had fallen asleep year ago and woke up today, would have missed little
Adapted from the opening paragraphs in the New York Times Opinion Piece, The Election Is Happening Too Soon by David Brooks.
Mr. Brooks wrote:
I had hoped this election would be a moment of national renewal. I had hoped that the Democrats could decisively defeat MAGA populism and send us down a new national path.
That’s clearly not going to happen. No matter who wins this election, it will be close, and this is still going to be an evenly and bitterly divided nation.
In retrospect, I think I was expecting too much of politics. When certain sociological and cultural realities are locked in, there is not much politicians can do to redirect events. The two parties and their associated political committees have spent billions this year, and nothing has altered the race. The polls are just where they were at the start. If you had fallen asleep a year ago and woke up today, you would have missed little of consequence, except that it’s Kamala Harris leading the blue 50 percent of the country now and not Joe Biden.
It’s clearer to me now that most of the time politicians are not master navigators leading us toward a new future. They are more like surfers who ride the waves created by people further down in the core society.
When I was in college and studying the history of the United States, a theme pounded into my head by one of my favorite Professors was that the number one job of the President was to ‘educate the people’.
This Professor felt that with the correct information, the people would understand and support the President’s goals and the current administration’s efforts to reach those goals.
Another way to put, was that the President’s role was to provide leadership.
What a concept.
Leadership.
Mr. Brooks writes, “Politicians, especially when running for office, are professional opportunists, trying to please voting blocs. They are rarely visionaries.”
I like that.
Professional Opportunists.
Even when its seems both parties are just a bunch of lemmings running in opposite directions and the reason there are running in that opposite direction is mostly because it IS the opposite direction, with both sides heading for the cliff, the candidates see which way the crowds are moving, get in front of their group and yell, ‘Follow Me (to the cliff’s edge).’
When certain sociological and cultural realities are locked in, there is not much politicians can do to redirect events.
The two parties and their associated political committees have spent billions this year, and nothing has altered the race.
The polls are just where they were at the start.
And this is how we choose our leaders.
It sure doesn’t seem to be because of any leadership qualities on where we might, as a country, be going.
As Mr. Thurber reminds in his Fable, The Wolf who Went Places, “Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hellbent get where they are going.”
high school I went to does not exist any more … but it is still there
Grand Rapids Creston – 1968? (note the Christmas Tree Lot)
Came across this old photo and as I remember it, Grand Rapids Creston High School was built in 1927 as the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan, spread north and started to wrap around the far away from downtown, Kent Country Club.
Enough families now lived north of Leonard Street a new high school was needed.
A community effort was made to choose a suitable mascot for the new high school and as it was on the North End of the city, the community picked out Polar Bears and the Creston Polar Bears joined the Grand Rapids City League Athletic Conference.
When opened, there were classes from 7th to 12th grade in the new high school.
My Dad grew up on the North End and graduated from Creston in 1936.
He had been bumped up two grades along the way at Plainfield Elementary and was only 16 years old and had been moved up into the same class has his sister, Marion.
For the rest of his life, my Dad was against any kid being bumped up a grade or two.
For sure, it guaranteed he was the smallest kid in class, which was something most of us Hoffmans did not need any help understanding.
But it also meant that he graduated from Dental School in Ann Arbor in the Spring of 1942 (he was on a fast track of two years at Grand Rapids Junior College and then three years in Dental School without needing an undergraduate degree).
Which made him available for service in the Army of the United States.
He always thought that had he not been bumped ahead in elementary school, he might have been allowed a deferent to finish Dental school and entered the army later or maybe have missed all of WW2 which would have suited him just fine.
My Dad had a pretty good WW2, being the Dental Officer in a headquarters unit in Europe for 3 years but for the rest of his life, camping or spending time in a tent held no attraction for him.
After the war, my Dad returned to the North End, moved his practice from Leonard Street, to Plainfield Ave. and set up housekeeping with my Mom just east of Riverside Park.
They had 11 kids and all of us went to Creston.
By the time I started at Creston, it was a HIGH school of 10th to 12th grade and there were four city high schools, Central, Creston, Ottawa and Union, in Grand Rapids.
My Dad’s office was just down the street so we had a ride to school but a long walk home.
I remember once being in the car with my sister, Lisa, with my Dad driving and he says all of sudden to my sister, “Is it your birthday?”
Lisa said yes it was.
Dad then said, “The sun was in my eyes just like this that day when I drove Mom to the hospital when you were born.“
As little kids we would go to events at Creston starring our big brothers and sisters in plays and choir concerts, so we were familiar with the building.
Most of my brothers and sisters where in the Creston Choir or Madrigals and back then, the thing to do was make a record that they could sell to raise money for who knows what.
