Art is 80

The Supreme Court ruling on the White House ballroom didn’t really surprise me. From the start, it was unclear to me that the National Trust for Historic Preservation had standing to bring this lawsuit, and the current Supreme Court, which had also questioned the standing of about two dozen States to bring a suit against the Trump restrictions on mail-in ballots prematurely, did what I thought and feared they would do. And it brought up a real dilemma.

As Chief Justice Roberts said in his dissent, the construction of the ball room with the approval of Congress is most likely illegal without approval of Congress. But if Congress won’t act, if no one can show sufficient harm to satisfy a Court that they have standing to sue, and if the courts themselves have no authority to stop illegal actions of the President without a case or controversy brought by someone with standing, what can be done to stop a president from doing something illegal?  If the answer is “nothing”, do we still have a democracy?

And if we do still have a democracy, is it only a democracy because every two or four years we can elect political leaders who can do whatever they want during their term of office? Is this now the American definition of democracy?

But it goes even beyond that. Do the political leaders who now seem to have untrammeled rights to do whatever they want, have the right to manipulate elections so that even those will no longer be democratic? After all, if Congress won’t act and the Courts say that they can not act, what will stop the current administration from making sure that their opponents can’t win elections? After all, isn’t this what happens in much of the world, and isn’t it usually successful?

Moving on to the Antichrist….

It’s hard for me to believe that J.D. Vance will be the 2028 Republican nominee, but I guess it is a possibility. He clearly is not very likeable, he is quite young and (in spite of all his experience) inexperienced, and he says really, really dumb things. Two really, really dumb things in the last two days. Thing One: Abdul El-Sayed, an extraordinarily accomplished ex-Rhodes Scholar now the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Michigan, is “very, very evil” and un-American, and out to foster the interests of only one very small group of American citizens at the expense of all the others. Thing Two: that he would not be surprised if the Antichrist (I guess people capitalize that word) is walking among us now, and that he is not certain whether or not we are living in the end days.

Now my knowledge of Radical Christianism (new word, thank you) may be relatively limited, but when I put together Thing One and Thing Two, I get a bit nervous. For after all, don’t Radical Christists (another new word) look forward to the end days? Don’t the end days mean that Jesus will return (a shocked Jesus he will certainly be) to Earth, and either rapture up to Heaven his followers or inaugurate the 1000 year kingdom of God on Earth? If this is what J.D. is looking forward to, I would think that all he has to do as president is (1) make sure that his wife converts from her current state of paganism, and (2) make sure that all the preconditions for Jesus’ Second Coming have been satisfied.

These preconditions would include the appearance of the Antichrist, who presumably can not be stopped by J.D., and by the Antichrist sewing chaos in the world, leading to the final battle. Now, all of us unbelievers (unbelievers in the Radical Christian sense) will be killed in this final battle – you can deny the Holocaust, but if you are lucky enough to survive Armageddon, you won’t dare deny the reality of the final Holocaust. That would include Abdul El-Sayed and it would include me. These are events that J.D. Vance, who criticizes El-Sayed for favoring one group of Americans only, would presumably welcome. His one group of Americans would be saved.

Of course, Vance is a born again Catholic, so I asked my religious source, Google, to tell me specifically how the Catholic church interpreted the end days, if they do at all. Basically, according to Google AI, there will be a human Antichrist, he will cause great turmoil and a harsh challenge to the Church and its believers, but then: Jesus will return to earth, evil will have been defeated, and although there will be no Rapture,  there will be a final judgement. Every human being who ever lived will be bodily resurrected, and will individually be judged, some being assigned to Hell, while the others will remain on earth where society will be perfected and evil will disappear and death will be no more.

And yes, none of this can happen without the appearance of the Antichrist to get the ball rolling, and, yes and very importantly, Vance said he would be okay if his doing God’s work (as he thinks he is) leads to the end times. (By the way, when asked if he was certain on a scale of 1 to 10 that he was a 10 who would avoid Hell, he said – no, not a 10, but a 7 or an 8. Weird, weird, weird.)

If he weren’t his vice-president, perhaps Vance would identify Trump as the Antichrist. Or Netanyahu, I guess. Or some Iranian leader. Or Putin. Perhaps, there is no single Antichrist, but we are living in an era of multiple Antichrists, all unknowingly working together to fulfill God’s bizarre purpose? Unlikely, yes, but as possible as anything else.

But I will tell you this: I do not want a president who things he is going to be the catalyst for the end times. And that is because, without knowing it, that president himself would be an Antichrist.

Walt Kelly: we have met the Antichrist, and it is us. Perhaps, it is all of us. But I doubt it is only Abdul El-Sayed.

Here I am, speaking once more out of ignorance.

I just heard a portion of Dara Horn’s appearance on Morning Joe. Dara Horn, a multi-award novelist and Harvard literature professor, has just published a book titled The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: a Love Story for the Living, her second book on antisemitism, following her People Love Dead Jews, published five years ago in 2021. I have not read either of these books (although I should), nor any of her other books. Hence, I am speaking out of ignorance.

I am also focusing on a topic I have focused on several times before, and it is the conflating of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. From what I gathered this morning, Horn is one of those many Jews (perhaps a strong majority of them), who believe that if one is anti-Zionist, one is antisemitic, and that calling yourself anti-Zionist is only a cover, because really you just hate Jews. If this is what she believes, and if this is what you believe, I disagree with you. Completely.

I say this as a supporter of Israel, and as someone who has played an active role in Israeli institutional support. And as someone who is Jewish and active in several domestic Jewish institutions. I have been a board member and officer of two synagogues, I have been a board member of a Jewish day school, I have led an organization dedicated to traditional Jewish burial practices, I have been a board member and officer of an organization that provides support to a major Israeli university, and I am currently the president of the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies, as you know at least from yesterday’s post. I have also been a student of Jewish history and Jewish culture. And I have been doing all of this for many decades.

Many Jews can be very sensitive. This should not be surprising because of the tragedies of Jewish history, including the Holocaust. There are still several hundred thousand Holocaust survivors and there are millions who had parents, grandparents or great grandparents caught up in those terrible events. Many American (and European) Jews have relatives and friends in Israel, travel regularly to Israel, support Israeli institutions. Some of even lost friends or relatives in Israel’s many wars with its neighbors.

Some Jews have a very expansive view of what constitutes antisemitism. For some, if a gentile criticizes a Jew for any reason, that shows that that person is an antisemite, full stop. For some, if a gentile criticizes or questions any aspect of Jewish ritual or theology, that is enough to show that that person is antisemitic. For some, obviously, any criticism of anything Israel does, or any Israeli politician says, is another manifestation of antisemitism.

And, of course, many of these people don’t recognize degrees of antisemitism. For them, if a gentile criticizes anything about Israel (or about anything Jewish), it is a sign not only that that person is antisemitic, but a sign that that person wishes all Jews were dead and, if given a chance, would gladly participate in activities designed to bring about the death of Jews.

That is just the way some people think. And, as an aside, I used the term “gentile” in the description above, because while some of those sensitive Jews would ascribe the same description to Jews who fit into any of those categories (calling them, perhaps, self-hating Jews, a term I have never understood), others think that it is fair game for Jews to be critical of Israel, but not gentiles. An analogy, of course, to “I can yell at my relatives, but don’t YOU dare to.”

I should add that those who conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism are not only Jews living in the diaspora. Jews living in Israel often feel the same way. But, and more importantly, Israeli political leaders, as a matter of strategy and policy, conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, and this is a significant part of the problem. From their point of view, if anyone who talks against Zionism is defined as an antisemite, it is a guarantee that Jews worldwide will be more likely to take anti-Zionist statements personally. And, to the extent that Jews abroad can identify with Israel, it is that much more likely that Jews will support Israel, no matter what.

The problem is that once you call someone antisemitic, you cut off all argument. You even cut off discussion. You just set that person out as your enemy, today and forever. How can anyone prove that they are not antisemitic? They can’t. The tag will stick on them throughout their life.

It goes beyond that, once you conflate antisemitism and anti-Zionism, you not only cut off discussion about antisemitism, but you obviously cut off discussion about Zionism. If someone confesses to be anti-Zionist, they are in effect demonstrating their antisemitism, and they aren’t worth even acknowledging them except as human scum.

There is an old saying attributed to Samuel Goldwyn, who said about some one: “He’s not even worth ignoring”. But the fact is, if you are Jewish and if you have feelings for the Jewish people (and there are about 8 million of them in Israel), you can not just ignore them.

Of course, there is one subject that this entire discussion has ignored. I am here talking about the definition of Zionism. What is it? What is it that anti-Zionists are against? Is everyone who is anti-Israel also anti-Zionist (as well as antisemitic)?

I am not going into the many possible definition of Zionism here; it would take up too much space. But, if someone says that they don’t like Zionists or Zionism, my reaction is: “What do you mean by that?” And I would expect that they would tell me what they mean, or they would express their own confusion about the definition of that term if they couldn’t precisely tell me. And then there could be a conversation. I would learn more about what they are thinking; they would learn more about what I was thinking.

Of course, you can’t do this with everyone. Many who are opposed to Zionism find it beneath themselves to have any one on one communication with a Zionist, or maybe even with a Jew. But with many, you certainly could, and maybe you could discover that on some topics regarding what is happening in the Middle East today, you actually agree. But once you call them an antisemite, the conversation ends.

One last thing. Does everyone who is anti-Zionist also define themselves as antisemitic? I think the answer to this is clearly “no”. And if “no” is the answer, but you think they are antisemitic but they don’t, what does that mean? That they are antisemitic, but don’t know it? Is that even possible? Or that those who think they are antisemitic are making assumptions that just aren’t accurate?

Are there red lines? Maybe. Maybe if someone says that Israel is illegitimate, for whatever reason, that is a red line. But even that is subject to discussion. What do they mean? Do they mean there should be one state “from the river to the sea” and the state should be democratic and perhaps be constructed to ensure that different types of its citizens are represented equally and not subject to discrimination? Or do they mean that the one state should be an “Islamic Republic”, where Jews are an underclass, or are forced out, or are annihilated? If they believe that the Jews have to leave the Middle East, that too may end the discussion, except for the inevitable “Where are they to go?”

One day, someone will come up with an answer to the Middle East. Calling everyone who might not agree with your thoughts on the subject an antisemite will simply put off that day. It’s a complicated problem to be sure. Why complicate it even further?

Lake America was just a step in the absorption of Canada into the United States. Other steps are coming….

