10.19.2023 – there was light good light

there was light good light
but what I consider dawn …
darker than all that

How Dark the Beginning

All we ever talk of is light—
let there be light, there was light then,
good light—but what I consider
dawn is darker than all that.

So many hours between the day
receding and what we recognize
as morning, the sun cresting
like a wave that won’t break
over us—as if light were protective,
as if no hearts were flayed,
no bodies broken on a day
like today. In any film,
the sunrise tells us everything
will be all right. Danger wouldn’t
dare show up now, dragging
its shadow across the screen.

We talk so much of light, please
let me speak on behalf
of the good dark. Let us
talk more of how dark
the beginning of a day is.

… by Maggie Smith.

According to Wikipedia, Maggie Smith is an American poet, freelance writer, and editor who lives in Bexley, Ohio.

Wikipedia also mentions that, In January 2022, when the board of trustees of McMinn County Schools in Tennessee, in a 10-0 decision, removed the Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust graphic novel Maus from its curriculum for 8th grade English classes, overriding a State curriculum decision, Smith was critical of the decision. She tweeted: “We’ve lost our damn minds if we think that to keep kids safe in school, we need to ban books, not assault weapons”.

10.18.2023 – answers on the beach

answers on the beach
to any question and tide brings
new answers twice daily

I really do believe that the answer to every question you might ever have can be found in the sand at the beach.

When you understand that the tide comes in twice each day and wipes out all the old answers and provides a beach full of new answers, the wonderfullness of this arrangement of answer management becomes even more wonderful.

I am happy to take advantage of this phenomena.

I walk the beach when ever I can, looking for answers.

I walk at lunch time at work.

“Going out for answers, anybody need any?”, I yell as I walk out of the room.

They are all there, the answers, just waiting for you.

But there is one caution.

Do you remember the old movie, No Time for Sergeants with Andy Griffith?

That scene when Mr. Griffith makes all the toilets seats stand up and salute?

That scene almost killed my Dad with a heart attack he laughed so hard.

The thing was that my Dad almost had a heart attack EVERY time he watched this scene.

Maybe knowing it was coming made it even funnier?

In the movie, Mr. Griffith and his Sergeant go over ALL THE ANSWERS to the all the tests Mr. Griffith has to take and PASS, to get classified.

When asked how did on the tests, Mr. Griffith replies, “you spent so much time drumming the answers into me …we ought to have spent a little more on the questions they joint up with.“

All the answers are there on the beach.

You have to bring your own questions that those answers joint up with.

10.17.2023 – he wrote, never print

he wrote, never print
anything that a scrub-woman
cannot understand

‘no paper of mass appeal could afford to be without a staff astrologist or a palmist who could tell you how to improve your fortune’. ‘The space we devote to politics is a dead loss in circulation.’ He wrote ‘Never print anything that a scrub-woman in a skyscraper cannot understand’, a statement paralleled by R. D. Blumenfeld in England ‘never to forget the cabman’s wife’.

So said Emile Gauvreau in his book, My Last Million Readers (New York, 1941) as quoted by Harold Adams Innis in his book, The Press: A Neglected Factor in the Economic History of the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, London, 1949).

Mr. Innis writes: “In the intense competition for circulation and for advertising success was won by the use of reading matter and picture appeal in competition with the magazines and by the use of features which emphasized gossip about movie stars.“

That year again?

1949.

10.16.2023 – saw live-oak growing,

saw live-oak growing,
all alone stood it, moss hung
down from the branches …

I Saw in Louisiana A Live-Oak Growing by Walt Whitman

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,
But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,
I know very well I could not.

Unlike Uncle Walt, I wasn’t in Louisiana but in Charleston, SC.

Also unlike Uncle Walt, I was surrounded by live oaks instead of just one that stood out alone.

Still, their look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself.

But not that in anyway might I match up with these wonders but only in how temporary I was and huge these trees were.

So there was Walt, in another state, a state named after a King of France.

And there I was in another City and a State both named after a King of England.

Louis and Charles.

I will be gone tomorrow.

Louis and Charles will be forgotton.

But these trees.

I can’t image the world without these magnificent trees.

They will still be here.

10.15.2023 – among reeds rushes

among reeds rushes
baby boy was found eyes as
clear as centuries

Down among the reeds and rushes
A baby boy was found
His eyes as clear as centuries
His silky hair was brown

Never been lonely
Never been lied to
Never had to scuffle in fear
Nothing denied to
Born at the instant
The church bells chime
And the whole world whispering
Born at the right time

Born at the Right Time – 1990 Words and Music by Paul Simon