Art is 80

But I will do it!

We spent the first part of today at Glacier Bay National Park in the boat. A naturalist and a park ranger spoke. I didn’t listen. I just took pictures.

Then, we went to Icy Strait Point. A guide spoke. I didn’t listen. I just took pictures.

We were told we were here on a very good, and somewhat rare, weather day. We were also told that everything in Alaska was not peaches and cream.

Bears and poisonous plants. It’s nature’s way of keeping down its human population.

I better start listening.

I have to say that the day promised to be a disaster. We were to pull into Juneau a little after noon and be able to disembark by 12:30. We did not have to be back on the boat until 9:30. Nine hours to see the town. What could be so bad?

What could be so bad? The weather. The forecast was for a high of 45 and for 100% rain. There was also a wind alert, talking of gusts up to 45 mph.

After a leisurely breakfast, we went to the top deck (the Crows Nest) to watch our entry into the city with windows in three directions, and to listen to the boat’s naturalist talk about what we were seeing. The weather outside seemed as expected. The views were beautiful, but not as they would have been on a nicer day. A few pictures tell the story.

But by some miracle, when we left the boat, the rain had pretty much stopped and remained only a drizzle the rest of the day. The high winds never materialized.

Juneau, the state capital, has a population of about 30,000. It is isolated in that there is no access by land (the only “highway” peters out 7 miles north of town and about 45 miles south), only by air (there is an airport served by Air Alaska and Delta)), or you can come by single engine sea planes), or water. There were five large tour boats moored in town today, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. That may add 10,000, or 33% to the population of the city. But Juneau is used to this and the closest blocks to the ship were loaded with souvenir and jewelry shops.

Juneau is in a valley, cut by water and surrounded by mountains.  There are a few residences, not fancy, behind the tourist shops. I liked the color contrasts at one address and was flabbergasted at the steps at another (I started counting the steps, got to 80, and lost count).

We had scheduled an excursion to see the Glacier Botanical Gardens, a privately owned tract of land that rises 600 feet and includes a very small part of the Tongass National Forest (the entire forest is the size of West Virginia).

(I could have taken many more pictures, but I didn’t. And I could tell you the unusual story of the garden, and of its upside down trees – see above –  but I won’t). We  were then scheduled to visit a salmon hatchery, but Colleen (our guide and bus driver) mixed up the order of our visits, and by the time we finished the garden, the hatchery was closed for the day. The hatchery, as I understand it, is a place where salmon are conceived through some form of artificial, or human engineered, insemination, and then freed into the salt water where they live the life of Riley for two to five years, but then return to their place of birth, as salmon do, where they become dinner.

Filled with disappointment, we (all 18 of us), under Colleen’s confused guidance, decided to substitute the Mendenhall Glacier, twelve miles south of Juneau. We would get there at 5:30, 30 minutes before the visitor center closed, and have an opportunity to glimpse the glacier itself, which we were told stayed at the same place 24/7. (In fact, this not entirely true. Since John Muir visited the glacier in 1880 or so, the Mendenhall has receded 6 miles, or so they say.)

Digression. Juneau and Mendenhall and a lot of other place names up here were the names of late 19th century men. It reminds me of something that I heard years ago in South Dakota where, at about the same time, a visiting businessman from New York named Rushmore pointed and said, “what’s the name of that mountain?” His host responded, “Why, that’s Mt. Rushmore! Hahaha.” End of digression.

The Mendenhall is one of many glaciers surrounding Juneau, all of which border Canada, and is the only one accessible by road. Here are a few photos from the entrance to the area. The surroundings are beautiful.

And here is Thomas Mendenhall himself, a meteorologist who helped set the Canada-Alaska border. Look up his bio. Very impressive.

We were back at the boat for dinner. I ordered lingcod. No, I never heard of it, either. It’s a fish. White. Flaky. But not for me. But my fried chicken, cole slaw, and zucchini lunch was just right.

Next on the agenda? Glacier Bay National Park from the water and Icy Strait from the land. Stay tuned.

July 5, 2026 was spent on board the ship moving north. No stops. Because our first stop is Juneau, about 900 miles north of Seattle, the sailing time is about 47 hours, certainly the longest time I have ever been on a ship.

I learned two things today (without really trying). First, I had assumed that when I get to Juneau, I will be further north than ever before. But, no! Both Helsinki and St. Petersburg lie north of Juneau.

I also assumed, since the Alaska coast is pretty much due north of Seattle, that the Alaska coast would be on Pacific Daylight Time. But, again, no. Alaska (most of it) is on Alaska Daylight Time, one hour behind PDT, four hours behind Eastern.

Today was chilly and cloudy, but there was no rain. The temperature was in the mid-50s, but there was a wickedly cold wind, which made outside activities difficult. If you walk three times around the periphery of the ship, you have walked a mile, which seemed like the thing to do, until you

did it. After one go-round, I called it quits. There were a few intrepid walkers, but just a few.

The decks were pretty empty. And probably no one else at 83 did even the one lap that I did. Which reminds me. I heard some demographic facts about our cruise, and one surprised me. I thought that the majority of those on board were elderly. But it turns out that only about one in 7 is 75 or older.

Holland America is a Dutch company, and Indonesia was formerly the Dutch East Indies, so it isn’t surprising, perhaps, that many crew members are Indonesian. In fact, 50% of the crew, I was told, come from Indonesia. That would be about 450 Indonesian crew members on board. The other 450 or so crew members come from 40 different countries.

So the day was quiet, including reading much of Evelyn Waugh’s travel writing from the early 1930s, watching The Da Vinci Code on our room TV, and eating three meals.

The executive chef is not from Indonesia, but from India. I did not catch his name, but he was introduced at the Captain’s Toast tonight, and got a big round of deserved applause.

The food has been very good. Tonight, I had a salad, pan fried sole with potatoes au gratin, spinach, carrots and asparagus, with strawberries Romanoff for dessert. My breakfast this morning was scrambled eggs, baked beans and Indian potatoes. Lunch, vegetarian tacos.

About half of the passengers are part of an Evangelical group, but I have seen no MAGA hats yet. But I wonder if this is a Trump crowd. It certainly does not contain anyone who, on first glance, looks like they would be a great friend. There are many younger people, although certainly not a wild crowd. The Evangelicals are wearing name tags, and the teenage daughter of one couple seems to have a great name, Symphony Knight. Another seems not have learned how to follow instructions for dying your hair green.

At the Captain’s Toast, they were giving out champagne.

The Toast preceded a show by illusionist James Cielen, who, talented as he is, left me bored.

Monday morning, we head to Juneau. Rain, rain, rain. Wind, wind, wind. Cold, cold, cold. Where is baked Alaska when you need it?

I have never written a blog post on a boat before, but here we are on the Eurodam, a Holland American boat with about 1000 staterooms, 2000 passengers and 1000 members of the crew. We left Seattle promptly at 2:30 on Saturday afternoon and our first stop will be Juneau on Monday at noon. It will be 47 strait hours at sea.

This is the Eurodam and, as I hope seems obvious, I did not take this picture.

But I did take others, such as the one I posted earlier on Facebook as we left Seattle.

I also took this one from the boat as we started our journey. It’s Mt. Ranier, as those of you who have visited Seattle know.

Leaving Seattle, we go north and then turn west with the Olympic peninsula on our left and Vancouver Island to the right. As we sail through the night, we will be parallel to that island all night.

We haven’t seen many others on the water. I have only seen a few small sailboats like this one.

And I did get out on our balcony to catch the sunset.

It was a beautiful day today. Our other days at sea look like we will be cloudy and rainy.

But not yet. This morning looks okay.

Or does it? Looked better in real life than in the photo.

We are on board, moving at 25 mph or so all day and tonight and get into Juneau noon tomorrow.

I think being on this boat is like living in an isolated retirement community. You have a small, but comfortable, apartment. When you go out, you are surrounded by people you don’t know and see no reason to know. You don’t drive, so you can’t leave even if you want to. They give you food when you are hungry. The staff is nice. And if you get bored? There is always bingo.

So far, so good.

We flew to Seattle sitting on the south side of the plane as we headed west, and we came into the area with Mt. Ranier to the north of us, so we did not see it. But, when we got to Pike Market, at least we saw more Ranier cherries for sale than anywhere else on earth. Good Ranier cherries are one of the best tasting foods in the world, as everyone knows.

We didn’t buy anything at Pike Market, although we spent time walking around and looking at much of it. The top level is basically the level with foods, flowers and crowds, while the lower levels have fewer people and fascinating specialty shops.

Not to knock the top floor. The foods all look delicious and the flowers are beautiful.

Speaking of flowers, we just had supper at an outdoor beer garden, Citizen Collective, very comfortable in good weather, and with surprisingly good food (not fancy, but good). On one side, the garden is bordered by a block long passion fruit vine, whose flowers are unique and (to use that word again) very beautiful. Why don’t we cultivate passion fruit in D.C.?

