1.9.2022 – betwixt sand and foam

betwixt sand and foam
tide erases wind blows away
sea and shore remain

Folly Beach – Hilton Head Island, Jan 9, 2022

Today’s haiku is adapted from Sand and Foam by Kahlil Gibran

I am forever walking upon these shores,
Betwixt the sand and the foam,
The high tide will erase my foot-prints,
And the wind will blow away the foam.
But the sea and the shore will remain
Forever.

I think of two things with Sea Foam.

One is the chocolate candy that you get from Sweetland’s Candy Shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

On the Sweetland’s Candies website, they state:

Our famous seafoam, sometimes referred to as sponge candy, carefully crafted in small batches and coated in our dark chocolate. Light, airy, and crunchy are just a few words used to describe this magical candy.

Somehow the spongy filling is a mixture of sugar, corn syrup and gelatin all whisked together when hot.

Once cooled and broken into pieces, it is coated with milk chocolate.

It isn’t in the stores down here on the coast like you would think which makes me think about an opportunity there.

On the other hand, if it was in stores, it wouldn’t be like it is from Sweetland’s.

You can take us out of West Michigan but you can’t the Sweetland’s out of us.

Same pretty much goes for fudge.

You can find it down here.

There is a fairly good candy store on River Street in Savannah.

I recommend their pralines.

Pecan Pralines.

Not sure if you can get these up north, but if you can, they are not these real Georgia Pralines.

But the fudge here, well, it isn’t Murdick’s is it?

If you grew up in West Michigan, you went to Mackinaw.

If you went to Mackinaw, you got fudge.

It is what you do.

I don’t know why, but that is what you did.

For my wife’s birthday, one of her good friend’s from Grand Rapids was kind enough to order a gift box of three 1/2 lb. slabs of fudge sent to her down here in the low country.

Why does taste bring back so much?

Murdick’s.

Like the pills in the Matrix, one taste and I am 10 years old again.

Nothing like it in the world.

A couple of slices of this fudge and my mind goes into a sugar high and contact with the known world is disconnected.

Were did all this start?

Sea foam!

I always think of the candy when I see the sea foam like I did today.

But I am also reminded of the painting known as the Primavera by Sandro Botticelli.

The Primavera depicts the birth of Venus or Goddess of Love in Roman Mythology.

In Greek mythology, Venus is known as Aphrodite.

According to Greek mythology, Uranus and Gaia had a son named Cronus.

Cronus castrated Uranus and threw his father’s testicles into the sea.

This caused the sea to foam and out of that white foam rose Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty.

Think of that next time you are at the beach or the Sweetland’s Candy counter.

1.8.2021 – Governments for – from

Governments for – from
the consent of the governed
derive just powers

In 1776, Mr. Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, 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.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

IN 2020, Fiona Hill wrote in her autobiography/social commentary, There is Nothing for You Here wrote, “This lack of a direct relationship between ordinary people and prominent intellectual and political elites leaves the playing field open for others to step in and present themselves as advocates for the entire working or middle class or other distinct underrepresented groups.

Indeed, politics since 2000 has been marked by the rise of populists -politicians who spurn “out-of-touch experts” and who claim to speak on behalf of millions of people with whom they in fact have no authentic connection, and in whom they have no genuine interest beyond securing votes to support their own often very personal agendas.

I am trying to think back to the days when an elected Representative of the people felt in someway responsible to the ‘people back home”.

In the old book, Advise and Consent, a novel focusing on the story of the United States Senate working to consent to the President’s latest Secretary of State nominee, the ‘people back home’ have a role.

The President calls the Senate Majority Leader and complains that he had a hard time getting through.

“Michigan needed their Senator this morning,” said the Majority Leader.

Why do I feel that most folks now in Washington are not as advocates for the entire working or middle class or other distinct underrepresented groups but people with their own often very personal agendas.

Do these folks check their mail or phone calls from the ‘people back home’ or do they only read their twitter and facebook comments and watch and re-watch their sound bites on TV as they push their ‘brand’.

Trying to think through this, I bet the last candidate for any office I ever talked to was a feller running for Judge back in Gwinnett County Georgia.

I shook hands but didn’t dare ask him what I wanted to ask him.

The funny thing was we had a connection with the candidate.

And once we explained the connection, we didn’t have to ask our question.

The candidate knew the question and knew he didn’t want to answer the question and moved on from us quickly.

See we had purchased a house he had owned.

We needed to get a new roof and our insurance didn’t cover it.

Seems that the house had just HAD it’s roofed repaired.

Or at least the previous owner had filed a claim to fix the roof but it appeared that while the claim was paid, the roof repairs had not been made.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh well, I digress.

BTW, this feller did not get elected.