I remember this as we at least two of each album in our stacks of records because we usually had at least two kids in the choir at any time so my Mom had to buy two albums.
Every Christmas, a forest appeared in front of the high school for the Athletic Club Christmas Tree Sale fund raiser.
We got our Christmas trees there for years and as a little kid, I thought they grew there.
Creston was a building built like they built buildings in 1927.
Designed to be bright inside, there were lots of windows in the classrooms and hallways.
Tall, tall ceilings in the hall ways.
Tall, tall wood framed windows that magically slid in and up and over so that the top and bottom of the windows were open for air flow.
The floors were hardwood and each room had a built in closet for the teacher.
Some rooms had little platforms for the teachers desks.
By the time I got there I knew my way around pretty good but I learned more.
In my junior year I was on the school paper but due to scheduling conflict, Mr. Eikenhout, the teacher in charge, let me work by myself during 1st hour, in the newspaper office while the rest of the class met during 4th hour.
I would often have to seek him out before class and find him in the teachers lounge and he would throw me his keys and I would let myself in.
So there I was with keys and all by myself.
I took it upon myself to really search out Creston High School.
I found my way into the 4th floor attic.
I found my way into the storage rooms behind the auditorium stage that could only be reached by a ladder bolted to the wall that went past interior windows on the air shaft so I could look down in the metal shop.
I found my way into the old coal bins under the gym and back parking lot from the days when Creston had a coal fired furnace.
I ran around so much that a security guard grabbed me one day and asked, “Just who are you anyway?”
I even got an A in Newspaper.
I was smart enough to not do anything stupid.
Well, too stupid anyway.
I admit dumping the bucket of water out the third floor window when the band was marching up the driveway was stupid.
Especially 5 minutes later when the Band teacher kicked the door of the Newspaper room open and demanded to know who did that … and I was the only one in there.
The gym was small and cramped and had to be shared between boys and girls.
The gym was so small that league basketball games were played at North East Jr. High.
The locker rooms were small and cramped (about 7 feet of brick vaulted clearance as I remember.
And there was no swimming pool for athletics.
Back then, the folks of the North End had some clout and the decision was to modernize and enlarge Creston.
A new gym and pool complex was planned and the old neighborhood next door was bought out and demolished.
One of my odder assignments came when I was called into the Principals office along with Mr. Eikenhout and I was told to go through the old neighbor and take photographs to show what it looked like.
With the Principals assignment in my pocket, I walked through the now abandoned neighborhood and went in and out of all those homes and took several rolls of film of streets and rooms and views out windows.
I gave the film to the Principal and never saw them again.
Years later, married with children, I moved back to the North End.
My oldest two boys went to Creston.
There were a little bit surprised how well I knew my way around.
But it wasn’t the same.
Sure there was the huge gym and pool but there were other changes.
Due to risk of fire, the big stairwells were all enclosed with fire doors.
The ceilings in the hallways had been lowered and most of the light from the interior air shafts was cut off making the hallways gloomy.
The floors were all carpeted and you couldn’t run and slide in your socks any more.
Instead of smelling of floor wax, the rooms and halls smelled of carpet disinfectant.
The rooms had modern tables and teachers had been supplied with new cabinets that, sadly, were made of particle board and most were chipped with doors hanging at odd angles.
The windows were sealed as a modern HVAC system had been installed.
They had modernized all the charm, for what it was, out of the place.
Just a few years later, as online education came into play and more and more people moved out the North End and the City overall, Grand Rapids no longer needed 4 high schools and the decision was made to close Creston High School.
The building and grounds had somewhat of a re-birth as Grand Rapids City High and Middle School but Polar Bears no longer.
But the name lives on.
A few years ago I was locked out of my online banking and I called customer service to restore access.
“No problem”, she said, “just let me ask you a few security questions.”
“What was your high school mascot?”
“POLAR BEARS,” I answered proudly.
There was a long pause.
“I don’t think I ever heard that one before,” she said.
blurry, unfocused hard to read and hard to see … whole world out of whack
I am not now nor ever have been a ‘morning person’.
I don’t like to get up but I do it anyway and I am here to tell you there are some mornings worse than others.
Much worse.
It usually takes some time for my eyes to regain focus and that’s the time I make the coffee and shower.
By the time I am sitting down with my tablet and a coffee mug, I can read without any difficulty.
Most mornings that is.
But sometimes, like this morning, I look at my tablet and a twist my head left and right and up and down, trying to find that angle when my eyes, my retinas, the lenses in my eyes and my brain all line up so I can read.
This morning was a no go.
No matter how I held my head or my tablet, everything was blurry and unfocesed.
It was hard to read.
It was hard to see.
Without my morning reading, my whole world is out of whack.
