Art is 80

On Thursday night, we watched Nuremberg and last night we watched One Battle After Another. As you probably know, One Battle won six Oscars last week, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Casting, Best Adapted Screen Play, Best Film Editing, and Best Supporting Actor (Sean Penn). In fact, if you look on Wikipedia, you will see that the film has been nominated for 458 awards, and has received 227. According to IMDb on the other hand, Nuremberg has been nominated for 17 awards and won only 4.

The films are in fact polar opposites. By that, I mean that the crew of Nuremberg started with a very interesting and equally important story line, and wound up with a film barely worth watching (i.e., worth watching, but barely), while Battle took a rather silly plot and made of it an extraordinary film.

As you might know, the Best Casting Oscar which was given out last week was the first such Oscar award. I hadn’t missed it before, of course, but now that it is a thing, I hope it continues. After all, think how important casting is.

A digression. You may think you know this, but why are Oscars called Oscars? Well, according to Google AI, sometime in the 1930s, the Academy’s Library said that the statuettes looked just like her Uncle Oscar. Perhaps, Uncle Oscar was not amused.

The casting for Battle really was impeccable. Usually, in any film, you can at least point to someone and say that they didn’t really do a great job. Not in Battle, where I think everyone was at the top of their game. Having said that, if I had to pick out one actor to give a Best award to, I don’t think it would be Sean Penn (this is not to deny that Penn did a very fine job). I would have given it to one of the other “big three” in the film: Benicio del Toro (he could not have been better) playing the protector of a large group of “illegal immigrants”; Leonardo DiCaprio (who had to show every emotion possible to an actor) playing the former revolutionary now barely getting by; and the actress with the wonderful name Chase Infiniti, playing DiCaprio’s 16 year old daughter (she is really 25, but could certainly pass for 16; in fact, she did). Sean Penn played the demented law enforcement official out to erase his past, so he could join a white nationalist group which required its few members to have no stains in their history.

Another digression. Watching Penn, all I could think of was George C. Scott, both when he played Patton in Patton, and when he played General Turgidson (“Buck”) in Dr. Strangelove. You know what I mean? Perfect posture, rigid body control, need to demonstrate unstoppable power. So controlled that much of the drama came with facial contortions. A sneer, a pursed lip, a blinking eye, a tic here or there. That was Scott; that was Penn. After we watched the film, I Googled “Sean Penn George C. Scott” wondering if anyone else saw that. I came across a review written by John Griswold in The Common Reader who thought that Penn was “channeling George C. Scott”. What a great reviewer he is.

One Battle After Another runs for close to three hours, but you don’t know it. It moves so quickly, and is put together so deftly, that the time just floats on by. This is by and large the result of extraordinarily good directing and film editing; both worthy of the Oscars they received. But another facet of the film should be mentioned – the music. You know that sometimes you don’t remember the music of a film at all, and sometimes you think of it as backing up the action in a positive sense. But in Battle, my reaction was different. The original music (it is combined with some golden oldies, which are all perfect for where they are used) was like another cast member. It was essential in setting the mood(s) of the film. I can’t begin to identify the genre. Is plink-plink a genre? It is so original and so well done.

What a shame Nuremberg couldn’t compete. Nuremberg is based on an historical record; apparently the trial sequences are from the trial transcripts, and much of what takes place outside of the trial is from memoirs of those who were present, but it doesn’t seem that way. It seems like relatively poorly thought-out dialogue in too many places.

And (hearkening back to Battle), I have to say, first, that I don’t remember any of the music in Nuremberg and, second, that I thought the casting was pretty awful.

Russell Crowe played one of the two leads in the film. He was Hitler’s number 2, Hermann Goering. (A mini-digression: he gained over 50 pounds for the role, and then had to lose them. Can’t be healthy for a 60 year old). He did look pretty much like Goering. Did he talk like him? Who knows? But I don’t criticize his being cast for this part.

But why did they cast Rami Malek to play the army psychiatrist, Douglas Kelly, the psychiatrist brought to Nuremberg to help the prosecution analyze the Nazis on trial? Malek, an American actor of Egyptian descent, looks a lot like Fareed Zakaria, and not at all like a Douglas Kelly. And they cast, as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the chief American prosecutor at the trial, Michael Shannon. Maybe I should know Shannon, but I don’t. He played a very unpleasant and stiff Justice Jackson. He doesn’t look anything like Jackson did; he is probably 6 inches taller, at least, for one thing, and much thinner. He just wasn’t believable, to me, in the role.

And the relationship between Goering and Kelly? I don’t know what really happened, but their relationship became very buddy/buddy. And Kelly was sure that he had played Goering sufficiently to help Jackson and the prosecution, but then it turned out that maybe it was Goering who was the better psychiatrist, and that it was Kelly who was played, and that this led to the case against Goering at trial suffering, until a sputtering Jackson was saved by the British representative.

It reminded me of the recent hearing for HHS Secretary, when nominee Mullin was asked by a Democrat whether he would obey an illegal order from Trump, and Mullin said “he would not give me an illegal order”. The British lawyer asked Goering if Hitler could have asked him to do anything that would have turned him against Hitler. Goering, more honest than Mullin, said “no”.

I said the film was “barely” worth watching. By that, I mean that it does show you a part of the history of the Nuremberg trials (the use of psychiatry) that I am not (and probably you are not) familiar with. Learning about this was worth seeing the film. But there is no other reason to select it among the many, many choices we all have.

I am thinking about my smart phone. I recently heard that 80% of baby boomers (all younger than I am) use their smart phones at least seven times a day. I also read a few days ago that, in addition to worrying about teenagers overusing their smart phones, there is now worry that older adults are overusing their smart phones, as grandchildren complain that their grandparents don’t talk to them when sharing a meal because they are continually checking their phones. As they used to say, “I resemble that remark”.

A digression. I grew up thinking that “I resemble that remark” was a clever line created by my Aunt Lee. But, lo and behold, my smart phone just told me that both Curly (of the Three Stooges) and the Marx Brothers used it long before. End of digression.

I admit to living much of my life on my phone. And, yes, I do get stuck now and then watching “reels” that show up on Face Book, but mainly I use my phone to check news, sports, occasionally weather, and to answer whatever questions pop into my mind as the day goes on. Last night, I asked Edie: How did I ever learn anything before I had a smart phone? I don’t know the answer to that question.

Take yesterday (you will have to bear with me on this, as I try to reconstruct yesterday). After having lunch with old friend Stephen Marcus at Paragon Thai, where we were the only eat-in lunch customers, I drove down to Dupont Circle to see the books outside at Second Story, something I had not done all winter. I found a copy of Vincent Sardi, Jr.’s book about his New York restaurant, which he had signed and inscribed to a customer, and put down my $4.

It’s basically a recipe book, and interesting (if it indeed has recipes used in the restaurant) because the recipes are (1) extraordinarily simple, and (2) often use canned ingredients, like canned beets and artichoke hearts. Sort of weird. I am sure that does not happen today.

When I got home, I went to my smart phone and looked up the history of Sardi’s, and it was interesting. Started by Vincent Sardi, Sr. and his wife in a basement location in a building that was torn down, it moved to its present location in 1927 and, after it moved, its business declined and Vincent, Sr. decided that he needed a gimmick. He hired an immigrant from Russia to make caricatures of celebrities to put on the restaurant’s walls (something he had seen in a restaurant in Paris). The artist’s name was Alex Gard, who drew the portraits for years in return for free food.

Alex Gard (my next smart phone look up), really Alexei Mikhailovich Kremkov, left Russia after the 1917 revolution, wound up in the United States (and in the U.S. military), and drew over 700 caricatures until he collapsed on Seventh Avenue and died at age 49.

His first caricature was of a man name Ted Healy (another smart phone look up). Ted Healy, a name totally unfamiliar to me, was not only a vaudeville performer in New York City, but was the highest paid vaudeville performer in the 1920s, earning for a time (so says Wikipedia) the equivalent of $150,000 a week. Among the things he did as a stage performer (and he was in several films), he created the Three Stooges (another smart phone look up), a trio that went through several changes before it settled on Moe, Curly and Larry.

Healy moved to Los Angeles, and at a party at the Trocadero, where he was celebrating the birth of his first (and, as it turned out, only) child, he got into a drunken fist fight with Albert Broccoli (future director) and actor Wallace Beery, staggered out, was found on the street, taken to a hospital and died at age 39, four days after the birth of his son. You can read a lot about this, as it is unclear whether the death was a result of the beating he took in the nightclub or underlying problems, including those relating to his apparent long time alcoholism.

The person that picked him up and took him to the hospital was a wrestler who went by the name of Man Mountain Dean. I, of course, had to look him up, and discovered that Man Mountain Dean weighed over 300 pounds, had a successful professional wrestling career (Dean was his wife’s maiden name; his was Leavitt), was a Miami policeman (until he was caught visiting Al Capone at his Florida house), and a U.S. Army Master Sergeant who was stationed at Ft. Richie Maryland (I wrote about Ft. Richie sometime last year – well worth reading about and visiting) and taught hand to hand combat. He then retired to a farm outside of Atlanta where he apparently lived a quiet life.

So there you have it: Vincent Sardi, Sr. and Jr., Alex Gard, Ted Healy, The Three Stooges, Albert Broccoli and Wallace Beery, and Man Mountain Dean. Without my smart phone, where would I be? What would I know?

And there was one more look up. I read that Ted Healy was once a guest on the radio show, It Pays to be Ignorant. We had never heard of that show, but it ran for years and years (and for a short time on television) and was a spoof of shows like Quiz Kids. Guests were asked questions like “Where did the Boston Massacre take place” and then gave “funny” answers. We found on my smart phone episode after episode that you can listen to, and chose one at random.

Don’t let anyone tell you that entertainment has gone downhill. This was one bad show (IMHO) filled with corny one liners. The question of the night was “What drink do we get from tea leaves?”. One panelist said he never drank anything stronger than pop. But, he said, Pop will drink anything. That’s the caliber of the show.

Okay, enough about my smart phone addiction. We also watched the new(ish) film Nuremberg last night. What a disappointing and  bad film! (Maybe I will review it tomorrow, because…….the topic is pretty important) And then I watched the first half of the basketball game between the St. Louis University Billikens (you want to know what a billiken is? Use your smart phone) and the University of Georgia in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Billikens won 102-77. Hope they keep it up. And hope future games start earlier than 10 p.m.

My writing style is simple and conversational, and it does serve its purpose. But it is far from professional writing. Every once in a while I come upon a paragraph (or a book) that tells me how puerile my writing style really is. I found an example yesterday, when I picked up Farewell Espana: the World of the Sephardim Remembered by Howard Sachar, a book published in 1994 and which I read (or read through) at about that time.

Here is the first paragraph of Howard’s book (by the way, I call him Howard because I met him once at dinner at a friend’s condominium, and that’s what I called him then; he died in 2018):

“Cordoba meanders somnolently along the banks of the Guadalquivir River. A town of perhaps a quarter-million inhabitants, it is sustained by mercury and bauxite mined in a pine-clad sierra of neighboring mountains, by fruit and vegetables cultivated in an ochred checkerboard of enveloping farmland. We are in Spain’s subtropical meridian, the apex of a triangle formed by Seville, ninety miles to the southwest, and Granada, a hundred miles to the southeast. Although each city in its time once served as the capital of Andalusia, it is Cordoba that best preserves the medieval legacy. Its Mezquita, or Great Mosque, defines that heritage. A Moorish phantasmagoria of striated marble pillars and garnet-and-ivory arches, the mighty edifice was begun by Caliph Abd al-Rachman I in the mid-700s and doubled in size by the Calif Abd al-Mansur I two centuries later. Even now, the Mezquita’s crenellated walls and sculptured arcades overshadow, all but devour, the garish cruciform Renaissance cathedral recklessly carved out of its viscera by later Christian conquerors.”

There is no way I could write like that. I would have simply said: “Cordova is on the Guadalquivir River, about 100 miles from both Granada and Seville. It once had Jews and Muslims and Christians living together. There is an old mosque there with red and white striped arches that is so big that the Christians put a church inside. Very unique.”

