July 20, 2025: "I Wanted to Be There When My Father Died," Date Night, "7 Reasons We Need Superman Right Now"

So, it has been a fairly busy weekend.

I mowed the lawn yesterday because of rain in the weather forecast.  (It never rained.)  I played two church services, one yesterday evening and one this morning.  I wrote a few poems.  I led a poetry workshop tonight that ended a little over an hour ago.

The highlight of last couple days was going to see the new Superman with my wife last night.  Then we went to one of our favorite restaurants/pubs where we had a couple drinks, ate some chicken nachos and breadsticks, and decompressed from the stress of the last couple weeks.

Sharon Olds comes clean about her feelings over her father . . .

I Wanted to Be There When My Father Died

by: Sharon Olds

I wanted to be there when my father died
because I wanted to see him die—
and not just to know him, down 
to the ground, the dirt of his unmaking, and not
just to give him a last chance
to give me something, or take his loathing
back. All summer he had gagged, as if trying
to cough his whole esophagus out,
surely his pain and depression had appeased me,
and yet I wanted to see him die
not just to see no soul come
free of his body, no mucal genie of
spirit jump
forth from his mouth,
proving the body on earth is all we have got,
I wanted to watch my father die
because I hated him. Oh, I loved him,
my hands cherished him, laying him out,

but I feared him so, his lying as if dead on the
couch had seemed to pummel me, an Eve
he took and pressed back into clay,
casual thumbs undoing the cheekbone
eye-socket rib pelvis ankle of the child
and now I watched him be undone and
someone in me gloried in it,
someone lying where he’d lain in chintz
Eden, some corpse girl, corkscrewed like
one of his amber spit-ems, smiled.
The priest was well called to that room,
violet grosgrain river of his ribbon laid
down well on that bank of flesh
where the daughter of death was made, it was well to say
into other hands than ours
we commend this spirit.

Yes, Olds hates and loves her father.  Human beings are able to experience conflicting emotions simultaneously.  ("We shake with joy, we shake with grief. / What a time they have, these two / housed as they are in the same body."--Mary Oliver)  When my sister, Sally, died, I was not only heartbroken over her loss, but also grateful for the end of her suffering.  When my daughter moved downstate last weekend to begin medical school, I was not only excited for her, but also grieved for her absence in my life.

So, it was good last night to spend some time with my wife, holding hands, eating popcorn, watching the Man of Steel kick some Lex Luthor ass, and coming clean about our feelings over our daughter's move.  No surprise, we're both shaking with joy and grief at the same time.  

I wish the universe did have superheroes with powers to keep things on an even keel.  At this point in the history of the United States, it wouldn't hurt to have Superman around to stop wars, save innocent people from harm, and stop the occasional supervillain.  (Unfortunately, our current supervillain is sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office.)  

I'm of the belief that any person can be a superhero.  I mean, Martin Luther King, Jr., didn't grow up thinking he was going to be the leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, let alone win the Nobel Peace Prize.  And I'm sure that Marie Curie, as a little girl, had no clue she would discover radioactivity and lead the way for effective cancer treatments (and also win two Nobels).  Martin and Marie were two ordinary people who became extraordinary heroes because of their circumstances.

I'm not a superhero, but I try to be the best person I can be every day of my life.  I don't always succeed.  Yet, the striving is important.  Human beings are incredibly flawed creatures.  We can save a child from a burning house, but we can also stand on the sidelines and witness genocide.  I'd like to think that, at the end of my life, my character strengths will outweigh my failings.  And, just maybe, I will have made some kind of impact on the world.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about superheroes for night, based on the following prompt from July 19 of The Daily Poet:

In admiration of Juan Felipe Herrera's poem entitled "187 Reasons Mexicans Can't Cross the Border," write your own list poem using "because" as your refrain word.  Examples from Herrera's poem:  

Because the north is really south, Because every nacho chip can morph into a Mexican wrestler, Because Pancho Villa's hidden treasure is still in Chihuahua, Because we couldn't clean up Hurricane Katrina, Because we have visions instead of televisions.  Some suggested ideas may be:  "99 Reasons to Grow Your Own Food," "54 Reasons It's Not Your Fault You're Fat," "88 Reasons to Say No without Saying No." 

