, yoga or get that massage you’ve been wanting. Catch some ZZZs: Tired is no way to go into a new work week. Use the weekend to catch up on lost sleep and recharge your batteries. (Just don’t sleep too much, as that can bring its own set of problems.) Aim for a fresh start: Do your best to wrap up work tasks BEFORE you clock out on Friday. That can keep things from lingering in your head during your days off. Treat yourself: Give yourself something to look forward to on Sundays and Mondays. Maybe that means a nice dinner with friends or family to end the weekend or a coffee from your favorite café on the way back to work. Make Mondays easier: Reduce start-of-the-week worries by embracing the concept of “Bare Minimum Mondays” and easing back into job duties with simpler tasks. Plan ahead: Jotting down a to-do list for when you get back to work on Monday may help release your worries about what’s to come. (Just make sure you keep the list out of your head once it’s written!) Detach from work: If possible, try to avoid doing work over the weekend to fully separate yourself from your job. That email can wait until Monday.
There you have it.
10 tips to avoid those Sunday Scaries and help prevent a case of Mondays.
Personally, I believe you’d get your ass kicked sayin’ something like that, man.
Also, for myself, was on the beach on Hilton Head Island yesterday.
There was a lot of moisture in the air though not quite fog.
And overhead was a white rainbow.
In the Book of Genesis, The Bible tells us that:
I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind.
Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.
Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.
Always a comfort to read and to see a rainbow in the sky.
Though there is the question about the rainbow being white.
Never saw that before.
Could it mean something?
Here come those Sunday Scaries.
We could be set up for a real bad case of the Mondays.
BTW: I was kidding when I said White Rainbow but according to Wikipedia I was right. Wikipedia says, A fog bow, sometimes called a white rainbow, is a phenomenon similar to a rainbow; however, as its name suggests, it appears as a bow in fog rather than rain. Because of the very small size of water droplets that cause fog—smaller than 0.05 millimeters (0.0020 in)—the fog bow has only very weak colors, with a red outer edge and bluish inner edge. The colors fade due to being smeared out by the diffraction effect of the smaller droplets.