And that is why I will never be a writer.

I am sitting here this morning at about 10 a.m. watching the Dow lose several hundred more points. It is now hovering around 46,000, which means it has lost about 10% since Trump started his war with Iran. My phone tells me that the average price of gasoline in the United States is now $3.96, which is a rise of close to 30% of what gas cost before the start of the war. Pam Bondi said that we should be talking about how Trump raised the Dow average to 50,000, and Donald Trump said that the price of gasoline in some parts of the country was now $1.95 and that everyone would get there soon.

I did watch a portion of the hearing of future HHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin yesterday and, once again, wish members of Congress were better at asking questions. Of course, I don’t know if there are internal rules that limit what questions can be asked at these hearings, but have never heard of any limits.

For example, there was a question asked to Mullin: if the president gave you an order to do something that was illegal, what would you do? Mullin’s “answer” was: the president would never ask me to do that. The questioner, a Democrat, then just let that go. I can not imagine why.

I would have asked Mullin a few simple questions. For example, I’d ask “Do you consider yourself MAGA?” No matter what his answer would be, I’d then ask him to define MAGA. I would also have asked him if he could name any areas where he and president Trump have different positions. And after that, I’d ask whether he felt that Trump has yet made any mistakes as president, and to identify them.

Mullin did say that, once he takes over HHS, there would be no entries into homes without a warrant, unless the ICE was pursuing someone who ran into a house while being pursued. That was good, but did anyone ask him if ICE and related agency personnel would stop wearing masks, would have operating body cameras, and would have identification on their uniforms and reading to show someone who requests seeing identification? If so, I didn’t hear that, and didn’t see anything reported on that.

With that in mind, I admit to being a bit confused as to why all of HHS, with the exception of ICE, has not been funded. Everyone agrees that it should be. And everyone agrees that ICE has, through the BBB, already been given enough money to carry on its activities whether or not ICE is funded for this year. So, even if the Republicans don’t want to change the practices of ICE agents (although we know from Mullin’s testimony that they will change its policy regarding the need for judicial warrants), you would think they would agree to fund the remainder of the department, and leave the ICE question to further discussions. The Republicans don’t give anything up regarding ICE by doing this, and they keep the other important activities of HHS going and HHS personnel paid for their work.

I recently read Stuart Stevens’ book The Conspiracy to End America. Stevens is a former GOP political campaign advisor, a founder of the Lincoln Project (anti-Trump Republicans), and a frequent panelist on TV. His short book is very well organized and important. He talks about disinformation, party discipline, big money in politics, political lawyers, and political demonstrations. It was published in 2023 (before the second Trump election) and I recommend it highly. It is not at all outdated.

Stuart Stevens (if in fact he wrote the book himself) writes quite well. Better than I do. But he is no Howard Sachar.

We watched Venezuela beat the United States, 3-2, in the World Baseball Classic. The only scoring for the U.S. was on a Bryce Harper home run.

I must admit to rooting for Venezuela, considering how the United States has treated it over the past year. And I was not alone. The stadium in Miami, where the Marlins usually play to empty seats, was totally packed, and the Venezuelan fans were by far in the majority. What does that show you?

There were no politics on display, although the undercurrent must have been there. The Nationals were not represented on either team, although Geraldo Parra (last year Nats first base coach) was the Venezuela first base coach, and ex-Nats Harper and Kyle Schwarber (now both Phillies) were on the U.S. team.

And yesterday’s Cardinals-Nats spring training game was also televised, and was true to form. With excellent pitching, the Nats won, 1-0, but they only had four hits. Their spring training record is now 14-7. This puts them in second place in the 15 team Grapefruit League, two games behind Atlanta.

I think the new full time telecast duo of Dan Kolko and Kevin Frandson will do just fine, and the third member of the team, Alexa Datt, who will be interviewing players from the dugout, is a welcome addition. She is a local native, but has spent the last few years in St. Louis with the Cardinals, Blues, and Billikens. I just wish we knew how we are going to watch the season on FIOS.

Enough of baseball, you say. Get on with the real stuff.

It looks like no one is going to accept the invitation to Trump’s party, and he will have to figure out how to extricate us from Iran himself. The ingrates at NATO won’t help him, China and Russia are both smart enough not to help him (although everything he is doing seems to help them), and Israel won’t help him because their business in Iran is not yet complete.

Joe Kent, a right wing, white supremicist kook who was totally unqualified to direct our counterterrorism efforts has resigned with a stinging letter that says that Iran did not pose an imminent threat to the U.S. and maybe no threat at all, and that Trump was, in effect, duped by Netanyahu to start the war. He of course may be right. Or he may just be looking for a way to bash Israel. Or both.

Trump on the other hand says just what you would expect. First, that he really doesn’t know Joe Kent at all. And second, that he always thought he was bad, very bad, on terrorism. This, of course, provides the obvious reason to choose him for the job. Trump wanted a counterterrorism chief he could ignore, so he could rely on his own bones and guts. Fair enough.

So what is the Board of Peace doing? How are the Palestinians in Gaza faring? What are we doing to stop violence in the West Bank? Has Hamas given up their arms in Gaza? Has Hamas stopped its activities in the West Bank? What does the future hold for the one million displaced in Lebanon? Will Hezbollah be destroyed there? And in Iran, what will we or Israel do to keep Iran from rebuilding conventional weapons and working again on its nuclear program (whatever that really is)? And when Israel be ready to stop?

Other things to think about? Ukraine? Cuba? The entite global economy? The operation of the 2026 midterms?

Should we just go back to baseball?

The title is just for your reference. The post is about baseball.

It’s been a while since I have even mentioned baseball. So I will start this morning with some thoughts I have. Those of us in DC who follow the Nationals find it a little harder this year because the Washington Post (our former local newspaper) has stopped reporting on the Nats’ spring training. Not that they aren’t covering it as intensely as they used to. They aren’t covering the Nats at all. I don’t know what the case will be when the season starts on the 26th of the month (that is only 9 days away), but they don’t have one reporter in West Palm Beach and I don’t know that they have published one article on the team.

So let me give you a quick fill-in. There is a new manager and a new general manager, and new coaches, and no one knows anything about any of them. There are players from last year (some of whom no one remembers at all) and a bunch of new ones that no one knows at all. Any local newspaper worth its salt would keep local fans up to date. The Washington Post clearly is no longer a local paper, and we have no other. Of course, you can follow the Nats through many websites and I am sure some people use them, but these websites do not include the Post’s  website. If you go to sports today, you will find 10 articles on baseball and none of them are on the Nats. Weird?

It gets worse. Up until this year, the Nats games were on TV on a network owned by the Baltimore Orioles, called MASN. It has been said that all of the Nats games will be streamed on MLB-TV, which costs $100 for the season, but that they will also be on Cable TV on a station yet to be announced, 9 days before the season starts.

Of course, the Nats are not doing too well, and haven’t done well at all since their World Series season in 2019. With new folks in charge, and a very young team, it is expected that 2026 will still be a rebuild year (referred to by some as a rebuild of the failed rebuild). And I know you can’t go by what happens in spring training, but this spring training (to the extent I could follow it, and I didn’t try too hard) has been interesting.

First, of the 15 teams that hold their spring training in Florida (the Grapefruit League), the Nats are in 3rd place. Second, of the 15 teams that have their spring training in Florida, the Nats’ pitchers have the lowest Earned Run Average (that means that their pitchers have pitched better than any other of the teams). Third, of the 15 teams that have their spring training in Florida, the batting averages of the Nats’ hitters is in last place.

Now, all of that is weird enough, but it becomes more weird since, for the last few years, the Nats’ hitters have not done too badly, while their pitching has been, by and large, pitiful. Very hard to understand. Very hard.

And especially hard to understand since it is so hard to read anything beyond these mere statistics.

But wouldn’t you know it? Once I wrote these words, I saw that the Nats scored 12 runs yesterday in beating the Mets. The start of something big? The exception that proves the rule? None of the above?

I also see that Venezuela will be the United States opponent in the finals of the World Baseball Classic tonight. I must say that I don’t really care who wins. No, that’s not really true. I would like Venezuela to win. It’s like Trump says: I am so tired of winning.

I did notice something else of interest. Do you know that everyone on Venezuela’s team has an Hispanic name, and no one (that means no one) on the U.S. has an Hispanic name? That means all of the Hispanic MLB players involved in the WBC decided not to play for the U.S. Take that, Mr. Trump!And there is something else that I find interesting. The U.S. team not only has no Hispanics, it only has one Black player, Byron Buxton of the Twins. I know that African-American players are not over represented throughout the league, but, for example, the Nats have at least 8 Black players on their 40 man roster.

And speaking of statistics, Wordle will tell you that I have a winning streak of 18 days. Why they say this, I don’t know, because by my own statistics, I am about at 103 days. The Wordle app says that I missed a day a few weeks ago, but I think the app is wrong. But….in any event, I just discovered (because it is sort of hidden in the app) that you can go back and play puzzles that you missed (it’s called the Wordle Archive), and I have gone back and played four that they say I missed over the past 8 months. The app tells me that I missed about ten games in July (I guess it is possible) and I will go back and play them.

But even if you go back and play successfully the days that you skipped over, it does not affect your days-in-a-row statistics. But for the record, I would like everyone to know that the last time I actually did not get a Wordle correct was in October of 2024. Now, why I would like everyone to know that, I have no idea. A character fault on my part, I think.

Has the fear (or the real possibility) of living in a semi-totalitarian country finally got to me? Last night, while asleep…….

I tell Edie that I might have to disappear for a while. She should not worry.

There is a man who looks pretty much like John Kerry (remember him?), who has expressed an interest in running for president. This has immediately put his life in danger, as all of us members of the political underground know.

One day, as he walks down a city street, he is surrounded by four men, dressed in dark colors, wearing masks. They look like they work for ICE. They surround and capture the Kerry look-alike (let’s just call him JK for simplicity) and take him away. It is clear that the administration has exacted revenge on a man who has threatened the right wing political status quo.

But, no! The populace is wrong. ICE has not captured JK. He has been abducted by four members of the political underground (let’s just call it PU, although that might not be the best smelling anagram), who bundle him into an unmarked van, drive quickly up a back alley, change cars, and then escort him to the service entrance of a fancy hotel.

They take him up to a “safe suite”, where he is met by a make up artist, a hair stylist, a vocal coach, a theatrical director, and more, who remake his appearance, change his voice, and alter his posture.

This is where I come in. I am sitting in a shiny black SUV in front of the hotel. JK (the revamped JK) walks out of the hotel lobby, climbs into the van, and we are off. We obey all the rules of the road, cross the Potomac and head to an airport in Manassas, where a private jet is waiting. JK and I board the plane, and seven hours later, we land in Shannon, and are whisked away to a comfortable, but modest house in the nearby Irish countryside, where guarded by military officers, JK is to make his home until he is out of danger. He will run for president from afar.

That is what I dreamed last night.

We went to a friend’s 75th birthday party yesterday afternoon. We knew most of the people there. Some we see now and then, and some not as often. But I talked to a lot of folks. And do you know what the biggest topic was? It was “age”. And the room was divided between those who thought that to be 75 was to be very old, and those who only wished they could be 75 again. I recalled that, a week or two ago, I had lunch with an old friend who, next month, will be turning 70. He asked me for my advice. That was an easy one. I told him “Enjoy your youth”.

Then we came home, had left over Indian food from Saturday night’s dinner at Delhi Spice (very good, thank you). The food was salmon curry and saag paneer, or spinach and cheese. I thought that we needed something cold and sweet to go with it, and looked to see what I could put together. I fondly remember Waldorf salads from my youth – the apples and nuts and mayonnaise (and the bits of celery that I pushed aside). So I took an apple, some nuts, some raisins (substituted for the unwanted celery), and some mayonnaise, adding honey (just because), and this became the perfect side dish for Indian food.