As trips to the West Coast tend to be, the first day of this one was very difficult on food normalcy. I started off the day with an inedible apple danish at Dulles, which I trashed after 2 bites, and a cup of coffee, which for some reason I didn’t finish. To eat on the 5 hour plane ride, I bought a Greek salad with chicken from Cava. I ate about half of it (if that) at about 12:30 EDT, and threw the rest out. We stopped at Mr. D’s at Pike Market at about 2 p.m. PDT  and I got a piece of spanokopita and a strawberry lemonade, which I pretty much ate and drank, and I bought a red bean cookie at a Chinese bakery, but could only manage one bite. At the end of the afternoon, we stopped at The Crumpet House and I bought a lemon curd crumpet, which I didn’t like or eat and a cup of High Mountain Green Tea, which not surprisingly was delicious. Why was I not surprised? This was hanging on the wall:

So…a strange food day. One where I never had a full meal and never really liked what I had, until I got to Citizen for a light dinner. Boy, do they know how to make a BLT.

Seattle looks like an important place

and is a very busy place, filled with tourists from Toronto here for a Blue Jay – Mariners series, and from all over for the 4th of July and the USA-Belgium World Cup game Monday.

But for us, it’s a stopover. Tomorrow, at 11:30 a.m., we leave for Pier 91 and Alaska.

And oh, yes, basically a full day in Seattle and no coffee.

As you read this, we are either on a plane to Seattle, at Dulles Airport waiting to board the plane, or on our way to Dulles in our 6:50 a.m. Uber. After a night in Seattle, we (and two daughters, one son-in-law and our son-in-law’s mother) will board a Holland America ship and head north to Alaska. It hit 102 in Washington today, and Juneau’s high was 48. Quite a difference.

I had to go to the bank yesterday, and the young, earnest and friendly bank employee asked me, “So what do you plan to do this weekend to get out of the heat”. You can imagine his reaction when I casually said, “Actually, I am going to Alaska”. He then asked me what I liked better, the hot or the cold. I was honest with him, telling him that when it’s hot, I love the cold, and when it’s cold, I wish it were hot.

After our week in Alaska, we are planning another week, driving through the upper northwest, where the temperatures will probably be in the 80s. Our suitcases are filled with t-shirts, shorts, and winter coats.

We board the ship Saturday mid-day, and we don’t have any idea (since it is the 4th of July) whether or not we are going to treated to any celebratory events, on board, or visibly on shore. The sun does not set in Seattle until after 9 p.m. and my guess is the ship will be at sea before that. So we will see what we will see.

I do like fireworks, although I generally don’t go out of my way to see them, as I often did when younger. We used to go down to the Mall every year, with the kids after we had kids, for the concert on the Capitol lawn and then the fireworks. It was a great tradition. Crowds with kids and great-grandparents, everyone in a good mood, good music and and a beautiful display to end the evening with the 1812 Overture and The Stars and Stripes Forever.

But along with destroying so much else in federal Washington, the president is also destroying the traditions that Washingtonians followed for many decades on the 4th of July. For one thing, the 4th of July concert is being held on the 3rd of July, devoid of fireworks. For another, even though it is being held on the 3rd, it is still being called a Capitol Fourth, and my guess is that those who watch it on PBS as it is shown again and again will not realize that on July 4, the west lawn of the Capitol was silent. Thirdly, if you go to the concert, you will not see any fireworks, but if you watch it on TV, you will see fireworks, but the fireworks won’t be from their usual place just off the National Mall, but will be telecast live from Mt. Vernon. You can’t see fireworks at Mt. Vernon from the Capitol; they are over 35 miles apart.

There will of course be fireworks Saturday night on the Mall, but instead of starting at about 9 p.m. as is usually the case, they will be starting at 10:45 or 11 p.m. and last not for 20 minutes or so, but for about 40. And of course, the National Symphony will not be playing before the fireworks display, since they will have played the night before, but those who come to see the fireworks will have the oportunity to sit through a speech by President Trump, which promises to be 45 minutes (or longer). So, kids, when your parents tell you they won’t bring to down to the mall to see fireworks this year, I hope you will understand why.

Trump keeps talking about how beautiful he has made Washington DC, and it should be beautiful on the 250th birthday of the country, but remember, we have the White House grounds torn apart by the now possibly halted for the time being construction of the Ballroom, the south lawn destroyed by the savage UFC fighting exhibition, the ellipse destroyed by the crowds who came to the fight, the Kennedy Center looking semi-abandoned and in financial distress, the Reflecting Pool is destroyed and off-limits to the public, at least one of DC’s public golf courses destroyed, Dupont Circle and certain other parks are secured by metal fencing, the mall placed out of bounds by the failing Trump Freedom Fair, and streets near and far closed for the festivities. Yes, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

As we cruise north from Seattle, we soon leave the country and enter the territorial boundaries of Canada, which never celebrates on the 4th of July, and this year certainly won’t, and it will be after July 4 by the time we are back into United States waters and Alaska. None of this bothers me. I am not celebrating the 250th. I see no reason to. If the Dems gain control of Congress next January, some celebrating may be in order. If they take control of the presidency in January 2029, the celebrations will be gargantuan.

We are in countdown phase here, 24 hours from when we fly to Seattle to catch the Holland-America Eurodam to cruise to Alaska. If you keep your eyes on this blog, I am sure you will be able to see what we are doing as we travel. It will be first time in Alaska, and first  time on a cruise, not only for the blog, but for us.

Tonight has been quiet. We watched a few hours of MS NOW, mainly focused on Trump’s corruption, and Milot Kiros, the Democratic Socialist winner of a Congressional primary race in Denver. I then turned on the World Cup match between the U.S. and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and saw the score was tied 0-0 45 minutes into the game. As I have said before, soccer does not excite me, and when the U.S. scored its first goal, I said to myself, ” Who cares?” I realized that I didn’t care if we won or we lost. That’s patriotism for you.

So I turned back to going through my things, as I have been doing much of this week. Tonight was “paper money” night. I have a shoe box containing old paper money from 33 countries, each country’s money being in a separate envelope. This is separate from a sizeable wad I found elsewhere that is comprised of money which I have found left in pockets after international travel.

I can’t tell you where I got most of this currency or when, and the value of most (not all) of it is modest. But it is interesting just to look at it.

For example, we worry when inflation exceeds 2%. In post-World War 1 Germany’s Weimar Republic, inflation hit numbers unimaginable. In 1918, notes like this 2 Mark bill were circulating.

By 1923, bills like this were being printed.

You know how many Marks are in a Milliarde? 1,000,000,000. One billion. You read that right.

Closer to home, here is an 1898 U.S. dollar bill, redeemable in silver. It is about 50% larger than American paper money today.

We Americans don’t have billion dollar bills yet, right? But wait. . maybe we can actually beat those Germans. Yes, there we have it. One TRILLION dollars. Honest Abe, can I spend it in one place?

The oldest paper money I have is French, dating from the years of the French Revolution, the late 18th century. And yes, these are authentic.

My favorites include currency from czarist Russia (I have 10 examples) and the early days of the Soviet Union.

I do have some from further flung places like Japan

And Cambodia

But I can tell you are getting bored.

So I will end as I began, but not quite. Here is a piece of paper money printed by the Germans, but not for the Germans.

When the Germans set up their model prison camp for the benefit of the cameras accompanying the Red Cross, for one day paper money circulated at Theriesenstadt (Terezin). I will show you an example of this fake money, which I bought at an antique store in Prague.

Of course, things don’t turn out exactly as planned. Of all the money that I have in this shoe box, it is the fake money which today has the most value.

“ALL PERSONS BORN OR NATURALIZED IN THE UNITED STATES, AND SUBJECT TO THE JURISDICTION THEREOF, ARE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES AND OF THE STATE WHEREIN THEY RESIDE.”

Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? But that clause that I have printed in bold does add a twist. Who is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States? The Courts have said that someone who owes primary allegiance to another country and is not subject to all American laws (i.e., children born of diplomats) are not subject to American jurisdiction under the 14th Amendment. There are a few other exceptions, like children of members of a foreign, occupying army and some others, but they are not likely to occur.

In its ruling today, on constitutional grounds, the Supreme Court upheld this definition of the term, so that children of the rich who travel here for the purpose of giving birth, children of those who sneak across the border in violation of American law, and I assume even those born in an airport while their mother waits to change planes, becomes automatically an American citizen.

This raised some questions in my mind. Such as: what about people born in Puerto Rico, not a “state” of the United States, but a place where everyone is a United States citizen? The answer is “yes”, but this is not on the basis of the federal constitution, but by federal statute. It could be taken away at any time. And this is true of Puerto Ricans who have lived in PR their entire lives, and children born of mothers who gave birth while just happening to be in Puerto Rico. It is the equivalent of being born in a state. But it can be taken away, at any time, by Congress.

The treatment of those born in Puerto Rico is the same as those born in Guam, the Virgin Islands and all other American territories…….except for American Samoa. In American Samoa, babies become United States Non-Citizen Nationals. To explain what that means would require me to write another blog post that I am sure I will never write.

Children born to at least one U.S. citizen (who meet certain qualifications involving their history of residence within the U.S.) can receive citizenship at birth. Those who are not so registered can become U.S. citizens late if they are under 18, legally in the United States and being raised by, under the custody of, their American parent. This again is statutory, not constitutional. There is nothing in the constitution that says that a baby born to the U.S. citizen outside of the country is automatically a citizen. So this, too, could be changed by Congress.

