Rabbi Lauren Tuchman gave a wonderful talk last week on the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av (Google it if you do not know) suggesting that it should be seen as the beginning of the High Holiday period leading to Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. I can’t come close to her words, but she comes to this as a person with disabilities. Lauren is blind (perhaps the only blind female rabbi in the known universe) and thinks a lot about how persons with disabilities are treated by others, sometimes on purpose and sometimes without thinking. Her thought is to use Tisha B’Av (a holiday associated with tragedy) to recall how you may have mistreated others over the year, perhaps creating small, or not so small, personal tragedies, and begin the process of repentance and atonement, leading up to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. I found this a wonderful approach. If you go to the Haberman website, you can watch her presenration and see how much better she said it (habermaninstitute.org).

Last night, we at Haberman had another presentation, a very different type of one, this one on the history of American antisemitism, given by Prof. Britt Tevis of Syracuse University. She is about to have a book published by the Yale University Press containing many source documents on the topic.

She traced the history of the term “antisemitism” to late 19th century Germany and gave it a political meaning, one which she continues to use today. She went through efforts in state laws and constitutions to keep Jews from holding public office, serving on juries, working on Sundays, and so on. And through other examples of public discrimination and defamatory writing. It was an interesting discussion, leading to many questions in my mind. You can listen to that on the Haberman website, as well.

To top it off, at my Thursday morning breakfast meeting, the presenter talked about the role of IBM during World War II, largely based on Edmund Black’s book, IBM and the Holocaust. The facts are staggering. IBM, through its German and Swiss divisions, in effect ran all the census numbers for the Nazis, identifying who are Jews and tracking their lives through their deaths. IBM provided the details to coordinate the pickup of Jews and Romas, to place them on trains to Auschwitz, providing that the trains would arrive at Auschwitz just when the death chambers would be available.

So, back to normal. And that includes celebrating daughter Michelle’s birthday with Michelle and Josh, Ollie and Ian, Gale and Edie.

But I still haven’t unpacked my suitcase.

We started out from Wytheville VA in a drizzle that soon turned into a downpour that lasted most of the morning. All of this surprised us, as there was absolutely no rain in the forecast. I couldn’t figure it out. One possibility, I guess, is that I was looking at the inside forecast.

In any event, visibility was down and the trucks looked like they had grown in size in the rain, like mushrooms. I soldiered on; in fact, none of that really bothered me. What did bother me was the light that went on on my dashboard saying that our tires were out of balance.

I figured we could hop off the Interstate and pull into any of the gas stations and ask someone to check our tires. I have never been so wrong. None of them provide that service.

At the first place I stopped, I was given a card of someone to call who was nearby. I called him; he only deals with trucks. A specialist. But he gave me another number. I never got to what he would cost, because he told me he was an hour away and had two calls before me.

My tires did not look low, so I thought I could go on to a larger town. I got off at Salem, Virginia, and went to a Sheetz station, a big one. But, no, they could not help me. One of the Sheetz guys, though, had a thought for me. Go down the street to the Walmart, and right next to it, you will find a Mr. Tire. That sounded right, he checked my tire, three were fine, one was quite low. He filled the low tire in the driving rain and then said, “You’re okay. No charge.” Of course, I gave him a tip for his service.

We stopped for lunch in Lexington, the home of both Washington and Lee and VMI. But here is what I did not know. Maybe you did. Do you know that the two campuses adjoin each other? That the only thing different is the architecture?

And do you know that after he signed a treaty at Appomattox and proclaimed loyalty to the United States, Robert E. Lee became president of what was then called Washington College (the Lee name was added after Lee’s death) for the last five years of his life. Not only that, a statue of a reclining Lee, Lee’s basically untouched office, and the tombs of Lee, his wife and several descendants, as well as the burial place of Lee’s horse Traveler, are all there. If you don’t believe me, just look:

On the VMI campus, there is another statue, that of George Washington

And elsewhere in the center of town, in the large Oak Grove Cemetery, along with 144 Confederate soldiers, you can find the tomb of Stonewall Jackson and family members.

You might think that Lexington must be a bastion of right wing voters. Au contraire. Lexington voted almost 2-1 for Kamala Harris. And their Democratic headquarters is prominently located.

We left Lexington (after lunch, a gelato stop, a book store, and some wandering) about 2:30. The weather was better, and we drove and drove, getting home about 6.

