(1) We went to the Nationals/Phillies game last night. The weather was perfect – about 70 degrees, no real humidity, a nice breeze. Perfect. It makes you realize how rare perfect evenings are in Washington during the summer. We have a number of them in the fall and spring, but in the summer? Very rare. It also helped that the Nats (fighting to stay out of last place in the National League East) beat the Phillies (fighting to sneak into first place in the National League East), 6-3. For once, the three relief pitchers held the opposite team scoreless, while as usual the Nats out hit the Phillies. All was good. We were there with four close friends, and that added to the fun. And the fact that it was Edie’s birthday helped.

(2) Our 50th anniversary is coming up at the end of October. We obviously want to celebrate in style. By style, I mean the style that Donald Trump, Jr. is accustomed to. In other words, we are looking for a Russian oligarch to fund our celebration. Someone with imaginative taste and for whom money is no object. Anybody have ideas?

(3) It is really tragic that the Kennedy Center is shutting down, and the fact that it is not shutting down for immediately starting renovations, but is shutting down until Congress or the next administration does something about it, is even more tragic. For those not following this story, the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees, appointed largely by Donald J. Trump and led by Donald J. Trump, has said that unless the courts allow Donald J. Trump to put Donald J. Trump’s name on the building along with John F. Kennedy’s, he will not authorize any renovations, and not spend the almost $300 million that Congress has allocated for the job. The legal argument against renaming is that the Kennedy Center was authorized by Congress, and only Congress can permit a second name on the building, something that Congress has refused to do. When Congress allocated money to upgrade the 50 year old building, it was never anticipated that it would be fully shut down during the renovations, and it was never anticipated that a president would fire all of the professionals who were successfully running the operation and replace them by sycophants who would do his bidding, including canceling programming that he didn’t like, putting his name on the exterior of the building, and shutting it down.

Just one more Trump era tragedy. I am waiting for the next renaming scandal. What will it be? My guess is that Trump will tell Mark Carney, Canadian prime minister, that unless Canada recognizes the name change from Lake Ontario to Lake America, Trump will order the lake drained dry. I also expect that the St. Lawrence River will be renamed the St. Donald, and am interested in the various proposals to rename Lake Erie – I know that Lake Pennsylvania has been proposed, as has Lake Cleveland. We will see who wins. Lake Donald, anyone?

(4) I got a text from daughter Michelle this morning. She told me it was “talk to text” – I guess I know what that is. Probably, it is talk to text. In any event, she asked me a question about this Sunday evening. A question about
“call knee dry”.

(5) I seem to have adopted the habit of writing a little something about interesting books I am reading before I finish reading them. At a time when I have no idea how they will turn out. Here is another one. Absolutely fascinating. The book is called The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon, and it was written by American scientist Ralph E. Lapp, and published in 1957. I had never heard of it, but I have a Penguin paperback copy, and as you may know, I am reading as many of those as I can fit in.

The Lucky Dragon was a Japanese tuna fishing boat that set sail in early 1954 to catch some fish. The first part of this relatively short book is devoted to a description of the boat, brief bios of some of the men on the boat and their families, and then a remarkably interesting description of how the Japanese fished for tuna in 1954. I have no idea how different it is in 2026, although I assume it is considerably different. Now, you might not think a description of a two month tuna fishing expedition in the Pacific in 1954 would be very interesting, but you would be wrong. And a lot of this is thanks to the very descriptive writing of Ralph Lapp. These ships carried 50 miles (!) of fishing wire, hundreds of buoys to keep the wire afloat, hundreds of weights which sent off shoot wires as deep as 200 feet, each with hooks and fresh mackerel for bait. How all this was set out and more important reeled in and stored so it could be used again is just plain fascinating. And how they handled fish that was caught.

Fishing was poor when the boat stopped about 2000 miles from port and they decided to move south where they assumed the fishing would be better (the book also talks about the economics of tuna fishing, equally interesting, by the way), and they came near the coral atolls where the U.S. had conducted atomic testing. A part of that area was off-limits to fishing vessels and they kept clear of the restricted areas. But not clear enough, as one morning an enormous flash lit up the sky, following several minutes later by an enormous boom and shock waves. Clearly, it appears, it was an American bomb test, a test which had not been announced. And it was not nearby, but distant, as evidenced by the time it took for the sound to follow the flash. But close enough.

Soon the ship was covered in a white ash which had to be cleaned up, but was too extensive to clean thoroughly, and the crew members began to get sick. They turned the boat around and headed back to Japan, burnt, blistered, with secretions from eyes and ears, with stomach and bowel problems.

This was 9 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and they obviously knew something about the effects of radioactive fallout. Their doctor in the port city of Yaizu sent two of the returned sailors to a radiation specialist in Tokyo……..

And that is where I am in the book.

To be continued.