A digression: Maybe you know this already (or, more likely, maybe you don’t care about this at all), but do you know (1) that a Waldorf salad was named at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, where it was first served, (2) that the Astoria in the name Waldorf-Astoria is from the Astor family, whose founder, the original John Jacob Astor was a fur trader in the northwest, (3) the Waldorf name comes from the German village of Waldorf (Forest Village auf Deutsch), where John Jacob Astor was born, and (4) originally there were two hotels, the Waldorf and the Astoria, built in the late 19th century next to each other by two cousins who apparently did not like each other at all. Go figure.

OK. After dinner, we actually turned on the Oscars and watched them from 7 until 10:38, when they ended 8 minutes late. I must say this: this was really a bad show. The host was hardly there, and the show better when he wasn’t. No one had an acceptance speech that was worth listening to. There was no drama. No surprises. The best things were the ads. Go figure.

That’s it. Not a profound post, I know. I need to get ready for a Haberman Institute Board Meeting Tonight. And, oh, yes, we may have a tornado.

Let it be known that we have never gone into the Oscars so unprepared. Not that I care (after all, what has the Academy ever done for me?), but we have only seen one of the films that is up for Best Picture, and that one we had not seen until yesterday when we went to see The Secret Agent. Now, I know that that Nats are more likely to win the World Series than The Secret Agent win the Best Picture Award, and (since I don’t do much pre-viewing research), I expected to see a gritty and exciting spy thriller. Au contraire (as they say in Quebec).

One review that I read said that the film is not a film noir, but a film neo-noir. I looked up neo-noir. It refers to a dark, cynical film that is in color and has increased violence. I am not sure that I would call The Secret Agent dark or cynical (whatever that means in a film), so maybe it’s really, not neo-noir, but more like, say, post-neo-noir.

Wikipedia says that it has been nominated for 165 awards (at 40 different places) and won 77 of them (at 18). It received 4 awards at Cannes, 7 from the International Cinephile Society, and 6 from the Indiewire Critics Poll. And get this: it won 5 awards at the Havana Film Festival! Now, I didn’t even know there was a Havana Film Festival. I didn’t even know that Cubans were allowed to see movies! Or rather, I assumed that Cubans saw only old American movies. You know, the ones with American cars dated before 1959.

But it turns out that this is a rather prestigious festival that takes place every December and has been held every year since the Ayatollah took over Iran and daughter Michelle was born. It is exclusively for Latin American films, but there has been one American film that has one – 90 Miles in 2001.

Well, if anyone knows about noir, whether neo, post-neo, or just plain unadulterated noir, I guess it should be the Cubans.

Now, that’s all I am going to say about “noir” films. The other reference I saw said that the film contained “magic realism”. Okay, try to wrap your head around that one.

So, I looked it up. Magic realism is defined by Google AI as “a literary and artistic genre that weaves fantastical, supernatural, or mythical elements into an otherwise realistic, mundane setting without explanation”. If this is a good definition of magic realism, the Secret Agent is an example of MAGIC REALISM!!!

Why do I say this? It’s because it contains a shark that was found far from the coast (the film takes place in Recife, Brazil, BTW), with a hairy human leg inside it. The leg is extracted at the local university’s shark research lab and sent to the police morgue, where it stays most of the film,  except that at some point, two policemen (none in uniform in this film, and none really acting like policemen) enter the morgue, take the leg out of its resting place, put another leg in its place, and take the original leg and wrap it up and dump it into a river (where it floats but does not sink, like a woman sank with a weight tied to her near the start of the film; we do not know who she was).

A digression: you, who have not been to Recife (which is where the Jews who first settled New Amsterdam sailed from in 1654), may assume that this northern Brazilian city is on the Amazon. Well, I looked that up, too. Remember this in case it becomes important later on: Recife is on the confluence of the Capibaribe and Beberibe Rivers, which flow not into the Amazon, but into the Atlantic Ocean. Which of these rivers was privileged to get the leg, I don’t know, but those of you who have been to Recife probably would recognize the (very nice, not at all noir) bridge from which the leg was tossed.

Back to the main feature. The leg, I should say, does play an additional role in that it appears in a large park, which seems to be the haunt of gay (sexual) and gay (party loving) people, and does some dastardly deeds, but these deeds seem to have nothing to do with the overall plot any more than the leg itself does.

So, you say, this film seems to have everything, right? I will tell you one thing it does not have. It does not have a “secret agent”. Scouts honor. No secret agent. Where did they get the title? Only the leg knows for sure, and it ain’t talkin’ (or walkin’).

I am not sure what the film is really about. SPOILER ALERT! A guy named Armando tells everyone his name is Marcelo. He is a handsome young guy whose wife apparently died of pneumonia, and who has a son age 7 or 8 living with his in-laws in Recife. He himself can’t live with his son, but they are out to get him. Who are the “they” who are out to get him? The they seems to be a wealthy businessman in Sao Paulo who hires a father and step-son kill team who go to Recife and find a guy who knows a guy who for 4,000 cruzeiros will locate and kill Marcelo. He locates him, but does not kill him (not that he doesn’t try), but instead kills three policemen in front of the government office where Marcelo has been trying to locate the death certificate of his mother (whom he never met and who had him when she was 14), and then kills the step-son (one of the two men who hired him) in a barber shop not far away.

That’s about where the film ends (2 hours and 40 minutes after it started), although a short sequence at the end shows you that Marcelo/Armando’s son, Fernando, has grown up and become a doctor working in a blood bank in Recife, and doesn’t even really remember his father who was apparently killed sometime between the end of the penultimate scene of the film, and the final scene where the same actor who played the father is now playing his son, the doctor.

And, by the way, the last scene, at the clinic, is not at all noir. Not at all.

Okay, so we don’t know who the secret agent was, we don’t know why Armando was being targeted, we don’t really know if the police were honest, we have no idea about the leg found in the shark or the one substituted for it, or what the leg did in the park that night, or who the woman was who was thrown over the bridge early in the film.

What have I left out? Maybe the important part of the plot played by the film Jaws (it came out originally in 1975), or the important role of Dona Sebastiana, who seems to be an old hippie who hides out people running from other people (a dentist with her young daughter, and a couple from Angola, to name a few) where Marcelo hides out. And I left out the Jewish tailor, scarred during the Holocaust, who only speaks German, and wants to be left alone.

I may have missed something, because I admit that I fell asleep for a few minutes during the film. The film is (except when the killer goes on a spree) very slow moving and I knew I could close my eyes for a while and not miss a thing, which turned out to be true.

77 awards. 165 nominations, including Best Picture tonight. How is that possible?

Maybe the Nats will win the World Series after all.

I took it seriously, I guess, when the word was: we are too much in our own silos, and need to break out. Read what the other side is saying and you will be better able to communicate with them and reach middle ground.

In order to do that, I trained my Face Book account to send me posts put up by right wing people and by right wing bots. I thought that way I would see what the other side sees and, who knows, that I may even changed some of my views.

Didn’t happen. Made me even more despondent that we will easily get out of the mess we find ourselves in. Today’s blog post required little thinking or creativity on my part. Here are the headlines, without editing, of some of the Face Book posts I have seen over the last two days:

“The Biden Administration was Monitoring Republicans instead of Terror Cells”

“You might hate me for it. But Joe Biden ruined America.”

“Christ is King” is “I hate the Jews”….Ted Cruz

“Yes, Trump says that Marco Rubio is the best performing Secretary of State in United States History. Do you agree?”

“Huge win! Tom Homan is officially investigating Ilhan Omar for marrying her brother to receive United States citizenship.”

“Women: You don’t need college. You need faith, a bible and a good cook book”

“Being a Democrat Changes a Man” (with a picture of a trans woman)

“If Thomas Massie does not want to be 100% loyal to President Trump, then he should resign immediately”.

“Democrats refuse to fund homeland security while their Muslim terrorist wing attacks Jews”

“Raise your hands if Democrats are the biggest threat to America!”

“Iran has sleeper cells on US soil. They are called the Democrat Party”

“President Trump has spoken: his ultimate goal is to go down in history as a truly great president”

“There is absolutely nothing under the sun that President Trump could do to lose my support. I’ll always back him 110%. Greatest President of my lifetime and it’s not close.”

“Iran may be losing allies around the world but there’s one that they can definitely count on: the Democrat Party”.

“Epstein’s accountant testifies under oath that Trump had zero involvement with Epstein”.

“Trump Claims the World respects the U.S. more than ever because of him”

“Jesus lived a sin free life and Muhammad banged a 9 year old”

“Raise your hand if you knew climate change was a political hoax from day one”

“I rather my tax money buy steak and lobster for our troops than house, feed, or pay for insurance for illegals”

“If the U.S. gets hit with a terror attack, its 100% the Dems fault for blocking DHS funding”

“Mike Johnson predicts big GOP midterm win”

“Olympian thanks Trump for protecting biological women while giving him her medal”

“California is $8 a gallon not because of Trump or Iran. It is because Gavin Newsom is a failure.”

“Did Obama intentionally divide America?”

“Should Trump be added to Mt. Rushmore?”

“I’m past the point of wanting to deport the illegals. I want to deport the people who want them here, too”

“Congress announces bill to ban all illegals from receiving any form of welfare. Do you agree?”

“Should AOC be removed from Congress for spreading anti-American hate?”

“Muslims hate pork, beer, dogs, bikinis, Jesus and Freedom of Speech. So I’m wondering why they come to America’

“If only the left cared as much about homeless veterans as they do about illegal aliens”

‘They say America wasn’t founded on Christianity…So why did the Supreme Court say “this is a Christian nation?”

“The first college in America (Harvard) was actually Christian and trained up ministers”

“If Democrats rise to power again, America will not survive….”

“Jesus is my savior. Trump is my president”

“He started believing things I knew weren’t true. At first, I thought it was Alzheimers…..then I realized he was watching CNN”

“Poll: is Islamaphobia a rational fear of an evil ideology?”

Obviously, I could go on and on. I tried to get my Face Book feed to send me this sort of material by opening and giving comments on right win links. Do you get this material even if you don’t do that??

The more things change, the more they don’t.

I started the morning, with my Thursday breakfast group, listening to a presentation about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, from The Republic. The gist of the story, by analogy, is that people, no matter where they live, live in a cave, and that the confines of that cave limit the ability of its residents to see truths, to get the full picture. All you know is what is in the cave, and shadows projected on the walls of the cave.

I ended the day at the Capital Jewish Museum, at a program co-sponsored by the Museum and by the Haberman Institute, on Clay Risen’s book, Red Scare, with a presentation by the author, moderated by Judge David Tatel. It was being presented in conjunction with the Museum’s current temporary exhibit, titled “Blacklisted: an American Story”. Both the program and the exhibit deal with the campaign against Communists, alleged Communists, and perceived Communists in America during the 1940s and 1950s, the heydays of the HUAC and the McCarthy Era.

Plato wrote The Republic almost 2500 years ago. Yet still today we live in a cave, seeing only what we see. In fact, with everyone addicted to their computers and smart phones, and through the miracle of modern algorithms, it may be we are living deeper in that cave than ever before. Not the cave that is always there, a resultcof one living in a community. That cave  can not be avoided. But our cave has other facets,  additional limitations that have been purposely created to prey upon and increase the polarity of our vary polarized society.

Similarly, the Red Scare and the consequent blacklisting (ensuring that people who were alleged to be Communists could not be employed on the basis of “national security’) of the 1940s and 1950s may be over, but this is just one result of people fearing those who they believe to be “other”, and to ascribing to them not only evil intentions but potentially uncontrollable power. Today, we may not be worried about Communists in America, but various of us are worried about Muslims, Jews, Fascists, Leftists, what have you. It was cancel culture then. It is cancel culture now.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  And you can quote me on that.

Clay Risen has undoubtedly written an important book on HUAC and the McCarthy Era. His conversation last night touched not only on those topics, but on the roles played (good or bad) by Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower, the execution of the Rosenbergs, and the place that antisemitism did or did not play. The Blacklisted exhibit concentrates on the Hollywood Ten, and others in the film industry. It is a good exhibit, although the signage is a little wordy and somewhat redundant.