Trip over.

Tomorrow evening, we should be home. Tonight, we are 308 miles away in Wytheville VA, a 5 hour drive (with no stops – as if).

We had a nice dinner at the 1776 Log House, which is housed in a log house built in 1776. In 2021, it suffered a major fire, was closed for ten months and partially rebuilt. We have eaten here before one time, for lunch, but can’t remember why we were in Wytheville. Or when.

The building itself does look a bit frail.

And if you look at the various rooms down the alley, you may want to turn right around.

But the food is good. For example, they took a very nice piece of salmon, coated the top with a healthy layer of wasabi cream sauce, put crushed pecans on top of that, and decorated the entire thing with a zigzag balsamic drizzle. Believe it or not, it came out tasting just as well as if they served in plain with some lemon slices. Now that is culinary wizardry.

As you may recall, we started this morning in Cookeville TN, which is about 100 miles the other side of Knoxville. To break up our day before it even started, we decided to visit Oak Ridge, The Atomic City, located about 15 miles or so north of Knoxville, and decided to forego I-40 and take a Tennessee state road there instead. That road, Highway 62, goes through beautiful rolling farmland and up, down and around southern Appalaichan mountains. Much worth the extra half hour or so. I wish I could have taken more photos, but instead kept my hands on the wheel.

The most salient feature of the drive was the number of churches. You were hardly ever out of sight of at least one. You know the old saying (I paraphrase): If you can….do; if you can’t….preach.

When we reached Oak Ridge, we passed a house with a unique front lawn decoration:

Chacon a son gout.

Oak Ridge, you may be aware, was a secret town created in the wilds of rural Tennessee by the federal government starting in 1942 to provide a site to convert uranium ore into a fissionable material, with the goal of developing an atom bomb before the Nazis could.

The story of how a city of almost 85,000 could be built in a few years by the government, on a strict need to know basis, kept from the public, its budget hidden, and most of its staff of tens of thousands not even knowing the goals of their efforts, is a miraculous story. As is the story of Oak Ridge in the years following the end of the war.

And that story is told in several museums and many sites. We only had time to visit one museum, which tells the story of the town in accessible and detailed exhibits. We had no idea there was so much there. Clearly worth much more time.

From Knoxville, we got back on the Interstate and stayed there, getting off for a while only in the Cities of Bristol, where busy State Street marks the demarcation line between Bristol, Tennessee and Bristol, Virginia. This is another place that deserves more time, including the Birthplace of Country Music Museum.

Maybe one day, we will come back and see all this and more.

Looking to discover a restaurant no one else has found yet?

I have been to Memphis a number of times. It always left a good impression. But this time, I wanted out. Maybe it’s that our GPS led us to a road closed for construction and, no matter how hard we tried, it kept leading us back to the same place. Maybe because the counter sign in the hotel we selected around the corner from Beale Street said there would be loud music until 3 a.m. Maybe because the hotel we finally selected was next to a railway track where trains with warning horns passed at 3 and 6 a.m. Maybe because I felt I deserved a drink after my drive yesterday and I asked for a Ketel One on the rocks with a couple of olives, and I was told they had plenty of Ketel One, but were out of olives. Maybe a combination of all those things.

We started this morning with something special. You may not know this, but Edie has quite a bucket list. She wants to sky dive in Antarctica, explore the ruins of the Titanic from a bathysphere, and learn to speak fluent Swahili with a Nigerian accent. This morning, she was able to check one thing off her bucket list. For the very first time, she went into a Walmart! We were short of a few things needed for our trip and had to stop somewhere. Her excitement was without limit.

The rest of the day, including stopping at Pattie’s for lunch in Nowheresville, at an antique mall in Jackson, and at Loretta Lynn’s very own gift shop (next to her dude ranch) was filled with stuff no memories have ever been made of.

We drove through Nashville. Big city, no music on the highway, even though it is called the Music Highway. Go figure.

