1.15.2023 – how did dare expect

how did dare expect
so much of life and how could
act so stupidly

I was in the library the other day and as I do in libraries, I walked down the H aisle of fiction to see how many Jim Harrison books were on the shelf.

I was pleased to see 8.

I looked them over and the book titled, “The Summer He Didn’t Die“, caught my eye.

I knew it was on the shelf at home among the remaining titles in my hard cover library and I also knew I hadn’t opened it in years.

To sidestep into the discussion of EBooks, EReaders and printed books, I am 100% in agreement with those who say there is something to the printed page and holding a book in your lap.

But I also say, move several times and your thoughts on a personal multi volume library will change.

I still say I love print, but am very THANKFUL for electronic versions of any and all books.

But I digress.

When I got home, I took The Summer He Didn’t Die off the shelf and sat in my rocking chair and opened it.

There are, as usual with Mr. Harrison, three long short stories in the book.

The first one was the title short story, The Summer He Didn’t Die, and it is part of the Brown Dog oeuvre.

If you never read anything else going forward, I ask you to find a copy of Brown Dog (what you don’t a free archive.org account?) which has all 6 of the Brown Dog stories anthologized in one volume, and enjoy the trip to world you never considered.

It’s the same world we live in, but it’s not the same world we live in at the same.

You won’t be in Kansas anymore.

The 2nd long short story is titled, “Republican Wives.”

I am sure I read the story when I got the book but I did not have any memory of it.

This was fabulous.

It was new ground or, at least, forgotten old ground, one of the few benefits of getting older.

Reading the long short story, on the 2nd page I hit this line:

How did I dare expect so much of life. And by contrast, how could I have acted so stupidly?

And I stopped reading.

30 minutes later I was still looking at that page.

In the book, The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk wrote about the hero, young Willie Keith, after a near death experience, sat back with a cigar and thought.

Wouk writes:

With the smoke of the dead sailor’s cigar wreathing around him, Willie passed to thinking about death and life and luck and God.

Philosophers are at home with such thoughts, perhaps, but for other people it is actual torture when these concepts – not the words, the realities – break through the crust of daily occurrences and grip the soul.

A half hour of such racking meditation can change the ways of a lifetime …

How did I dare expect so much of life.

And by contrast, how could I have acted so stupidly?

More than saying, But for the Grace of God, go I.

Thank God, and I mean THANK GOD, for grace.

But daring to expect so much of life?

Deep in my soul I think of Prospero in the Tempest.

We are such stuff, as dreams are made on.

Dreams?

Expectations?

Dare to dream.

Dare to expect much.

But, don’t act so stupidly, can’tcha?

Gee Whiz.

1.14.2023 – people want to think

people want to think
everything’s back to normal but
going take longer

There is always something lately seems to be the new way to look at things.

Orange is the new black was the thing to say for a while.

Not following fashion too much, I have a 5 pairs of pants, khaki khaki’s, black khaki’s and 3 pairs of blue jeans, I am not much sure about what the old black was.

Black, maybe?

And trying to nail down the origin of the phrase, the closest I could find on the Google (after .6 seconds of searching) was that it showed up in the late-’70s, when the New York Times stated: “Colors are the new neutrals.”

Back in the day, when I lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan and the hoi-polloi said they lived in EAST Grand Rapids, folks who couldn’t get property in EGR started saying Rockford was the new EGR.

(For fun just say hoi-polloi of Grand Rapids, Michigan out loud.)

I went around saying, that Sparta, it’s the new Rockford, just to watch Rockfordians get upset.

Its a Grand Rapids thing so don’t worry if you don’t get it.

In an article about New York Theater, ‘It’s a hard time’: why are so many Broadway shows closing early?, Mr. David Smith writes:

“People just got used to staying home and getting people back out and remembering how amazing live theatre is is taking time. Also people are still suffering and dealing with the trauma of the last few years. People want to think everything’s back to normal but it’s going to take longer for all people to feel normal after two and a half years of tragedy.”

I have to agree.

People want to think everything’s back to normal!

And I agree that it’s going to take longer for all people to feel normal after two and a half years of tragedy.

Normal.

It’s the new normal.

Tempora mutantur.

Times change and we change with the times.

And as Mr. Churchill said, or was reported as saying, “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

If Mr. Churchill was correct, and in saying that it is important to keep in mind that FDR said ‘Winston has 100 ideas everyday but only one is good. That’s okay as he will have another 100 ideas tomorrow, but as I was saying, if Mr. Churchill was correct, with all the change we have experienced in the last 2 and half years, we must be coming close to perfection.

There is that definition of perfection to worry about though.

1.13.2023 – old cowgirl, she seemed

old cowgirl, she seemed
like someone who had earned the
right to give advice

Seems like there is a story where young Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr. went to see Ralph Waldo Emerson to seek advice.

As I remember the account stated that Emerson respected individuals too much to ever give advice.