How do we make Congressional Representation truly representative.

On the other hand, maybe it is.

Mr. Jefferson also wrote that, ” … all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

1.7.2022 – cultural despair

cultural despair
loss, grievance anxiety when
feel dislocated

If you want to read a disturbing take on the world today, the writing of Fiona Hill is the writer for you.

You remember Ms. Hill.

She is the American lady with the brit accent who testified in one of the many hearings about important matters that mattered to important people back in the day when everyone was trying to get someone to say something that might get someone else in trouble.

Ms. Hill was an intelligence analyst under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama from 2006 to 2009. She was appointed, in the first quarter of 2017, by President Donald Trump as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on his National Security Council staff. (Wikipedia)

Ms. Hill has a command of language and prose and wit that produces wonderful, easy to read and grasp, important books that we all should read but no one will.

In her latest book, commenting on the United States at the beginning of the century, the millennium era, Ms. Hill wrote this.

Cultural despair is the sense of loss, grievance, and anxiety that occurs when people feel dislocated from their communities and broader society as everything and everyone shifts around them.

Especially when the sense of identity that develops from working in a particular job or industry, also recedes or is abruptly removed, people lose their grasp of the familiar.

They can then easily fall prey to those who promise to put things – including jobs, people, or even entire countries – back in “their rightful place.“

If what it takes is a sense of loss, grievance as everything and everyone shifts around them, it is safe to say the United States is in a state of cultural despair.

The goofy thing about the THEY in the line that starts, They can then easily fall prey … is that it can apply to either side of our great debates.

Take money.

Rich people are in despair due to a sense of loss, grievance as everything and everyone shifts around them and they fall prey to anyone who says they will return and keep the I in RICH. Back in their rightful place.

Poor people are in despair due to a sense of loss, grievance as everything and everyone shifts around them and they fall prey to anyone who says they will replace the rich people with the poor people. In their rightful place.

The right places are not the same places.

And if someone is right, why would they want to consider another point of view that has to be wrong?

Something for everyone and at the same time nothing for anyone.

Did I leave out the title of Ms. Hill’s latest book?

There is nothing for you here.

1.6.2022 – the power they have

the power they have
is not the power to destroy
not while this Court sits

I to think about back when.

Back when there were rules and laws and people followed the laws.

Back when there was a level of respect.

Back when we thought that the Government was going to do their best.

Back when, if the Government lost their way, the Supreme Court was there to kick them back into line.

Back in 1928, in a case at the Supreme Court where the State of Mississippi sued to get lost tax revenue back, the Court found for the State.

This decision brought a dissent from Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr. who felt that the the State of Mississippi was in the wrong and was going to far.

“The power to tax is not the power to destroy while this Court sits.” Justice Holmes wrote.

Who knows what he really meant, but it sure sounded like the little guy had a friend in high places.

But things change.

The courts change.

The little guy DID have a friend on the court.

A man who once said, “If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell, I will help them. It’s my job.”

But read that last line of the Haiku.

Not while this Court sits.

Justice Holmes was on the court into his 90’s.

That Court no longer sits.

The power of Government today now seems to be the power to destroy.

1.5.2022 – we saw potential

we saw potential
that we thought we could bring out
actually not

Watching TV last night, one of the ever growing list of do it yourself home repair shows flickered by.

There was a couple standing outside of this house that looked like a on old fashioned barn silo made of corrugated metal, laying over on its side.

The couple who lived there was being interviewed.

“We saw potential we thought we could bring out that never actually happened,” the couple said.

Why do I have this feeling that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and James Madison and all those folks are sitting around somewhere, saying the same thing.

According to Wikipedia, Mr. Madison and Mr. Hamilton discussed the possibility of the new country under a new constitution not reaching its’ potential because the country would be broken up by some ‘faction’.

Mr. Madison’s Federalist Paper No. 10 continues the discussion of the destructive role of a faction in breaking apart the republic that Mr. Hamilton started in Federalist No. 9.

Madison defines a faction as “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.“

Madison argues, these factions would be prone to make decisions in their own interest, and not for the public good.

Mr. Madison felt the answer was in a large democracy in the hands of elected delegates.

It was simple, thought Mr. Madison, because in a large republic, there there would be more “fit characters” to choose from for each delegate.

I am fascinated that the founders feared that maybe the United States was too big or would grow to big survive as a Union or that our freedoms would be abused.

I am dismayed that I while I can agree with Mr. Madison, that ‘fit characters’ in Government is a great response, I have to ask today, where did all those ‘fit characters’ go?

I often feel that when the USA poured out the brains, there were all on top, like cream, and now we are left with the bottom of the milk jug.

So much potential for a country less than 300 years old.

Hopefully it will be more than a potential that never actually happened.