3.19.2023 – just once in six months

just once in six months
or a year, a call serves to
keep up acquaintance

From The Home Cook Book, by Ladies of Toronto and Other Cities and Towns, Toronto, Belford Brothers, Publishers, MDCCCLXXVII.

The Title page states:

COMPILED FROM RECIPES CONTRIBUTED BY LADIES OF TORONTO AND

OTHER CITIES AND TOWNS: PUBLISHED FOR THE BENEFIT

OF THE HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN.

Under SOCIAL OBSERVANCES – Cards and Calling, we read:

The simplest society duty is, that of making calls. A new comer should return each call within two weeks after it is made. After this, a call once in six months, or a year, serves to keep up acquaintance. Calls are due to a hostess two days after a dinner party, and two days after a ball, and a week after a small party, though these are amply fulfilled by leaving one’s card in the case of a gentleman, a personal call being polite from a lady who has more time.

In town, leaving a card with the corner bent signifies that it was left by its owner in person, not sent by a servant. Bending the edges of a card, means that the visit was designed for the young ladies of the house, as well as the mistress of it. If there is a visitor with the family whom you wished to see, a separate card should be left for that person, naming him or her to the servant. A card should also be left for the host, if the call was designed as a family matter, but more than three are not left at one house.

For some reason I must now immediately read each text or message on any electronic device as if it were a message from the Principal of my High School.

And if I don’t respond immediately, somehow, I am RUDE.

I want to pay calls.

Once every six months or a year.

And if you aren’t home, I want to leave my card.

Somehow, afterwards, we are both satisfied that we have done all that is necessary.

All that is required.

The telephone was seen as an intrusion in the home.

Now it sits in my hand constantly … in case someone wants to tell me something that I didn’t need to know in the first place.

Oh well.

Devil will have his details.

3.18.2023 – the times are changing

the times are changing
or, tempora mutantur
… and we change in them

Or Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis, which can be translated as:

Times are changed; we also are changed with them

or

Times are changed; we, too, are changed within them.

We change WITH the changes?

We are changed BY the changes.

In the first, we change to meet the challenges brought by change.

In the second, we are changed by those challenges brought by change.

I have to say that things have changed in the world of politics in the time that I have been around.

Not to mention any names, but there was a time when, if a candidate for ANY OFFICE, from dog catcher to President of the United States, was named in headline, just NAMED, about an encounter of any kind, from a cup of coffee, to the beast with two backs, with anyone, let alone with a porn star, that candidate would be FINISHED.

Can anyone remember Gary Hart?

But Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.

Times change and we changed with or we were changed by the times.

The current news cycle has a story about a candidate for Public Office who had a ‘tryst’ with a porn star.

No one denies that this happened.

No one denies that the candidate was married at the time.

No one denies that the candidate arranged for hush money to be paid to the porn star to keep the story quiet.

(UPDATE: truth be told, rereading the accounts, the candidate in question DOES deny the tryst took place 3/18/2023)

What is at question here is whether or not the candidate paid the porn star off with funds diverted from political contributions.

Because using money to pay off a porn star so the porn star would keep quiet about their ‘tryst’ would be WRONG if the money used to pay off the porn star so the porn star would keep quiet about their ‘tryst’ came from political contributions.

There is a tragedy here.

And it is not about the candidate.

That old wise man changed with the changes, watched and learned, and built a house on the rock with a firm foundation.

That old foolish man was changed by the changes and saw his house on the sand go splat.

3.17.2023 – piling on problems

piling on problems
persistence of poverty
in life should shame us

Poverty is measured at different income levels, but it is experienced as an exhausting piling on of problems.

Poverty is chronic pain, on top of tooth rot, on top of debt collector harassment, on top of the nauseating fear of eviction. It is the suffocation of your talents and your dreams.

It is death come early and often.

From 2001 to 2014, the richest women in America gained almost three years of life while the poorest gained just 15 days.

Far from a line, poverty is a tight knot of humiliations and agonies, and its persistence in American life should shame us.

All the more so because we clearly have the resources and know-how to effectively end it.

From the Guest Opinion piece, America Is in a Disgraced Class of Its Own by Matthew Desmond, a sociologist at Princeton, where he is the director of the Eviction Lab.

Mr. Desmond continues:

Most Americans — liberals and conservatives alike — now believe people are poor because “they have faced more obstacles in life,” not because of a moral failing.

Long overdue, however, is a reckoning with the fact that many of us help to create and uphold those obstacles through the collective moral failing of enriching ourselves by impoverishing others.

Poverty isn’t just a failure of public policy.

It’s a failure of public virtue.

I am not so sure that most Americans don’t think that the poor are poor because they deserve to be poor due to some moral failing.

And I don’t care why poor people are poor.

The fact that they are are poor should be enough.

Truly I think we cannot do anything about the poor in the long run, as the poor will always be with us, but what do we do, what did we do in the short run?

Jesus himself said that “The poor you will always have with you.“

Myself, I think if that as being a bit of test for us.

And Jesus also said, “For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink.

I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ “

They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

Is there another way to express that last line?

The line that says, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me?

A failure of public virtue seems to fit nicely.

Tts persistence, both poverty and the failure in public virtue in American life should shame us.

But those words, virtue and shame.

Lets just say when the State of Florida gets around to releasing their approved dictionary, I doubt either word will be in there.

3.16.2023 – driving in the dark

driving in the dark
no slow down through the circles
all the lights are green

Sure I drove in Atlanta traffic on a daily basis for years.

I learned to cope.

I did not learn to like it.

I didn’t like traffic then.

I don’t like traffic now.

On the grand scheme, there is not a lot of traffic where I live and work now but there are some odd factors that impact traffic.

One thing is the only one way to work and that way is a bridge.

A four lane – two lanes in either direction – soon to be condemned bridge.

Not that Atlanta had any alternate routes that worked either but they did have lots of lanes.

Another thing is that anyone who needs to be at work in the area where I work, has to be at work at the same time.

Everyone using the same bridge at the same time creates traffic.

Frustrating traffic.

To add to the frustration, there are two traffic circles on my route to work.

So I have been leaving earlier.

Then the time changed.

And leaving early put me in the dark.

But it was okay.

I was the only car in the traffic circle.

When you are the only car and the idea is to slow down and yield to traffic on your left, there was no slow down as there was no traffic.

There are a handful of traffic lights between me and work and most of them are placed by some deviltry to do nothing but annoy me.

But it was okay as all those light were green.

I am not so foolish as to think I have found the trick.

I am not so foolish as to think this could happen again tomorrow.

I am happy for just today and for today, that is enough.

Hope for tomorrow, but for today …

driving in the dark
no slow down through the circles
all the lights are green

3.15.2013 – stacked against what we

stacked against what we
think we are: impossible
to surprise ourselves

From:

The days are stacked against
what we think we are:
it is nearly impossible
to surprise ourselves
I will never wake up
and be able to play the piano.

In the poem The Theory & Practice of Rivers as it appears in the book, The Theory & Practice of Rivers and New Poems by Jim Harrison, (1937-2016), Clark City Press, Livingston, Mont 1989.

While I have to agree with Mr. Harrison, I still wake up and hope to play the piano and I don’t even have a piano.