The story in my mind also recorded that Holmes gave Emerson an article he had written to review and while Mr. Emerson did not make any specific comments he did say that he sensed Holmes direction and that if he, Young Holmes, fired off enough buckshot, something was bound to come close to the target.

To me, this explained the writing of most Harvard academics and graduates.

There is a lot of good in there, somewhere, in all that chaff.

Maybe.

And I always liked Mr. Justice Holmes.

Any Justice who sat on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States with 5 gunshot wounds in their body from fighting in the American Civil War was for me, someone who had earned the right to sit on that bench.

Holmes, according to the legend, is the Union Officer who figured out that by standing with a bunch of short Union Officers in blue uniforms, Abraham Lincoln, dressed in black and a tall stove pipe hat, kind of stood out as an attractive target for rebel sharpshooters.

Once he figured it out, as men started dropping left and right, Holmes grabbed the President and pulled him down behind a wall with a shout of “Get down you damn fool!“

I often muse how many people would love to have the opportunity to yell that at any President.

Lincoln later spoke of finding himself under enemy fire and said that it was a disagreeable experience.

According to history this was the only time an American President came under enemy fire while in office.

Justice Holmes would go on to be on a member of the Supreme Court for 30 years until he was 92.

AND SO what if at the end of his years of service he fell asleep on the bench from time to time.

A little nudge brought him back to the court.

Often with a waking shout of “Jesus Christ, where the Hell am I?“

Just give the guy a break.

But I digress.

But who else can give advice?

Who else should give advice?

And who ever listens to advice anyway.

Still this line, “He got the advice from a 100-year-old cowgirl interviewed in the pages of a newspaper and soon adopted it as his own. She seemed like someone who had earned the right to give advice.” from the article, I’ve never forgotten the advice of a 100-year-old cowgirl: ‘Always check your own girth strap’ by Gabrielle Chan caught me eye.

Ms. Chan wrote:

… I was slightly relieved when I moved to a farm that my husband didn’t have much advice for me. He is a sink or swim type of person.

One of the only scraps he offered was “always check your own girth strap”.

The Farmer, as he is known, underlined early on in my unspectacular horse riding career that I should always check my own girth strap.

A girth strap, for non-horsey people, is the belt that holds the saddle to the horse.

In people, it might hold your trousers up, or separate the bottom and the top half of you, depending on what you need it for.

The Farmer, as he is known, underlined early on in my unspectacular horse riding career that I should always check my own girth strap.

He got the advice from a 100-year-old cowgirl interviewed in the pages of a newspaper and soon adopted it as his own.

She seemed like someone who had earned the right to give advice.

It is a great piece of sound advice that even sounds great to say out loud.

When I get tomorrow I am going to say to myself, “always check your own girth strap!”

I’ll remember to say as I have painted it on my bedroom wall.

Right under, “It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.”

Another piece of sound advice.

1.11.2023 – break any these rules

break any these rules
sooner than say anything
outright barbarous

I came across this the other day in my reading attributed to one Eric Arthur Blair.

Mr. Blair wrote some rules on writing.

He said:

But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English.

I love that last line.

One could keep all of them and still write bad English.

BTW, Eric Arthur Blair was much better known under the name of George Orwell.

1.9.2023 – instagrammable

instagrammable
moments lacking are listed
don’t we need to pee?

Ginia Bellafante, writing in the New York Times (Must We Gentrify the Rest Stop?) about the changes at rest stops on the New York State Thruway stated:

Five years ago, the New York State Thruway Authority conducted a survey of more than 2,600 drivers to take measure of the customer experience at the service areas lining the 570 miles of road that make up one of the largest toll highways in the country, stretching from the edge of the Bronx up past Buffalo. Whether participants were traveling for work or for pleasure, they had needs that apparently were going unfulfilled.

The resulting report listed as chief takeaways that leisure travelers complained about unappealing interiors and the lack of “Instagrammable moments.”

Instagrammable moments?

Instagrammable moments!

When I was studying history back in college, I was taught over and over, in lectures, in statements, in LOUD RED LETTERS WRITTEN on term papers, to AVOID A SENSE OF PRESENT MINDEDNESS.

What was an instagrammable moment 10 years ago?

What will be an instagrammable moment be ten years from now.

Since the beginning of time people traveling from point A to point B have hoped for a clean, well lighted place to answer a call to nature.

And if it wasn’t too much trouble, maybe a decent cup of coffee and a bun or a biscuit or a doughnut maybe.

Why do these two things do not figure in as the chief takeaway on a survey of customer experience of service areas?

As Ms. Bellafante writes: In a society so casually stratified that major airlines now offer five classes of service and airport security lines can be bypassed for an annual fee, rest stops remain one of the few spaces in modern life that can be generally counted on to level us.

As my Dad would have put it, “Everybody has to pee.”

That won’t change but if it comes it to that, spare me anything instagrammable that captures that moment.