I was reminded of two things. One of the victims of the blacklisting was actor Morris Carnovsky, a name you may not even know, butcyouvcan Google him. Morris Carnovsky’s son Steven was a classmate and friend of mine during my Harvard undergraduate years. I have not seen him since our 40th college reunion (and that was 20 years ago).

Morris Carnovsky was born in 1897 (in St. Louis, but that is irrelevant for this story). He went to Washington University, and then moved to New York where he went firstcinto the Yiddish Theater, and then moved to the American stage and film, where his career started off quite well. He was, I guess, a member of the Communist Party at one time, and was one of those listed as Communists by Elia Kazan during his Congressional testimony where he famously named names. He was blacklisted, and the entire family was turned upside down and made very bitter. Although some years later, Carnovsky did get somewhatbresurrect his career, it is clear that his his life was terribly affected. And it certainly created bitter feelings throughout his family.

Digression: Tony Hiss, Alger’s son, was also at Harvard when I was there. He was also an extraordinary bitter (and clearly very bright) fellow, who spent much energy proclaiming and proving his father’s 100% innocence as a spy for the Soviets. We later (and I am surevTony) discovered that he was wrong, that Alger Hiss was a spy. I was surprised. I am sure Tony was shocked.

Moving on…

There has been a lot of news about Dubai recently in light of some Iranian drone strikes there. I had never been to Dubai until last night when I dreamed I was there. The city and its high rises were visible in the distance, but I was staying at a nice b and b in the country, and decided to take a walk along the highway leading to the city. There were no sidewalks, unsurprisingly, but the land was flat and easy to walk on, and pleasant enough, and the traffic only moderate. I never got to the city (that would have taken more time than my dream had) but did get to a spot where I could get on the Metro to go into the city. The Metro was spacious and attractive (all in shades of tan and beige) and very clean. I asked someone how much it cost (I knew nothing about Dubai’s money) and he told me that if I used American dollars (he said you could use American money anywhere in Dubai), all Metro rides were $22 each, whether the ride was long or short. I told him I thought that was a lot of money for a Metro ride and he told me: “This is Dubai; we can afford anything.”

That’s all I remember about Dubai. But I also remember last night being in a group home (sort of) with a bunch of my real life friends. We were happy that one of them was there because we hadn’t known where he was for a long time, but he seemed happy and fine. Then, he disappeared. Just vanished. We called his three kids, thinking he would have said something to them, but he hadn’t. They were surprised, too. He had no money.

Finally, last night, I seem to have been enamored by the charismatic young governor of Tennessee, who was running for reelection. I told him that I wanted to go to Tennessee to help him with his reelection. He told me that I shouldn’t do that because I was a journalist and couldn’t get involved in political activity. But I attended a big meeting with his supporters. One of the people there was a lawyer that I used to work with, now in his late 80s, who I know has slowed down a lot mentally. He raised his hand and said that he wanted to go campaign in Israel. He said he had been to Israel once before and thought there were a lot of voters there. I told him that there was a war going on and this was not the time to go to campaign there for the governor of Tennessee. He was adamant. He was not, by the way, Jewish. But he was determined.

That’s about when I woke up.

A week or two ago, I went to get into my faithful 2019 Prius on a parking lot, and noticed that it had a puncture wound on the passenger side in front of the front tire.  It appears that, although the wound itself is relatively small, the entire front bumper piece will need to be replaced, and – as of now – although small, it is pretty unsightly. I have been the only driver of that car for months, and I know that I was not in an accident, and that I don’t remember running into a sharp item at a curb, or anything else that could have been the cause. My initial reaction was that someone had run into the car when it was parked. It didn’t happen when I discovered the problem, because at that time there were no cars near me. And I didn’t remember any time parking so near another car that this type of a wound seemed really possible.

I told Edie about it when I got home, and she thought she had seen it before, and that it did not happen the day that I spotted it. I guess that is possible, since it is on the passenger side, but it seemed at the time unlikely that I hadn’t noticed it.

But let’s assume that it is possible that I just did not see the tear, that I just hadn’t looked down at that exact spot. Let’s just assume that for a minute.

Last night, being in the middle of a very nice dream about an exhibit in a small art museum and talking to someone (in the dream) about all of the small art museums that I could think of, I woke up abruptly for unknown reasons. I looked at the clock, expecting it to say something like 5:30 a.m., and was surprised to see it was only 2:57. That surprise woke me up completely, and just lay there wondering if I would ever get back to sleep again, thinking about first one thing, than another. One of those things that I thought about was the damage to my car. How could it have happened?

I then had an “aha” moment. Unlikely perhaps, but “aha”, nevertheless. Is it possible that this injury to my car has been here since January 27? It was on January 27 that we had someone come to dig us out of the ice and snow storm that caused Washington to slow down for two weeks. You may remember the story (or may not, more likely). We had about 7 inches of hard, hard snow and a friend gave us a name of someone to call, which we did. It was a landscape company that also would do snow removal (for a hefty price).

Two men came, we told them we needed to get the walkway to the street, the walkway to the driveway, the driveway, and the sidewalks both on Davenport and on 32nd Street done. Whether I mentioned in particular the two cars parked in the driveway, I don’t remember, but my assumption was that if you clear the snow from the driveway, you also clear the snow off the cars. Otherwise, why clear the driveway? Right?

The two men, who seemed very nice, started to work. I was impressed, looking out the front windows, with their energy and hard work. I assumed that, when they were finished, they would knock on the door again, tell us they were done and ask us if everything looked okay, and probably ask for their money. I didn’t look out of the window again, but after a few hours, wondered why we hadn’t heard from them. I saw that their truck was gone – perhaps they went to lunch?

They didn’t return and about 3:30, I went outside to make sure that everything had been done. All of the walkways and the driveway had been done perfectly. But the cars were untouched, and I spent an hour or so myself freeing my car, and a few days later, freeing Edie’s. When we got an invoice from the landscape company, I told them what had happened, and suggested a price that knocked about 1/3 off their price. I did not know what the reaction of the company would be, and was surprised when their reaction was “okay, but don’t ever call us again”. Jeez, I thought.

This was, as you might know or recall, a very unusual snow storm, or perhaps it was a very unusual ice storm. The 7 or so inches of snow was packed so hard that you could walk on top of it, without sinking in at all. So shoveling it was not a normal job where you could push some or all of aside without a lot of heavy lifting. Nothing could be pushed, and nothing could be shoveled without first breaking apart the ice. It was very hard work. Not for the fainthearted, as they say. For obvious reasons.

What if????

What if, when breaking up the ice to clear the driveway, our shovelers had used something hard (they undoubtedly did) which, when they were working so diligently near the car, had actually hit, and torn, the car? Perhaps, they didn’t even notice what they did until they finished the driveway? Then, when the saw the car damaged, they decided two things: first, they were not going to knock on the door and ask us to look at their work, and second, they were not going to stick around and do the cars themselves for fear that, at some point, we might come out to see how they were doing. They simply decided: let’s get out of here as quick as we can!

Likely? I don’t know. Possible? I think so. Another alternative? I can’t think of one.

This will cause us the deductible on our auto insurance policy (I think that is $250) and some aggravation. I don’t think it will affect our premiums, based on the insurer’s accident forgiveness policy (if this is even considered an accident). And I hope we don’t have to leave our car (fully able to be driven, obviously), but can bring it in when the part is ready to replace the old part. We shall see.

I also thought that maybe we should just get a new car and trade our old friend in, so he can be rejuvenated or put to pasture. I remember years ago hearing an ad on the radio which started with, “If you have a flat tire, you don’t go out and get a new car, do you?” As if the answer to that question was obvious.

Can you even imagine another country dropping a bomb on an elementary school in the United States, killing 175 young girls, and the president of that country saying that he thinks the Americans did it themselves? I’m sorry, but I just can not wrap my head around that.

Clearly, President Trump doesn’t give a damn (at least, doesn’t give a public damn) about those girls. Nor does the Secretary of War. And, yes, we should call him the Secretary of War, who has been put in charge of the Department of Defense. A mismatch.

Did anyone else hear Hegseth’s press conference yesterday? Much of it was devoted to the recitation of a biblical psalm, and to thanking his God for leading him in every step he is taking and protecting him. Do I remember an Ingmar Bergman fim from 60 years or so ago where both warring armies were accompanied by almost identical religious leaders assuring both sides, in almost identical words, that God was on their side, and would see them to victory? I probably don’t remember that, but I can see it clearly enough as if I did. And, it appears that, in 2026, I can choose my own historical truths.

I am writing quickly this morning. No Wikipedia research. But did you follow the results of the election last night in the 14th District of Georgia? My numbers won’t be fully accurate  but they will be close. The mail in votes were counted first (about 30% of the total vote), and the Democrat had about 44% of the vote. When the final tally was made, the Democrat had about 37% of the vote. In this Republican district, it won’t make much difference. But in swing districts, you can see why Trump wants to abolish mail in votes.

Okay, let’s change subjects. I am still reading Rez Life, and enjoying it. And I had a revalation. Growing up, I learned the name of many Indian tribes. But I never heard of Ojibwe until I was  well grown. But David Treuer said that the Ojibwe Nation was the largest in the US and Canada. How could I have not heard of them growing up? It’s because the Ojibwe are the Chippewa. Did everyone else know that?

It has been a busy morning. I am sitting for a casual lunch at a Filipino restaurant. That brings up two questions. First, why isn’t it Philippino?

Second, how do you decide between an adobo, lechon kawali, dinuguan, tapstlog, pancit bihon, bangus or lumpia? Maybe I will just have some crispy pata. Or a longanista sandwich.

And take note of the handwriting on the wall? “Huwag pong itapon ang mga kutsara, tinidor at bilao sa basurahan.” You want to see the remnant of 333 years of Spanish control of the Philippines? It’sho “Basurahan”.

When we first got married, we lived on the corner of Military Road and Chevy Chase Parkway in Northwest DC. Our first next door neighbors were the Treuers. They were an interesting family.

Bob Treuer was considerably older than me. Had he lived longer, he would have turned 100 in January. He was born in Vienna, left Austria with his family in 1938, wound up the the U.S. with degrees from Antioch and Bemidji State University. I don’t know his full work background, but he lived in Bemidji before moving to DC, where he worked with HEW (now HHS). He left HEW in 1979, and shortly after that, they moved back to Minnesota. Bob then became a tree farmer and a writer. I read his book, Tree Farm, years ago.

His wife, Margaret, was much younger, 17 years younger in fact. She was also almost a year younger than me.

Margaret was an Ojibwe Indian from Minnesota. She was a lawyer, and later she became a judge, the first female Native American judge in the U.S. Bob was Jewish. It was an unusual mix. They had two elementary school sons, Tony and David. They also had two younger children, twins, whom I don’t remember. Perhaps they were born later in Bemidji. Bob and Margaret have both passed away. Bob first, in 2016 at 89, and Margaret   in 2020.

The four Treuer children are now in their 50s, and it looks like all have had successful careers. One of the twins is an emergency room physician, the other followed her mother’s career path and became a judge. Tony, now apparently known as Anton, has become an expert on dying Native American languages and has taught at Bemidji State for over 25 years. The other interesting thing about Anton, the 8 year old (or so) that I remember, is that he now has 9 children. The four Teuers together have 25.

David Treuer is also an academic,  teaching since 2010 at the University of Southern California. He has now published seven books, one of which I started to read last night. Published in 2012 by Grove Press, it is called Rez Life, a “blend of memoir and history”, and reads very well.

Anton and David are members of the Ojibwe nation. Whether they also identify aa Jewish or not, I don’t know. But I did see a brief excerpt of a talk by one of them (don’t remember which) discussing his feelings towards Austrians and Germans in light of his father’s experiences.

Two anecdotes. I don’t remember exactly what Bob did at HEW. I think he directed an office and I remember that he thought the function of his office was no longer necessary. So he lobbied to have it closed down. And hecwas successful

As to Margaret I remember something at their house with a number of neighbors present. The two Treuer boys, and a few other kids, were playing and having a good time. One of the neighbors said, “Boy, are they a bunch of wild Indians!” You can imagine that that was just the wrong thing to say in Margaret Treuer’s house. I later wondered if that is when they decided to move back to Minnesota.