As gas prices continue to float around

$4.00 per gallon, Donald looks for ways to look like he is going to bring them down. He declares the Strait of Hormuz to be ours (he has not yet gotten around to rename the Strait, but he will), he touts a company for selling gas below market prices (and it turns out they do so by stiffing their

supplier to the tune of at least $4 million, and he works out a “deal” with a private party in Venezuela to have the Department of Defense take a share in a Venezuelan oil company (actually a Barbados company, I am told) which – in his dreams – will wind up benefiting the United States (once the Venezuelan equipment is fixed so that it can extract the heavy crude, once someone figures out how to finance the transport of the heavy crude to the U.S., and once the heavy crude can be refined at American refineries so that it becomes useful). Like peace with Iran, the benefits of this “deal” are far off.

So let’s change the subject. Let’s talk about the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies, a 40+ year old DC based non-profit of which I have the honor of being president. Many of you are on the Haberman mailing lists, but many of you are not, and as we are getting our fall and winter programing in line, I thought it would be helpful to let you know what has been scheduled and announced so far. Virtually all of our programming will be on Zoom, and can be accessed free of charge. None of the programs involve Donald Trump.

(1) Wednesday night, September 2, 7:30 pm EDT: “The Great Christmas Boycott of 1906” by author Scott D. Seligman. An early fight against Christian nationalism, perhaps, as Jewish parents in New York City reacted against how the public schools were going to celebrate Christmas, and how the boycott affected public policy.

(2) Tuesday night, September 8, 7:30 pm EDT: “The Jewish Calendar: The Logic, Complexity and Wisdom of Jewish Time” by Rabbi Seth Bernstein (formerly of Temple Sinai in Worcester MA and Bet Aviv in Columbia MD).

(3) Wednesday night, September 23, 7:30 pm EDT: “What’s New in the Cairo Geniza?” by Professor Khedouri A. Zilkha of Princeton University.

(4) Wednesday night, October 14, 7:30 pm EDT: “Model or Mirror? Lessons from the “Golden Age” of Sephardic History” by Professor Jonathan Ray of Georgetown University.

(5) Wednesday night, October 21, 7:30 pm EDT: “Stolen Moments: Jewish Themes and Cultural Allyship in African American Art” by Professor LaNitra Berger, George Mason University

(6) Monday night, November 2, 7:30 pm EST: “Labors of Love: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Szold”, a film screening and talk by film maker Abby Ginzberg.

(7) Tuesday afternoon, November 10, 1:00 pm EST: “The Surprising Biblical Origins of Prayer” by Rabbi Uri Topolosky of Congregation Kehilat Pardes, Rockville MD.

(8) Wednesday night, November 18, 7:30 pm EST: “The Jewish History of Atlanta: Jews in the Melting Pot of Dixie” by Jeremy Katz, Archivist, Hamilton College.

In addition, on Sunday evening, November 15, for those in the DC area, we will be sponsoring an in-person program titled “Saving the Iraqi Jewish Archive: From Emergency to Exhibition”, presented by Corine Wegener, the Director of the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative.

We will also be sponsoring an in-person Introduction to Judaism class on 15 Thursday evenings beginning on October 8 (taught by a consortium of local rabbis of various denominations), and a Zoom class entitled “Forgotten Books of the Second Temple Period” on 9 Sunday mornings starting on October 11 (taught by Gideon Amir).

More will be announced as plans become finalized, but I hope that you agree that our fall programs look good. Again, the Zoom lectures are free, and last between 1 and 1 1/2 hours. You can register at http://www.habermaninstitute.org. I hope some of you come to some of the programs, and I know that all of you can’t come to all of the programs. And I promise: no Donald Trump.

(1) SMALL. People have asked how the new Prius did on our road trip. The short answer is that we drove approximately 1,000 miles, and that our final result was 67.3 mpg. Not bad, I say.

The longer answer (which is still being written) is that there a lot of doodads and a complicated screen that I still don’t fully understand, and a lot of sounds that I could do without.

(2)  BIG. I now see that, according to Trump, the United States is getting 65% of the revenues (?) from an oil field in Venezuela owned by a company controlled by someone named Betancourt and that gives the US about 20% of Venezuela’s oil. Now, of course Trump announces a lot of deals, most (almost all) of which get lost in the small print, so we will see what this means, if anything.

But if it’s a case of robbery or inappropriate pressure, I don’t want it. And certainly, if it is another example of Trump family or buddy grifting, I don’t want it. In the first book of the Bible, mankind is given control over all the world’s animals, perhaps to be served by them, perhaps to preserve and protect them. In the Trump Bible, the United States is given control over all other nations and all the world’s resources. It’s just another religion, with an imam named Donald, and accolytes comprising about one third of the American voting public.

I have said before that one third is about the same percentage of Germans who actively supported Hitler. They supported Hitler when he cursed those who opposed him, and they supported Hitler when he cursed, removed and killed the Jews, just as Donald’s followers support his action against refugees and immigrants.

And they supported Hitler when Hitler decided that the German Volk needed Lebensraum, needed more room to inhabit and to control. I have not yet seen anyone compare Hitler’s drive for more land to control (which led to a war estimated to have killed 60,000,000 to 80,000,000 people) to Trump’s actions, but it seems to me they are parallel to Hitler’s. How else would you describe Trump’s plans for Greenland, Gaza, Panama, Canada, Cuba, the Strait of Hormuz, several independent islands in the Pacific and now Venezuela? Lebensraum for the Americans and glory for the American Great Leader.

Of course, while this is going on, we can’t forget the other parallel between Trump and Hitler – the monumental rebuilding of their national capitals. Again, you don’t hear much about this parallel, but if Albert Speer were still alive sitting in Spandau prison, you would. He would recognize it as deja vu (as they say even in Germany).

So Hitler was after Ukrainian grain to feed the German Ubermenschen, and Trump is after Venezuelan oil to provide needed energy to feed the Americans.

In the meantime, we are or are not still fighting Iran over control of the Strait of Hormuz. And if Oman, our long time ally and a very peaceful Muslim nation, and Iran work out a deal between themselves, we will “bomb the shit out of Oman” and nuke Iran.

That is too much for even Tucker Carlson, who thinks Trump should be removed as president…..right now. Good luck, Tuck. Some of us have been saying this since 2016. You are quite late to this party.

It is so easy to write a blog post when you are traveling. All you have to do is show where you have been, and throw in a few photos. But we weren’t traveling yesterday, and I didn’t take any photos. I did leave the house, but it wasn’t very interesting. I went to Breads Unlimited in the morning and bought a challah – that’s a Friday morning routine most weeks. Then later in the afternoon, we went to Mom’s Organic Market just to buy a few things to carry us over the weekend, and we wound up spending $146.34. We dropped by Hannah’s house and saw Joan and Izzy for a little while, and stopped at the Fishery and got some bronzino fillets.

We came home, had a very nice dinner, watched the Nationals beat the Marlins 9-2, and that’s about it. Reporting on that does not make for very interesting reading. But……something worth writing about must have occurred, no?

Well, there was the guy, who maybe was named “Will”. (I am very poor at hearing the end of sentences that go “Hi, I am _____”.) He was a very charming young man, probably about 6 feet tall, blue eyes, dark hair. He was charming, and he knew it. He told me that he just graduated from BCC High School (Bethesda-Chevy Chase) and that he was about to start college at UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County). He stopped me as I was coming into the house to tell me that he also had a group of folks who washed windows, and he asked if we wanted our windows washed.

Well, I have learned my lesson long ago about people who knock on your doors, so I said that I didn’t think so. He then said: “Can I tell you how we do them?” “Sure”, I mistakenly responded, and he told me about taking off the screens, using various pressure mechanism, cleaning the frames as well as the glass, doing inside as well as outside if we wanted, being able to reach up to 50′ outside, using purified water that left no streaks. Everything that you would expect a charming young man to say.

He then asked me if he could give me an estimate. Again, mistakenly, I said “Sure”, and he asked if we wanted an estimate for outside only, or for inside and outside. I told him outside only, and he said “OK, but added that they have to go inside to loosen the screens. He walked around the house and said that his normal price would be $370, but since he was doing so many houses in our neighborhoods (including, he said, “Sonia, next door, at 9:30 a.m.”), he would do our windows for $270.

I told him “no thanks, and he looked hurt, as only a charming young man can, and asked if the problem was the price. He told me that they were filled up for 9:30 in our neighborhood, but had one slot left at 12:30. Just like Donald Trump (I can’t leave him out of my posts, can I?) looking for 11,799 votes in Georgia, Will had just one more slot left at 12:30 and it was so important for him to fill it, that he gave me one last chance: “Okay”, he said, “here is the Hail, Mary. Because we need to fill that one slot, I will give it to you for $220.”

To his enormous shock and surprise, I told him “no, thanks”. But, I said to myself, “well, he is a young kid trying to make some money for school (although he looked like he could have been a billionaire’s son), so I am not just going to leave him without something, so I said “Well, give me your card, and maybe later”.

A card? What made me think that this young entrepreneur would have a card? He had no cards – the deal should be made right now. But he said he had a website. “Oh, I said, okay. What is your website?”

Of course, I felt like the decrepit old man being taunted by a young grifter who was sure he would win this conversation, and he said (not surprisingly), I can text it to you. “No”, I said, “that won’t work. Just tell me what it is.” My phone number was the last thing that I wanted him to have. He told me it was fluxhomesolutions.com.

It turns out there is a website and the company does exist. The website is pretty flashy and it would take you all day to read everything on it. It says the company is locally owned, and it says that they get 5 stars on Google. Well, I couldn’t find the Google rating, but I did find the Yelp rating and it gives them 3 stars, saying that some customers were satisfied, while others felt they did not do a good job or a complete job, or did not show up at all.

Well, it is now 10 a.m., and looking out the window, I certainly don’t see them at Sonia’s house. Of course, they might just be coming 35 minutes late. We will see. I will let you know.

At any rate, that was my Friday excitement.

One more thing. While I was writing this post, I got a text on my phone. No, not from Will or Flux. The text is “Hi, Lily here. We are working nearby and offering complementary quotes for tree trimming this week and next. Want one?”

Will. Lill. Do you see a pattern here?

But, wait! Maybe tree trimming is just what we need.

The view of our front yard crepe myrtles (crepes myrtle?)  is being blocked by that tree on the left, which is growing every year. Maybe I should ask Lill to trim it. But that would also make our windows more visible. “Will, where are you?”

A good night’s sleep, a poppy seed bagel and coffee, saying good-bye to our friends Simon and Rosie, and a morning drive from White Plains to West End Avenue and 84th Street to see our friends Bruce and Ilona. I was very worried about finding a parking place. It was an unnecessay worry, as you can see from this photo of our car and their building.

We walked two blocks from our friends’ place and had lunch at The French Roast on Broadway. We had been there before, once on Bastille Day. It’s a fairly trendy place with a fairly trendy menu, and the food is acceptable, but not great. The specialty of the house seems not to be any particular dish on the menu, but the attractive waitresses who bring you the menu.

