Category Archives: A Pocket of Resistance

A potpourri of posts on a variety of topics, in other words, what’s currently on my mind.

Disillusioned

i am 80, a year plus younger than Joe Biden, about a year and half older than Donald Trump. i recognized my synapses and thought processes no longer worked as well as they used to as i moved on from a decade ago. My ideas about things have been formed over 80 years of living, much of that is no longer relevant. The world has changed. The two major candidates share those things with me. Even if i had the backing, financial and public support, i would have difficulty in deciding what was best for my country, as in a number of situations, there isn’t a right answer, there are only choices of what could be the better answer. i would not run and if elected, i would not accept.

Having noted that, i am supposed to choose between two doddering, old, self-centered politicians more focused on their personal success backed by two parties who have nothing closely related to promote what is best for the country, but only to get the advantage politically. i have tried to make decisions on the parties’ platforms, but those platforms are only marketing bullshit bashing of the other side.

i certainly don’t have the experience to navigate the mined waters of no-quarter politics, but quite frankly, i would make a better president than the two old narcissistic farts with oversized egos. Just don’t vote for me.

All i ask is for you to consider what is your best choice between these two horrible choices. Unfortunately, voting for an alternative is like throwing your vote away.

George Washington was right.

To Maureen: On Our Painting i Bought in Hong Kong

you sleep in the next room;
i, tired from weekend tasks,
start to bed but stop
to look at Lisi Tang’s painting
striking me as a “lonely” painting;
a beautiful tribute
to the loneliness of
the vast and omnipotent sea
yet
there are two gulls,
beautiful in their flight together,
graceful, in syncopation,
juxtaposed against the vastness of the sea;
i see us, the gulls,
flying into the mist of the morning sea
aware of its vastness, its cruelty, its beauty,
flying toward infinity together:
a significant moment:
the two of us
flying above the sea of time.

Ode to RPW

Dear Mister Warren,

i am reading you again,
more thoughtful reading perhaps
buffered by the passage of Time:
your time, my time,
perhaps because
we come from near the kindred borders
of Kentucky and Tennessee
with limestone, pockmarked hills
of cedar, pine, oak, poplar, dogwood
and, of course, hickory;

lives reared by the hills,
farm gardens, several dairy cows
in the pasture next to the barn,
hogs in the muddy slop of the sty,
all of which did not know Time,
your time, my time
until it was gone.

The mockingbird trills another song
as the stars mock Time
but not in golden California
or the snow blotted woods of Connecticut:
did i write of stars mocking Time
or did i repeat what you said?

Does it matter with Time?

i am more often now older than Time,
antique words past Time,
lost
far from those rolling, curving rivers
of Water and Time
in the hills and valleys of the Shawnee
when deer and bear roamed the woods;
even then, the mockingbird
trilled its borrowed music
in our ear.

Time is forever and never
as it was then,
as it is now;
we will have our time with us
for we are in Time,
always and forever.

i have you to thank
for my thoughts of Time;
at least, it makes me gracious,
conscious of how Time, us
fit together.

Hope For The Right Way To Do It

It is a drizzly, dour, Saturday morning. i feel blessed to be in the Southwest California for the rest of California is getting smacked in the face with snow and rain. This little section of the state, nay, the country is usually like there is some kind of invisible shield.

The shield was admittedly down back around my January birthday when the lower areas od San Diego were flooded. Most of the time, those big storms veer around the Southwest corner.

Still, today is not a good day for tromping around a golf course, or long walks, and, although this is the kind of weather i enjoy for walks on the beach, it is not an attractive activity except for old salts, crazy ones like me.

So i arose for dreary day work stuff. Then my day changed when i read a sports article on line and got…Hope.

For the last several months, really stretching into a year or two, my buddies and i have had a running discussion on the state of college athletics, especially the major sports, and especially Vanderbilt. Including is this group are two former Vanderbilt basketball stars from my era. Jerry Southwood and Kenny Gibbs played on the Vanderbilt teams that excelled (and would have been in the NCAA finals in 1964-65 except for a horrible call in the last two minutes against Michigan — but i’ve sang this song before).

