It's all in here: the sublime, silly, dangerous, petty, too cute for words, and a shed tear.

December 2, 2025

My banner photograph today is of the copper beech tree in Northport, brought from England long ago by a member of the Thomas family and still flourishing today. In which season is this venerable tree at its loveliest? I can’t decide but took the photograph above with my Samsung android phone one December morning, a little after 10 a.m., and to my eye it looked magnificent.

  

Ogden Nash

I don’t think it’s belittling his gift to call Ogden Nash a versifier. My discovery of Nash came in a volume called Parents Keep Out! on the shelves in my hometown library children’s room, and how could any kid resist a book with that name? What fun to memorize Nash’s poems, from two-liners to those of many stanzas! 

Here is probably the shortest verse Ogden Nash ever wrote. It’s called “Fleas,” and the entire poem is as follows:

Adam

Had ‘em.

Imagine my shock, however, to see that the site “All Poetry,” in analyzing the verse, refers to this clever couplet as a “witty quatrain”! Quatrain? A four-line stanza? Obviously not! Witty, yes. Quatrain, no.

Here is another two-line Nash poem, a favorite of my father’s and one of the earliest that I knew by heart without even trying:

God in his wisdom made the fly

And then forgot to tell us why.

One of my longer favorites was “Very Like a Whale,” which I leave you to look up for yourself by following this link—and then see if you can stop from reading more and more Ogden Nash verse. Fair warning: It is addictive.

Why do I drag in these humorous poems instead of some more ethereal ode to trees? Because Nash himself took off on Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees,” following Kilmer’s first two-line stanza with a second of his own:

 

Perhaps, unless the billboards fall

I’ll never see a tree at all.

 

Silly? Yes. Corny? Yes. But also irresistibly memorable, especially to a child discovering mockery of sacred literary cows for the first time.

 

Get Off of Your Cloud!

My son told me a couple years ago, “The cloud is just someone else’s bigger computer,” and with my initial skeptical aversion to cloud storage thus vindicated, I have continued to buy, read, and hold onto printed, bound books; to write letters and send them through the mail in stamped envelopes (treasuring written replies); and to store my digital files only on my own devices. (Note to self: Need a couple more flash drives, memory sticks, whatever they're called.) Here were my initial arguments against relying on the so-called cloud, i.e., “someone else’s computer,” somewhere else --

 

Ø How do I know the cloud won’t crash? 

Ø How do I know my data (i.e., my precious image and text files) will remain unchanged, uncorrupted, and accessible by me—and only by me?

Ø Finally, after reading about the massive amounts of water and power necessary to maintain those so-called clouds, and the dreadful 24/7 noise the data banks put out, why would I want to park in someone else’s backyard something I don’t want in my own? Better, I believe, to buy extra camera cards and additional flash drives and keep them in a safe place at home. 

If those arguments didn’t convince you, how about this one: Many people believe that massive data centers, currently touted for AI, are a bigger financial bubble than the country has ever yet seen. It all boils down to extractive industry and good old entropy. Most of the spending on the AI bubble, as is true of your beloved cloud storage, is not “virtual,” but very, very physical. Real estate. Buildings. Hardware. Electricity. Water. Now add to the deterioration of the surrounding physical environment and the rapid deterioration of electronic chips a super-scary degradation--the deterioration of information (“intelligence”?) gathered and synthesized as LLMs (Large Language Models) are put through post-training “learning.” 

Word of the day: sycophantic. Look it up. So-called artificial intelligence degrades rapidly the more it “learns” from what human beings say online. Garbage in, garbage out. Bullshit in, bullshit out. When put through post-training, AI becomes an obsequious flatterer rather than a knowledgeable advisor!

If you don’t understand how something is made, you should not invest in it. (Think cryptocurrency.) In the case of generative AI, the more you know about it, the less likely you are to invest. Seriously, watch and listen, because others are investing for you—your government, your money managers—and you cannot afford not to know what's going on. Has your community been asked to make room for a data center? Sooner or later, one will be proposed near you, so prepare yourself now with information.

Fonts and Politics???