The weather (rain, dry, rain, dry) was concerning, with severe thunderstorm warnings all through the mid-Atlantic states. Our GPS must have sensed the danger that a ride down the Jersey Turnpike could take forever, so it suggested an alternative route, presumed to take over 5 hours.  Basically, we first drove west through New Jersey to the Pennsylvania border. A dull ride in the rain, to be sure. But I did learn something. I now know how to get to Donald’s golf club in Bedminster.

Crossing the Pennslvania border at Easton, we continued past, oh, little town of Bethlehem, and then Allentown (did you say “Allentown”?) Before we got to I-81 and familiar territory. We went by places we had passed in the opposite direction on Sunday, including Dillsburg and Gettysburg, stopped for supper in Emmitsburg MD, where I had a decent tuna melt and chips.

Emmitsburg is home to the National Fire Academy, which gives specialized training to fire fighters. So it was only appropriate that a fire broke out in the sky while we were there.

Oh, did we see rain? Off and on. Until we got about 20 miles from the house where the skies just opened up. I didn’t realize how poor the lane markings are on I-270 in Montgomery County. When it is pouring and dark, you can see neither the car or the road. Lucky everyone has head and tail lights. And really slowed down.

We spent much of the ride listening to MSNOW on Sirius in our car. We have a free subscription through the end of the year. Should we continue after that? I haven’t figured Sirius out yet. Is there only one classical music station? That’s what it looks like.

I must admit I was surprised that he renamed Lake Ontario Lake America. I always assumed he would rename the Great Lakes like this: Lake Donald (that would be Lake Superior), Lake Ivanka, Lake Tiffany, Lake Eric, and Lake Junior.

Anyway, nice to be back in Washington, DT.

It is pretty late at night and we are in White Plains NY staying with our friends Rosie and Simon, so this might be shorter than the others.

We just finished dinner at the Moghul Palace in Valhalla, NY. All good, amd I learned a new word, Mangolorean. This is cuisine from the coastal city of Mangalore, not the central city of Bangalore. I had Mangalorean Salmon Curry, with ginger and coconut.

We left Troy this morning, not, like Odysseus heading for Ithaca, but for White Plains. We made a few stops on the way, including Kinderhook, the home of Martin Van Buren (who was not in residence today). We had toured the house, built in the 1840s, several years ago, so today was just a pass-by.

We saw also the 1819 John Vanderpohl House (now a museum), and the house where Benedict Arnold recuperated after being injured in the Battle of Bemis Heights in 1777 (now a house).

Most things in Kinderhook are rather ritzy, by the way, but not this.

And the countryside is very nice.

On to Catskill, where we visited the 1815 house and studio of artist Thomas Cole, who is credited for creating the Hudson River School of Painting.

And yes, we visited the 1815 privy as well. The privy was another pass-by.

Then, on to Saugerties, where they like dogs

And where you can buy a very nice building.

We skipped Kingston and Poughkeepsie, but stopped at Newburgh, a very troubled city, but home of the first building ever bought by a U.S. governmental body for historic preservation purposes – George Washington’s headquarters in 1782 and 1783.

This is the Orange County Courthouse in Newburgh, almost 200 years old.

All was not good there.

Because of time constraints, we skipped Bear Mountain and West Point. But we stopped when we crossed the Hudson at Bear Mountain to enjoy the view.

And quite a view it was.

Tomorrow, the plan is rain, Manhattan to see other friends, rain and home.

Interesting day. Surprised to learn that our Marriott Courtyard doesn’t give us breakfast. So we went to downtown Oneonta to the Oneonta Bagel Company, where the scrambled eggs were first class and the poppy seed bagels well poppylated. And the coffee? Eight choices for black coffee.

I chose French Roast. Good.

We saw that Oneonta’s downtown was quite nice and, on the way out of town  we saw Oneonta has an octagonal house (take that, AIA), built in 1870.

We then retraced our steps 25 miles and went back to the book village, Hobart. There are some smaller stores there, but only three full service used book stores, two of which were open (the Blenheims are on vacation). We had a nice conversation with the owners of the Adams Book Store. He is a retired physician and she a retired lawyer from Manhattan, and they first opened the store 20 years ago. They have quite a collection, specializing in older American and English books in all sorts of fields. The next time you are in Hobart, population 380, look them up.

The town itself looks pretty run down. These guys guard the entrances.

Too many houses look like this.

But the church has a good sense of humor.

And out of the blue, in this tiny town, two blocks from the book stores, we found a very large Mallinckrodt pharmaceutical plant. Who knew?

Driving on, we saw a skeleton driving a wagon and a church built in 1805, remodeled in 1839, and maybe not touched since. We stopped at a rural diner where we ordered pistachio and chocolate ice cream for lunch.

And the continued on our beautiful and interesting drive.

Soon we were going past Albany and crossing the Hudson, entering Troy.

Troy is an elegant old city with loads of beautiful 19th century buildings.

Because it has so many old and beautiful buidings (it was a major industrial city), it is often used as a set for films set in certain periods. There is one such film being made now, which explained a parking lot with no car newer than about 90 years. Examples:

And they all had their keys, ready to be driven away. Just one weird site. The cars by the  way included Fords, Chevys, Chryslers, La Salles, Packards, Studebakers, and Hudsons, to name a few.

The day ended with a nice Italian dinner at Bacchus, where we sat outside and split a salad and a veggie pasta with a creamy tomato sauce, which for some reason, they named after Aristotle.

Today, we follow the Hudson south and see where it goes.

Oh….and I am very sad about Dolly Parton.

Sometimes, things don’t go exactly as planned. But them’s the breaks.

As you recall, we started in Scranton PA.

The thought was to get to the Anthracite coal mine tour when it opened at 10 this morning, get on the first tour, and be done by 11 or so. But we didn’t get there until after 11 and couldn’t get in the mine until the 12 nooon tour. The 12 o’clock tour didn’t start until after 12:30, and we left the tour gounds at 1:50 and had not had lunch yet. So, as you can imagine, the rest of our day was affected.

Scranton was at the center of anthracite coal mining and for a century anthracite coal was at the center of home heating (and much more). This particular mine was operating for over 100 years and was restored and open to tourists by Lackawanna County. You ride a tram 300 feet underground and walk about a half mile underground, while you are told about the mining process, and a difficult process it was, made more difficult by the lack of labor protection laws and lack of management compassion.

Temperature in the mine? Think Sitka in July.

Some photos from yesterday:

Because it was after 2 and we had not eaten lunch, we stopped at the first place we saw, Mr. Ranchito, a very casual Columbian restaurant, where we were the only English speakers (and that included the staff). Our meals were not to write home about.

Our next goal was to get to Hobart NY, a small town about 2 and 1/2 hours from Scranton where there are 8 used book stores. Most are closed on Monday, but that was okay, because how many can you see at the same time?  But of course, by the time we got there, all were closed. So, it was a long and for the most part beautiful country road, but to no avail. We drove another 30 minutes to Onteonta  where we were lucky to find a room as there is a lot going on there, including move-in day for the local SUNY and a fire fighter convention.

The last, and only other, time we stopped here, we had a delicious meal at an Italian restaurant called Toscana. But, keeping with the post-mine tour day, it is closed on Monday. But, we went to another, and trendier Italian restaurant, Dazzo’s. An A+ dinner from a restaurant that gets 4.8 on Yelp. We split a black bass special (roasted purple potatoes, asparagus and sauteed red peppers) and a burrata cheese artichoke flavored home  made ravioli, served with a butter sauce and crispy fried onions. Could not have been better.

We are in Scranton PA just off the President Biden Expressway. Scranton, as you know, is Biden’s home town.

Digression: Biden won the 2020 vote over Trump in Lackawanna County about 54 to 43. End of digression.

We are staying at the Radisson Lackawanna Hotel, the former headquarters of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railway. The last train pulled out of the station 56 years ago.

The hotel (we have stayed here previously) is known for its elegant lobby, its Tiffany glass stained windows, and for its very secure coat closet.

Of course, we started the day 260 miles from here, at a location known as “home”. We had four stops along the way.

Stop 1. We have seen most of the sights in Frederick MD, one of the nation’s most appealing mid-sized towns. But we had never seen the Hessian Barracks.

Unfortunately, you can not get too close. The barracks, built about 1780, are on the grounds of the Maryland School for the Deaf, and the school’s grounds are pretty much off limits. But this building has quite a history, including serving as a prison for captured Hessian prisoners during the Revolutionary War snd serving as a hospital during the Civil War. It has been part of the school since 1867. And, yes, that is a long time ago.

Our next stop was a lunch stop at the Kountry Kitchen in Thurmont, off Route 15 north of Frederick. It was our third or fourth time there. I ate light, just scrambled eggs, toast and potatoes. They don’t look remarkable (although they taste good), but you should know that this meal costs $5.99.

Stop number 3 was 25 miles up the road or so, just off one end of the Gettysburg battleground. It was the Eisenhower farm, where Ike and Mamie spent their retirement, although they had owned it for some time. We had never been there before, although it is very accessible, free, attractive and interesting. We had a good Park Service guide

Some pictures:

Leaving the house, our 4th stop was Dill’s Tavern in Dillsburg PA. Dill’s Tavern was built in the 1790s and expanded in the early 1800s. It has served the Dill and Eichelberger families as an inn, a tavern, a distillery office, a farm offiice, and a wheelwright’s office, until it wound up in other hands, finally as an antique shop. A county non-profit bought it about 30 years ago and restored it to its early 19th century looks. What I thought would be a 15 minute stop turned into a 1.5 hour tour (and we left before being able to see two of the outbuildings). Very worthwhile, if a bit TMI.

Again, some photos:

From Dillsburg, which is south of Harrisburg, to Scranton is a little over two hours. This stretch of the trip we made without a stop. Beautiful scenery.

And here we are. Dinner last night at the hotel. Edie ordered salmon. She was very surprised when they brought pasta with a pork bolognese sauce. But I guess that is Scranton.

With our trip to Maine cancelled because our host took ill, we needed to decide what to do. We didn’t want to drive all the way to Maine and have no place to stay and no friends to see, we didn’t want to just stay home when we had planned to be away, and we didn’t want to let our one night hotel reservation go to waste. So we are heading north, not quite knowing where we are going, or why. Our original plan was to get home next Sunday, and that would give us too much time to just wander, so we are now planning on a voyage into the unknown that will probably last four nights and five days. I have a few thoughts, but I am keeping them to myself. You (and we) will see.

That makes for a short post on today’s blog.

