There comes a time when every living thing begins to creak and leak. I include among those “living things” this very blog, which I—with considerable help from a few esteemed cohorts—breathed into being a bit more than 12 years ago, with a post on the novelist, essayist, and public intellectual Marilynne Robinson.
A couple of years ago, the WordPress platform this blog uses informed me that its “theme,” the graphic design interface it sits on to convey the words and images here, would no longer be technically “supported.” That meant I would have to transition to a new theme, since the old one would likely be springing metaphorical leaks over time.
Given my basically traditionalist, change-aversive, stay-with-what-works-until-hell-descends sensibilities, I of course ignored the WordPress warnings. And then the leaks began—sudden disappearance of paragraph breaks, different fonts descending from nowhere. And a few weeks ago: Poof!
There went my Comments section.
After this long a run and much thought, I more feel the pull (or is it a push?) of Newton’s First Law of Motion: that an object in motion will stay in motion…
When I had my web developer look behind the curtain to determine the problem, he was something like your friendly neighborhood car mechanic poking his head out from under your hood, wide-eyed, slightly amused but too kind to laugh, asking, “You say this car’s been runnin’, has it? Don’t see how.”
Ergo: the page you are viewing here looks different, yes? You’ll notice the rotating banner shots across the top by esteemed photographers Elizabeth Haslam and Larry Rose are gone, though in a bow to their rich history, I have retained them on the homepage when you log onto https://andrewhidas.com/.
You’ll also notice the “s” on the end of the “http,” which is standard for all modern websites and allows you to comment and move around on the site without that annoying warning telling you the site isn’t secure. Since this is not a commercial blog, it didn’t really matter, but just consider it a necessary bow to modernity!
The theme name is “Graceful,” and I’d like to introduce and get you comfortable with her as I share a few more thoughts about embarking, if my luck holds, on perhaps the next leg of this joint venture we began in late December, 2012.
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I will admit to a temptation, as my old theme started falling apart, to see it as a sign from the heavens that perhaps this entire blog venture should slide quietly into the grave with it. It requires a certain amount and kind of attention to produce one on a pretty much weekly schedule over years, through all the usual thick and thin that entangles itself into every life, mine no exception.
Maybe if I let it go I could pursue a long-contemplated idea or two for a book, or a family history/memoir. Even, perhaps, a collection from among the now 620-and-counting posts that occupy this site.
But after this long a run and much thought, I more feel the pull (or is it a push?) of Newton’s First Law of Motion: that an object in motion will stay in motion unless an outside force acts on it. “This means that objects resist changes in their state of motion,” my beloved Internet that I just used to brush up on this law tells me.
Since “outside forces” (death, dementia, Kash Patel’s goons rousting me in the dead of night and shipping me to El Salvador sans my laptop) have yet to “act on” me, my natural, Newton-approved resistance to change in motion seems to be holding strong enough at the moment.
Also, when I think about how much I think about this blog during the course of a week, how many snippets of books, poems, films songs, conversations and horrid political developments I tend to and find myself immediately assessing whether it would be fodder for a post, I wonder where all those inspirations and little storm surges would go.
What shelf would I put them on, what bed could I consign them to, as I tuck them in with a soothing “There, there now, don’t worry, it will be fine, just keep it to yourself…”
“Try it for a year, and see how it goes,” my first web developer told me 12 years ago. “You may decide it’s not for you, but give it more than a few months.”
I took his advice and tried it for a year. Then 11 more.
Seems to be for me.
Hope it is for you, too.
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YES, you can comment again, and they are always appreciated and responded to, so have at it below! (First Noble Truth of Blogging: Conversation always beats monologue.)
And/or on Facebook, where you’ll find a notice of this post and regular 1-minute snippets of wisdom and other musings from the world’s great thinkers and artists, accompanied always by lovely photography. https://www.facebook.com/andrew.hidas/
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewhidas/
Deep appreciation to the photographers! Unless otherwise stated, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing.
Homepage rotating banner photos (except for the books) by Elizabeth Haslam https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/
Library books by Larry Rose, Redlands, California, all rights reserved, contact: larry@rosefoto.com
Ballerina by David Hofmann, Los Angeles, California https://unsplash.com/@davidhofmann
Pupa by Bankim Desai Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India https://unsplash.com/@rochangraphics
Now that baseball season is upon us, my thoughts turn to the places and players that have made this game a lifelong friend. These two baseball poems are a sentimental journey of sorts for a kid growing up just a few miles from Dodger Stadium.
“Go West, Baseball”
When O’Malley’s Dodgers deserted Brooklyn,
The borough wept.
When Stoneham’s Giants followed suit,
Coogan’s Bluff mourned the theft.
But Yankee stripes remained in the Bronx,
Babe Ruth’s ghost never left.
Money married Chavez Ravine with the Golden Gate.
One always sunny the other windswept.
“Sandy”
In the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn
among enclaves of Jews and Italians,
spanning Brighton Beach to Coney Island,
where cheering Pin Stripes was a mortal sin,
A kid walked past Ebbets Field’s din,
cradling a worn baseball in his left hand,
mimicking the windup of the great Erskine,
breaking off curveballs with merciless spins,
His fastball was even more devasting,
Scouts raved, “Gamble on him. It’s a sure win.
No shit—he’s Feller’s identical twin.
Control? Very little. It’s one wild fling.”
Pegged as the greatest arm ever seen.
He had no idea where his pitch would go,
For five years his career was a fiasco.
In his sixth be blossomed into the show,
Shutouts and no hitters to the extreme
Even the Big Train played in his shadow.
“Batter up!” is what I say to that, Mr. Spencer…