But, if a non-citizen gives birth in the United States, the baby is a citizen. So what, if anything can the administration to do stop throngs of would-be mothers from coming to the United States the minute their water breaks? Steven Miller has the answer. Do not allow pregnant women into the country. That would do it. All we have to do is have all women of child bearing age take a pregnancy test as part of their customs check upon entering the country. Then, what the Supreme Court says, does not matter.

Putting all this aside, does birthright citizenship make sense as a matter of policy? On its face, it seems like something that could be argued on either side. It does seem a bit arbitrary to say that a woman who happens to be in the country as a tourist, or short term visitor, gives birth, and even if she and her baby leave the day after he is born, he becomes eligible to vote in our elections and even one day run for president. On the other hand, I would think it is in everyone’s interest to make sure that no child is born stateless. And, of course, if a child is born in the United States, you know who the mother is, but not necessarily the father. It would be easier to determine paternity if the baby was here, for the father might be an American citizen. And, even more commonly, a pregnant non-American may be coming into the country to be with the father, who is an American, or who has a legal right to be here. It’s all a big burden to put on to the customs officials.

“A solution to a problem that doesn’t exist” is probably the best way to describe all of this. We are not overrun with babies born here, but with no connection to the country other than birth. I see nothing in our crime records, or our welfare rolls, that shows this to be a problem. It is one more way to stir up the crowd against those left wing globalists, who want to turn America into a cosmopolitan country with no sense of its own history.

One more thing to think about. Will the circle be unbroken? (I am not sure of the origin of that one.) What about this? Trump is president. Most people hate him and want him out. But they are unsure who should replace him. You don’t want to replace a right wing crazy with a left wing crazy (remember my post of a few days ago saying how no one likes communists, but only enemies hate fascists), so you call all Democrats communists. None of them are but, because the MAGA crew is so despicable, the Democrats run candidates who are as anti-MAGA as you can get, and they tend to be more on the left than than moderate Democrats. So you wind up with Mayor Mamdani, and left wing Democratic candidates for the House in New York. You wind up with left wing mayoral favorites in Seattle and Washington DC. And now, yesterday, we see the same thing happening in Colorado, where more progressive candidates oust more moderate ones.

“See”, says the Trumpers, “see what we told you about the Democrats? Radical, leftists, communists.” Because the Democrats run to the left, rather than running to the middle, it is possible that the frightened mainstream voter, not thinking he would be a victim of the fascists, but knowing how he would fare under the communists, is afraid to vote for the progressive Democrat, and – just possibly – in some places this would be sufficient to enable the GOP to win once more.

Will the circle be unbroken?

I continue to go through shoe boxes of ephemara, trying to figure out what is worth saving, and what I should throw out.

For instance, does anyone want a ticket to a Celtics playoff game from 2008? The Celtics were the champions that year, but I can’t tell from the ticket (which still has the stub attached) the date of this game, or what team the Celtics played.

Okay, what about this from the Queen Elizabeth 2?

I have never been on the QE2, and have no idea why I have this. Do I just chuck it? It’s sort of neat, no?

I have not been in the balcony of the House of Representatives since 1958. But I do have many tickets, like this one from 2013-2014.

Again, in or out?

On the more exotic side, how about this invoice from the Beijing Tongli Aviation Service Company of CAAC?

Now, I have not once been to China, so what is this, why do I have it, and should I just tear it up? Or should I write a thriller based on the story behind it?

Remember Bill Clinton? It has been 33 years since his first term inauguration, and I was there. This is how I got in.

South Standing. I obviously did not warrant a chair.

And then I have this card, which I will put in my “Funny, you don’t look Jewish” file.

But enough of this. I have an opera to watch and I don’t want to miss the first act, which started 43 years ago.

What a waste of a blog post, you say. Especially since so many more important things are going on. You are correct, but thinking about opera in Vienna in 1983, in the long run, may be equal in importance to whatever the Supreme Court decides about birthright citizenship in 15 minutes. In the long run.

Remember the novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz, the post-apocolyptic novel where the only piece of evidence of a prior civilization was a piece of paper, found buried, containing a grocery list? It was, all knew, the clue to understanding this extinct civilization. You just never know.

We all see the polls that show that descent of MAGA, but we also see the continuous attempts, which may actually be successful, by Trump to rig the mid-term elections, so we remain nervous that what should be a relatively certain takeover of the House of Representatives by the Democrats, and the potential takeover of the Senate, may either be thwarted by immoral (who even has an idea these days as what is or not illegal?) actions of the Trump administration.

Our nervousness is increased by the increasing emphasis by the GOP that Democrats are Communists. As nonsensical as this is, there are those Americans who probably have always believed this (or at least believed this since the days of that great Commie, Franklin Roosevelt), and there are others who are less sure, but who just don’t want to take a chance that that this may actually be correct. And it does no good to counter by saying that the Trump crowd are fascists, because while right wing America is deathly afraid of Communism, they don’t even know what a fascist is.

This brings to mind something I learned long ago reading about Lithuania during the Second World War. Okay, here is a mini-history lesson. Between World War I and World War II, there was an independent country called Lithuania for the first time in centuries. Its boundaries were a bit different from today’s Lithuania (most importantly, Vilnius/Vilna/Wilno, today’s capital city, was in Poland, not in independent Lithuania, and Kaunas/Kovno was the capital of the country), but the country existed, a result of the Treaty of Versailles. Previously, it had been a part of the Russian (tsarist, not Leninist Russia) empire.

When Hitler’s Germany moved east in 1939, and arranged to divide up central and eastern Europe with the Soviet Union, Lithuania naturally fell into the area of influence of the Soviets, and stayed that way until the Germans broke their agreement with the USSR and moved their armies through Lithuania, east towards Moscow.

Let’s pretend that Lithuania had an option. Let’s say it had to decide whether to be dominated by Stalin’s USSR, or Hitler’s German Reich. What would it have decided?

The answer is clear. The Jews in Lithuania, and there were several hundred thousands of them who were very important to the Lithuanian economy, and who had a long history in the country, clearly would have favored the Russians. Why? Not because they had any love for Russia, or Stalin, or Communism, or the USSR, but because if the Germans took over Lithuania, they would all be murdered (as in fact the vast majority were when Germany moved through the country, and even before in anticipation of the German advance). The remainder of the Lithuanians felt very differently. They did not feel themselves targeted by the Germans (only Jews and Gypsies did – and of course intellectuals and opposition politicians), and they assumed that life under German occupation, while not ideal, would be livable. On the other hand, if the Communists moved in, their lives would be torn asunder, their property would be stolen from them, their freedom curtailed, and so forth.

In other words, Communism affects everyone, so most everyone is afraid of it and against it. Fascism, on the other hand, only affects those groups targeted as enemies by the fascists, and if you are not a member of one of those groups, your life will continue without change, and in fact may even in some ways be improved. If the United States becomes a fascist oriented nation (as Trump wants it to be, whether he recognizes that or not), his supporters will, they think, be the winners, so why should they be against it. On the other hand, if the Communists take over……

So, to a certain number of Americans, arguing that Democrats are communists will be a winning argument for MAGA. So, the Republicans, who don’t care at all if they lie, as we know, will call all Democrats communists.

So what will the Democrats do? In part, they will ignore the screaming of the Republicans. “No one will really think we are communists”, they will think (incorrectly). But, worse than that, they will ignore the attempt (against successful, I am sure, to some extent) to target some of the Democrats as communists, because some of the “progressive” Democrats, who are members of the Democratic Socialist faction of the party and who are winning elections here and there, are calling themselves not only Democratic Socialists, but socialists, pure and simple. And if you think you can explain the difference between being a Democratic Socialist, a socialist, or a communist to conservative Americans, you are kidding yourself.

And this panics those Democrats (by far the majority) who are not Democratic Socialists and who don’t even know what it means to identify that way. So the “moderate” Democrats start badmouthing the Democratic Socialists as if they are as dangerous as ….. communists!

We will now have the Democratic Party (it was Will Rogers, right, who said “I don’t belong to any political party. I am a Democrat.”) split in two, divided among itself, and playing right into the hands of the Republicans.

The Democrats should know better than that, but apparently they don’t. The fact is that the majority of political positions taken by the most moderate of moderate Democrats, and the members of the Democratic Socialists, are identical, including things like more support for housing, and education, and civil rights, universal health care. In fact the only reason the moderate Democrats are yelling at the progressive Democrats is that they fear that the Republicans calling the progressive Democrats communists will hurt the party. But what they are doing will hurt the party even more.

There is no reason why all Democrats (of course, all is too broad a word, I know that) can’t get together with general policy positions which are those of moderate and left wing Democrats alike, and which are policies that the majority of Americans do or should endorse. But it does not look like this will happen.

New York is one of the big battlegrounds here. That is where the majority of Democratic Socialist type victories have occurred. But New York is also the home of the Democratic leaders of both Houses, Schumer and Jeffries. This is another reason why, as I have been saying consistently, that to ensure victory in November, these leaders should be replaced. Of course, that won’t happen.

In addition to all the other problems we will have to face between now and November, we will get numb to Republicans calling all Democrats communists, we will see the Democratic party itself failing to separate itself from the claims, and we will see the likelihood of double Democratic victories in November narrow and narrow.