I will say this. I saw a segment on CNN last night showing ICE picking up a undocumented man as he took his 5 year old son to a soccer game, the man handcuffed and the son crying as he tried to hold the hands of his handcuffed father. They were apparently both whisked off to an ICE detention center in Louisiana. The boy’s mother (and man’s wife) remained at home, and CNN showed her speaking to her 5 year old son by phone, telling him not to worry, that things would all be okay.

I also saw yesterday the first plane of deported Haitians, all who were in the country legally with temporary protection status until very recently, landing not at Port-au-Prince (which was deemed too dangerous for our evacuation planes), but at Cap Haitien in the north of the country. By coincidence, on YouTube, while I was on the stationary bike yesterday, I watched a video made by a vlogger who had traveled to Haiti to really see what it was like, exploring Port-au-Prince with an armed guide, and speaking to a few residents. Clearly, this is not a place that anyone should now be sent. Period. Full Stop.

Digression. I remember our trip to Haiti in 1977, during the reign of Baby Doc Duvalier, where things were also far from good for residents of the country, but where terror of the government was so strong that we were told that you could leave your suitcase on a downtown sidewalk and it would be there untouched when you came to pick it up a week or two later. End of digression.

Back to ICE. I also saw interviews with some deportees (I don’t remember where they were from) who had been sent to a third party country, in their case, the Central African Republic, about which I know little, which is also apparently a place where no one should be sent. Looking on Google, where the question was asked: Can Americans travel to the Central African Republic? The answer given is: “Americans can technically travel to the Central African Republic, but the U.S. Department of State Travel Advisory is Level 4: Do not travel. High risks include violent crime, civil unrest, kidnapping, unexploded landmines, and very limited medical care.”

The men who were interviewed said that not only were they now in the Central African Republic, a country to which they had no connection, but they had no way to leave that country, as they had no passports or identifying papers. Perhaps this will be resolved. Perhaps not.

Let me be clear: the depravity and cruelty of the Trump administration knows no bounds. However low they go, they can and will go lower.

That’s it.

And we’re off.

Family accomplishments from last week. 11 year old granddaughter Joan got her ears pierced, and 5 year old grandson Izzy can now ride a bicycle. On Monday, it’s back to school, but they had a full summer. Joan spent a month at an arts camp near Philadelphia and two weeks at Smithsonian summer programs. Izzy went to the local Ramah day camp, went camping with his father and visited relatives in Washington State, and spent a week at bicycle camp. They both spent a week visiting their other grandparents in Massachussets.

We spent a week on an Alaskan cruise and another week in and around Glacier National Park in Montana. Our plan was to end the summer with friends in Kennebunkport ME, but just got word that our host is ill. We are sorry to miss our time in Maine, but sorrier to hear he is going to require medical attention, and wish him the best.

We are now deciding how to spend the week. It’s hard just turning off the spigot, so we are planning to go somewhere and do something, at least for 3 or 4 days. Our creativity will surprise you.

September will be busy here as we get back to our routine, welcome Israeli house guests and celebrate the Jewish holidays. We are now planning the year’s entertainment. Six Sunday afternoons will be spent at the Shakespeare Theatre and five at Theater J. We hope to see several of the plays at Studio Theatere, and now and then elsewhere. Because of Trump’s destruction of the Kennedy Center and the exile of the Washington Opera and the National Sympathy Orchestra, we will get tickets to some of their performances, which will be spread out across the area in several venues, some close, and some far from our house.

We have tickets to one more baseball game, on September 15, which turns out this year to be Edie’s birthday. On the subject of the Nats…….enough said. Unlikely we will get to other sporting events this year.

My birthday this year will fall on Thanksgiving Day (as it did in 1942), so the entire country will take the day off and celebrate. My cousin Donna has a big birthday in December, so odds are that a St. Louis trip is in the offing. More travel over the year? We will see. With a travel agent in the family (please see Michelle for your cruise and other vacation needs – I know how to reach her), anything is possible.

Hopefully, today will be quiet. Downtown, the Indy500 cars are getting ready to tear up the city tomorrow. A 1.7 mile route along Pennsylvania and Independence Avenues between 4th and 9th (that is the approximate route) to be lapped 147 times (that makes 250 miles, one for each year of American independence) by 25 cars racing as fast as 180 mph. Thank you, Donald Trump. What could be dumber?

Let me start with this. First, one thing you know: I would not vote for a Republican anywhere in 2026. Second, one thing you may not know: I also would not vote for anyone who tells me that they are a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

During the Biden years I remarked over and over in this blog, that the Democrats were going to lose the presidency in 2024 because of the Biden border policies. It was clear to me. And obviously, I was right. Had the Democrats done better on immigration and border control, Kamala Harris would be our president today.

Now, in 2026, we see the Republicans trying to avoid responsibility for all of the extraordinary damage that they have caused by running a campaign where their main point will be that the Democrats are communists. We know that is a ridiculous charge, but the country is filled with many who firmly believe that where there is smoke, there must be fire  My fear that unless the Democrats do something to separate themselves entirely from the Democratic Socialists of America, there will be smoke and they are going to wind up in 2026 much weaker than they would otherwise be.

A lot of this, like so many things, has to do with education. In this case, not educating Republicans, but Democrats need to educate themselves as to the danger of being identified with the policies of the DSA.

The Democrats have a number of progressive candidates this year, and many have done well. But it is surprising to realize that most of these candidates are not DSA members. In fact, only two members of Congress today are members of the Democratic Socialists of America. One is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and the other is Rashida Tlaib of Minnesota. That’s it. Of large American cities today, only New York City has a mayor who is a DSA member, Zohran Mamdani. Sadly, DC will be another after the November election, when Jeneese George takes on the job.

In addition to AOC and Tlaib, there are only two members of the DSA running for Congress as Democrats in 2026. They are Melet Kiros in Denver and Christopher Robb in Philadelphia.

In other words, if all of the DSA members who are running for Congress this year win their races (as they probably will) only 4 out of 435 members of the House of Representatives will be DSA members.

To clarify this a bit more, let’s take Bernie Sanders. Guess what? He is not a member of DSA, although he calls himself a Democratic Socialist and supports some, but not all, of their policies. Similarly, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is not a member of the DSA. Progressive Abdul El-Sayed, running for the Senate in Michigan, is not a DSA member. But, for reasons unclear, Angie Nixon, who has won the Democratic primary for the Senate race in Florida (beating Alexander Vindman in a major upset), has announced that she is going to join the DSA, even though she had not previously belonged, and does not support all of their positions. I heard her say she joined because of their position on healthcare. She is making a big mistake.

It is easy to understand the DSA. All you have to do is look at their website, and at the Wikipedia articles which discuss the organization. But I went a bit further and read through their current platform.

Yes, they have a platform. Apparently, every two years, the DSA has a convention at which a 27 member National Political Committee is elected. The NPC is charged with the developing a platform which is brought back to the main body.

The current platform of the Democratic Socialists of America is beyond being simply radical and beyond being kitchen table socialist. And it has no place being connected to anyone running for office in the Democratic Party. Sure, it has some goals that most of us might agree with, like free healthcare for all, equal treatment for members of all religious groups, races and genders, the Green New Deal, and statehood for the District of Columbia. But it also includes many positions that we would not support at all and which, as you will see, are shocking.

Here are some of them:

Abolish the Senate and just leave the House as a unicameral body.

Abolish the presidency and the Supreme Court in their present form and have the Senate select a chief administrator and select members of the judicial branch.

Large corporations should be publicly owned (not through stock, through public ownership). This would include all energy companies and transportation companies.

The United States should not support Ukraine’s defense against Russia, should not support any actions against Iran, should not provide any funds to Israel, and should support the current Cuban government. The DSA supports Palestinian rights, including the right of return, and does not believe that Israel should be able to defend itself (not sure what that means); the DSA supports a Palestinian state with its capital, Jerusalem (the policy does not say East Jerusalem, just Jerusalem).

Housing should be a right and publicly owned, there should be community owned or government owned grocery stores (e.g., in NYC, where Mamdani has broached this), there should be rent freezes (again, NYC), and public transportation should be free.

Education should be free through university and some graduate schools (such as medical schools)

ICE should be abolished, borders should be open, migration should be encouraged. Any permanent residents should be allowed to vote in federal elections, whether they are citizens or not. And there should be no voting restrictions on those convicted of a crime. Everyone today in the United States, irrespective of how they got here, should be granted amnesty.

Police work should be demilitarized, police unions abolished, and police funding should be redirected towards fully abolishing the police and the current prison system.

Lobbyists should not be allowed to influence governmental officials. No private money should go into election campaigns.

None of this is hidden. It is right on their website. How can the Democratic Party support candidates who belong to this group? And why aren’t the candidates who do belong, or who are very progressive, but don’t belong to the DSA, being asked questions about whether they agree or disagree with the DSA position on each of these items?

Think of the DSA as a left wing Heritage Foundation with a Project 2028, not 2025.

The Democratic Socialists of America is an outgrowth of an organization founded by socialist writer Michael Harrington in the early 1980s. Its members were good old fashioned anti-Soviet American socialists of the mid-twentieth century. But after Harrington died in 1989, the DSA became fairly inactive and stayed that way until Bernie Sanders ran for office in 2015, when it attracted a large number of Sanders supporters. In 2016, when Trump was first elected president, it attracted more members. And last year, as part of the Mamdani campaign, it doubled in size.

Today, there are about 125,000 members of the DSA. In 2015, before Bernie Sanders’ influence was felt, the membership was about 6,000.

By another measure, the change is maybe even more interesting. In 2013, the average age of members was 68. By 2017, when its numbers were much larger, the average age of members was 33.

(All these stats come from Wikipedia.)

The goal of the DSA is to wean the United States away from capitalism and create a socialist (not communist, but socialist) country that looks very different from the country we have today, or from any other country that has ever existed. Its strategy is to do that by infiltrating the Democratic Party and turning its focus away from its current focus. I assume that this influenced its choice of a name for itself. It believes that socialism can only be accomplished by working through an existing party, that forming a third party would not work under the current American system.

By the way, the identity of the 27 members of the DSA National Political Committee is public. One of the co-chairs are Ashik Siddique, of Bengladeshi descent, who lives in NY, but was once a losing ANC candidate in Petworth DC. He is a pro-Palestinian activist, as are several other committee members. The other co-chair is Megan Romer, who is a self-proclaimed Communist and a member of the DSA Red Star caucus.

Virtually nothing the DSA does has any relationship to the Democratic Party today. So why does the Democratic Party not question individuals running for office under its name and disassociate itself from the organization itself. Fear of losing progressive votes? I think that could be dealt with, and I think that by defending the DSA, the Democrats will wind up losing more votes than they will save.

It goes back to my proposal that the Democrats put together a party platform that is flexible enough that all candidates could sign onto. This is one way to separate the Democratic Party from the Democratic Socialists. And separation is crucial.