Do you recognize the font I use on this blog? It's called Bookman Old Style, and I like both the name and the look, being a bookseller and always having been partial to serifs (particularly adnate serifs), those little extras that seem so graceful and generous. Do you see them as unnecessary furbelows? Consider:

Bookman Old Style example: AI

Helvetica example: AI

Which one is clearer to you? To my eye, the capital letter I without a serif looks like a small L or even the number 1. With a serif, there is no such confusion. And, as I say, I have always simply found serif fonts graceful and generous in appearance, overall more attractive, although many people see the matter differently and consider the sans serif fonts easier to read, cleaner, and more modern. 

One thing that would never have occurred to me would have been that a switch to a san serif font signaled some kind of political agenda, but leave it to Republicans to suspect liberalism's vile fingerprints on anything done by a Democratic administration, and so it isn't as unbelievable as it should be that Marco Rubio, current Secretary of State, has declared Anthony Blinken's switch to the simpler Calibri font a symptom of wokism and, somehow, “another wasteful DEIA program.” Good lord, it's almost enough to make me renounce serifs for life! But no, not quite. This insanity cannot last forever. For now, however, Rubio is reinstating the Times New Roman font “to restore decorum and professionalism” to the State Department. 

Ha! Wouldn't that be nice? To see “decorum and professionalism” again in our nation's capitol? (Why do I think that will take more than a change of typeface?) For now, who can tell me how eliminating serifs was more costly than restoring them will be? How petty can anyone be?

Just another red herring, folks. Another little brushfire to add to the giant smokescreen....

Turning Toward the Sun

No, not yet. It will be eleven more days before days begin to grow longer, and yet I'm sure I heard on the radio that yesterday was the year's earliest sunset and that tonight the sun will set marginally later. Can that be? Did I only imagine it? And will it matter, anyway, if clouds keep us covered? 

For me, though, every morning is a Sunny morning, come rain or come shine, and I know you want to see her, too, so here's the dog girl!

Her ears were blowing in the cold, cold wind!

Indoors, cozy and photogenic

We Lost a Most Memorable Northporter

It was a shock to learn on Monday evening that David Chrobak had died only that afternoon. My last relaxed visit with David (I'm not counting sidewalk chats outside the post office) was in his front yard one evening this past summer, and somewhere I have a photo taken from the yard, looking through hanging prisms and flowers to the Willowbrook Inn, but where can it be? Here, anyway, and much better, is a photo of David himself. The occasion was the 21st anniversary of my bookstore, which David on the cake he baked and decorated called “a love story.” David loved Northport, and Northport loved him back. There will never be another like him. David, we miss you already!

David Chrobak, Northport, MI, June 2014

What Does Northport Think About the Sale of the Washington Post to the Online Behemoth?

It's big news, Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post. I asked a few of my friends for their thoughts, many of them writers, and here are the responses:

A retired community college teacher, fiction writer, and (clearly) someone very careful with words: “This is a paradigm shift indeed.”

A career fiction writer: “Well, as [a mutual friend] said after I sent the email about Amazon trying to control the book business: ‘Well, they do call themselves Amazon, after all.’  Is this getting scary or what?”

Another fiction writer: “When you control all the media you will control the thoughts of a people.  Sad news for every American.”

A retired newspaper writer: “I think people are correct to be nervous, but he is a smart businessman and when he talks about giving readers what they want, my heart soars because for years newspapers have been giving readers what bores and confuses and annoys them – even the smart ones who WANT insight and analysis. And, if he can charge for news online in a way that makes sense – that will be the beginning of the turnaround for news organizations.”

Retired public school teacher: “Certainly true – ‘The Post will mine data about its readers in ways not seen before in the newspaper world.’ I wonder what that means for the paper, its reporters, its readership. We don’t read a newspaper any more, except for my brief online viewing. (The local paper is still free online.) I get too much news from CNN and take complete breaks now and then. Most of what we hear is depressing or silly or just plain mean, it often seems to me. All the sides of “big” stories have their own facts, and it’s hard to know what to believe.  We’re currently watching ‘House of Cards’ on Netflix, and I’m completely skeptical of the whole political system and journalism industry. I’m also unhappy with the education system (at least around here) – so books are a welcome relief. So is yoga.”