That’s it for today. It will be a busy one. Not going to take the time to proofread. Sorry about that. I will bear the slings and arrows of my wife’s criticism.

This will not be the first time I have written about my stamp collection. I wrote about it 1955, when I was in the eighth grade, when I was 13. I don’t remember what the assignment was. It was in Social Studies class and my teacher was one of my favorites, Mr. Coleman. I am sure I don’t have my essay anywhere, but I imagine it was only two or three pages, and I remember the subject, which I thought (at the time, and maybe still now) was brilliant. My thesis was something like: You can become a great historian through stamp collecting.

The reason I remember this is that, although I thought it was brilliant, Mr. Coleman didn’t. His red pencil remarks belittled my well thought out thesis and told me that I was exaggerating and that he did not assume that I was really being serious.

But perhaps the joke was on him. About 50 years later (and I don’t remember where), I found a well researched article that took the same position that I took as an 8th grader.

I don’t maintain that my 8th grade essay was correct, and Mr. Coleman was undoubtedly right in his criticism, although a conversation would have made my position more clear. But I was a kid who never traveled anywhere. I lived in my house, I could walk to school, we went to see relatives, and we rarely explored any new territory. I remember when after 4th grade, I went to Camp Ivanhoe, a day camp located in the St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood (on South Geyer Road). Living in University City, I was the second kid picked up by the yellow school bus, and we drove west and picked up campers in Clayton, Ladue and beyond. It was a revelation to me. Every day was like taking a trip, and the bus rides were by far the best part of camp.

All of this, I think, led to an early fascination about the rest of the world that I had never seen. Books about children growing up in exotic locations, and a real fascination with maps of all sorts. This was a natural path to collecting stamps, and my goal, of course, was only to get stamps from places I had barely (or never) heard of, or to get especially attractive stamps from all over. (By the way, I never studied the stamps to become an great historian. Not at all. But I knew that if I did ……)

I started collecting stamps when I was about 9 years old, about the time I went to Camp Ivanhoe. I kept at it (as kids then did) through junior high school, and then other things became more important. But, out of fashion that it became, I did go back to it for spurts of time over the years.

I collected stamps like I collect everything else (and I do collect everything else). Quantity over quality. The more the merrier. At some point (and I have no recollection of that point – was it during my high school years, college years, or later?), I bought a three volume Supreme Global Stamp Album, which was the Cadillac of stamp albums, to house my collection.

It replaced my original album, which I still have.

And my old album has my 4th or 5th grade informative message for anyone who finds this album if they happen to find it by the side of the road.

A. Margulis was my grandfather.

At most points, during my active collecting spurts, I subscribed to “on approval” services. The stamp companies would send you books of stamps, and you would simply remove those from their books and pay them a dime or a quarter a stamp, return everything and wait for the next shipments. Or sometimes, the stamps would not come in books, but in little envelopes (“25 stamps from Nigeria, $1.50”).

I would go years without touching my collection, and then something would happen, and I would be back at it.

For a while, during the 1980s, my philatelic activities took a new twist. I started buying entire collections. No longer 25 cents a stamp, I started buying old albums, paying (I don’t really remember) $50 or $100 per album or collection. I liked the albums as well as the stamps. How could you not?

My Supreme Global albums, by the way, date from 1965. I decided to limit my collecting to stamps that were issued in 1965 or before, and have pretty much done that. Since about that time, stamps have been issued more for collectors than for actual use; I have no interest in that.

All this is a preface to say that, as a part of cleaning up all the things that I have gathered over the years, I have pulled out boxes of stamps that have gathered dust over decades.

There are, for example, in this box alone, several thousand stamps (almost all pre-1965), which need sorting. Most may be duplicates. Most have no monetary value.

But sometimes you are surprised. As an example (and I know this is post-1965), yesterday I came across this “first day cover” celebrating the victory of Bangla Desh (then, two words, I guess) over Pakistan in its war of revolution and liberation. This retails for something over $100 apparently.

Where, you ask did I get this? I have no idea. Nor do I have any idea at all how most of these loose envelopes filled with stamps got here. I bought them? I got them from dead relatives? I really don’t know. But here they are.

By the way, did you know that Bangla Desh won its war of independence on December 20, 1971? No? Well, now you do. You are on your way to become a great hiistorian.

Take that, Mr. Coleman!

This is the basic question of human existence.

(1) I am sitting here thinking about Hannah Beech. That is highly extraordinary because until about a half hour ago, I don’t know that I had ever heard of Hannah Beech, and I still don’t really know much about her. She is a New York Times reporter, and she has an article on Page 1 of today’s newspaper, titled “Drumbeat of Death Surrounds Myanmar Rebels”. It is a story of the ongoing rebellion in Anyar Province, which she and a Times photographer visited, where an undersupplied rebel army was hanging out and “where the rebels say no foreign journalists had gone since the military had toppled the civilian government.” That was 5 years ago, in 2021. She also quotes a young rebel soldier (a “boy”, she says he is), who “had been told that an armed drone was prowling” and where the rebel leader said that “over the previous three days…..his men had evaded drones, fighter jets, attack helicopters and even paraglider pilots intent on chucking hand held bombs…..”

I looked up Hannah Beech in Wikipedia. I see she is American, born in Hong Kong, married with two children. She has been reporting for about 20 years, so although her age was not given in the article, I would assume she is in her late 40s or early 50s. Her husband’s name is Brook Larmer. He is also a reporter and for a long time was an Asian bureau chief for Newsweek. Her father was also a reporter, a war reporter who won a Pulitzer, and who reported on at least three wars – World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

So, maybe it is in her genes, but the concept of a mother of two going into the jungle of Myanmar where no western reporter had dared go for five years strikes me as hard to understand, and I don’t know whether she should be lauded, shamed, or both. Probably both. Maybe only lauded. I just don’t know.

(2) I am sitting here thinking about Donald Trump. That is much less unusual, as you would guess.I do that a lot. I understand the frustration that Donald has as he tries to run the United States. Not that his ideas are ever permanently quashed, but sometimes there are bumps in the road, such as ……. (okay, I don’t remember any bumps recently; thank you, Supreme Court).

But this is not what I am thinking about this morning. I am thinking about Venezuela, and its one-two earthquake punch, and all the destruction in that already much-destroyed country. Several months ago, after kidnapping the political leader of that country, Donald announced that “we run Venezuela”. Of course, “we”, did not mean Donald and you or me, it meant the royal Donald. And he made no bones about it. He was in charge of their political leadership and he was in charge of their massive oil deposits which were, after all, never really theirs, but have really always been ours.

So now that Venezuela has suffered two earthquakes with over 1000 reported dead, many thousands injured and 50,000 or so (those are the figures that I saw) missing, what is the royal Donald going to do about the country we run/he runs? So far…..not that much. But that isn’t really surprising, is it? How much has he done in the 18 months or so that he has been president this term about the lingering problems in the remote mountains of North Carolina? If a big earthquake occurs in the United States (and I guarantee you that we are moving closer to, not further from, the day such a tragedy will occur), what will his response be? I hope we never find out. After all (although there has been reporting that he is being fired), Donald’s head of response and recovery at FEMA was once (maybe more that once? maybe whenever he gets hungry?) spontaneously teleported 50 miles from his home to a Waffle House. I submit that you really can’t give your all to a recovery effort if, at all times, you are subject to immediate teleportation.

(3) I am sitting here thinking about the 250th anniversary of the United States and how celebratory it could have been. I have long decided that I will not celebrate it under current circumstances. But is that wrong? Should I go down to the Fair on the Mall? (I understand from a few people who have gone that it is not at all worthwhile going to, but should I see for myself?) Or should I go back and see the green algae on the Reflecting Pool? Or maybe try to get a glimpse of the damage to the Ellipse caused by the UFC fight, or the damage caused on the White House grounds by the $400 trillion dollar ballroom construction? Should we go and see the tarp now covering the front wall of the Kennedy Center before it comes down? Or should we just drive down Constitution Avenue to see all the bigger than life size photos of Donald on the exterior walls of all of the federal buildings?

Yes, there are still ways to celebrate and we would have to do that now, because we are not going to be in town on July 4, when the biggest fireworks show in the history of the universe (barring a few supernovas, but they don’t really count) comes off near the Washington Monument. At least that will be fun, right? Bring the kids……

Well, don’t. The kids aren’t really going to be welcome, because the fireworks this year are not going to start until 10:30 p.m., so if you bring the kids, you have to assume that they won’t get to sleep at all that night. And, it’s going to be a bit tight. You won’t be able to see the fireworks from the Mall as usual – it is, after all, junked up for the Fair, and you can’t see it from the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial or the Reflecting Pool (gotta keep that algae clean). So unless you can get on the Monument Grounds, or know somebody with a tall roof, you are just plumb outta luck, as they say. (Oh, and if you do come, of course no alcohol, but this year, also no balls or frisbees, and nothing in a bag, unless it is a diaper bag or a clear plastic bag. Just like going to the ball park.)

(4) I am here thinking about the ball park………but that’s another story and, today, not a good one.

(People ask how much time I spent writing these blog posts. I started this one at 10:27. It is now 11:08. 31 minutes, with a few interruptions to answer questions from my better half.)

“Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddled masses  yearning to be free,

The wretced refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

by Emma Lazarus

That was then (1883). This is now (2026).

In 1990, Congress passed the Temporary Protected Status Program into law, giving the Homeland Security Department the authority to allow into the country citizens of other countries whose internal conditions would not enable their citizens to return safely to their home countries because of national disaster, and that law allowed those displaced citizens to live and work in the U.S. on a temporary basis (read, for example, Haiti in 2010 after its earthquake) or armed conflict (read Syria in 2012). A well meaning law, to be sure, on sync with the thoughts behind Emma Lazarus’ sonnet (of which the above lines are the second, and better known, half).

But the law wasn’t perfectly written (what law is?) and undoubtedly assumed good faith on the part of those who would be administering it. For example, law was not explicit on when such temporary shelter could be reversed. In case of beneficiaries from Syria and Haiti, we are now about 15 years after the initial designation, and once refugees are here for 15 years, dislodging them can be very painful. They have not only lived in this country for a decade and a half, they have married (sometimes marrying U.S. citizens), they have had children (all of whom born here are U.S. citizens), they have bought houses (payment for which depends upon their income), they have had occupations (sometimes being heavily relied upon by employers, customers and others), and they have become threads in the fabrics of their communities. Perhaps the law never contemplated TPS (as it is called) for such a long period; I don’t know.

The law gave discretion of the Department of Homeland Security not only to give TPS, but to withdraw it, and that is what the Trump administration, under former Secretary Kristi Noem decided to do. The law did two more things, as I understand it. It set forth procedural steps that the Secretary was to take to determine whether ending TPS was appropriate, and it provided that the decision of the Secretary was not reviewable by the Courts.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Homeland Security Secretary’s ruling as to the Haitians and the Syrians, right or wrong, humane or inhumane, was by law not reviewable by the courts. Period. The three dissenting liberal judges said that, while the decision was not reviewable, the Secretary was required to go through certain steps to inform his/her decision, and whether these steps were followed was reviewable.

I haven’t studied this case at all, so frankly I don’t know, as a matter of law, who was right. But I do know that the position taken by the Court is going to create havoc not for a small number of people, but a larger number, and that the havoc was not necessary.

The case before the Supreme Court involved citizens of Haiti and Syria. There are about 330,000 Haitians in the United States with TPS, and about 6,000 Syrians. But the same reasoning would presumably apply to citizens of other countries whose status under the program could change at any time. The estimates of the entire number of people in the United States with Temporary Protective Status is about 1,300,000, from 17 countries. The largest numbers are from Venezuela (over 600,000), Haiti, El Salvador and Ukraine.

Because so many TPS beneficiaries have established social ties over their years here, it is estimated that the 1,300,000 TPS holders live with approximately 900,000 American citizens (spouses and children for the most part). So, like the other actions of the Trump administration with regard to other immigrants (those who came here legally, and those who did not), many, many, many, many Americans are affected, with families broken up because of loss of a parent, or thrown into poverty because of lack of an earner. The ultimate effects are on the children.

It was Gerald Ford who said in 1974, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.” He was of course speaking of Watergate and he was correct. But it may be worthwhile to see a little more of what he said: “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over….Our Constitution works, our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. here the people rule. But there is a higher power, by whatever name we honor him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice, but mercy.”

I always liked the decency of Gerald Ford. His steady hand steadied the country at a time of crisis. Where is the Gerald Ford of 2026? We need to find him/her, because until we do……the nightmare continues.

Congress, by overwhelming majorities, Democrat and Republican, pass a housing bill. They do so because housing is very expensive, home ownership is out of reach for so many, especially for younger families. They work hard on it, they shed their partisan differences for the most part, and they hand the bill to the president for signature. The president has been supportive of their efforts and, clearly, there is smooth sailing ahead.

But no. The president cancels the signing ceremony and says that he won’t sign the bill until Congress passes the SAVE America (from the Democrats) Act. He reverses his previous positions on the housing bill and calls it just a “minor” bill. Big deal, just because 90% of Congress voted for it, and just because housing is now looming high as an economic issue and therefore as an election issue, you think he should sign it and get on with life?

I have not studied the housing bill carefully, but Trump may be right that, in the big picture, this bill is might turn out to be minor. It attempts to make the production of housing somewhat less expensive by eliminating or lessening some regulatory and construction requirements, and may encouraging loosening of zoning restrictions. And it limits the ability of corporate buyers to outbid home buyers and put new housing on the rental market, rather than put in under the ownership of first time family home buyers. In the grand scheme of things, that may be minor. But so what?

Trump said that the real stumbling block to more home ownership is high interest rates, and he may be correct. But the Fed, under its new Trump appointed chairman, decided to leave interests rates where they were, rather than lowering them, in order to fight continuing inflation. This was a disappointment to Trump, to be sure, and he assumes that the opening of Hormuz will lead to less, or no, inflation, and the rates may tumble.

The SAVE Act, if passed into law, would put more chaos into what will certainly be chaotic mid-terms in November. And it seems clear that the Senate will not pass the act, unless the filibuster rule is eliminated. There is no way the Senate will give it 60 votes, but with a 50 vote standard, passage would be possible. Most Senators have been against eliminating the filibuster rule on the “what goes around, comes around” theory. But I wouldn’t put anything past them at this point.

Now, it is also true that presidents can’t just ignore legislation passed by Congress. They have ten days to act. They can either let the legislation go into law by letting ten days pass, or they have to actually veto the legislation. There seems to be an assumption that Trump is not going to veto this bill, and that sometime next week it will become law without his signature and without the passage of the SAVE Act. But how can they be so sure? Why should he hesitate to veto a “minor” bill, saying to Congress: after you pass the SAVE Act, enact the housing bill once more and I will sign it. I wouldn’t put anything past him at this point.

I also found the reversal of Senators Tillis and Paul on the War Powers Resolution interesting (even if the War Powers Resolution was itself “minor”). The populace is clearly against the Iran War and everything about it, so on the one hand it is hard to understand why these two (of the four Republican votes) changed their position. (By the way, Tillis is not against the War Powers Resolution, while Paul now voted “present”.) On the other hand, while we are actively negotiating to get out of the mess in Iran, a statement by Congress that Trump should not do anything more to support his war does put at least one hand behind the back of his negotiators (and after all, they are our negotiators). So, on one level, perhaps it is understandable, even though Trump would have tried to ignore it anyway.

Finally today, and I need to start my daily activities soon, it seems clear that the Republicans are going to concentrate on the primary victories, especially in New York, by left leaning Democrats, calling them the new leaders and faces of the Democratic Party (which in some areas they are), but also calling them Communists. I have mentioned this before as something that is hard to believe that a major political party would actually do, but now it seems clear that the Republicans actually will, and that such assertions will become mainstream and soon seem not outrageous at all, even thought there is zero (yes, zero) relationship between even the most left wing Democratic Socialists and Communism. There is hardly even any relationship between Democratic Socialists and socialism.

Okay, two more things. Yesterday was Robert Reich’s 80th birthday. I may be a bit crazy in writing a blog post every morning, but Reich (reaching millions of people to my dozens) seems to post something two or three times each day. Much too much for me. But yesterday, he talked about his 80th birthday. I will say this: it was an awful and nasty post (you can find it and look at it if you want), and it surprised me.

And finally one more time, Mayor Mamdani insulted AIPAC by calling it, its officials or its supporters (not sure which) “monsters”. Okay, he didn’t say it quite like that but almost – he referred to a larger group of organizations as “monsters”, but AIPAC was his “example”, the one he called out by name. I think he chose his words very badly, but today that is my point. He said that he was quoting Antonio Gramsci, Italian anti-Fascist who wrote something like (I don’t have time to get the actual quote): the old world is past, the new world is in the future, and this is time of monsters.

I actually talked about Gramsci and used that exact quote to describe the Trump administration about a month or so ago. You can search the blog and find it if you want.

Gotta run.

This is one of those days when I started a post only to decide that I didn’t really like it and it wasn’t going anywhere, and I should start over. So here I am, and where we will go, nobody knows.

Remember when someone called Barack Obama (now known as Barack Hussein Obama if you listen to the current president) an Arab, and John McCain interrupted the caller and said something like, “No, Ma’am, he isn’t an Arab”? I admit to having a mixed reaction to McCain. While he was courageously responding to a false description of his opponent (strange that this simple correction could be construed as “courageous”, but that is what it was), he was also, I thought, doubling down on the idea that calling someone an Arab was an insult, identifying them with a lower rung of humanity. Maybe I am reading McCain’s remark incorrectly, but that was (and is still, I think) my reaction. After all, McCain’s response included the words: “he’s a family man and an American citizen”. As if an Arab could be neither.

Now the woman who called Obama Arab so long ago would not have done so had she not heard, in her right wing circles, others say similar things. And of course, Obama’s father (but not his mother) was Muslim (but not Arab), and he spent some of his early years in a Muslimv(but not Arab) environment. But it was clear that he was not a Muslim, unless he was a deeply hidden Muslim which, I believe, as Islam is such a public religion, would be pretty much impossible. But in any event, many of Obama’s opponents had no second thoughts about calling him a Muslim, just as they had no second thoughts to keep them from claiming, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that Obama was born, not in Hawaii, but in Kenya, his father’s home country.