Remember when Churchill described Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”? No one would describe Russia that way today. Certainly, I wouldn’t. But I might describe China that way. I have never been to China, and although I certainly see and read enough about it today, my knowledge of Chinese history (and I bet yours) is minimal.

For example: Han, Ming, Qin, Qing, Shang, Song, Sui, Tang, Xia, Yuan, Zhou. These are the Chinese dynasties. Can you even begin to put them in chronological order?

On October 7, 2025, my blog post discussed two books I had recently read. One, The House of Exile, by Nora Waln, was the memoir of an American woman who had gone to China in the early 1920s and stayed over a decade, and the other Two Gun Cohen by David Levy told the story of Morris Cohen, a British Jew who had become Sun Yat-Sen’s body guard. Waln’s book told me quite a bit about rural China before most of the political and economic upheavals of the twentieth century and about life in the European sector of Canton where European “concessions” allowed westerners to live very privileged lives, and Levy told me a bit about Sun Yat-Sen and the first attempts to create a unified, modern China.

I also knew about the early Chinese communists and how they had to retreat westward until they were ready to start the Long March which led to their takeover of the country. But I didn’t (and still don’t) know much about that beyond what I just said in the last sentence.

So, I decided to pick up another Penguin paperback titled Mowrer in China by Edgar Mowrer, an American journalist. The book was published in 1938, before the Long March occurred and during the fighting between Japan and China, well before Pearl Harbor and the American entry into the war in the Pacific.

I was intrigued by the book because I had read another book by Mowrer (see my blog entry from April 4, 2025, titled So It Can’t Happen Here) called Germany Puts the Clock Back, published in 1934 and giving a history of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Hitler, then newly installed as Germany’s chancellor. I found that book very well written and extremely informative, and I thought his book on China might be as well, even though Mowrer lived in Germany as the Berlin correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, and only visited China for the purpose of writing this book. And although Mowrer’s book did not give me any help at all in putting the Chinese dynasties in chronological order, it did give me a lot of context for China in the 20th and now 21st centuries.

This simple blog post is not going to be a history of twentieth century China of course, but let me give you a few thoughts that Mowrer imparted from his 1938 vantage point:

1. The Chinese/Japanese rivalry was long-standing. Like it went back over a thousand years. And Japan looked upon themselves as the superior power in terms of military might, organization and culture. And they might have been, for the most part, correct.
2. In the 19th century, China was devastated by the prevalence of opium (not only the west, but Japan too bore a responsibility here), was hardly a single nation, but rather one run by provinces and by warlords, and deservedly with a reputation of being backward and lazy.
3. The Chinese were, by and large, a peaceable people, not at all militarily strong or sophisticated, and were much more respectful of intellectual and literary greatness than military or political greatness. This gave the opportunity to Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a physician and a philosopher who operated mainly while in exile, to create the Republic of China in 1911. (How he did this, I am not sure; this was not covered in the book.)
4. After Sun died, Chaing Kai-shek took over and was everything that Sun was not. Chaing was a doer, not a thinker, and in addition to being successful, Chaing had captured the imagination and respect of the Chinese people, and as of the writing of this book, except for the part of China occupied by Japan, China was for the first time truly a united country.
5. At one time, Chaing and the communists were allies, but they had broken apart and Chaing was clearly the winner, although in their quarters in the west, Chou en-Lei was still someone to reckon with. (Mao, on the other hand, was not mentioned).
6. Digression: in Theodore White’s early book about his visit to the Communists in exile as a Time Magazine correspondent, he met with Chou and, at a dinner prepared in his honor, was convinced by Chou that he should eat what was served him, whether or not it was kosher. White (who grew up in Boston completely Orthodox and who never had eaten anything no kosher, even when living in Harvard dorms) said that if Chou en-Lei could convince him to stop keeping kosher, he could convince anybody of anything. By the way, White never kept kosher again after that. End of digression.
7. With all of the turmoil in late 19th and early 20th century China, Japan thought it had its opportunity. It invaded and captured Manchuria, creating an independent vassal state there without much opposition, and decided that it could take more without fear of much response. It captured Beijing and it perpetrated atrocities in Nanking, and suddenly found itself fighting a somewhat unified Chinese military that had not previously existed.
8. The Japanese were much stronger than the Chinese in equipment – no comparison. But the Chinese had the numbers, and they had the patience, and with a combination of defensive fighting and guerilla tactics (which were new to China), they were able to keep the Japanese from running over the entire country
9. The United States was officially neutral, and there were apparently no restrictions on American trade with either party. Japan was by far the more favorable trade partner because it had the stronger economy and was able to purchase American goods, including American planes, which were used to attack China.
10. On the other hand, American sentiment at all levels favored China and, from what I could see, a surprising amount of Chinese government officials (at all levels) and military leaders (even in remote parts of the country) had American connections. Many were at least partially educated in the U.S., had family here, and spoke English. This was a surprise to me.
11. There was a lot of debate in this country about the dangers of an even more powerful Japan and the desire for a strong China with economic relations with western nations. This was also still the era of colonialism, Hong Kong was a British colony, and there were “concessions” to European nations giving them privileged positions of various sorts. The west wanted to see these concessions grow – they knew they would not exist if Japan took over. But of course, the Chinese themselves were not happy with the concessions, either.
12. I am going to leave it here with just a few other comments. Mowrer’s writing was as clear in this book as in his book on Germany. He traveled and met many Chinese officials and visited the “front line” under what turned out to be harrowing experiences. He had no idea whether Japan or China would prevail, he had no thoughts about the U.S. getting involved in actual combat although he thought we would cut off selling planes to Japan, he certainly had no idea that the Communists would prevail in China, forcing Chaing and his followers to retreat to Taiwan.
13. I would recommend this book, even though it deals with a time that is now long past. Or perhaps for that reason. I think it provides a fair amount of context, largely lacking in our memories today.
14. One last thing. Mowrer puts an interesting chapter at the end of the book, which he lists as optional reading. It is, in effect, a conversation between Mowrer and his conscience. The question is how does a reporter stay neutral (which seemed then to be an essential element of journalism) when he clearly has a favorite in the contest and believes one side to have right on their side. Another contemporary twist that you might find relevant.

(1) It was in March that I got the first of three tickets I received for running a red light at Fessenden Street at 39th (or is it 38th?). When I have tried to fight such a ticket (maybe three times over the past 50 years), I have always had watertight proof of innocence and lost, because the appeal process is stacked in favor of the police and against the ordinary citizen. So, why should I fight City Hall? I paid by $100 fine, and went on with my life.

In April, we took a trip to St. Louis and when I returned, I found an unexpected piece of mail from the DC Motor Vehicle Department. It was a statement telling me that they had reviewed my ticket (without my asking) and concluded that I had not failed to stop, and they were going to return my $100. They told me to be patient because it would take about 6 weeks.

Six weeks would have been about June 1. I put a little note on my calendar and, not surprisingly, June 1 came without my hearing anything more from the Department. I made a mental note to keep my eyes open, and if the check did not arrive within the next couple of weeks to follow up. I was not sure how to follow up, but I thought I would probably call the Mayor’s hot line; I had had pretty good luck with them before.

But time passed and I didn’t think about it. It just slipped my mind. But, lo and behold, when I picked up the mail today, I saw an envelope from the City Finance Office, and inside was a $100 check.

You know how they always say “Don’t spend it in one place?” I think we are going to spend it in one place.

(2) We are going out of town for a week on Sunday, and because we are newspaper Luddites and still get the Washington Post and New York Times delivered daily, we have to cancel the delivery for a week. Usually, this can be done with a brief phone call: you tell them your address and your name and maybe answer a security question (e.g., what color is your red Prius) and they say okay. This time, this is exactly what happened when I called the Post and spoke with their computer. When I called the Times, however, nothing seem to work. First, the computer asked me a totally unexpected question (unexpected because it had never asked me this before): what was our account number? I didn’t have an invoice with me and had no clue. The computer would not take “I don’t know” for an answer, and it wouldn’t let me speak with a person. It asked me what I wanted to do: I told it I wanted to pause my subscription for a week. It old me it could do that and asked me what I wanted to do. I could tell I was in a loop, so I picked another answer (I don’t remember what it was) and the computer got me confused and told me to hold on, and pretty soon it was obvious I was being sent to another computer.

This time the computer asked me when I wanted to start my pause and when I wanted to end my pause. I didn’t feel comfortable, because the computer had never asked me who I was or where I lived and I didn’t think my cellphone was connected to the account. I talked gibberish to the computer and that was enough for it to send me to a real person.

I told him what my concern was. He seemed to understand and was very apologetic. I told him that I now had my account number, and he liked that. He then asked me my address, which of course I told him, thinking that was a fair way to check that I was who I said I was. But he then asked me my name, which I wasn’t sure that he liked. He then asked me phone number. I gave him the cell phone number, and he asked me if I had any other. I gave him the land line number; he told me that was helpful, because for delivery accounts, they only went by land line numbers (I know that made no sense, but I let it pass). He then asked me for my email, which I gave him, and he asked me if I had any better email, and I gave him Edie’s.

At last he seemed satisfied, and he asked me when I wanted the delivery paused. I told him, and he said, okay, let me put you on hold a minute. Okay, I replied, and he went off and then came back on the line, and told me “Someone already called this in. The pause was already in the system.”

Now this had to be me. Couldn’t he have told me that before taking up about 20 minutes of my (and his) time with all of his questions? But I thanked him, and then told him that, the next time we went away, I did not want to go through all of this again. Could he tell me what information I needed – account number, what phone number, what email, etc.? I just wanted to make it easy on everyone. There was a pause. It was as if I could hear him smile. His response was “No, you have done everything just right.”

(3) While writing this post, I am watching the Nationals play the Rangers. Going into the 9th inning, it is Texas 5, Washington 0. I repeat what I have said before – the team management has ruined this season, taking a very exciting group of young players, disposing of three of them on trades that do not seem to be working out yet at all, demoralizing the fan base, and demoralizing the remaining players. Hard to say when they will really win me back.

Yes, that is an old saying, but it’s true.

I will say something else. Anyone who still supports Donald Trump is a deplorable. And they will remain a deplorable until they change their support or their vote. Hillary was right.

It is unimagineable how many ways Trump is destroying this country and, yes, much of the rest of the world. Every now and then, someone comes along who can do that, and he is one of them. And for us, he is the only one who counts. (Yes, there is Netanyahu as well. That is true.) (Yes, there are several of the Supreme Court justices, that is also true.)

I guess I could go on and on.

Who was it in The Mikado who had “a little list” of people who would not be missed? Today, his list would be large.  And Donald, in big, bold letters would be at the top.