I remember my seven years in New England, when March was still winter, April still cold and disappointing, and May heavenly. Not the case in DC, where warmer weather comes sooner. In fact, as you see the daffodils begin to pop up out of the ground, and the occasional crocus already in bloom, you tend to think that spring begins in March. In fact, it does, of course, around March 21.

But, no, March in DC is like April in Boston, more disappointing than hope filled. Today is the 9th of March. Looking at my phone, here are the high temperatures coming our way for the next ten days: 66, 70, 75, 59, 50, 66, 71, 50, 35, 37. So little consistency.

But, I guess it is much better than it has been the last several months, when DC had such a cold and snowy winter. As I got older, I learned that my tolerance of weather variations became much constricted. I decided that I was only happy with the weather if it was between 65 and 75; other than that, I was too cold or too warm. But yesterday, when it was about 73 and I stepped outside, I thought it was too hot.

This worried me, for obvious reasons. I think maybe the only temperature at which I am comfortable is the temperature I set on the thermostat indoors. That can’t be a good way to live………

In case you haven’t noticed, when I sat down at my computer this morning, I had no idea what to write in today’s blog post. I still don’t. Like the character we saw on stage yesterday who was waiting for Godot, I am sitting here waiting for the plumber. He is supposed to be here between 8 and 10, and it is now 9:07. I have had breakfast, gone through the print edition of the New York Times, and have been watching Morning Joe. I see that, nine minutes after opening, the DOW is already down almost 600 points, oil is over $100 per barrel, Tehran is today a very dangerous place to be if you have to breathe, the most dangerous urban area in the world is the southern part of Beirut (will there be a building left standing?), Mayor Mamdani was safer in Astoria than in Gracie Mansion (who was Gracie, anyway?), three synagogues in Toronto were shot at within a few hours, and Darryl Hannah is upset at the portrayal of a woman named Darryl Hannah in the new TV series about John F. Kennedy, Jr. (as she should be). It’s hard to believe, isn’t it, that Darryl Hannah is already 65 (and her husband Neil Young 80), when, say, Bo Derek (whom you would assume would be 110 by now) is only 69. Wouldn’t you assume they were of very different generations, rather than both Boomers? I would. And, of course, Bo Derek’s husband, John, if alive, would be celebrating his 100th birthday this August. That would seem to mean that there was a 31 year age gap between male Derek and female Derek. That would also mean, if I had married someone with a similar age gap to me, and if I had married (as I did) when I was 34, I would have married a 3 year old.

Speaking of Bo Derek, as I was, you can picture her, right? Very attractive lady, who couldn’t really act? Guess how tall she is. If you would say, 5’9″, you would be wrong. She is only 5’3″. Hard to believe for me. Darryl Hannah, on the other hand, is 5’10”. Neil Young is 6′, so it’s all okay. John Derek? He was 6’1″, so he would have been okay with Darryl Hannah as well, except that she would be 35 years younger than he, and there are limits.

Speaking of height, as you know, Robert Reich is only 4’11”, but his wife is 5 inches taller. And Danny DeVito is only 5′ even, and Wikipedia says that his wife, Rhea Perlman is also 5″. I do find that hard to believe, because every photo of the two of them together shows Perlman to be several inches taller than her husband. Maybe you know why this is.

I want to end this with everybody knowing that I did see the Country Joe McDonald has passed away at 84. He was 84, but born the same year I was. Can you even imagine how that could be possible?

Now, I have one more thing to admit. I don’t think I knew Country Joe McDonald, although good friend and current house guest Simon Aronin can’t believe that.

So I will assume you knew him and his protest songs. I will leave you with one thought about him. Do you know his mother was Florence Plotnick, who was a Communist and Berkeley CA politician, who was arrested 24 times before she was 18?

I don’t know how tall she was.

El Presidente Trump, while planning the collapse and takeover of the Cuban government, continues his war against Iran. He, based on his feelings supported by no facts, has concluded that it wasn’t a United States bomb that killed over 150 school age girls, but it was the Iranians who bombed their own daughters. This is how history is made. If the president of the United States in 1945 had been Franklin Delano Trump, we would undoubtedly have learned that the Japanese dropped atomic bombs on themselves.

This was a two event weekend, and the second event explains why this post is being written so late in the day (it is now almost 5 p.m.).

Last night, we attended the first performance by the Washington National Opera of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha. It was also the first performance of the 70th season of the WNO, and the first of three American operas being presented this spring in celebration of the 250th birthday of the country. It was also special in that it was the first performance by the NSO since it elected to leave its long time headquarters at the XXXXX-Kennedy Center. Treemonisha is being performed at the Lisner Auditorium of the George Washington University, a 2000+ seat venue that is going to see a lot more usage by the community in general over the coming years, as the XXXXX-Kennedy Center undergoes its “rehabilitation”.

You probably don’t know Treemonisha and are surprised that ragtime composer Scott Joplin wrote an opera. In fact, he wrote two, the first of which was lost when a fire burned what were apparently the only scores. Joplin, born to musical, if quite poor, parents in or near Texarkana, Texas. His father had been a slave; his mother a free Black. He was born in 1868, and died at the age of 48 in 1917. He was an ambitious composer, to be sure, and his biography, although short and often (rather, mostly) quite sad, would be interesting to read. There have been at least two published; I have not read either.

You wouldn’t call Treemonisha grand opera. Perhaps it is more of an operetta. But it is a professionally composed piece, to be sure, with appealing music of various genres, and (as with much opera) lyrics that could have been a bit better. It’s the story of a young girl found as a baby and raised by a couple who made sure she would learn to read and write, something no one else in her plantation community could do. There was a “conjurer” who brought superstition to the community and kidnapped Treemonisha (that was her name) because they were afraid that she would draw the people away from superstition into more progressive thinking. She is rescued by her future husband, the conjurers decided to be good, not evil, from then on and everyone lives happily ever after.

I don’t know exactly for whom Joplin wrote Treemonisha. Was it for white audiences, or for Blacks? I would like to know what was in his mind.

How did a poor Black boy from a small town in mid-America become such a talented musician. Not only someone who could play an instrument (many could do that, of course), but someone who knew various types of music, who could compose, who knew music theory and who could say, and defend his saying, that ragtime was just a form of classical music?

The trick was that when he was 11 he came to the attention of a Jewish music teacher from Germany, Julius Weiss, who taught Joplin and was a mentor to him for five or more years, and with whom he stayed in contact long after. But read the Wikipedia entry on Joplin to get more of his interesting, and much too short, life story.

Today, we went to the Shakespeare Theatre to see a one-man show, called On Beckett, performed by actor Bill Irwin. I wasn’t familiar with Irwin, a 75 year old actor and choreographer, and graduate not only of Oberlin College, but the Ringling Brothers Clown School, but he is clearly a very talented (and very limber) fellow. He has played in many of Beckett’s plays, is apparently enamored of his use of language, and put together this one act, 80+ minute show, which is a combination of readings (really, more than readings – what is the word? it isn’t “actings”) of excerpts from Beckett’s prose and plays, interspersed with commentary about them, and with comic/clown routines, and ending with a long take on Waiting for Godot. I must say that, except that I found out that Irwin was a very talented man, the recitations from Becket, to the extent that they made any sense to me whatsoever, left me pretty cold. Some of his clown routines were very clever, although I never laughed out loud – he is a physical actor. But I couldn’t quite get the purpose of the show – it did not increase my appreciation of Beckett (if that was the purpose), and it contained a bit too much of “Look at all the clever things I can do!!” for me.

And, by the way, I did go back to the Bethesda-Chevy Chase used book sale this morning. It was “bag day”, so I knew I wouldn’t spend more than $15. And I didn’t expect to find much. But I did find 6 books. One was by an old neighbor – no value to that one, but for nostalgic. But I found a book signed by Angela Merkel (former Chancellor of Germany) (Freedom), and one signed by former British Prime Minister, David Cameron (For the Record). Not bad for $15.

Three things for today:

(1) Donald Trump says that we (i.e., he) will hit Iran harder and harder and he will only accept unconditional surrender as a way to end the war against Iran. Tough talking from the Donald, right? But of course you can’t take him seriously for several reasons. One of the reasons is that this is not only our (i.e., his) war, but it is Israel’s war as well, and I have not heard similar language coming from Israel (i.e., Bibi and friends). A second reason is that we don’t know what unconditional surrender means in this situation.

The last time we forced unconditional surrender, I think, was during World War II. We certainly didn’t end Korea or Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan with an unconditional surrender. In fact, we didn’t end any of those more recent wars with a victory. So, our models for unconditional surrender have to go back to Germany and Japan.

And what we found in both countries is that, after unconditional surrender, there was no way for either country to pick themselves right up and start governing themselves in a way friendly to the victors. In the case of Japan, the United States became an occupying power for about 7 years. In Germany, the four allied powers occupied the entire country for almost 5 years and occupied Berlin until 1991. In both cases, the occupying powers had an enormous number of military troops on the ground during the occupation and today, in 2026, over 80 years since the end of World War II, the United States still has troops in both Germany and Japan. This is what seems to be required after an unconditional surrender.

In Iran, we have no troops now. Without troops on the ground, we cannot have a post-war occupation. Without a post-war occupation, we have no way to police the dismantling of the Iranian military, the Iranian Republic Guard Corps, or the civil rights of Iranian citizens, free of Islamic oversight, that we seem to want.

There has never been successful regime change with only an air campaign. And without regime change, we cannot get unconditional surrender, because the regime itself is based on opposition to us.

(2) I didn’t have any real plans for yesterday. But I certainly didn’t expect, when I turned on the funeral services for Jesse Jackson at about 1 p.m. that I would still be watching well over three hours later. But that is what happened.

As you may know from earlier postings, I have long been a fan of Jesse Jackson. And when I heard that Presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden, and Vice President Harris were all going to speak, I became very curious about what they were going to say. But, from the opening of the service until its end, I was glued to the television, interested in what everyone said, whether what they said was interesting or not.

The service was heard at the House of Hope, a megachurch in Chicago which holds, if Wikipedia can be believed, about 10,000 congregants. The founding minister of the Salem Baptist Church, which is housed in the House of Hope, James Meeks was the emcee of the proceedings, and did a fine job.

There were many speakers, including two of Jackson’s sons, several clergymen (including a rabbi), several other politicians (the mayor of Chicago, the governor of Illinois, Congresswoman Maxine Waters), and representatives of the business and sports world, and – although each of them had something different to say – they all talked about how their lives were influenced, and often changed, by Jackson, and I think they were all sincere.

There was little pure religion. There was a large and quite good chorus, and at least three soloists who sang with the chorus, including Opal Staples (wonderful) and Jennifer Hudson (I had to turn off the sound). And yes, there was one big mistake, when the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, was introduced and spoke, in Spanish with a live translator and went on for about 20 minutes talking more about Simon Bolivar and about everyone he has ever known who was Black than about Jackson. I don’t know how he got on the invite list.

Obama spoke wonderfully, as you would expect, and (did you know?) he spoke about the current administration in less than glowing terms. Harris spoke well. Biden and Clinton? Not so much. You would expect that Biden, given his current physical and mental condition, would have trouble speaking. But Clinton, in fact, seemed as confused as Biden. James Zogby, the American Arab leader, didn’t seem confused at all; in fact, after giving a meaningful and short talk, he said that he had only one more thing to say…….and then he couldn’t remember what it was. He told the crowd that he excused himself when things like that happened – after all, he was 80.

(3) We went to the annual used book sale this morning at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. There are about 8.5 billion people in the world; at least 2/3 of them were at the book sale. The pre-opening line of people holding their tote bags stretched half the way to Pittsburgh. There were about 2 books for every person – so that makes about, what?, 10 billion?

I had pledged to limit myself to 5 or 6 books, and I came home with 9, well within my limits. All in perfect condition, all signed on inscribed. The most valuable were books singed by Buzz Aldrin and Jeffrey Sachs. I found a signed copy of Joyce Carol Oates’ memoir The Lost Landscape. And a signed copy of Alexander Vindman’s The Folly of Reality, about the failure of the west to serve Ukraine.