And, believe or not, we had no friends to visit and show you today. But, so as not to disappoint, I took pictures of some random people that look like people we could know. Here they are:

And then we arrived at Cookeville, home of Tennessee Tech and, according to Chat GPT, a city of approximately 200 restaurants. We had to choose one, and we chose The Putnam Room, across from the Putnam County Court House, upscale and just right. One of us had seared tuna, zuchini and sweet potatoes. The other had roasted chicken, asparagus, and mashed potatoes. We each had a Spanish sparkling wine. Our waitress, Emerson, maybe a student, did a fine job. I probably should have told her that “y’all” is not a word. But if I had, maybe she just would have substituted it with “like” or “I mean”, and all those things, I mean, are, like, contagious.

And that is it. Tomorrow morning, we plan to lose an hour and bet we won’t find it until our next trip to St. Louis in October, when one of us has, for the first and only time, a 65th high school reunion.

There will be two more of these posts, and then it’s back to bashing Drumpf.

We started the day in Hot Springs and ended it in Memphis. Or, to look at it a bit differently, we started our day in a Hampton Inn and ended it in the same place.

In Memphis, we were to meet up with my second cousin Randy, but instead he was briefly hospitalized and came out with a doctor’s note, so he told me, excusing his absence.

Before we left Hot Springs, we drove by the eight 100+ year old bath houses, the Gangster Museum, and the famous Arlington Hotel. Then we drove the 3.5 mile loop to the top of the mountain and then took the elevator up to the top of the tower on top of the mountain, from where we could see…..everything.

Then, a one hour drive to the outskirts of Little Rock, where we stopped for some delightful conversation with Edie’s college friend, Marvin S_______ and his wife Sandy.

We found a delightful brunch spot near their house, The Root Cafe for omelettes and a wonderful salad, and then headed downtown. Boy, is downtown Little Rock quiet on a summer Sunday afternoon. A lot of buildings, mostly attractive and no longer new (but widely spread), but no people. Then we drove around the state capitol building, mainly to see the statues of the Little Rock Nine, who integrated Central High School.

If you drive away from the capitol building in the direction opposite downtown, you see some important works of street art lining the walls on both sides of the road. Here are a few examples:

We then drove by Central High School, before heading out of town on I-40.

The two hours plus drive to Memphis should be easy on the Interstate, but there was an enormous amount of truck traffic on the two lanes moving east and the average speed was over 80 mph. I wanted off.

So we got off, stopped at a McDonald’s, and traveled the last 50 miles to Memphis on a state highway with no trucks. And almost no cars.

We got off the Interstate at Brinkley, a very small town where every building is empty and falling down. The homes and farms looked better and the few towns we drove through didn’t look healthy. Unless you compare them with Brinkley. Most looked like this.

One of the towns we passed through is Palestine.

No one was speaking Hebrew or Arabic. Or English. There was no one afoot. Fewer than 700 residents (but no genocide).

West Memphis, Arkansas, is almost as decrepit as it was when I was here last. And, on the whole, Memphis itself looks like many parts of it need new energy.

Beale Street was loud and when I went to check into the Hampton Inn there, a sign on the counter warned against staying there if you want quiet. Beale Street closes down at 3 a.m.

So we went elsewhere, staying at a hotel 53 blocks from the river. It is on Poplar, a major thoroughfare, but the restaurant choices are pretty limited. We wound up at Red Pier, a Cajun restaurant, where the food was surprisingly good.

Today, we head east.

We will probably never get back to Bentonville, but I would like to, especially when the Walmart campus is completed. If it ever will be

Digression: You know the old joke. “What did you think of London?” “I think it will be great when they finish it.” End of digression.

We went back to Vira’s Kitchen Friday night. I made the mistake of ordering a different fish with same sauce. Not a mistake in the taste sense, only in the variety sense. I also got a vegetable dish with the unlikely, but delicious, combination of cauliflower and green pepper. One more thing. I wondered if our waitress was from Kerala, since that was the cuisine. Turns out she was from Indonesia. Could have fooled me. Did fool me.

We drove south on I-49 from Bentonville towards Ft. Smith. The scenery on that ride is spectacular. I think this part of the western Ozarks is called the Boston Mountains. Or maybe it’s no longer the Ozarks. I don’t know.

Digression: Do you know that Bentonville was named after Thomas Hart Benton? Not the artist, but his father, the Missouri Senator who apparently was a driving force behind Arkansas statehood. End of digression.

About an hour south of Bentonville is Ft. Smith. It sits on the Arkansas-Oklahoma border which explains the prevalence of Cherokee Indian license plates.