Of course, I am not the only one who says this. Everyone talks about Donald Trump and nobody does anything about him.

The entire Republican party is so cowed that all they can do is say that Democrats are Communists who will take away everyone’s private property and destroy the country. That’s all they say now. Their entire campaign is: “You think we are bad? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” That’s it.

Isn’t there a way to get him out of office before January 2029? I can think of several. I think that so can many others. Soon, everybody will be talking about and, if past is prologue, nobody will do anything about it. Including me.

I gotta run. Full day ahead.

I guess the Congressional race in Virginia’s 2nd District will be close. The incumbent is a one term Republican Jennifer Kiggans. The Democrat is former Congresswoman Elaine Luria.

On a short drive this morning, I turned on C-Span radio and heard part of a press conference being given in Virginia Beach by Kiggans and Majority Leader Mike Johnson. Kiggans started off by saying that this race was crucial in order to prevent the Democrats from controlling Congress and putting into action their Marxist and Communist programs.

I chuckled when she introduced Johnson and he said how important it was to elect her because she had such great ability to work in a bipartisan manner. I thought someone got their wires crossed.

But, no, I guess not. Because Mike Johnson, the Majority Leader of the United States Congress, now (as he says) on a 30 day, 34 stop, 18 state trip supporting Republican candidates, spent the next ten minutes or so asserting that the Democratic party “is in the middle of a civil war”, “does not know who its leaders are”, and “is controlled by Marxists and Communists”. And these Marxists and Communists, now that they control the Democratic (he of course says Democrat) party, if they get to control Congress will put into place a Communist agenda which will take away our civil rights and, what might even be worse, abolish private property. Are you a small business man? Well, you won’t be under the Democrats, because they want to take over your business.

Now, few things can shock me today regarding the action of Republicans in the federal government. But I must say this one did. If I hadn’t been driving in my new and still very clean car, I might have given into my first instincts and and thrown up onto the passenger seat.

I can’t imagine anyone dumb enough to fall for this, but I know that between 30% and 50% of the country will.

Heaven help us.

I haven’t read this book, but think I will make it my next one after I finish Walter Bernstein’s I8nside, Out, about a writer’s experience with the Hollywood and Broadway “blacklists” in the 1950s.

I am not sure what Good Muslim, Bad Muslim says, but it is by Zohran Mamdani’s father, who teaches or taught at Columbia, and I thought it might give me some insight as to the mayor’s thinking. Or at least some context. The book is an explanation for the rise of Islamic terrorism, and was published 22 years ago, in 2004. (Am I the only one who has trouble realizing that 2004 was over 20 years ago? In 2004, Zohran was 12.)

In looking quickly at the introduction to the book, it seems to focus on nationalism, not religion, and not to necessarily equate Islamic terrorism with other forms of nationalism, but to show how closely related they are, and how it is western culture that paints it as very different. And, while certainly condemning the Holocaust, he also seems to define it as a not unusual phenomenon (the phenomenon of one group deciding to annihilate another), but large in size and European. He says that if you look at other parts of the world, particularly in Africa (remember, Mamdani is from Uganda), there are many such examples. But Europeans (and I guess Americans), he says, look at European wars very differently than they look at wars elsewhere. What he says about Israel, I don’t yet know, or about the Palestinians.

Looking at the world as a battleground between rival nationalities is of course the way Timothy Snyder talks about Nazi philosophy and perhaps you can also equate it with Trump’s stated MAGA philosophy, which seems to have defined an “American” race, which should have dominance over competing cultures around the world, and which should keep itself as pure as possible, hence the strong anti-immigrant and strong border policies.

Just like the Jews got in the way of Hitler’s concept of racially pure European societies structured in a pro-German hierarchy, the Jews in Israel get in the way of Arab nationalism in the Middle East. Always the Jews.

As to Walter Bernstein and the blacklist, I must admit that his name meant nothing to me when I found the book. He was a Hollywood (and New York City) writer, a fellow traveler of the Communist Party from his college days on, and member of the party starting in the later 1940s, after the end of World War II. I am only about halfway through the book (it seems to becoming a habit for me to write about a book before I have finished it; probably not a good habit), and I haven’t really got to his being blacklisted yet.

He describes his New York City background as being impoverished and his immigrant father as both a teacher and a writer, but he seems to have been privileged in many ways. He went to summer camp, his parents went to a summer family retreat on a regular basis, and he met, through his parents, some well know New York intellectuals. He talks about being a poor student, but somehow got into Dartmouth, and spent the summer before college living with a family in France. So it is a bit confusing.

He graduated from Dartmouth in 1940 and was soon drafted in the army, spending time at Ft. Benning for basic training, but then being put into a journalist/entertainer unit where he spent the remainder of the war years working for an army newspaper called Yank!. He got into this unit with some strings pulled, and his Communist background (clearly not hidden) did not seem to affect his assignments, including his appointment (aborted before it could actually take place) as the Moscow correspondent of Yank!. (It was Moscow that decided that they did not want the paper to have a Moscow office.)

Bernstein clearly had one knack that I lack. He had the knack of meeting famous people, while my only knack is consistently finding good parking spaces. For example, he, as a military reporter, is flying to Naples and he is sitting next to General Benjamin Davis, leader of the Tuskegee Airmen. He gets on another plane in Naples to fly to Bari, and the other passenger is Ernest Hemingway’s wife, or ex-wife, Martha Gellhorn. His buddy in basic training is future China expert, Robert Conquest. It goes on and on.

The most interesting portion of the book that I have read involves his being sneaked into Yugoslavia and having the first interview with Tito in his wartime headquarters. This comes from his having met two Yugoslav partisans when he was stationed in Cairo (“stationed” is not the right word, because as a journalist in the military, he seemed to be able to go anywhere he wanted, when he wanted, with whom he wanted; strange military service in the middle of a war), who told them they could smuggle him into meet Tito and that, especially because of Bernstein’s communist connections (which again did not seem to affect his military service), Tito would be happy to talk to him. Getting him to Tito turned out to be far from easy. He had to wait for a plane going to the right place, and then sneak onto the plane and be left on a coastal island where there were villagers and partisans, to trade his American uniform for a partisan uniform, and hike for over a week up and down mountains, hiking at night, hiding during the day, with a group of partisans.

The interview came off, but Yank! wouldn’t publish it because (a) Bernstein was not authorized to go into Yugoslav territory, and (b) there were two civilian reporters who had already been promised by the U.S. army that they would have the first interview with Tito. Bernstein was threatened with severe punishment (perhaps a court martial), but he sent the article he wrote to The New Yorker (for whom he had done some freelancing when he was still at Dartmouth) and they published it. Although he was afraid this would cause even more problems, it turned out to work in his favor, because the article was so well and widely received, that the army apparently did not dare carry on with its promised discipline. He heard nothing about a potential court martial, or any other form of punishment, again.

Okay, that’s all I know right now about Bernstein. Well, one more thing. He lived until he was 101.

Going back, for a minute, to the importance of nationalism in recent world events, you could conclude that the fight against Hitler was a fight against nationalism, and that the post-war split among the allies was solely related to ideology.

Or could you?

“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here”, said Captain Renault, tongue-in-cheek. Of course, he wasn’t, nor were we. But there are other things that may (or, I guess, may not) shock us, and should.

The latest in this list of shockers is the apparent decision by ICE to use electric shocking gloves (pardon me: conductive distraction and de-escalation devices, or generated low output voltage emitters) as they go about their work rounding up people legally and illegally in the country at their whim. What, I ask you, are we coming to?

I just saw a demonstration of these devices on TV. Clearly, they are effective. If someone holds out their hand to you in a friendly fashion and you shake it, before you know it, you are on the ground, writhing in pain, although the pain seems to vanish or at least substantially subside once you hit the ground and are not longer being fingered by the glove. Some of the victims also emitted some sound, and got up slowly shaking their hand to rid it of any leftover discomfort. Others got up laughing heartily, as if they were part of the joke. The entire video looked like the equivalence of a paintball match, or some such thing, just a big game being played for the camera.

But this is not a game. This is dead serious. I had never heard of these gloves before yesterday or the day before. But I can see them becoming the latest fad for the unscrupulous and for the wary. Let’s say you are stopped at a stop sign and a car-jacker comes up and tells you they want your car. You want to object, but they put their electric glove on your shoulder and before you know it, you are on the ground in pain. Or, on the other hand, the car-jacker tells you to get out of your car, not knowing that you are the one with the shocking gloves and before he knows it, he is on the ground. Or – the most extreme scenario – you and car jacker come after each other with your shocking gloves and find yourselves both on the ground, laughing and laughing at the unexpected circumstances.

Who can use these gloves? High school or middle school bullies? Teachers? Wrestlers? Parents? What are the laws covering electric gloves, I ask you, for the general public? And for ICE enforcers (or other government law enforcement personnel)? Can they only be used in defense (and how would they really be used in defense), or can they be used willy-nilly? For example, an ICE man sees someone who they think might possibly be from elsewhere and might possibly not be in the country with the right credentials? Assume, he has no evidence, just suspicion. He walks up to the person, holds out his hand friendly-like and says, “Hi, my name is Jake, and I’d just like to talk to you for a minute.” The foreign-looking individual holds out his hand, also in a friendly fashion, and finds himself in serious pain, writing on the ground. Is that okay?

ICE will say that it was necessary to keep the individual from running away, right? That, if he ran away, the ICE man would have to react with something even more dangerous, endangering others, as well as the target. That there is no harm done, because once you take the glove away, any residual pain quickly vanishes.

Remember the 1960s, and cattle prods being used, mainly in the South, against Civil Rights marchers and protesters? Is there any difference here?

I have not taken the time to look up individual cases and court decisions, but let me quote Google AI: “Using a cattle prod on a human is universally recognized by U.S. courts as a violation of the Eighth Amendments’ prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. When correction officers, law enforcement, or institutional staff use electric shock devices like cattle prods on incarcerated individuals or detainees, the act constitutes the unnecessary and deliberate infliction of pain.”

Is there any difference here?

The answer is “perhaps, not”, but there are also cases that clearly permit law enforcement to use tasers and other forms of stun guns, and many law enforcement agencies do. But the use of such weapons is generally tightly controlled by the agencies. Policemen don’t walk their beats tasering everyone who looks like they might possibly have committed a crime in the past ten years. But no one (at least I think no one) assumes that all ICE men will be so circumspect, or so disciplined. I would guess that ICE’s use of the electric shock gloves will be more akin to the use of cattle prods in the South 60 years ago than to the disciplined use of tasers by city and state law enforcement personnel.

We shall see. In the meantime, just remember that when that masked ICE man cometh towards you and holds out his hand to shake yours, put your hands in your pocket and give him a slight (the slightest) nod.