The sale will be much less crowded tomorrow. Should I return??

Tonight we have tickets for the Washington Opera’s staging of Scott Joplin’s Tremonisha.

Yesterday, on C-span, I listened to part of a panel discussion which included Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who was incarcerated in Tehran from July 2014 to January 2016, a total of 544 days. Also on the panel was his American attorney, whose name I did not catch (and did not bother to look up). He was charged with and convicted of spying and spreading anti-government propaganda.

A portion of yesterday’s program dealt with Rezaian’s trial. Without going into great detail, it is best simply to say that it was not a fair trial and there was no possibility of any result other than ‘guilty’. He met with his court-appointed lawyer only two times before the trial itself began, and those two times only with someone from the prosecution present. There was a meeting with the judge prior to the trial at which the judge questioned why any of these pretrial procedures were necessary, as it was clear that the prisoner would be found guilty and sentenced. The judge himself was apparently someone with a strong reputation for finding everyone guilty, and for his free use of the death penalty. Rezaian’s lawyer said, after Rezaian went through his experience with the Iranian judicial system something like: “This sure is not the way it would have worked in America”.

Cut forward to this morning. My occasional Friday morning breakfast group had as its guest a young woman who is a documentary film maker, and who has been working for 7 years on a film about a woman from Guatemala who entered the country more than ten years ago with her daughter, and who applied for asylum. She has not been involved in any criminal activity since she came to this country, and has fulfilled all requirements for asylum seekers. Nevertheless, since ICE does not seem to care that she is following a recognized governmental process, she is presumably fair game for capture, detention and deportation at any time. This of course makes the making of this film itself risky, and the makes the question of what to put in the film, and what to leave out, even more risky.

For a while, when she first crossed the border, she was held in detention, but then released. Because of the backlog of such proceedings, her detention hearing is set in 2028, and may be postponed beyond that date.

The film maker this morning discussed how hearings are now working in our broken administration system. As we know, people are being kept in detention, being whisked off the street (sometimes whisked out of scheduled hearing rooms) and sent to far away detention centers or far away countries. There are hearings being held, but they are extremely cursory and some judges have ruled in favor of the government and against the asylum seekers 95% of the time. Other judges, who have been more favorable to seekers, have been summarily fired.

As to these proceedings, Rezaian’s lawyer could not say that the fairness of our procedures are much better, if at all, than the procedures used in the Islamic Republic of Iran. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

But this is the Trump administration in action, and it is not clear if things will be any different now that Kristi Noem is out of HHS. That, we will see.

The administration, whose leader wants to be able to choose (or at least to hold a veto over) the next leader of Iran, is in deep trouble. The dismissal of Noem is just one matter. I saw this morning that, across the country, the average price of a gallon of gas is $3.44, and presumably the idea of $1.95 gas is now only a dream. I saw that the country lost 92,000 jobs last month, that unemployment has risen. Trump’s 50,000 DOW that Pam Bondi loves to boast about, may fall below 47,000 by close of the markets today. Everything is a mess, and we will see how Mr. Trump responds. It will not be pretty.

In the meantime, we still have not had a replacement toilet for the one we are told has been clogged over time. After dealing with one plumber for over a month looking for the right replacement, we have a new plumber coming Monday morning with a promise of fast and good service. The problem is that the toilet sits under a window, and normal toilet tanks are too high. The related problem is that we don’t want to overpay for a replacement toilet. We don’t need anything fancy.

Yesterday, I saw the first segment of a Netflix show called Love & Death, apparently the story of a true incident in Texas in 1980. In that first episode, there is a poetry group that meets in a church, and the members of the group are asked by the facilitator to read their poems. The first member says that he wrote a short poem which is meant to attack materialism. It went like this:

“On my new toilet,

I do the same things.”

That was it. I identified.

I don’t always know why I read what I read, but last night, I picked up a copy of The Twilight of the Elites by MS NOW host Christopher Hayes, and I read the first chapter of the book which I think provides a summary of what the rest of the book contains. I watch Hayes’ show only now and then, but always find him one of the more intelligent and insightful of the cable news show anchors.

Hayes has written three books, one about the American prison population, one about the causes and consequences of the shortening of everyone’s attention span, and this one, about America’s political, educational and economic elites. The Twilight of the Elites is the first of his books, published in 2012, during the first term of the Obama presidency. Because I have only been through about 15% of the book, my thoughts about it may change as I go on, but I think there are a few points made in this opening chapter that ae worth thinking about.

First, Hayes believes that the United States (and much of the rest of the world) is run by the “elites”, a group of well educated, and increasingly wealthy individuals, who deal only with each other, are concerned mainly about their own welfare, and are out of touch with most of the country. Their decision making (and they are the decision makers) tends to increase, rather than decrease, inequalities, perpetuating their increasingly closed status as “elites”.

Second, as the country went through its civil rights struggles, which resulted in the elimination of much of the bias and discrimination that had been so pervasive for so long, the goal was to convert the country into a “meritocracy”. But the meritocracy has not resulted in the changes in society that were hoped for the goals of the shift. Those who benefited by the American meritocracy have simply become the “elite”.

Third, as the elite has become more powerful, trust in the decision making of the elite in the eyes of the rest of the populace has diminished. A large number of scandals in business, poor policy judgements by regulators, and mistakes by those at the top of government have led to a lack of confidence in all of those institutions that hold power in both government and business.

That is what I got out of the first chapter, broadly speaking. What struck me about this is that this chapter, written about fifteen years ago, could have (with few name changes) been written today. But I think that the problems Hayes saw in 2012 have increased and worsened by 2026, as our trust in our leaders and trust in our important institutions have been shaken to the core today. This either means that Hayes is a seer, or that today’s problems should have been obvious to us (but weren’t) even before the era of Trump, although they have clearly accelerated since Trump first came to power.

I look forward to the rest of the book.

Speaking of books, I just read a book of the type I rarely pick up. I had taken a walk to the Cleveland Park Library the other day (the first day that the temperatures have been comfortable enough for a leisurely outside walk), and looked at their “for sale” rack, picking up (for $1) a signed copy of Head Wounds by Michael McGarrity. It is one of a series of books by McGarrity featuring a police official named Kevin Kerney. I don’t know what you would call the genre. A mystery? A detective novel? I am not sure. But you know what I mean.

The most interesting thing about the book is its setting. On the border between Texas and Mexico, and in New Mexico, the book concerns Anglos and Mexicans, to be sure, but also Native Americans, both Apache and Kickapoo. And yes, there are drugs and cartels, and cultural and generational challenges, and law enforcement bureaucracies, and, more than anything else, murders. A lot of murders.

The book was an easy read, which is surprising since it has many too many characters to keep straight, and the plot line is composed of several different plot lines that intersect mysteriously with each other. So, you enjoy reading it, although you don’t always understand what is going on or how things fit together.

When you finish, you say to yourself both “that was pretty good” and “that was sure a waste of time”. That is why I rarely read that kind of book. (By the way, it gets over a 4 our of 5 rating on Goodreads.)

Yesterday, I had lunch with my old law partner Tim Aluise, which is always fun. The day before, I went to the National Symphony rehearsal with my old law partner Alan Vollmann. And this morning

at my Thursday morning breakfast meeting, I heard a presentation by my old law partner Chuck Edson. Do you see a pattern here? What do you guys who don’t have old law partners do with your time?

Chuck, who specializes in talks on “Jews in ………” today spoke on Jews in Congress, and it was nice and low key, but led to an extensive discussion by the 20+ who were there. It turns out there have been 40 Jewish Senators (starting with David Yulee in Florida) and over 200 members of the House of Representatives. The most interesting statistic was that there are only 5 states which have never had at least one Jewish Senator or Representative – North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Arkansas and South Carolina, if I remember what he said. What is also interesting is that there is no sense that antisemitism has ever been a major (or even minor) issue in any of their election campaigns.

One last point for today, having to do with the Senate, but not having to do with Jews in the Senate. Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana has decided not to run for reelection. Perhaps this opens the opportunity for a Democratic or independent win in that heavily Republican state. After all, Montana was served by Democrat John Tester from 2007 to 2025.

I know nothing about Montana politics, but there is an independent candidate with quite a resume. His name is Seth Bodnar, and he has most recently been the president of the University of Montana. Before that, he was a graduate of West Point, where he ranked first in his class, was both a Rhodes Scholar and a Truman Scholar who earned two masters degrees at Oxford, one in Economics and Social History, the other in Comparative Social Policy. He was a member of the 101st Airborne Division and a Green Beret, who served in Iraq. He is still an officer in the National Guard. He taught economics and West Point, and then worked for General Electric for several years, where he became a senior officer dealing with railroad technology. He served as president of the University of Montana for 8 years. His wife, a pediatrician, was also a Rhodes Scholar.

He sounds like someone to watch. He is only 47, which by the way, is the same age as Chris Hayes.

Sorry for the delay today. I left the house early this morning to go with a friend to the open rehearsal of this weekend’s National Symphony Orchestra concert at the XXXXX-Kennedy Center. It was my first visit to the XXXXX-Kennedy Center since XXXXX added his name to it and announced that it would close in a few months for a renovation which would take out everything but its steel supports and start all over. I had vowed not to go into that building again, but the NSO is pretty much stuck there for various reasons and the NSO is worth supporting.

Does the building need a top to bottom redo? Not from anything I (or any one else) can tell, but I did realize what XXXXX doesn’t like about it. One thing that XXXXX doesn’t like is open space (XXXXX abhors a vacuum) and the XXXXX-Kennedy Center has a lot of open space in the concerts venues, and in all of the common space, where the hallways and rooms are wide, and ceilings very very tall. The thing that XXXXX craves is gold, and there certainly is insufficient gold in the XXXXX-Kennedy Center. The building’s architecture is, in a sense, minimalist (at least closer by far to minimalist than to maximalist), and there is no frivolous wall decor. All that will, I am sure, be remedied in the makeover.

The rehearsal itself was interesting. One of the pieces on this weekend’s program is Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony, and the entire 2 plus hour rehearsal was devoted to the third and fourth movement of that piece. At first, the orchestra played the entire third movement. It sounded very good. Gianandrea Noseda, the conductor of the NSO, then announced that the orchestra had never played that movement before (it rehearsed the first and second movements yesterday), which surprised the few of hundred of us listening. He then went through an hour of very intense rehearsing, sometimes playing a portion over several times, discussing various things with the members, and so forth. After an intermission, he went through the same process with the fourth movement. I have never been to an open rehearsal which was so intense, so detailed. Usually, they are more like dress rehearsals of a play.

Before I went to the rehearsal, I did turn on the press conference given this morning by Pete Hegseth and General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. about the status of the war XXXXX is waging against Iran. I missed most of what Hegseth said, but was surprised when Caine referred to members of the military at his “teammates” and then to the assembled members of the press as his “teammates”. Teams are what you put together for games and sports. Not for killing other people.

I have no idea how this war will turn out. It will be complicated. You think Ukraine is a big country, and therefore difficult for Russia to conquer? Well, do you know that Iran’s area is almost three times that of Ukraine? 220,000 square miles in Ukraine; 636,000 square miles in Iran. And as to population, Ukraine has just under 40 million, while Iran has a little more than 90 million. 90% of Iranians, or about 80 million Iranians are Shiite Muslim. The Supreme Leader of Iran, by its 1979 Constitution, is required to be an educated cleric who is not a religious leader per se, but who is the final authority on how the Islamic Republic of Iran interprets and enforces Islamic law.

Notwithstanding the overwhelming number of Shiite Iranians, a large survey conducted less than two years ago by a Dutch based company, GAMAAN, concluded that, irrespective of citizens’ religious identification, between 70% and 80% of the population do not support the current form of government.

What to do with that information, I don’t know. After all, what are we trying to accomplish in Iran? My best guess is “we want to make Iran disappear as if it never existed”. This, as you can see from above, is not possible. But anything less than that seems unsatisfactory to XXXXX and his crew. If Iran surrendered today, for example, we would not know what to do. So it would have to be a surrender, along with what? Disabling all means of carrying on

warfare? Getting rid of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards? Making sure there is a satisfactory government in place?