7 Reasons We Need Superman Right Now

by: Martin Achatz

1.  Because most aliens on this planet just want to drive to McDonald's to get an M&M McFlurry.

2.  Because capes are back in style.

3.  Because truth and justice are endangered species, almost extinct in the continental United States, and the Smithsonian doesn't have room in its collections for 185,000 migrants.

4.  Because if he catches a cold, he could reverse global warming with a sneeze.

5.  Because eggs are expensive, and we need his blood to create a super chicken.

6.  Because all of our other heroes have been sent to concentration camps.

7.  Because we need a Fortress of Solitude to hide our neighbors when the white vans roll through the neighborhood.

August 5: Claws of an Eagle, Great America, a Lot of Lemonade

Santiago and the biggest fish he's ever seen . . . 

The old man had seen many great fish. He had seen many that weighed more than a thousand pounds and he had caught two of that size in his life, but never alone. Now alone, and out of sight of land, he was fast to the biggest fish that he had ever seen and bigger than he had ever heard of, and his left hand was still as tight as the gripped claws of an eagle.

Santiago is alone, and he's facing the greatest challenge of his fishing life.  It always seems like that's the way it happens.  The universe seems to have a way of picking the exact wrong moment to throw curves balls at you.  Usually, it's when you're most vulnerable.

I spent the day at Great America with my wife, son, daughter, and daughter's boyfriend.  I rode exactly five rollercoasters.  Remarkably, the first one (Superman) did not give me vertigo.  It made me a little green.  It was Batman that nearly killed me.  My 13-year-old son wanted to go on it, and I volunteered to ride with him.  We stood in line for about 25 minutes and got all strapped and locked into our seats.  The attendant came by to check our restraints, and my son panicked.  He asked to be released.

You guessed it--I ended up riding Batman by myself.  It was nauseating.  As we pulled back into the loading area to be set free, I felt the world shift and start spinning.  It was as if I could actually sense the planet rotating at 1,000 miles per hour.  I took and deep breath and said a little prayer.  It went something like this:  "Please let me get off this ride without throwing up, soiling myself, or having to crawl down the exit ramp."

After a couple seconds, the world stopped spinning before my eyes, and I walked, a little shakily, off the ride.  Of course, my son was waiting for me, and he apologized about 172 times.  I sat on a bench, sucked in some oxygen, and waited for my stomach to get off the rollercoaster, too.

Like Santiago, I faced a great challenge alone, and I survived.  Of course, I wasn't in any real danger, and I could have requested to be released from the ride after my son bailed on me.  But I didn't do that.  I'm not sure if that was incredibly stupid or incredibly brave.  Maybe a little of both.

After Great America, we went to eat at Outback Steakhouse.  I had prime rib and two very stiff drinks.  By the time I got back to our hotel room, I was quite relaxed.  So, I took out my laptop and decided to do some grading for the summer course I'm teaching.  (Probably not the best plan after five rollercoasters and two mixed drinks.)

I know that life sometimes gives you lemons, but today, I drank a lot of lemonade.

Saint Marty's blessing for today:  getting wet with my family.

May 12: Passionate Interest, Bigfoot, Alter Egos

Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby Dick; though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one passion; nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature and long habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman's ways, altogether to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at least if this were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much more influential with him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even considering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards the White Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all sperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated one he hunted. But if such an hypothesis be indeed exceptionable, there were still additional considerations which, though not so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling passion, yet were by no means incapable of swaying him.

To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He knew, for example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but stand in sort of corporeal relation. Starbuck's body and Starbuck's coerced will were Ahab's, so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck's brain; still he knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred his captain's quest, and could he, would joyfully disintegrate himself from it, or even frustrate it. It might be that a long interval would elapse ere the White Whale was seen. During that long interval Starbuck would ever be apt to fall into open relapses of rebellion against his captain's leadership, unless some ordinary, prudential, circumstantial influences were brought to bear upon him. Not only that, but the subtle insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was noways more significantly manifested than in his superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing that, for the present, the hunt should in some way be stripped of that strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it; that the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure background (for few men's courage is proof against protracted meditation unrelieved by action); that when they stood their long night watches, his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of than Moby Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed the announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable- they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness- and when retained for any object remote and blank in the pursuit, however promissory of life and passion in the end, it is above all things requisite that temporary interests and employments should intervene and hold them healthily suspended for the final dash.