Retired state employee (not teacher): “Not sure.  Certainly it will make the Post an e-business but that will probably help keep it alive.  More likely it will go off to the right and give him a ton more leverage on Government than he has already.  But, that's normal now where buying influence is the norm.  Wow, it's still morning but my cynical button is already pushed in.”

Retired university professor of history: “In recent years, visits to DC and via other links regarding this once great newspaper, I felt it was increasingly stogy, predictable, though reliable in a sturdy way (esp when Catherine Graham ran things with an amazing deft touch). Though the editorial page kept up, more or less, competitive with the NY Times (Sunday), the Post seemed almost dead in the water as the winds of change blew harder (pardon the allusion). [A friend] was so put off, after taking it daily for 4 decades, that he got his news on line from the NY Times. I think that, like most literate Washingtonians, he will keep a close eye on what comes.  I more or less felt among 'friends' vis the Post, but a great news system has to be up front and OUT front not therapeutic, not calming the herd, but leading it, like a wolf pack, out front. It was like that in the 70s . . . . When a major organ like this is merely transmitting the canon, the nation is not well served.”

The last reply deals with the newspaper as it has been in recent years, rather than with the sale. A retired law professor had a lot to say, but he said in person, and I neglected to take notes. Also, it would be interesting to hear what some younger people think, so if by some miracle any young person's eyes fall upon this post, please feel free to leave a comment. 

So what does this small bookseller blogger think?

One observation made on Facebook was “He knows how to sell things.” My reaction to that was, That isn’t all he knows. Right off the top of my head I can think of four big additional areas of his knowledge. He knows: (1) how to stomp out competition; (2) how to beat out unions; (3) how to manipulate government, at every level, to his benefit (see first and second points) and to his competition’s detriment; (4) how to keep running on investors’ money despite recent surprising and spectacular losses. (That link is worth following to read the article.) Interesting, isn’t it?

Does your idea of a free press include many competing viewpoints? Do you think we have that now and/or what would encourage it? Are you comfortable with falling wages and salaries? (Have unions encouraged workers to expect too much?) Should reportage and government be bought and sold, subject only to market forces? (Have they always been for sale?) What about more and more people putting their eggs in a single basket – something like Dutch tulip bulbs? Will there really be a big payoff eventually for all investors – and are you on the bandwagon?

Although most people probably do not think of him primarily as Aristotle’s pupil, Alexander the Great is a familiar name worldwide. Did he truly weep when he had “no more worlds to conquer” or upon being told that the number of worlds was infinite – and therefore, presumably, beyond his insatiable reach? What price did Alexander pay for temporarily gaining [most of] the world? Would you pay such a price? Who else paid heavily? Here is a quick biography of his life and accomplishments. Like Molly Malone, in the end he died of a fever, and no one could save him. In the long run, no one gets out of life alive.

The least ambitious goal of any business, I suppose, would be simply to survive, to stay alive, forever struggling, while the most ambitious (here the word ‘overweening’ comes to my mind) would be to take over the entire world. Between these two extremes (and no, whatever you imagine of my bookstore, I do not fall at the absolute bottom of the scale) we can imagine a wide range of possibilities of flourishing (to use one of Aristotle’s favorite ideas), each step up in profitability matched by an increase in complexity and responsibility. Hmmm. Lots to think about there....

Moving along, though, it baffles me how the same people who fear a “single payer” for, say, health care, when the proposed payer is the federal government, have no fear of a “single seller,” however wide that seller casts his product net. Data mining? Terrifying and un-American if done by government! Done by a mammoth corporation? Okay? Really? How so?

Many Americans fear a government takeover of business. I fear a corporate takeover of government. Which direction are we headed? (Your answer might be that I have posed a false dilemma. If so, explain!) More specifically do you have concerns about the sale of the Washington Post, or do you see it as probably a positive change? Whatever you think, what are your reasons?

Someday soon I hope to write about short stories, both in general and as exemplified in some particularly good collections, but we read all kinds of things here Up North, including national newspapers.