Each of these things seems impossible. Are we going to leave Iran to fight it out in a civil war? That doesn’t seem to serve our interests. How are we going to deal with the members of the IRGC? Or the high ranking Shiite clergy? Or the officials in the current government? If there is to be a transition to a new form of government, there will have to be a transition period. Who will police Iran and keep its society in control while that transition is taking place? Will we, or we and allies acting in concert, become an occupying power?

We clearly don’t have an exit strategy (we never seem to), but in this case it seems to be worse. In this case, we don’t know to whom, when we choose to exit, we will cede power, or how we will be able to do that without the eruption of serious violence. In other words, XXXXX’s exit from Iran may be bumpier that Biden’s from Afghanistan.

So far, the U.S. and Israel have proven their ability to inflict pain on a country exceeds that country’s ability to defend itself. But we already knew that. What we don’t know is how having a war which has already touched more than a half dozen countries and threatens more will be accepted by those countries’ citizens, or what the individual responses might be. We do know that American military bases and diplomatic quarters are fair game. And we now know that high level American civilian government personnel have been made fair game by our making Iranian high level officials our targets. What do they say about chickens coming home to roost?

And what about the 1 million (yes, 1 million) Americans who are now stuck in Middle Eastern countries bound up in this war. The XXXXX administration has told them two things: First, “Get out!” Second, when both air space and ground routes are blocked, “Too bad, but we can’t help you.” This is, is it not, unconscionable when connected to a war whose existence and timing was of our own choosing. This is potentially exponentially worse than our exit from Afghanistan.

I will stop here. After all, in Tehran it is already tomorrow.

So, tonight (Monday) is Purim. At Adas Israel, and all other American synagogues, there is the reading of the Book of Esther, and most likely a satiric Purim spiel, alcohol, food, costumes, fun and games. I said on Sunday that I was not going to go to the reading of Megillot Esther this year, because it tells the story of Jews vs. Persians, and ends with the massacre of Persians by the almost-killed Jews, and I thought that was a little too close to the situation in Iran today for comfort. But that is only me, and the mass of synagogue-going Jews will not let contemporary affairs affect their standard ritual practices. Okay, I accept that. To quote our great president (from another context), “that’s just the way it is”.

But interestingly, in Israel, with Iranian drones blanketing the country, there will apparently be no public readings of the Book of Esther this year, no Purim spiels, no costumes, fun and games. I have read that, by order of the military, all public gatherings have been banned, including gatherings for the purpose of celebrating Purim (even if they are held in bomb shelters). The reason for this is obviously different from my reasoning, although the two rationales are obviously related. But it does show that it is not impossible to cancel religious observances (at least those characterized in Jewish law and practice as “minor” observances) in appropriate circumstances. I rest my case.

But I want to raise another problem, one that is more worrisome. Edie and I generally have supper while watching MS NOW, and tonight (Monday), that is what we did. We were watching the Weeknight show (7 p.m. to 8 p.m. EST), whose hosts tend to be very much against the current war for all of the reasons you may suppose.

No one on MS NOW or anywhere else knows how this military action will end and what will happen after it does, and no one at MS NOW or anywhere else knows why Trump ordered it in the first place. Is it because there was an “imminent threat” to this country? Is it because Iran was not negotiating on its nuclear plans in good faith, or because Iran refused to negotiate about its development of long range missiles? Is it because Trump wanted regime change in Iran? Or to totally destroy Iran’s military capacity? Is it because Trump wanted to divert our attention from his other problems? Or because Iran was simply a self-stated enemy of the United States? Was there intelligence that the government can not share with us normal folks that would have convinced us this was the time to do what we are doing?

Any, all or none of these reasons may be correct, but this afternoon (I am writing this Monday), Secretary of State Rubio gave a different reason, something that administration officials had not stated before. Rubio said that there was an imminent threat because “another country” was going to attack Iran and when this “other country” attacked Iran, Iran would strike back not only at this “other country”, but at the United States. Thus, presumably because we were not able to (but aren’t we all-powerful?) or didn’t want to stop the “other country” from attacking Iran, we had to attack Iran first because their threat of retaliation was imminent (or, I guess, imminent-ish).

There is no question what country the “other country” is. And since Rubio has made those remarks, I have heard several anti-Trump voices on television state that (and I paraphrase), “It looks like the United States is just the pawn of Benjamin Netanyahu, and it is Netanyahu, not Trump, who is calling the shots, while Trump is just following his lead.” And, from the right wing, people like Tucker Carlson are saying the same thing.

The latest CNN poll, released today, shows that only 27% of Americans approve of our attacking Iran. And it means that many many of the 73% of Americans who currently disagree with Trump may believe that this misguided war is not Trump’s, but is Netanyahu’s. At a time when antisemitism is rising all over the world, there is now another reason for antisemitism, a war caused by Jewish power, Jewish wealth, and Jewish everything else. The powerful Jews wherever they may live are all led by Netanyahu, and have turned Israel’s long battle with the Iranian regime into a battle between the United States and Iran. We, the Americans, are fighting Israel’s war. The war with Iran is not Trump’s fault. It is the fault of the Jews.

So, how to fight against this dangerous conclusion? For one thing, we need to realize that, while the Trump administration will deny it, it just might be to some extent true. Just like American policy today is to turn Gaza into a world class resort and to move Palestinians out of the West Bank (and maybe out of Gaza). Trump and his family and friends want to profit from the transformation of Gaza, and American Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has announced that the West Bank is legitimate territory of the State of Israel (deeded to them by God, of all people).

I have long suggested that the Netanyahu government believes this is the time for Israel to take extraordinary, often unpopular, and often cruel steps to secure Israel’s long term future. Whether this is appropriate and will be successful over time is unknown. It is a gamble. And it helps Netanyahu to have America on its side. And with Trump in charge of the United States, the two countries seem to share Netanyahu’s goals. In the short run, these goals will lead to destabilization and create dangers. In the longer run, we do not know.

And these dangers go beyond the veryy serious dangers of war itself. There is the danger of increasing world wide antisemitism and all the ills that that can bring about.

The 17 million Jews of this world of 8.5 billion people (less than .002% of the world’s population) remain, as they seem to always have been, at the center of major world events (and therefore the cause of major world problems).

There seems to be nothing we Jews can do to escape our fate. We  are thought  to control world finances, world politics, world culture, world everything. And if it ever looks like we don’t, the assumption is that we are going through a phase where we are being very clever hiding our power. If we perform acts that benefit the world, that just shows both that we are arrogant show-offs, and that we are pretending to be good, when deep down we are evil.

Yes, the war with Iran will increase anti-Israel, and therefore anti-Jewish, sentiment across the world. What else is new?

You know the old question: Is it good for the Jews?

But you may be deluded into thinking that there is more than one possible answer. In fact, the answer is always “no”.

We needed a break on Saturday, so we drove to Baltimore to visit the American Visionary Art Museum. We had not been to this unique and wonderful museum for years.

We needed lunch before our visit, didn’t want to battle downtown or Inner Harbor Baltimore, so drove a little south and wound up just outside the city line in Brooklyn Park, Maryland.

While wandering around looking for a decent place to eat, we were reminded not to be totally distracted by the war in the Middle East.

We found a Salvadoran-Mexican restaurant, Les Esperanza. It’s a fairly large, and remarkably clean restaurant that was almost entirely filled with family groups. I counted more than 80 customers, and they all looked Hispanic. I asked the waiter if we were the first non-Hispanics that he had ever served. He laughed, and said, “Oh, no. We get 4 or 5 every day.” The food was very good.

The Visionary Art Museum specializes in what Wikipedia calls “outsider art”. You have not heard of the artists, and they include folk artists, artists who learned their craft in prison, in hospitals, in orphanages, in mental institutions, and in concentration camps. The signage tells you a lot about the artists’ unique backgrounds, and often equally unique world views. For the most part, the quality of the art is first class.

And in addition to wall art and sculpture, there is a large model of the Lusitania. Anything unique about this model, other than its size? Yes, it is made entirely of 194,000 toothpicks.

After the museum, we strolled around Federal  Hill Park, with its high-up views of the city.

And then, we came home, but went out again, to see our old friends, Little Red and the Renegades, playing in Silver Spring.

Then, as the not young crowd thinned out by 10 p.m., we slowly drove home.

Monday night begins the holiday of Purim. A “minor” holiday, in that it does not require one to cease work and spend all day at a synagogue, but a major holiday in that it is a celebratory day, a day which is a response to the biblical story of Esther and her cousin Mordecai, and evil Haman. Haman, an advisor to the King, determines to kill all the Jews. But Esther, the King’s choice to succeed his wife Vashti, and who is Jewish (something she keeps from the King) convinces the King that this would be wrong, and the King turns against Haman and has him hanged.

So far, so good. And the contemporary Purim celebrations at synagogues world wide, are very celebratory, and are more and more concentrated on children. Carnivals, and costumes, and games and fun, along with the reading of the Megillat Esther, where Haman is booed with voices and groggers, each time his name is mentioned in Esther, and that would be 54 times. And then there is the tradition of the Purim Spiel – generally a comic play, often interspersed with the reading of the Megillat Esther – often raucus, showing off the talent of the amateur players. SNL skits writ large.

Our synagogue, Adas Israel, probably does Purim more lavishly than any other synagogue in the history of synagogues. Well, of course, I don’t know that to be true, but the staff works very hard turning large parts of a large building into a make believe world, serving food and frivolity both before and after the reading of the Megillat. And, oh yes, there is another tradition – a strange tradition that says you should get drunk on Purim, so drunk that you can no longer tell Haman from Mordecai.

But, as usual, there are complications. Two that I can think of this morning.

First, the story of Esther (as far as we know, it is only a story….but you never can tell what the next generation of archeologists might turn up) takes place in Shushan. Shushan, also known as Susa, and today the mid-sized Iranian city of Shush, is located on the western edge of Iran, near the Iraqi border. It was a major Persian city in ancient times, and the home of a large palace built by Darius and finished by Xerxes. Archeological remains of the palace have been found. And, in fact, King Ahasueros of the Book of Esther has been identified historically as Xerxes I, who ruled a kingdom that stretched as far east as India in the 5th century BCE.

Second, the Megillat Esther is more than just a story of the Jews being saved from an antisemitic tyrant who was out to destroy them. I quote from Chapter 9, from a translation found on the website Sefaria.org.

“For Mordecai was now powerful in the royal palace, and his fame was spreading through all the provinces; this man Mordecai was growing ever more powerful.

“So the Jews struck at their enemies with the sword, slaying and destroying; they wreaked their will upon their enemies. In the fortress Shushan, the Jews killed a total of five hundred of them. They also killed Parshandatha, Dalphon, Aspatha, Porata, Adalia, Aridatha, Parmashta, Arisai, Aridai and Vaizatha, the ten sons of Haman, son of Hammedatha, the foe of the Jews. But they did not lay hands on the spoil. When the number of those slain in the fortress Shushan was reported on that same day to the king, the king said to Queen Esther, “In the fortress Shushan alone the Jews have killed a total of five hundred, as well as the ten sons of Haman. What then must they have done in the provinces of the realm! What is your wish now? It shall be granted. and what else is your request? It shall be fulfilled.

“If it please Your Majesty”, Esther replied, “let the Jews in Shuham be permitted to act tomorrow also as they did today; and let Haman’s ten sons be impaled on the stake.” The king ordered that this shall be done, and the decree was proclaimed in Shushan. Haman’s ten sons were impaled, and the Jews in Shushan mustered again on the fourteenth day of Adar and slew three hundred men in Shushan. But they did not lay hands on the spoil.”

“The rest of the Jews, those in the King’s provinces, likewise mustered and fought for their lives. They disposed of their enemies, killing seventy five thousand of their enemies; but they did not lay hands on the spoil. This was on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar, and they rested on the fourteenth day and made it a day of feasting and merrymaking……..”