Digession. You know who Captain Renault? No, he was not the African Explorer. That was Captain Spalding. He was the African Commissaire de police in Casablanca. End of digression.

I am going to ignore our president’s most recent comments this morning. I am not going to talk about how he wants American sailors trapped in the Strait of Hormuz to stay there even longer, how he denies that recent suicides among those on the ship have anything to do with conditions on the ship, or how he plans on adding the Strait to those American territories which will include Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland, Gaza, Panama, and, yes, Canada. I am not going to mention any of those things this morning. You will not even see a listing of them here. I promise.

Instead, I am going to the first page of today’s New York Times, but I am not going to talk about the dam recent immigrants (beavers, not people) have built in northern Quebec which is “as tall as a city bus and even longer”, which journalist Norimitsu Onishi calls “hydraulic attenuation”. And I am not going to talk about the comments of murderer Luigi Mangione, except to say that you should never confuse him with my wonderful law school classmate Lou Mangione, who is as opposite Luigi as it is possible to be.

I am going to talk about the State of California and the article headlined “California Mulls Recognizing ‘Jewish’ as a Formal Ethnicity”. The gist of the article is that California is thinking about listing “Jewish” along with, I guess, African-American, French, Samoan, Hispanic, Native American, etc., as ethnic groups on all state documents where you have to, or have the opportunity to, state your ethnicity. Yes, Judaism is more than a religion, and “more than a bagel”, but what is it? This is a question that has confused the confusable since time immemorial.

We know you can be Jewish and an atheist. We know that you can not be Christian or Muslim and be an atheist. They are both religions. If Judaism was just a religion, one who disavows the religion would no longer be Jewish. But we know that is not the case (although some very Orthodox Jews think that any Jew who is not at least as Orthodox as they have ceased to be Jewish, but who cares about them?)

I saw a comedian on a Facebook reel the other day. I don’t know his name. He was clever. I think he is from Toronto. He said that he is Jewish, but not religious. That he doesn’t have any respect for Judaism’s religious structure. But….he said….his Judaism is like his belief in the Toronto Maple Leafs, whose organizational structure he doesn’t think much of, either. He identifies as a fan (as he does of being Jewish) and, if a miracle does happen to occur, he will be the first to be there wearing his jersey.

I also listened to most of the first session of a class called “Hitler and Stalin”, being taught by former Yale professor Timothy Snyder at his new home in Toronto to a bunch of Canadians. The course is built around his now aging, but still eye opening, book Bloodlands about the effect of Hitler on the lands between Germany and Russia. I remember a fair amount about that book, including Snyder’s belief that Hitler and the Nazis saw world civilization as a continual, repeating clash of nationalities or ethnicities, one against the other and, in each instance, there had to be a winner and a loser. He (Hitler) thought that the Germans (the Aryans) were destined to be winners as he pushed in all directions for more Lebensraum. And ethnicity was built up over the centuries both by genetic and physical connections and by a set of shared beliefs of one’s identity with a group.

To Hitler, the Jews did not fit into this worldview. Because they had no homeland (Hitler was really a kind of Zionist, you know, for some time), they lived everywhere as infiltrators, spoiling the purity of the ethnicity which would exist if they were not around, so they had to be disposed of.

This is not what is happening in California, of course, but the thought process is not that foreign to Hitler’s thinking. Of course, the premises are opposite. The goal of Nazi Germany was ethnic purity, and the goal of California is to protect various ethnicities, the ethnic groups that make up California’s enormous melting pot. In order to protect the Jews in an era of growing antisemitism, should the Jews be defined in such a way as to enable them to come under the protection of all of California’s anti-discrimination laws. (I know, the federal government is now against anti-discrimination laws; that’s for another day.)

I am in the middle of reading Rachel Cockerell’s fascinating book Melting Point, published just a few years ago. It is fascinating because Cockerell didn’t write any of it, other than the introduction. The entire book is composed of excerpts of books and speeches and newspaper articles from the time periods that the book is covering.

Melting Point‘s stated focus is on the movement of European (mainly Russian) Jews to the United States through Galveston, Texas in the early 20th century. Her great grandfather was one of the organizers of that movement. But the book (and I am only a little over half way through it, but it fits with this column) covers more than that. It covers the Zionist movement starting with the calling of the first Zionist Congress in 1897 in Basle, Switzerland.

The goal of the Zionists was to establish Jewish settlement (a state? maybe, maybe not) in then Ottoman and soon to be British mandate Palestine. When it became clear that this was not going to happen in short order, the next question was whether there should be an attempt to create a Jewish homeland somewhere else, either as a temporary measure or permanently.

Digression: One thing leads to another. I read the Times article about California, and it reminds me of Timothy Snyder, whom I just heard yesterday, and that takes me to the book I am reading now, and it leads to something else. Where does it lead me? It leads me to a book I just finished reading a week or so ago, Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which presupposes such an alternative homeland. In Alaska, on Baranof Island, home of the city of Sitka. End of digression.

You may have heard about the possibility of creating an alternative Jewish homeland in British East Africa, in today’s Kenya, then a part of a larger Uganda. The British were apparently willing to permit large scale Jewish settlement there and, with pogroms running somewhat rampant in Russia, this was viewed as a realistic alternative to waiting until the Sultan decided he could open up Palestine to large scale Jewish immigration.

Of course, it never came off, but until I read Melting Point, I don’t think I realized how serious the proposal was, how seriously it was taken, how much effort went into deciding the practicality of such an effort, and how much it was debated at two separate Zionist conferences before it was voted down, both for ideological and for practical reasons, to the great distress of Theodor Herzl.

And, I didn’t realize that there were then alternatives proposed that also were seriously considered and studied and which also proved to be impractical. One such place was in today’s northern Libya, then called Cyrenaica. Another was in Portuguese Angola.

And still another was in the United States. In 1900, there were already many, many Jews in the United States, and most of them seemed stuck in New York City and Brooklyn. The goal was to spread them around. To direct the ships bringing refugees somewhere else. One possibility was Baltimore, but it was deemed to close to New York. Another was Charleston, SC, but it was thought that there weren’t sufficient economic opportunities there. A third was New Orleans, but New Orleans was deemed to be such an attractive place that no one would leave and it would become another New York City.

But then there was Galveston. And Galveston became for several years at the beginning of the 20th century an entry point for tens of thousands of Jews coming to America. Successful at first, it didn’t last. Many Jews did not want to go to Texas, did not want to take the month long ocean voyage from Bremen or Hamburg to Galveston. Many were afraid that they would be spread around an unwelcome country where they knew no one or, conversely, that they would become so American that they would no longer be Jewish. And then there were unanticipated opposition from American immigration authorities which had to be overcome.

All this is history. But it all connects to today. Who are the Jews? What is their role in the world? Why are they so different in so many respects from other groups who seem to fit into a very different pattern? And where is all this heading today?

Michael Chabon had the Jews going to Sitka (at America’s invitation) because the Jews lost their battle to the Arabs in 1948. He rewrote history. But that battle of course continues today. As Timothy Snyder said in the lecture I heard yesterday, no one knows what will happen tomorrow, but it will only happen because of what happened yesterday and what is happening right now, and, he says, no one knows what is really happening right now either.

I heard Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries talk about the Supreme Court yesterday, and in particular about all the evil that the Court, in recent years both before and during the current Trump presidency, has visited on the country. He could have talked about any number of items which have changed our direction, but he stuck to Citizens United dealing with campaign finance, to several decisions gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and to the decision relieving the president from liability for just about anything. He suggested that the Democrats, if they control Congress after the midterms, would work on preparing proposed constitutional amendments that would reverse these decisions, and on changes to the structure and composition of the Court itself.

I think that Jeffries is 100% correct on his position as to the problems created by the Court, and I think that his proposed paths to solution deserve careful consideration, but I think, not surprisingly, that his remarks are politically 100% wrong.

The Democrats have enough problems trying to present a united front to the voting populace. The elections of several “progressive” candidates have already raised questions in a part of the voting public that did not really know what the Democrats stood for (other than being against the Trump administration) even before recent voting results, and is more confused now.

My own suggested next step, while quite complicated in practice, is not complicated in thought…..I think the Democrats need to create a mechanism that will develop a party platform that all candidates can buy into. What is the party’s position on Iran and Israel, on immigration, on national debt, and so on? Some of those topics are quite divisive, which is why they must be addressed. And, on the difficult questions, the party platform does not have to provide full answers. For example, on immigration, there could be statements on keeping families together, protecting children, ending ICE’s strong arm tactics such as detention centers and sweeping people off the streets, finding a way to really judge asylum claims, giving those in suspended animation working privileges, controlling borders, encouraging immigration of individuals who are needed by our economy, or by our educational institutions, etc. On Israel, there could be recognition of the importance of Israel as an American ally in the Middle East, the necessity for Israel to remain strong, but also for fair treatment of Palestinians and a connection between major U.S. support and how Israel reacts to its aggressive neighbors. I would hope that the platform would not threaten Israel as an independent state, but be more open to candidates criticizing Israel in the occupied territories.

On other areas, there is less contention, and it is these areas that are often not spoken of at all in the Trump era. Climate change and environmental protection being two of them.

The final platform should be completed in time to influence the 2028 elections, because the 2026 midterms are too close, but the beginning of the process itself could influence the midterms.

I think the reasons for this step are clear. They are to blunt attacks on the Democrats as being radical or out of control or anti-American. And yes, I would expect all Democratic candidates to buy into the process, understanding that they are all part of a political party with people of various views attempting to come together on important issues.

The problem with Jeffries’ attack on the Supreme Court is not only that it does not speak to attempts to unify Democratic job seekers, but it feeds into the overall sentiment that Democrats are anti-American and want to destroy American institutions. What is the purpose of saying that if the Democrats are in control, they will work to amend the Constitution, or they will work to amend the Supreme Court. Maybe (and it is only a maybe) they will want to do that once they are in power and if so, once they have a thought-out program, let them put it forth for consideration. But to say to the public which is already nervous about the Democrats as a party that they want to change the constitution and restructure Court only promises chaos of the Democrats are elected.

Jeffries would be better off going to see the progressives on the ballot, such as Abdul El-Sayed, and saying: what are you going to do to help Democratic moderates to be elected? And going to the Democratic moderates and say: how are you going to help get El-Sayed in the Senate? These conversations would be a great start to the process of putting together the party platform that I think it so badly needed.

A digression: Heard a funny joke this morning. An elderly lady sells pretzels on a New York City street corner for $1. She has been doing this for years. A young man walks by her stand every morning on the way to work, and gives her $1, but doesn’t take a pretzel. He never says anything to her, and she never says anything to him. But he has been doing this for several years. One day he walks about her corner, takes a dollar out of his pocket, and lays it on her counter. She looks at him and says something for the first time: “the pretzels are now $1.25; the price has gone up”. End of digression.

