You may have seen this on Facebook. I remarked that, gender aside, this looked like me and my conscience at a book store. And my conscience seldom wins.

(1) For example, a few days ago, I had to run a simple errand in Rockville. It would have been easy enough to finish my errand, turn my car around, and drive home. But, no. I said to myself “I should stop at the Second Story warehouse. They may have something I need.” Of course, they always have things that I want. After all, they have an enormous number of books. They say that have more than 500,000. I myself have never counted them. But it sure makes it easy to visit again and again and never look at the same group of books twice.

I stopped by after my errand, deciding I would only spend a few minutes looking around. I went to the “vintage books” section, a section I really never look at. It is fairly large, and contains books of all kinds, all mixed together. I, of course, was looking either for something that I thought really unique, and/or which included a signature or inscription by the author. On the third shelf I looked at, I picked up a book titled “Reminisces and Comments“, by a man named Adolf Kraus, which he inscribed to his friend Lewis Fabrikant. The book, in quite good condition, was published in 1925.

It was the subtitle of the book that intrigued me: “The Immigrant, The Citizen, A Public Office, The Jew”. Who was Adolf Kraus?

I don’t know everything about him, to be sure. I saw that he came from Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) when he was 15 and penniless in 1865. He eventually wound up in Chicago, where he became a lawyer (by reading law in a lawyer’s office, not by going to a law school), founded a law partnership with a friend, Levy Mayer (now the firm is known as Mayer Brown – not sure what happened to Kraus’ name), became involved in Chicago politics, became chair of the Chicago Board of Education, because Chicago head of B’nai Brith and involved with the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (the governing body for American Reform Judaism) and was a friend of presidents.

I picked up the book last night and started reading it, getting through the first 50 or so pages. It turns out to be very readable and it is certainly interesting to see how a young immigrant from what he terms Bohemia, after several false starts, decided to “read law” and make his way in Chicago. He came to Chicago in 1871, right after the great fire destroyed much of the city, deciding that this should be a place where a future could be secured. He was obviously fluent in Czech (again, he calls it Bohemian), and says that Chicago had about 30,000 Bohemian immigrants at the time, but no Bohemian speaking lawyers. This provided a spark for what obviously became an impressive career. I think I will read some more.

By the way, as I always do, I looked on the Abebooks website to see if other copies of the book are available for sale. There were three, one of which was also inscribed by the author. The two unsigned copies are each for sale for $100 at a well established bookstore that specializes in rare Jewish books. The signed copy is for sale for $230. I paid $10.

(2) Read these statistics involving Ferguson, MO, the St. Louis suburb where Michael Brown was shot and where the reaction created major headlines in 2014, and think about how racism still stalks aspects of American life, particularly housing and school integration. The statistics reflect the percentage of Ferguson residents (the total population is about 20,000, just as it was over 60 years ago) who are Black:

1970 – 1%

1990 – 25%

2000 – 53%

2020 – 70%

Enough said on that.

(3) The New York Times this morning reports that the United States’ national debt is about $35 trillion (that is $35,000,000,000,000), and that eight years ago, it was “only” $20 trillion. In the Trump and Biden years, the debt has risen about $15 trillion dollars, half under Trump and half under Biden. These are big, big numbers. The Times also reports that Trump’s tax cutting plans (even if you include any projected revenue increases) would add about an additional $4 trillion, while Harris, who has yet to state any specifics, is suggesting that the Biden budget proposal would be close to hers. It projects a debt reduction of about $3 trillion over a ten year period.

Just saying…..