So……

I think we have a double problem here. I have always had a problem with Chapter 9 of the Megillah, with Jews killing more than 75,000 and then merrymaking and feasting. But today, Purim 2026, we have a second problem.

Israel and the United States are engaged in a heavy bombing campaign in Iran, today’s Persia, the country of Shushan. This is happening in large part because of the strong anti-Israel stance of the Iranian government since 1979, and its actions to support groups determined to destroy Israel. I could argue both sides of the question as to whether or not this is a legitimate war (although I think one side of that argument is the right one), but we must remember there are at least three reasons why this war is being fought (forgetting a possible fourth – that Trump was looking for an Epstein diversion):

(1) Iran was out to destroy Israel

(2) Iran was out to destabilize the entire Middle East

(3) The Iranian regime was an enemy of the Iranian people, who deserve better.

All three of these statements are correct. But in the attempt to safeguard Israel, stabilize the Middle East, and “free” the Iranian people, the country is being bombed in a campaign that as of yet sees no end. Innocent Iranians, as well as Iranian political and military leaders, will be killed and wounded, and their country and properties and lives will be badly hurt or destroyed. It is not a time for celebration, for frivolity, for Purim spiels.

To celebrate with hi-jinks the revenge taken by the Jews in Chapter 9, while Israel and the U.S. are bombing the same country, and descendants of the same people, today seems to me to be the height of disrespect and arrogance. Disrespect of, and arrogance towards, those very people we say we are “freeing”.

I for one do not intend this year to go to tomorrow night’s Megillat reading and party. I understand the investment of creativity, work and money that has gone into the preparations for Purim this year at Adas Israel, but I still think the celebration should be cancelled. A simple reading of the Book of Esther would suffice.

As for the kids and their Purim Carnival, I think that could go on. The kids have nothing to do with the war currently being staged, and they deserve and need a good time. So I wouldn’t stop that (that is going on today, by the way), but I would make an abrupt change to what is planned for tomorrow night.

Of course, the Adas Israel  festivities will go on. No one will be swayed by what I say. Many will disagree with me.

But……

I will be brief.

He is attacking Iran. His partner in doing this is Israel. He has asked the Iranian people to rise up. He wants regime change. He is the head of the Board of Peace.

Iran’s people rose up at his request several months ago. He did not support them. Thousands were killed, wounded, or arrested. He did not care. He did not intervene. He is the head of the Board of Peace. He is not the head of MIGA.

He attacked Iran before, the head of the Board of Peace did. They did not fight back, although they did send rockets to Israel, which damaged property more than life.

The Board of Peace head’s first attack on Iran turned out okay, he believes. He obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities, he said. Not quite, so he is doing it again.

When Putin moved troops to the Ukraine border, some said it was for show. Yesterday, I had lunch with a friend (who does not read these posts), who said the military might moved by the Board of Peace chief into the Gulf of Arabia was just “kabuki”. “Au contraire”, I said, showing both my disagreement and bilingual strength.

Now, Iran is again attacking Israel. I have two thoughts about that. First, it will be a more serious attack and, second  it is totally unnecessary. It is Israel, maybe more so than Iran, which should rise up against its “leaders”.

In the meantime, the head of the Board of Peace talks about further conquests. We know about Gaza and Venezuela and Greenland and the Panama Canal. We will learn more about his plan to take over Cuba peacefully. What can be hard about taking over a little (well, not so little) island in the Sea of Trump?

March comes in like a lion, they say. Sometimes, it goes out the same way. Not with Eliot’s whimper, but with Vachel Lindsay’s “Boomlay, Boomlay, Boomlay……Boom!”

The two burning questions of the day. First: why do so many people (okay, 40% of the electorate qualifies as “many”) support Donald Trump? Second: why do so many people (more than 40% of the electorate) distrust the Democrats?

I think the answer is the same. Trump supporters believe that the current system is stacked against them, and that Trump and MAGA generally will destroy that system and that whatever they put in place will be better for them than what they currently confront. Trump supporters believe that the Democrats (and you can add to that those traditional Republicans, now known as RINOs) are the ones who have created and control the system they find stacked against them.

Of course, you have to add something to that to get the full picture. You have to add Trump’s cleverness, and Trump’s ruthlessness, and Trump’s chutzpah. His cleverness allows him to lie continually, convincing his supporters that his lies are a necessary part of his plan, that they are strategic lies and should be ignored as lies. His ruthlessness allows him to approach potential enemies, especially those with access to enormous resources, and tell them that they will follow his wishes or wind up (along with their entire business enterprises) in the gutter. His chutzpah allows him to ignore standards, norms, laws, the courts, constitutional standards, really anything, and claim his actions all as necessities.

Only he can fix it: people believe that. He can murder someone on 5th Avenue: there are always casualties in a war. People who disagree with him are his enemies: you have to quash them, or they might win.

I have said it before. We are lucky that Donald Trump is 79 years old. If he was 29, or whatever Castro was, when he took over Cuba using many of the same techniques (putting aside his very different vision for his country’s future), he was able to stick around for 58 years. And the one thing that Trump has not, and can not, take into granted, is what will happen after he is gone.

And, although we presume he will be gone in 2028, you never know what is up his sleeve. He could try anything. The most likely of the very unlikely scenarios would require the Republicans to win the presidency (Vance or Rubio or someone else) in 2028, and win at least the House of Representatives. The House, when it convenes in 2029, for the first time elects a Speaker who is not himself a member of Congress, a man named Donald Trump. (An alternative would have Trump, as his presidency winds down, run for Congress in, say, Palm Beach County or somewhere in, say, rural Mississippi, and be elected to Congress.)

Once Trump is Speaker of the House, the wheels will be set in motion. The newly elected President of the United States resigns, and the newly elected Vice President resigns, and – according to the Constitution – the Speaker of the House is next in line. Donald Trump becomes president for his third term, without violating the Constitution which says that no one can be elected more than two times to the presidency.

The biggest stumbling block to this scenario might be the president’s age. In 2028, he will be in his 80s. But, in spite of the Big Macs and Diet Cokes, he may be a healthy octogenarian, providing that his mental capacity does not continue to decline.

For that reason, perhaps the most troublesome problem we have is the sanctity of our elections. And Trump and his crew are going to try very hard (they already are trying) to limit the number of people who would vote against him by controlling or patrolling voting places, by limiting mail in and other forms of early voting, by placing ID requirements on voters that many would be unable to meet (at least on a timely basis), by challenging voters at the polls, by challenging close elections after the ballots are counted, by general intimidation, and by actions that we may not even yet contemplate. All these must be opposed – both through the courts, and on a precinct by precinct, state by state basis. How this will play out…..we just don’t yet know.

As you can see, I haven’t even mentioned the Democrats, who need to find a way convince so many (perhaps the majority) of the populace that they are not the enemy. To have Democrats moving to the left with progressive policies at this time is probably not a good idea. That time may come, but it is not now. Now, the attempt must be to convince that great center of the American voting public – the “independents”, whose votes most count, and especially the independents in the “swing states”. And, equally important, the Democrats have to get out the vote in the urban centers (thinking particularly in Pennsylvania) where the turnout will decide the race.

The question is: can the Democrats unite where there is such a danger if they fail to capture Congress in 2026 and again in 2028? Unity is not something that Democrats are very good at. That is one thing on which we can all agree.

I wrote this last night. A more professional or thoughtful writer might have erased it and started over this morning. Not me.

I am just sitting here on a Wednesday night thumbing through today’s newspapers with the television on across the room, not clear that any thing I see, hear, or read makes any real sense. Look at what I mean.

We all know that Kash Patel, who should never have been named head of the FBI, went to Italy over the weekend to see the U.S. – Canada Olympics final hockey game. We know he went on the FBI’s jet. The New York Times tells us that he is the FBI director is not allowed to fly commercially because he needs to be in contact through a secure communications system at all times. Why this is necessary, I don’t know – after all, there are deputies and others at the FBI who could man the ship for a while, as they would if the director, say, got sick.

Digression. In Letters From Groucho, Groucho Marx wrote Joe Dimaggio balling him out for going out to eat wearing a normal business suit. What would you have done, asked Groucho, if a ball game had broken out?

Yes, some people are indespensible.

End of digression.

Patel has been director of the FBI for under a year, but has taken at least the following taxpayer-paid trips, none of which are cheap:

1. His trip to Milan for the hockey game.
2. A trip to play golf in Scotland with a bunch of his Navy buddies
3. A trip to see his girlfriend perform in State College, PA
4. A trip to a Texas hunting lodge

In each case, he has said that his trips were really for important meetings, and that the frivolity was just coincidental. And if you believe that….

Next, on CNN, I was listening to the story about Texas Congressman Tony Gonzales, who had an affair with one of his staffers (married, with children), at least partially the result of a boss pressuring an underling. Heis being pressured to resign. He is not going to resign, he says, and he is running for reelection, with an endorsement from President Trump. Will this hold?

By the way, Gonzales, who is 45 years old, also has a wife. And he has 6 children. And, I haven’t yet mentioned it, but you probably know this. The woman with whom he had the affair committed suicide by setting herself on fire! Can this just be ignored?

And then what about Trump and Epstein? I think we know that, even with all of the material that the DOJ has released, and with all over the over redactions and the under redactions (all in favor of the men involved), the DOJ has not released everything. Maybe not even mostly everything. And now we have a prime example. It turns out there was a woman who claims that, when she was underage, Epstein introduced her to Trump. What happened after that, I don’t know. But this survivor told her story, and was apparently interviewed by the FBI several times. Nothing concerning her is among the papers being reduced, but there are documents relating her story that clearly must exist. Unless they have been somehow erased.

And what about our Peace President, whose Board of Peace, is beginning with the reconstruction of Gaza and in theory going on from there to pacify the rest of the world? While managing his Board of Peace, and while claiming to have ended eight wars, he has assembled half of the U.S. military’s attack forces (outside of ground forces) near the Iranian coast, with promises to attack the country again and again if they don’t do his bidding. He sees no conflict between war mongering towards Iran and maintaining he is the Peace President. And I guess he doesn’t think we should see a difference either.

And finally tonight, I heard that Trump is taking credit for the death of cartel king El Mencho over the weekend. I guess this is because the U.S. provided some intelligence to Mexico. Well, my question is: if Trump is the force behind the capture and murder of El Mencho, isn’t he also the force behind the 60+ people who were killed in the riots and attacks in Mexico over the weekend? Or is this just like the 100+ who have been killed in Venezuelan and Colombian fishing/drug boats? As to these folks, his response seems to be “who cares about them, anyway?”

Switching gears, this evening there was a Haberman Institute program (you can see it on YouTube or on the Haberman website, habermaninstitute.org) featured Rabbi Daniel Zemel, recently retired from over 30 (or is it over 40?) years at Temple Micah in DC, and now co-chair of Truah, a rabbinic civil rights group. The topic was the relationship between Judaism and civil rights, both historic and today. I thought Zemel summed it up pretty well in discussing the moral failures of today. They stem, he thought, from failure of people to recognize all people as equal, with the same rights as others, irrespective of skin color, nationality, religion, or personal ancestry. Okay, that is simple enough. But he thought we were at a crisis today, both in American and Israel, where a strong form of nationalism is taking over, and people of other nationalities, religions, or cultures are less valued. People, he said no longer seem to believe that you can be both a nationalist and a universalist, that you have to be one or another. He said, and I agree, that should not be any reason one cannot be both. I would add that finding the proper balance might not always be obvious, but that this is part of the challenge of being both, and it is a challenge we should take up.

Zemel quoted his grandfather, who was also a rabbi, who said that the problem was ……… well, I don’t really remember what he said his grandfather said, but it again led to that illusive balance. We should not be so nice that we put ourselves at risk, nor so mean that we don’t take into consideration the rights of others.  Something like that.

Sort of like what I quoted a day or two ago about Ukraine – too weak to win the war, too strong to lose it.

This also relates to the discussion of yin and yang, as described last Shabbat by Micah Goodman at Adas Israel. But how it relates to yin and yang, I don’t really remember.

You can see that I have a lot of things in my mind. Maybe it isn’t worth the effort to cram them in if all they do is jingle around in there.