You would expect that leaders of major American political parties would speak out against this, as John McCain did (he also spoke out against the Kenyan “birther theory”), and some did, but many did not and of course one of those who did not was Donald Trump who, in fact, was the originator and main propagator of at least the “birther theory”. And even today, Trump cannot mention Obama without throwing in his middle name, because he believes that identifying Obama with the name Hussein somehow taints all Democrats. And, for some, it does.

Today, it looks like nothing has changed. In fact, perhaps things have grown worse, as the MAGA world, while not overtly referring to Democrats as Muslim or Arab (although Mayor Mamdani’s Muslim faith does provide them with an opportunity), are now referring them as Communists. And of course, members of the Democratic Party, even left wing members of the Democratic Party, are no more Communists than Obama was an Arab.

Just last night, in a 2:30 a.m. rant, the Man Who Can Not Sleep said that he would never let the United States become a Communist country. And just yesterday, at a rally in deepest Pennsylvania, I heard Donald describe Democratic candidates as not just socialists, but full blown Communists (he especially noted “that guy” in Maine with the “Nazi tattoo”, the Nazi tattoo somehow being proof). And on my Facebook feed, I get posts on a regular basis from a site (manned by members of the right wing, or manned by Russian bots, I do not know) called simply “Democrats are Communists”, which posts some of the more outrageous posts possible not about some Democratic politicians, but about all Democrats.

This is not really new. In scrolling on my phone, I see that in 2012, then Congressman Allen West (how did he ever get elected in the great State of Texas?) said that “I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party who are members of the Communist Party….it’s called the Congressional Progressive Party”.

Again, you would expect that true leaders of a party would denounce such a statement. I don’t know if anyone did at the time, but I am sure that today, Donald Trump probably would have agreed completely. You are either with him, or you are a Communist.

The 1917 takeover of Russia by Lenin’s Bolshevik Party was an extraordinary event. Even today, with everything known about the weakness of tsarist Russia, it seems impossible. In fact, at the time, Communism seemed more likely to take over countries in central Europe, countries such as Germany, and the potential takeover of Germany by the Communist Party was as great a factor in Hitler’s rise as was his antisemitism. But the Communist Party has never posed a threat to the American government and today, where Communism of the 20th century variety hardly exists anywhere (certainly not China, not Vietnam, maybe a bit in Cuba), it poses less of a threat to this country that at any time within the past 100 years.

Nevertheless, you say “Communist” to those in what Hillary Clinton described as part of the “basket of deplorables”, and they shiver and shake and hate and fear any of their neighbors who dare to question the lunacy of MAGA.

We are stuck with this, one way or another, until the next presidential election, although hopefully the midterms in November will provide some respite. And thrown into this Time of Troubles (an illusion to a much earlier Russian period when no one knew who the tsar really was), is the 250th anniversary of the United States. In fact, July 4 is just about 10 days from now.

Trump has planned all sorts of festivities, I guess, and – although much is behind schedule or off schedule – he is making many physical changes to the city of Washington. It would be nice for this important day to be celebratory, but I am not in a celebratory mood, and will ignore it all. I know there is a Jewish tradition that external circumstances should not keep you from celebrating celebratory holidays, but it is a tradition that I can not embrace. For me, and for many, July 4, 2026 will be a sad day. Hopefully, July 4, 2029 will be different, and hopefully I will be able to  then to celebrate accomplishments without  fear or dread.

Here are some before/after pictures of the south side of the White House before Trump’s birthday fight between the Christians and the Lions and after.

What more can one say?

My memory was that the UFC head said that the company would repair all damage. Today, I read that Miracle-Gro said they will do it. Will anyone? And when?

Of course, the restoration of the ground will not end the disrepair at the White House. Hete is how the former East Wing looks today.

Well, not really today. This photo was taken before the UFC fiasco. Trump wanted to live in a construction site, I guess, but he is stuck in the muck of a demolition site. And of course he has more plans. I certainly have not heard him say that “the muck stops here”.

And even before he starts construction on the Arc d’Drumpf, we have the continuing fiasco of the Reflecting Pool, made unbelievably worse by the arrest of five citizens who dared to put their hands in the water, by his threats against ABC and its reporter Jonathan Karl (“I love their money”, says the Supreme Grifter), and the plight (rather than the flight) of three dead ducks.

And then there is the Kennedy Center, whose physical destruction is only its surface problem, where there is apparently no plan to remove the tarp covering up the destruction caused by the removal of the Mr. Trump’s illegal spoilation of the facade.

Well, today is Tuesday and four more states have their primaries, including Maryland and New York. I am interested in New York’s 10th where 2 term Congressman Dan Goldman is running against former NYC controller Brad Lander. I feel for Goldman because he has done a fine job, but will probably be soundly defeated.

Here are the candidates, first Goldman, then Lander.

I have no problem with either candidate, although Lander’s foreign policy views and mine are not completely aligned, but I fully support his courageous actions regarding Dump’s immigration policies. And we have (sort of) a connection. As you may know, Brad is from St. Louis. I have known Brad’s uncle since pre-bar mitzvah Sunday School, and we were college roommates and remain friends today. Through him, I met Brad’s father, and we became friends as well, although it has now been a while since we have seen each other.

Decades ago, I received a phone call at my office from a young Brad Lander (at the suggestion of his father, who was thinking about going to work for a housing non-profit in Brooklyn. In that this was by field, he thought I might have some advice for his son. We had a nice conversation. I don’t recall most of the specifics, but I remember telling him that I thought the job would be a good one as a career starter. But I warned him against New York City. I tolld him it was a very unique and provincial place, and that a young guy from the midwest would never really be accepted as a New Yorker. Once again……

Of course, Brad Lander is no longer a young guy. He is 56. It reminded me of a conversation at the Lane and Edson reunion last Friday. Bruce Lane told me his son Chuck (former Washington Post reporter Charles Lane) was now 65. I view Chuck as still a young journalist with his entire career ahead of him. After all, I was already a practicing lawyer when I attended his bar mitzvah.

We saw Othello at the Shakespeare Theatre yesterday (between Fathers’ Day brunch at Hannah’s and dinner at Michelle’s) and the production was, as expected, very good. Good acting, good directing, good staging, good choreography, good entertainment.

But I must say that, although Othello has been around for over 400 years, performed over and over again, I don’t think it worthy of its success. Okay, who am I to say this? I know virtually nothing about the play and its history, which has been studied and studied.

But I know how simplistic it is. Othello himself is a Venetian general (originally from North Africa) who marries a noble woman, Desdemona, and his chief aide, Iago, decides to poison their relationship and convince him that Desdemona is unfaithful to him (she is not) and is having a relationship with a rival of Iago, a soldier named Cassio. Othello falls for it, and everybody (almost) dies. That is the entire play. This worn out story that repeats itself through history and theater over and over. And it makes it easy to watch and comprehend, which may be why, among all of Shakespeare’s work, this early one is so often put on the stage.

Now, I must say that, although the plot is trite (and, pretty unique for Shakespeare, there are no complicating subplots), the script is quite good. Filled with memorable lines about wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve and loving “not wisely but too well”. And many more. I’m not denying the guy had talent.

And there are a couple of unusual twists (I don’t think that is the right word; I am not thinking of unexpected plot twists, of which there are none, but of unusual idiosyncratic – oxymoron, I know – elements). I will list three of them.

First, Othello is “Black” and a “Moor”, and he is from North Africa. Now, Venice in the 17th century was a pretty cosmopolitan place, and there were certainly Blacks in Venice. There has been scholarly work on the Black gondoliers, and on Venetian Black slaves and freed slaves, and even on Black/White marriages and relationships. There were also obviously Moors in Venice; this term applied to people from North Africa and did not refer to skin color. The term Moor also did not delineate religion, and Othello was a Christian. Whether he was born and raised in Venice as a Christian, or whether he came to the city-state as a Muslim and converted, we obviously don’t know. We do know he had no hesitation in leading the Venetians against the Muslim Ottomans.

We also don’t know whether Shakespeare wrote this play as a study in race relations, although it has certainly come to be performed and discussed as if he did. There are relatively few references to to Othello’s “blackness” during the play (after the initial scene discussing his marriage) and had he been, say, a Spaniard or a Greek in Venice, you could imagine the play written just as it was with the references changed. Black, White or whatever, Othello was accepted by his Venetian compatriots. And, in fact, we don’t even know what Shakespeare has in mind when he calls Othello “Black”.

The second oddity (that is probably the word I should have used above) is why Iago (called over and over and over and over again, in the script, “honest”) is out to get Othello. There is no hint that it is related to skin color or ethnicity. In fact, there is not hint that it is related to anything. There has been 400 years of speculation (he was himself in love with Desdemona, he was jealous of Cassio’s position in Othello’s eyes or in Desdemona’s eyes, he did it for sport, etc., etc.). Perhaps some view this lack of evidence of a motive as a strength in the play, inviting speculation and conversation. But to me, it is a weakness.