Our discussions have centered around recruiting, the Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) rules (which in my mind, makes the college athlete a professional athlete), the transfer portal (which, in my mind, throws loyalty and team spirit out the window). Then a month ago, Vanderbilt’s Vice-Chancellor for Athletics, Candice Lee, asked supporters to encourage their congressmen to look into the current practices in the NCAA, especially the NIL.

i forwarded that request to my brothers and several others. It struck me as appropriate Jerry and Kenny were more skeptical because, as Jerry, said, that horse is out of the barn. We also have been discussing something a late brother, Joe Francis advocated years ago: Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Stanford, Rice, Tulane, Wake Forest, and other good academic schools form their own conference and have true college athletics.

i have been a strong supporter of Vanderbilt succeeding in the SEC, even against very strong odds. A good deal of that comes from my belief in the late David Williams who preceded Candice as head of Vandy athletics, and Candice herself pursuing college athletics the right way or as David Williams coined, “the Vandy way.”

i have been losing faith in the possibility of success in the SEC.

This morning, i read “The Athletic” story on Ray Davis by Zak Keefer entitled “Ray Davis grew up homeless, now he seeks to be a ‘name you’ll remember forever.

My hope is restored.

i can’t come up with numbers of success stories that would make others feel Vanderbilt doing it the right way is worth staying the course, but i think Vandy being part of Ray Davis’ story is worth it.

Unfortunately, i cannot embed the link in the post. i’m sure this is because one must have a subscription to read. i hope you can find it. It’s worth it.

Escape from the Doldrums

i have not written much in the last several weeks. Got into a funk. Went to a dark place.

Perhaps the dark place was a backlash to the wonderful octogenarian birthday blast that was just too good to be believed.

Perhaps it was getting lost in the weeds getting our tax records ready for our accountant.

Perhaps it was accepting my golf game is not going to get better and my “physicality” will continue to decline — oh, how i love to make fun of the talking heads that misuse that word on and on and on.

Perhaps it was realizing i will never spend enough time with my daughters, grandson, family, friends, and meet new ones.

It matters not.

Tonight, Maureen created this wonderful soup, along with her always perfect salad.

Afterwards, i walked out to our patio in the back, put out the cushions on a chair, and turned on the heater. i sat down with Mr. Dickel and resumed my voyage with Joshua Slocumb’s “Sailing Alone Around the World” describing his circumnavigation of our planet in three years in the late 1890’s. For me, it was a spiritual journey with the sea.

Slocumb is easy to read almost as if he wrote it this year, not over 120 years ago. And his accomplishment of rebuilding the Spray on his own and trusting in her for more than three years is just flat amazing. His stops in ports around the world give the reader an idea of what is was to live in this world long ago, long ago.

How i came to this book was also wonderful.

At my party, one of Maureen’s co-workers and close friend attended. Craig Augsburger also is a mariner. He crewed on several boats in the sailing races from San Diego to Hawaii. He lived on his own sailboat for quite some time and continues to upgrade and maintain the boat. After the party and reading my book, Steel Decks and Glass Ceilings, Craig asked to meet us for lunch with his wife Joan. We did. There he queried me about parts of my book my time at sea. We explored our reading of other books about sea ventures. Then, he handed me a copy of The Wager, a current best seller about a sea venture. It is next on my list of things to read.

Finally, he handed me one of his prized possessions. It was an edition of the book published in 1999 in Canada. It was thick and about the size of my hand, handy by the way to take to sea for reading pleasure.

Craig had been given the book by Charlie McInnes, including the Jack of Diamonds. He had signed his name on the back of the front cover. Craig also signed it and then loaned it to special folks he deemed enough of a mariner to read this special copy. His provisos were to sign and return the book including the one-eyed Jack. i will return the book to Craig in the near future after i become the 13th reader to sign it.

i was going to include several passages from the book here, but i will let you decide which passages are special to you. The book is now available but in a newer, larger version, i have sent copies to a couple of my favorite mariners.

i have been in the doldrums at sea, notably the South China Sea in 1979. Fortunately, i was on a steam ship, not a sailing ship. Still, the experience of dead calm in the middle of the seas is captivating.

i have been in the doldrums in my head while ashore: just couldn’t get any purchase on the lines.

But reading Craig’s treasured book of a sea venture was an escape for me. My doldrums were the darkness, and they are gone.