Nor was Ahab unmindful of another thing. In times of strong emotion mankind disdain all base considerations; but such times are evanescent. The permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man, thought Ahab, is sordidness. Granting that the White Whale fully incites the hearts of this my savage crew, and playing round their savageness even breeds a certain generous knight-errantism in them, still, while for the love of it they give chase to Moby Dick, they must also have food for their more common, daily appetites. For even the high lifted and chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to traverse two thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre, without committing burglaries, picking pockets, and gaining other pious perquisites by the way. Had they been strictly held to their one final and romantic object- that final and romantic object, too many would have turned from in disgust. I will not strip these men, thought Ahab, of all hopes of cash- aye, cash. They may scorn cash now; but let some months go by, and no perspective promise of it to them, and then this same quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would soon cashier Ahab.

Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and perhaps somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the Pequod's voyage, Ahab was now entirely conscious that, in so doing, he had indirectly laid himself open to the unanswerable charge of usurpation; and with perfect impunity, both moral and legal, his crew if so disposed, and to that end competent, could refuse all further obedience to him, and even violently wrest from him the command. From even the barely hinted imputation of usurpation, and the possible consequences of such a suppressed impression gaining ground, Ahab must of course have been most anxious to protect himself. That protection could only consist in his own predominating brain and heart and hand, backed by a heedful, closely calculating attention to every minute atmospheric influence which it was possible for his crew to be subjected to.

For all these reasons then, and others perhaps too analytic to be verbally developed here, Ahab plainly saw that he must still in a good degree continue true to the natural, nominal purpose of the Pequod's voyage; observe all customary usages; and not only that, but force himself to evince all his well known passionate interest in the general pursuit of his profession.

Be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard hailing the three mastheads and admonishing them to keep a bright look-out, and not omit reporting even a porpoise. This vigilance was not long without reward.

Here's Ahab pondering how to keep his crew from mutiny.  A few chapters ago, he showed his hand.  The crew saw him in all of his monomaniacal glory.  He whipped all his men into a frenzy, convincing them of the importance of hunting Moby from the Pacific to the Atlantic to the Arctic.  Now, however, he must somehow sustain their loyalty during the long, tedious days at sea.  Therefore, Ahab must put on his mask again, become a whaling captain again instead of the Great Avenger.  He's like a crazy Superman putting back on his Clark Kent glasses.

I think we all do this every day of our lives.  We hide our particular quirks and weirdnesses as we go to work or church or school.  We do this to avoid strange looks and ostracism.  We want to fit in, be accepted and liked.  So we all become Clark Kent or Diana Prince.  Hide our capes underneath coats and tee-shirts.

For example, I have been writing Bigfoot poems for a couple years now.  I've become a little obsessed with all things Bigfoot.  I own several Bigfoot tee-shirts.  Listen to a podcast called Sasquatch Chronicles all the time.  My sister went for a trip downstate yesterday.  On her way back, she passed through a town that had a huge statue of Bigfoot outside of a store.  I'm now planning to visit the town to take a picture of the statue.  If there were Bigfoot vacation packages, I might even consider booking a weekend in Bigfoot country (although I sort of live in Bigfoot country--many documented sightings in the Upper Peninsula).

I am open to the possibility of the existence of Bigfoot.  In my writing, I use the big hairy guy as a metaphor for the big things in life--love, loss, grief, joy, isolation.  However, it wouldn't surprise me if, eventually, it's proven that there is an unknown species of primates or apes living in the United States.  If Donald Trump can be President of the United States, anything is possible.

Now, I don't go around talking about Bigfoot all day long.  Then I risk the possibility of becoming an Ahab.  No, I keep Bigfoot under wraps, only drag him out on special occasions--poetry readings and workshops, birthday parties, and Mother's Day.  Other than that, I'm Peter Parker, cub reporter for The Daily Bugle.  I don't go out into the woods to howl at the midnight moon or tree knock with a baseball bat.

The important thing is that I DO let Bigfoot out every once in a while.  I think every person needs to do that.  If your alter ego is Julia Child, you should cook octopus in the kitchen every once in a while.  If your alter ego is Robin Hood, you should shoot some arrows occasionally.  And if your alter ego is Donald Trump, you should seek therapy.

Saint Marty is thankful today for Bigfoot.