Thirdly, the story line begins in Venice and ends in Cyprus. It appears that Venice has defeated the Ottomans, although this is not clear. In fact, the military aspects of this play (as well as the time line) is also very confusing and impossible to understand, it appears. In real life, Venice and the Ottoman Empire fought a major series of battles over the Island of Cyprus about 30 years before Shakespeare wrote Othello and Venice lost control of the island forever. But obviously this is not what happened in the play.

Enough criticism. Did I enjoy the show? Yes, for the obvious reasons. Well performed and entertaining. Just like watching any battle of the sexes. Just like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, another ridiculous, but entertaining show, where you can always enjoy the performance.

If I had reviewed Othello in 1604, and if I had liked the performance, I would have praised it, and said that the play itself would have a short half life. It’s the opposite of what I said when I saw Liza Minnelli in her very first public performance at the initial New Haven premier of Flora the Red Menace. My conclusion was that Minnelli had no future in theater, but that Flora, the play, was going to be a big time hit. Shows you what I know.

This is a picture of my father when he was four or five in Kansas City. The year was probably 1908. And, no, everything was not up to date in Kansas City. Or maybe it was.

Last night, we had dinner with 9 of the 12 friends we have supper with three or four times a year, and the discussion turned (after many other subjects) to computers and smartphones and AI, and their effects on the education and socialization of children. One of the group had recently done a lot of research on, and given a presentation on, the use of computers and AI in schools around the world, and its effects, which seem to be generally harmful and universally so, not just in the United States.

I am not sure I had too much to add to the discussion, which dealt in part with how difficult it will be (and is) to regulate artificial intelligence in today’s environment, except to say that no matter what we try to do, we won’t be able to stop “progress” and that the world is going to change and become unlike anything we know today. Chances are that will be good for some, and less good for many others.

So, take my father. I view him as a contemporary of mine, just one generation back. He was born in Kansas City MO in 1903, and died in St. Louis in 1979, obviously too early. But look at the changes that he saw. Clearly, in 1908 when he was a young boy, horses and buggies were the main ways around town. In 1903, the year he was born, the Wright Brothers first took to flight at Kitty Hawk. The world still was enjoying peace in its time; it was 12 years before the start of World War I which changed everything. Teddy Roosevelt was the president, the trusts and robber barons were being tamed, and uncontrolled immigration from Europe was at its height. Not only did television not exist, radio was still almost 20 years away. And, although telephones were invented in the 19th century, in 1903, probably about 5% of homes had a telephone in this country; and you can be sure that the home of my grandparents were not included in that number.

I remember sitting, on July 16, 1969, with my grandmother, in the common room of the Delmar Gardens Nursing Home in University City MO watching the first moon landing on the television, and talking about the changes she had seen in her life. She was born in Lviv (then Lemberg, later Lvov) in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in 1872. She remembers her first (or one of her first) jobs as a very young girl, helping to stuff bullets for the Emperor’s army. But even compared with Kansas City of 1908, Lemberg in the 1870s was quite primitive.

I was born in 1942. In a sense, I don’t think one realizes that changes that they have seen over their life. My memories over the past 83 years lead me to think that things were always up to date. But think of these things that I remember (especially, you who are much younger than I am).

1. I remember when no automobiles had automatic shifts, and when now and then you saw cars from the 1920s driving down the street.
2. I remember an ice man bringing ice to our house, a knife sharpener coming down the street ringing a bell, mile delivered in the morning, and eggs in the afternoon.
3. I remember when there was no TV in St. Louis and when there was only AM (no FM) radio.
4. I remember when the first supermarkets opened.
5. When I first went to school and learned to write, I remember dipping a quill into an ink well, writing a few letters and dipping again.
6. I remember when a fountain pen seemed a luxury, and the extraordinary invention of the ball point pen which changed everything.
7. I remember, throughout my youth, mimeograph machines, and carbon paper
8. I remember never being able to really figure out slide rules beyond the basics, and I remember when there were adding machines, not calculators, and they were almost as large as a typewriter.
9. I remember when all airplanes had propellers, and how travel changed when commercial jets began to appear.
10. I remember when dictating machines were introduced, and the first time computers were available in the office, and how bulky they were then.

And I remember a day in the early1980s, when I was working on a real estate transaction in San Juan PR, and a bunch of us were meeting in the office of the contractor, when he pulled out his pocket calculator that could do all sorts of tricks. We were all mesmerized. What would they think of next? How is this thing even possible?

Of course, every major society change changes society. From the time that hunter/gatherers became agriculturalists, to the time that agricultural Britain became industrial Britain and on and on. With artificial intelligence and super computers and quantum computers and who knows what else being developed, there are clearly going to be some consequences that will be negative, some foreseeable, some not. And there will also be improvements, benefiting most but not all. The nature of education may change, the nature of social interactions may become much different.

The one thing that will remain constant, as they say, is that there will always be changes. The society that our grandchildren will know will be such that they will look back at the pictures of my life and feel sorry for all that we missed. Will the future be better than the present? We don’t know. We may have lived in a golden age. But perhaps our age was not as golden as it has seemed, and the next generation may see progress in many spheres beyond our wildest dreams.

When I read that Donald has concluded that the problems with the algae growth and peeling paint at the Reflecting Pool were caused by Vandals, I naturally wondered if we had seen any Vandals when we visited the pool last week.

So, I wondered what a Vandal looked like, how I could recognize one. I asked my usual sources, and they sent me this picture….

I can honestly say that, on the day we visited the Reflecting Pool, there were no Vandals present.

I think Donald may be barking up the wrong tree. There are, as you may know, many beautiful trees lining the Reflecting Pool, and these trees are undoubtedly infested by baby lantern flies. Yes, only babies this time of year and, like all babies, baby lantern flies are hungry, active and do not know right from wrong.

In addition, baby lantern flies are very cute.

Now, I took this picture on our front porch, not at the Reflecting Pool, but they are all over and, because they are so cute, people would rather watch them than send them to Lantern Fly Heaven. So it is my guess that armies of baby lantern flies have taken over the Reflecting Pool, encouraged the growth of their allies, green algae, and are still feeding on that delicious American Flag Blue paint. And nobody has tried to stop them.

Actually, I am kidding. I know that Vandals no longer roam the earth, and that baby lantern bugs do not thrive on blue paint. So, who is to blame?

I have an unusual answer to that question. I think the person to blame is Donald John Trump, who just could not see the forest because of the trees. What do I mean?

It is simple. Donald John Trump, wanting to turn the water of the Reflecting Pool blue, went out and hired two companies to do the work, one of which is named (ta da!) …. Green Water Solutions!

Donald, you should never ignore the obvious.

Similarly, you should realize that a war has never been ended by a Memorandum of Understanding, especially one like the one you signed with your signature flourish the other day and one which Iran signed with the equivalent of an autopen. It is not surprising that Israel and Hezbollah, which had as much influence on the MOU as I did, are still fighting. And it is not surprising that the Strait of Hormuz, sort of a little bit but not too much open the last few days, is closed again.

The next move is yours. What will you do about the closed strait? Send in the Vandals? The baby lantern flies? Green Water Solutions?

Remember that Woody Allen film where the seemingly world’s worst punishment would be to take the accused and lock him in a tiger cage with a mutual fund salesman? Have you thought about threatening the new Iranian leader with capture, followed by an indefinite imprisonment in an ICE cage somewhere in deepest Louisiana with J.D. Vance as a companion? That should do it.

On my agenda today is a get-together with about 15 former principals of Lane and Edson, PC, the small law firm I first joined in 1972, two years after it was founded. I was then the 7th lawyer in this newly established law firm, which eventually grew to over 100, with lawyers not only in Washington, but in New York City and Los Angeles. A victim of its own success (see below), it disbanded in 1989, and its hundred or so lawyers went in many different directions. 1989 is now 37 years ago, and if you think that it is extraordinary that, 37 years after the dissolution of the firm, so many of its principals still occasionally get together, so do I.

Digression: the law firm I founded with Tim Aluise in 1991 is still going strong (without me or Tim at this point) in 2026. I practiced with that firm for more than 20 years, and it is now in its 35th year of operation (twice as long as Lane and Edson), but I am pretty sure there will never be a get together of all its former principals. Just won’t happen. End of digression.

Lane and Edson was founded by Bruce Lane, Chuck Edson and Stanley Frosh, and was first named Frosh, Lane and Edson. But Stanley left the firm after a few years when he was appointed a Circuit Judge in Montgomery County, MD, and the firm was renamed in 1975. The primary thrust of the then new firm was to serve what was a fairly new industry in the United States, the construction, development and financing of government assisted and regulated housing for low and moderate income individuals and families. And it kept that specialty (as it added others) through the years, becoming predominant in its field.

One of the facets then and now in the development of affordable housing was the sale of equity interests in partnerships that developed the housing. These limited partnership shares were sold to wealthy individuals who were primarily looking for tax write-off against other income (this is what the federal legislation provided for as a way to encourage investment in these types of properties), as opposed to cash distributions (which were limited both by the economics of the properties themselves and by governmental restrictions. Structuring these investment vehicles was, to a great extent, a niche practice, but it obviously had a lot in common with other investment structures, each of which had to comply with similar securities laws regulating the sale of such interest to the public.

