It’s over ten years ago, maybe even 15, but I remember and it still hurts. It was the National League pennant match and the Nats were in a tough series with the Cardinals. The Nats jumped to a 6-0 lead, and everyone felt good. As the game went into the ninth inning, the Nats were three runs ahead, and, as I said, everyone felt good. No one anticipated that the Cardinals would score 4 runs in the ninth to win the game and eliminate the Nationals.

I also remember the presidential election of 2016, when it was clear as can be that Hillary Clinton, in spite of her baggage, was going to defeat Donald Trump for the presidency, as everyone (and then we really thought it was everyone) thought/knew he was a clown. You know what happened, and it happened again in 2024, when the opposition candidate Kamala Harris did not carry the baggage that Clinton carried, but unfortunately did not, in the minds of too many, carry anything else, either.

So, with that in mind, we go into today’s midterm elections, with Democrats leading almost everywhere, say the pollsters. A 90+% chance that they will take the House and a 70%, or so, chance that they will also flip the Senate.

But, as the old saying goes, don’t count your chickens before they cross to the other side of the road.

Now, I really don’t have much fear about the House. But the Senate is another story. I am not convinced that Talarico is going to beat corrupt Ken Paxton in Texas. I am not convinced that Abdul El-Sayed will beat Mike Rogers. I am not convinced that Troy Jackson will beat Susan Collins. And I am not convinced that Mary Peltola will beat one, much less two, Daniel Sullivans. And if I am not convinced that any of these elections will go our way, I am certainly not convinced that all of them will.

For some reason, DC public schools were closed yesterday (teachers had professional development or some such thing) and today (election day), so Joan and Izzy spent the day here. Joan at 11 is very self sufficient, so her day was divided between sketching, reading, and supervising her 6 year old brother, including a lot of trampoline time. Izzy spent quite a bit of time with his new rocket toy (dangerous thing, I think), sending one rocket up into a tree, where it might just sit until the next tornado hits. And he and I spent some time playing games (I really don’t like games) – each of the games (including Sorry and Connect4) is played with Izzy’s rules, rules that have little relationship to the printed rules of the games. Connect4 is simply to fill up the grid with pretty designs, and Sorry is played with Izzy telling his opponent what he should do on his next turn.

Last night, we watched a new documentary film, “Labors of Love”, which tells the remarkable story of Baltimore native Henrietta Szold, who in the early 20th century founded ESL schools for recent Jewish refugees from Russia in New York, and then went to Palestine, helping to create Hadassah and the Hadassah hospital, a program for social workers and youth camps, helped bring children from Germany to Palestine in the early 1930s, and more. In addition, she was a Zionist who, as was Martin Buber and other close associates of hers, believed not that there should be a Jewish nation in Palestine, but a combined Jewish-Arab nation, and said that Zionism would be a failure if Arabs and Jews did not work together. I can’t say that I thought the film was the best documentary I have ever watched, but the story of Henrietta Szold is well worth knowing.

Following the showing, the Haberman Institute had a Zoom program with the director of the film, Abby Ginzberg, which was very interesting. During the program, Ginzberg told several stories about Szold that she chose to leave out of the film. It’s too bad, because she would have had a much better film than the one she wound up with had she put thosev stories in.

I am going to stop here today. In fact, the only thing I am thinking about is the election. We will see how it turns out. We will probably stay up late.