Starting the day with one boot off.
So I changed my outlook on life.
I changed my focus.
Being nearsighted, I made my right eye focus on the glass in my glasses.
…
Seems that this morning, when I reached for my glasses, I had grabbed them by my thumb and forefinger.
By thumb and forefinger … on my the glass.
I had my finger prints to prove it.
Feel like I found my other boot and now, ready to face my day.
Been wearing glasses since I was 9.
I appreciate the simple miracle of adjusted site but … geee whiz.
growing up with my sister Mary, hey do you … remember Freddie?
I grew up in a group.
I have 10 brothers and sisters, though the last brother showed up after the first brother got married so there were never more than 10 kids in the house at one time.
And it was a big house.
We evolved into two groups of siblings.
The first five and the second five with one brother kind of lost in the middle.
I have memories of being a little kid but there are jumbled altogether with those ‘big’ kids in the first five.
They were ones who went everywhere on family trips.
They went to Disneyland and Yosemite and the Grand Canyon and New Orleans.
Then they went off to college and we in the second five wondered who those people were.
They would be around in the summer and then leave in the fall but be back at Thanksgiving (when we would all watch the Michigan-Ohio State and scream at the TV) and then back at Christmas (when we would all watch Michigan in the Rose Bowl and scream at the TV).
Christmas also had the added attraction of the first family bringing back germs from college and we all got, in succession, the dread stomach virus or winter vomiting as the brits call it.
Through it all strode the indomitable force that was my big sister Mary.
Determined to be all she could be.
Determined to make us all be all we could be if we would just listen.
Before she left for college, her room was on the 2nd floor (or 4th floor … it was a split level) right over the room I shared with my brother Tim.
We had bunk beds and could knock on the ceiling to bug her and she would bang the floor.
We would knock again.
She would bang again.
We would keep this up until we would hear her get out bed, slam open her door, and stomp down the stairs.
We would dive under the covers and pretend to be asleep and she would kick our door open and yell , “KNOCK IT OFF – I KNOW YOU’RE NOT SLEEPING.”
And we had balanced a cup full of water on top of the door.
Even when she was off at college, Mary would reach out to us.
She wrote a letter to my brother Pete with a sketch of her finger on the paper.
She said her hand had been asleep on the page and she didn’t want to move her finger, so she drew it into the letter.
We read that over and over and just laughed and laughed.
She would put her return address on her letters as ME.
What else would the return address be but return it to ME and of course ME meant our sister Mary!
Which we thought was so cool … until she told us it was her initials (Mary Elizabeth).
About this time my brother Peter brought the word Freddie home from school.
We would be watching TV or in the car or anywhere doing nothing and Pete would say, “Freddie” and we would all crack up.
So Mary picked up on it.
She would write and at the end of her letters include, PS: Freddie.
And we would laugh and laugh.
Mom would call her long distance from time to time and Mary would ask to talk to us kids and Mom would hold the phone out to us and Mary would say ‘Freddie’ and we would fall on the floor laughing and laughing.
They thing is we never told Mary what Freddie meant.
We never told anyone what Freddie meant.
My Mom got upset at being left out of the joke and started guessing at what ‘Freddie’ meant and she really fell off the deep end with her off color guesses which made us laugh harder and made Mom madder.
So today, on my sister’s Mary’s birthday, I have to ask?
cycling means freedom we don’t allow anything to interfere with that
It’s a joy from the start as cycling is so delightfully normal here: no one’s in Lycra, or wearing a helmet. “For us, cycling means freedom,” says our guide, Remco. “We don’t allow anything to interfere with that, like special clothing or helmet laws.” Old women are riding around in frocks; we see men in blazers and even one in a DJ and bow tie.
I work on a resort island that is famous for biking.
Unlike that island up north in the straits of Mackinac, one of the perks of biking on this island is the hard packed sand at low tide that lets you ride along the water.
Be aware that most of the bike rental locations will charge you a cleaning fee if you bring back a bike covered with sand so make sure you give ur bike a good hosing off.
But for clothes …
Sure I see ‘bikers’ in their … ‘uniform’ but for the most part, the folks down here are biking in swimsuits and flip flops and it all seems so delightfully normal.
There don’t seem to be any helmet rules and the only rule is the rule of common sense.
Which I admit is non to common among these local bike riders but we all seem to survive.
I do remember watching a young lady walking from the beach to her bike that had been sitting in the blazing sun all afternoon.
The young lady was wearing the briefest of briefest bikini swimsuits and she leaped onto the bike and in the same motion leaped right off as her bottom came into contact with the sun heated bike seat.
It was like it had been choregraphed.
Cycling means to do what you want even if that means burning your butt I guess.