The professionals who actually marketed these interests are known as real estate syndicators, and we had many clients who could be described by this term. One of those clients became involved with someone in the business of marketing interests not in affordable housing partnerships, but more broadly in entities which would acquire other types of business, both manufacturing and distribution organizations. This was a very lucrative business, and expanded into what is still known as the merger and acquisition business, where older companies would be purchased by new companies.

Digression #2. The merger and acquisition business, as practiced by certain segments of the industry, became very controversial and remains controversial until today, as the result of these acquisitions undoubtedly led to extremely large fees for the organizers and purchasers, and often burdened the acquired business with an enormous amount of debt which led to either or both of the acquired company having to shed some of their branches in order to raise money to pay the debt, or even to go out of business, resulting in job losses, etc. End of digression #2.

Representing the new entities created by our syndicator client and his new business partner led to not only an increase in Lane and Edson’s business, but an increase in the levels of legal fees being earned by the firm. You can imagine that the fees available through the restructuring of some very large companies outran the fees earned through the sale of interests in a partnership operating a small affordable housing project in a mid-sized city somewhere in America. And it was this business that led us to the establishment of a significant office in New York City, where virtually the entire merger and acquisition world lived. In fact, we were I believe the only m and a firm at the time in Washington.

Our affordable housing business continued, and we had added a conventional real estate finance business that complemented it, and earned comparable fees. But we also added some business lines whose fees were perhaps closer to those earned through our merger and acquisition clients, including a fairly large energy finance business, which was becoming international in scope.

In the mid-1980s, we began to realize how much the firm was changing, and how we had to change with us. We had for over a decade been a firm that prided itself on treating each of its partners fairly equally when it came to compensation, but now we had some partners generating much more income, and some of those partners lived not in DC, but in New York City, where expectations were different. They began to demand more.

At the same time, we had been hiring law firm associate lawyers at the same pace as most firms in DC, but the skills developed by our associates dealing with merger and acquisition, and energy finance, clients were in demand by bigger firms (largely in New York) who were willing to pay them much more. We could not compete, and began to lose associates. Something had to happen.

What began to happen was that some of the members of the firm began to peel off, to leave us (often with associates) and move to other and larger firms with deeper pockets, both in DC and in New York. And those of us who would have wanted to stay with a Lane and Edson more like the firm that existed before these other practices grew quickly found that this would not be possible, largely because by this time Lane and Edson’s infrastructure had grown to support the bigger firm. We had a first class Park Avenue office that housed over 25 lawyers and could have housed more. We had recently signed a lease for an additional floor in our office building in DC in the expectation of increased growth. All this had occurred when all of the office talk was about staying together, before the first groups split off.

In late 1989, amidst a lot of Sturm, Drang and turmoil, and a lot of publicity, Lane and Edson disbanded.

End of story.

(Of course, not really the end of story, but the end of story for today.)

But most of those who departed the firm departed in clumps – 3 went here, 5 went there and so on. Fewer, like me, went out on our own. But, I should say, that three former Lane and Edson lawyers eventually did work for Hessel and Aluise for a number of years. And somehow, most of us remained in contact, and organized occasional lunches and reunions, and then Zooms, and for a while now more lunches and get-togethers. And one of those is today. Two hours from now. And yes, there are a few of us who are no longer walking the earth but, I think, surprisingly few. Bruce and Chuck, now both in their 90s, will be in attendance today, and hopefully for many more in the future.

I don’t know about my friends and relations who support Trump or Trump’s “programs” these days. They have become relatively silent, so I do not know what they are thinking. I did watch a bit of Trump in Europe over the past few days. I noted two things that seemed to me to be a bit different.

For one thing, he looked exhausted. Big bags under his tired looking eyes. Even a fresh coat of yellow in his hair and paste on his face could not make him look anything other than worn out. For another, when I watched his press conference yesterday, which went on interminably, he sounded manic during his presentation (speaking much faster than usual, his voice pitched a bit higher, breathing every two sentences rather than every sentence), and during the question period from the journalists, he sounded less sharp in his answers, again what I thought were signs of exhaustion.

No reason to go over everything in what is apparently a Memorandum of Misunderstanding between the U.S. and Iran. Lawrence O’Donnell last night made the most important point, I think. The MOM begins with a sentence that says that the two parties will “refrain from the use or threat of force against each other”. Trump violated that first sentence before the ink was dry (or whatever the electronic version of dry ink would be), when he said that if Iran tried to impose fees or charges on ships transiting through the Strait of Hormuz, he would simply “bomb them”. And things got worth from there.

So it appears that the United States will leave the Strait of Hormuz, will end sanctions on Iran (over a time period to be determined), will guarantee that there will be $300 billion to repair war damage in Iran, will release many billions of dollars of frozen Iranian money, will allow oil exports from Iran, will exert no control over Iranian missiles or delivery systems, will not move to restructure the Iranian government or provide any democratic or civil rights to the Iranian people, etc., etc. In the meantime, the United States will spend millions or probably billions of additional taxpayer dollars to restore our military hardware after using so much up in the war. From the perspective of the United States and of Iran, this is a lose-win situation.

As to 60 days of negotiations between the two countries, does it really make a difference as to what will be decided (or not decided)? The MOM says that Iran will refrain from charging boats in the Strait for 60 days; Trump says that means that they never will (or we will, as said above, bomb them). It says nothing about them supporting their proxies. Trump says but they won’t support them…..or we will take military action against Iran.

The United States and Iran are going to talk about how to dispose of the current stock of enriched uranium, and Iran says what it has always said: that it will not develop or procure nuclear weapons. There are no restrictions on Iran having a peaceful nuclear energy program.

Tired Trump will have a hard time explaining all of this here at home. From the look of things, J.D. better start preparing for his short presidency.

Let’s change the subject.

Once a month, the Avalon Theater (our community owned movie theater) has a French film. Last night, the film for June was Deux Femmes (Two Women), which had won an award at Sundance. So we went to see it.

We didn’t really research it; it just seemed like a good idea. But disappointment developed quickly when we learned that the film was not French. It was “in French”, but the movie was filmed in Montreal. They may speak French in Montreal, but Montreal is a Canadian city, not a French city. Was this false advertising? Or should we have read beyond the Sundance award line?

French films are always (no matter the subject) imbued with French culture. This is what makes almost all French films worth watching. This film seemed to have been purposely made to avoid all culture. Yes, they spoke French. Yes, Montreal is a French speaking city. And, yes, I am sure that Montreal has its share of culture indigenous to the city, but this film reflected none of it. In fact, you only knew you were in Montreal because of the some time background skyline.

The majority of the film took place in the ugliest cooperative housing development in the world. There were two neighboring families – one with a 10 year old and one with a baby. The father of the baby was having an affair with a woman from work; the father of the ten year old was not having an affair with anyone, including his wife. The women decided that the world was passing them by and monogamy was not for them (in fact, that it was invented) and they were going to change their lives.

Digression: It was Dorothy Parker, wasn’t it, who had a dream one night, woke up and scribbled something on a note pad by her bed, went back to sleep and in the morning saw what she had written: Men are monogamous, women polygamous? End of digression.

So the women had sex with the plumber, the exterminator, the cable guy, and the house cleaner. And it was all (to the viewer, or at least to these two viewers) pretty boring.

Why do I say there was no culture? Because you know nothing about these four people (or any others). What was their background? How did they earn a living? Did they have any other friends or relatives? Nothing.

One more thing about Deux Femmes. It was only 100 minutes long. But it felt like it was three hours. That’s a trick in and of itself.

In Little Shop of Horrors, Audrey dreams of leaving Skid Row, and living in a little house “somewhere that’s green”. I would suggest that she pitch her tent next to the Reflecting Pool just to the east from the Lincoln Memoral, on the grass, under the trees, and next to the water, all three being green.

As you probably know, the Trump administration has spent $16,000,000 on “improvements” to the Reflecting Pool, including a new filtration system, and the repainting of the gray bottom of the pool a shade the president calls American Flag Blue. The idea was to change the color of the water to a cleaner looking color, a refreshing blue. No longer a hard to describe color, made harder to describe by omnipresent algae, but a color that is beautiful.

So far, it has been a failure. Whether the color of the bottom paint will ever influence the visible color of the water, I don’t know. It certainly hasn’t made a difference yet. And the reason it seems hard to tell about the future is that the green algae which the old filtration system let remain seems to be equally happy with the new filtration system.

I know this because we went down to look at the Reflecting Pool yesterday afternoon. The algae was visible up close, and gave the water a greenish tint when viewed from afar. Here are a few photos.

Not that the Park Service is just sitting idly by. They have apparently first tried to solve the problem using a nanobubble ozone treatment. But that, at least by itself, did not do the trick, so they are now pouring in hydrogen peroxide. Yes, a bleach, just like what Trump thought would probably choke off Covid-19. Here are the hard at work NPS employees.

Another question was whether or not the pool would still reflect. It does seem to, although the reflection is damaged by the condition of the water.

So, perhaps this was one more example of Trump’s ways to waste money. Or perhaps a cure will be found for the algae. But even if the algae is gone, my guess is that the pool will still not look like an Alpine lake.

But guess what? Nobody will care. It will be fine as-is. The Lincoln Memorial and the surrounding grounds are what counts. Not the color of the water.

Of more concern is what will happen on the other side of the Memorial, where Emperor Trump wants to build his 250′ arch.