9.17.2024 – no harum starum

no harum starum
ranting swearing fellow but 
sober, steady, calm

“but he is Clever, & if any thing too modest. He seems discret & Virtuous, no harum Starum ranting Swearing fellow but Sober, steady, & Calm. His modesty will Induce him I dare say to take & order every step with the best advice possible to be obtained in the Army.”

A description of General George Washington in the letter “AN APPRAISAL OF WASHINGTON: JUNE 1775” written by Eliphalet Dyer to Joseph Trumbull.

As published in The American Revolution edited by John H. Rhodehamel and published by The Library of America.

Clever, & if any thing too modest.

He seems discret & Virtuous.

no harum Starum ranting Swearing fellow.

But Sober, steady, & Calm.

His modesty will Induce him I dare say to take & order every step with the best advice possible.

Such a low bar and somehow, much to high for today.



9.16.2024 – cannot read papers

cannot read papers
as they no longer reflect
the world I perceive

Adapted from the passage:

“After twenty years of studying them I am no longer able to read newspapers.

Why?

It’s because they no longer reflect the world I perceive.

I will have to go along with the way I see it even if wrong.

And if they are right, it lacks interest.”

Written by Jim Harrison in the novella, The Man Who Gave Up His Name, published in the collection titled, “Legends of the Fall” by Jim Harrison, New York, Grove Press, 2016.

I still try to read The Guardian and the New York Times every morning with my morning coffee.

I used to try and read USA Today but it’s website defies any real effort to read the stories without a lot of perseverance.

I am speaking of perseverance, of course, from a technical point of view.

Oh to handle all the ads and popups and pop downs and such that make reading online news such a challange.

But of late I am having more and more issues with what I am reading.

I keep asking, what world are these people living in.

The world described more and more in newspapers does not reflect the world I percieve.

One side of the paper can decry the end of the world and those dire portents in the next elections and how if we all could really care about what was happening, we could stop it.

And on the other side of the paper are heart felt discussions of the clothes people wore on the red carpet of the Emmy’s and how the Emmy’s was rigged and whole lot of other stuff that is supposed to be of interest to me.

Maybe it is getting older.

I recently went to a major college football game and while there was much I recognized from when I went to this college as a student, there was much that did not reflect on college football as I perceived it.

I chatted with the lady next to me and she said that they were searching for ways to make if fun for kids.

I guess getting together with your friends along with a keg of beer and going someplace where you could drink in public and yell your head off is no longer fun enough.

Reading this as I type it I decided I better check my drivers license and it says I was born in 1960.

I think I am right on schedule.

9.15.2024 – recognize warning

recognize warning
signs of someone who’s on a
path to violence

The CISA is on the job.

Accordioning to Wikipedia, “The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is a component of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) responsible for cybersecurity and infrastructure protection across all levels of government, coordinating cybersecurity programs with U.S. states, and improving the government’s cybersecurity protections against private and nation-state hackers.”

They are working hard to insure the digital sanctity of the up coming elections as well as the safety of those people running and managing the day to day operations of America voting.

Among the many things the have done is prepare helpful pamphlets of useful information for these election workers.

One of these pamphlets titled simply, RECOGNIZE.

It is about behaviors that election workers might want to be on the lookout for?

Now what might election workers want to be on the on the lookout?

What might they want to recognize?

You know, back when I was a kid, my elementary school, Crestview, was the local voting stop.

For as long as I can remember the same local ladies where the election workers who ran this voting site.

Often we would walk by and my classmate’s Mom’s would be sitting behind the desks by the voting machines and we would say hello.

Often our class would be invited down to see what was going on and HOW TO VOTE.

The process I mean.

How to fill out a sign a declaration of who you were, which the ladies would look up in giant thick books and then hand you a ballet.

As I got older, the ladies got older.

When I started voting, the schools’ name had changed but the ladies were the same and we would spend a moment to catch up and they would always ask about my brothers and sisters and my folks.

I have moved a lot since then but I have kept voting and I tell you, across this country, whether in Michigan or Georgia or South Carolina, it has been these same little old ladies running the show.

I always felt safe with the fate of democracy in their hands.

So CISA created a pamphlet for these little old ladies titled, RECOGNIZE.

The subtitle is, “Recognize the warning signs of someone on a path to violence.”

Sometimes its seems the biggest enemy of Democracy is Democracy itself.

9.14.2024 – a moral duty

a moral duty
maybe … it fails to invoke
a legal duty

“Mr. Arredondo has contended that he was not the incident commander, and his lawyers said it does not matter in the context of the indictment. “Such an allegation may invoke a moral duty to perform his job well, but it fails to invoke a legal duty,” the lawyers argued in their filings.”

From the article, “Former Uvalde School Police Chief Asks Court to Toss Charges” By Edgar Sandoval.

The article sub headline is, “Investigations have singled out Pete Arredondo for the delayed police response to a 2022 school shooting in Texas. He is expected to appear in court for the first time on Monday.”

I hate to say it but I guess I see the point the lawyers are trying to make.

Chief Pete Arredondo MAY have had a moral duty to perform his job well and protect the lives of those little kids in Uvalde but that doesn’t mean he had a legal duty to do anything about it and just because he let a little thing like … a lack of morals I guess … that and the ability to live with himself should not leave him open to legal prosecution for not performing his job well and not protecting those kids.

While I can see their point, those lawyers lose me along the way there somewhere.

But I have to ask, would I have been any different?

Had I been Chief of School District Police … goodness but I hope so.

9.13.2024 – many touches but

many touches but
couldn’t care less what the colours
are in reality

From the review, Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers review – a riveting rollercoaster ride from Arles to the stars by Jonathan Jones in the Guardian, September, 10, 2024.

A review of the show, Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, at the National Gallery, London, that opens September and I will never see.

Mr. Jones writes, “He’d toiled for years doing brown studies of northern life before he met the avant garde in Paris: within weeks of his arrival in Arles, he took the impressionist ideas he’d encountered to the next level. Describing his painting of a man sowing, he wrote in June 1888: “There are many touches of yellow in the soil … but I couldn’t care less what the colours are in reality.”“

I have seen so few Van Gogh’s in person but I can testify to the impact of the power of the artist that can be felt standing in front of painting, knowing you have to be in the same space the artist once stood and the world the artist attempted to record on canvas.

As Mr. Jones states: “Reality is not real. The visionary is.”

I like that.

I like that a lot.

Reality is not real.

The visionary is.

When Mr. Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” he wasn’t, as we know, describing the world of Colonial America as it then existed.

Not all men, mankind were equal.

It wasn’t the reality.

It was a vision.

A vision we are still too far from after almost 250 years but the vision, for a lot of us, is still there.

Which, I guess, makes us the visionary.

Reality is not real.

The visionary is.

That is the reality of it all.

Mr. Jones closes his review with this.

We all know how badly it ended. The ideals Van Gogh invested in his little home couldn’t withstand the shock of sharing it with Gauguin, and after his ear-cutting and further crises he decided he was better off in an asylum. But here, that never happens. We experience not the sordid facts, but Van Gogh’s dream of The Yellow House. It still exists, always, out there among the painted stars.

It still exists, always, out there among the painted stars.