Do you know who Paul Toboni is? Maybe not. Paul Toboni is the new (less than a year) general manager of the Washington Nationals.

I have this to say about Paul Toboni. For a while now, I have been convinced that the worst deal maker in the world is the former New York City real estate mogul and TV star Donald Trump, but now I think that I may be wrong. Donald Trump may be a genius when compared with Paul Toboni.

Going into the the halfway point of the 2026 MLB season, Toboni’s Nationals were playing .500 ball, winning and losing about the same number of games. This was unexpected, as the Nationals are such a young team and in the middle of a much-too-long rebuild. And they were doing this in a unique way – they were the team with the best offense (batting average, runs scored, home runs, etc.) of the 30 MLB teams (that’s how they won half of their games), with a pitching record that stood at 27th of the 30 teams (that’s how they lost half of their games).

It was obvious that, to be contenders, they needed to improve their pitching drastically, but because they were such a young team, they seemed to have a little time to do that.

August 3 (just ten days ago) was the MLB 2026 trade deadline. All trades for the year had to be completed by that date. No one knew what the Nationals were going to do. But the assumption was that they were looking for pitching and would not be trading any of their offense unless they could obtain pitchers who would be worth the price. For good pitchers, some of their offense might be expendable, because they had hitters, and power hitters, in abundance.

By sad coincidence, the week before the trade deadline saw the Nationals play two of the best teams in the league, the division leading Atlanta Braves and the always dangerous Philadelphia Phillies. The week proved a disaster for the Nationals. I think that was in part because the young team (no position player was over 29) was just plain nervous, not know what was going to happen to this offensive machine that they had built together. And, before the trade deadline passed, three Nats were traded away.

The first trade (with the Red Sox), infielder Curtis Mead for pitcher Connelly Early might have been a good trade. Mead was a surprise fan favorite and doing well, but was not going to be more than a platooned player, and Early is a young pitcher with a very promising future. It looked like each team got what they needed. (As an aside, Early has been on the Injured List with an inflamed elbow, and has yet to pitch, and Mead suffered a finger stress fracture in his first – and so far only – game with the Red Sox.)

A second trade was with the Cleveland Guardians.  The Nationals picked up three pitching prospects:  Josh Hartle, Will Dion, and Kendeglys Virguez, and an outfielder whom they didn’t seem to need, Nick Mitchell. They gave up their only All-Star pitcher, Foster Griffin, whose won-loss record was 12-3. What was the argument that this was a good deal for the Nationals? Griffin, who was signed by the club after he pitched in Japan the last three years, is 31 years old (old for the Nationals) and was signed to a one year contract only, which meant that he would have been free to go anywhere he wanted after the year ended and (as the Nationals’ ownership is so tight-fisted) some team would have probably seriously outbid the Nationals if they tried to keep him. So by trading him now, they got something in return. If they waited until the fall, they would just have lost him.

One of the new Nats pitchers, Will Dion, who is 26, is on the Nats’ current roster and has pitched three innings in relief and done well. The most touted of the three pitchers, 23 year old (6’6″) Josh Hartle, has yet to make the majors, nor has the other, 22 year old Kenderglys Virguez. The outfielder, 22 year old Nick Mitchell, probably (my guess) will never see the majors.

But the assumption was, with Griffin probably leaving at season end, the Nationals did well getting Hartle for the future and Dion to help with the bull pen today.

So, that too may be a good trade, although losing both Griffin and Mead was clearly a blow to team spirit and morale.

But then there was trade three, where Toboni traded second baseman Luis Garcia, Jr to the Yankees, this time for four (not three) pitchers of dubious quality. Garcia is only 26, has been with the Nationals organization for close to a decade, was hitting .283, had 23 home runs and 76 RBIs, and was leading the National League in slugging percentage. He will immediately be a star for a Yankee club that already has more than its share of stars. It was probably a long-run great move for Garcia (but unexpected), bringing him back to his home town of the Bronx. But for the Nationals?

Yovanny Cruz is in his first Major League season at age 26 (almost 27), and has pitched in a few Nats games, with decidedly mixed results. Yesterday, against the Cubs, he got one batter out, walked one, and allowed two hits, and two earned runs. Jack Bird is older than Cruz (30) and has been a regular Major League reliever since 2022. His record has been far from outstanding, with an over all ERA (earned run average, per game) of 4.89. What do we think he will bring to the Nats? Jack Cebert is a 24 year old prospect with potential upside, but little experience over last year and this, none of it overly impressive. Ben Grable, also 24, has probably the best upside of the four, getting very strong reviews from the Scouts. Cebert and Grable are still in the minors, and whether either will see a Nats uniform this year is not clear.

So maybe one day Cebert and Grable will make the Garcia deal look brilliant. But that day is not near, and what the trade has done to prospects for this year, and to team and fan morale is disastrous.

And this is especially true, because your can look at other major league stars, Harper, Turner, Schwarber, Scherzer, Soto and more, all former Nats.

So it is same old, same old in DC. Over the past two days, the Nats have lost twice to the Cubs, 8 to 6, and 12 to 6. When you score 6 runs, you are supposed to win. Losing with great offense is what led to these three trades. Nothing seems to have changed. And we are tired of it.

I like old maps, and have a number framed hanging around the house, including this map of the United States, dated 1834. If you count them, you will find 24 states. If you look, for example, at the State of Illinois, you will see that the capital is Vandalia. The capital of Georgia is Milledgeville. Detroit is capital of Michigan, and Tuscaloosa the capital of Alabama.

But this isn’t the oldest map of the country that I have. The oldest, which I have just taken to be framed, is from 1784.

Here there are only 13 states, and their western boundaries are a bit uncertain. (The photo is of a portion of the map, not the full map.) It is interesting to me that St. Louis is not on the map, although every history dates its founding in 1764. Nor is Ste. Genevieve, 75 miles or so down river from St. Louis, founded in 1735. In 1785, this area was controlled by Spain, and it looked like the cartographer might not have been welcome. The entire Mississippi looks to be the domain of various Indian tribes, and you can see that the land just to the northwest of where St. Louis should be is simply marked “full of buffalos”.

Between 1784 and 1834 is only 50 years (like 1976 and 2026), but look at the changes.

I have some other maps from the late 1700s, including this 1794 map of Jamaica.

Jamaica then had about 25,000 Whites and about 250,000 Black slaves (and a few thousand free Blacks). There were about 700,000 enslaved people in the US then, close to 20% of the US population. If you look at, say, South Carolina in 1790, over 40% of its population was enslaved.

Here is another map of North America that lives here in one of my closets. I haven’t researched it yet. Not sure why. I assume it is older than the 1784 map, and shows colonies of Britain, pre-independence. It is probably worth something and shouldn’t be rolled up. I should know more about it than I do.

That is all for today.

A few things you should know about me. (in addition to the fact that I am in hurry and didn’t proof read this)

First, with my own children and grandchildren, when they have differences of opinions with me, I am always on my side, not theirs. But whenever I hear argument between a parent or grandparent (other than me) and a child, and when I can hear enough to sense what is going on, I am inevitably on the side of the child. The child always seems right to me.

Second, if a young woman gets in trouble (and I must admit it helps of they are attractive), I always assume that they are being wronged, and that they are in the right. Remember Casey Anthony, whose trial for the murder of her three year old daughter was televised, gavel to gavel, about 20 years ago? I watched most of that trial and I was sure (as was the jury) that she was innocent. No, let me correct that. I was sure she was innocent; the jury found her not guilty.

Another case, from about the same time, was the arrest and conviction of Amanda Knox in Rome (Italy, not Georgia or New York) for the murder of her roommate, both students (one from the US, one from the UK). Knox was imprisoned for several years, and then the conviction was overturned (I don’t remember why) and she was released and went back to her home town in Washington State. I was convinced that she was innocent throughout. Still am.

I am not claiming that this is a matter of gender. I was convinced, for example, that O.J. Simpson was innocent, basically on the theory of “nobody in his right mind would do that”, not realizing that Simpson (even though not convicted) was clearly not in his right mind and undoubtedly murdered Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. On the other hand, that Murtaugh guy (if that’s the way he spells his name) in South Carolina? He has never seemed innocent to me.

I bring this up because just this morning after finishing the New York Times crossword puzzle (who has ever heard of the Wutang Clan?), I glanced at the article above it and saw that Amanda Knox, now at age 39, not 19 any longer, has decided to become a stand up comic (a long term ambition of mine) at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and that at least part of her humor centers around her experiences in jail in Italy. I wish Knox the best, but I am not certain that she has chosen the right career or the right subject matter, but the idea that she was arrested for murder, convicted for murder, jailed for murder, later freed, and then decided to turn that into a comedy routine, did give me some ideas.

For example (and this is, I think, today’s only example), what if Donald Trump, after his bit part as president is over, decided to turn his experiences into a comedy routine and try them out in 2029 in Edinburgh?

The highlight of the routine, of course, would be his escape from Turkey in a caterer’s cart (not that I know what a caterer’s cart really is, but I could make up a description that you could believe, because you don’t really know, either), when it turned out that the airplane he got from Qatar was less than meets the eye, and that he couldn’t get on the old Air Force One because……..[you fill in the blank]. So, he had to get into a caterer’s cart and travel by cart, along with several dozen parfait glasses and a bunch of dirty napkins, all the way to London (on a Fedex plane), where he finally could transfer to a replica of the Spirit of St. Louis and head west, Greeley style, to Washington.

Of course, he would have other routines as well. Cheating at golf is a good one. What he really thinks of the pillow king, Mike Lindell is another. How he fooled the leaders of Iran into thinking that he really was going to beat them at war was a third. How he beautified Washington DC could make up an entire evening – how crime has disappeared, how a city where you were afraid to go to a restaurant became one where you wanted to open your own, how the monuments were being painted gold, or were being beautified with a peel-off American Flag Blue non-sealant. He could restage the UFC White House fights with himself playing all of the parts.

You could go on and on.

My guess is that Trump would win the Best in Class award in Edinburgh and that the Guinness Book of World Records would certify that he was the oldest and most senile comedian ever to win at the Fringe.

Well, this is not going to happen. But, boy, if I were a comic writer, what material I could put together for a Trump look-alike actor!! And there sure are many of those.

DNC: Want to know how to win for sure in 2028? Hire me to write the script. I asked Google AI who should play Trump. They suggested James Austin Johnson, Shane Gillis, Alec Baldwin (I could make my own one man show based on him, so let’s leave him out of this one), Darrell Hammond and Phil Hartman.

Your choice.