While Bentonville is thriving, Ft. Smith looks content and funky. Because we had a goal for the day, we didn’t get out of the car, but managed to see some of the sights, like the two year old National US Marshals Museum.

Digression: I just heard that the marshals who used to fly incognito on airplanes have been reassigned to help ICE agents. I wonder how they feel about that. End of digression.

We also saw Miss Laura’s

Miss Laura’s is a restored brothel from the 1890s, the only former brothel on the National Register of Historic Properties, and a museum about the history of prostitution.

And we saw a lot of interesting wall art.

From Ft. Smith, we took Interstate-40 to Russellville, Arkansas. We ate lunch at a very informal railroad oriented restaurant called Stobie’s, where I had a turkey Reuben, and the waitress asked if I wanted Russian dressing or mustard. Say, what? It was very good with the Russian dressing, thank you.

We didn’t get a real feeling of Russellville, just skirting the central business district because we had a different agenda. Our old friends Carl and Michelle S__________ left Washington and moved to Russellville about ten years ago when Carl took a position as a pulmonologist at a local hospital. They stayed five or six years and then retired to New York. We think we found their house.

By looking for their house, we saw that Russellville had some large and nice residential areas which we never would have seen otherwise.

We left Russellville and headed south on “scenic” Route 7 about 75 miles to Hot Springs. We took this route because my cousin Jon in Hot Springs said it was so attractive. It is a very nice road, but there are few places to stop en route, it is very hilly and very curvy, and only two lanes. So, it was pretty exhausting. But nice.

We drove through the tourist area of downtown Hot Springs. Wall to wall people. Clearly, the place to be. Our hotel is away from this area (where we have been before; and I more than once), and we checked in to it, the Hampton Inn.

My cousin Jon F___ and his wife Sharon live near the hotel and we had a nice walleye dinner and conversation at a restaurant so good that we had to wait 45 minutes to get a table.

Here are Jon and Sharon:

Now many of you see Jon’s Facebook comments and have questioned our connection. The connection is strong and will remain so. No conflict in real life.

That is it for Day 9. Day 10 will be a little different than expected. My Memphis cousin is in the hospital, so dinner is off. So where we stop, nobody knows.

If you google Walmart New Home Office, you can see what they are building.

Yesterday was spent in Bentonville and it is very hard to describe this remarkable place. When I graduated from high school, Bentonville’s population was about 3500. Today, it closer to 65,000 with several hundred thousand living in the general area. Walmart is the biggest employer, with about 15,000 employees locally. It is building a new office campus which is unbelievably extensive. I can not do it justice, but I can try.

And these new offices lead to new multifamily and single family residential buildings, most being done with exceptional flair.

The reason we came, of course, is the Crystal Bridges Museum, showcasing American art. It is a very large museum, founded by Walmart founder Sam Walton’s daughter Alice. The architect was Moshe Safdie.

The art work, and boy, is there a lot of it, is stupendous. And it is a self-avowed practitioner of DEI, showcasing the work of all minorities, especially American Indians. I took many too many pictures. Here are some:

And on and on. So much more.

In addition to the museum proper, there are trails (it was raining hard) and a separate building, the Momentary, being used now for two photo exhibits – rock and roll performances and Johnny Cash at the California prisons.

On the top of the Momentary, an old Kraft factory, there is a wonderful Tower Bar, where we had a drink and snack.

There is a large square in the center of downtown Bensonville, where on the first Friday afternoon and evening of every month, dozens of vendors ply their wares or give things away. Every week.

The square  is the site of Sam Walton’s original 5 and 10, and now the home of the Walmart Museum, which we will save for the next trip.

All in all, I think this is what America could be and should be like. Why isn’t it?

We the people. Symbolizes our country, right? But it is fragile. Made entirely of shoestrings.

It is all inside out and upside down now.

We got a rather late start after a “see you next time” visit with our cousins Donna and Ed, and reached Bentonville a little after 6:00 p.m. by minimizing our stops. This 350 mile drive was our longest one day drive of our trip. That does not mean the day was uninteresting, even though it almost all passed by at 70+ mph.

Our first stop was in Cuba, MO, about 80 miles southwest of St. Louis. I stopped for a short break because a sign announced Cuba as The Mural City. That is not accurate. It does have a lot of murals (I assume as part of a goal of enticing tourists to visit), but it sure isn’t a city. Here are four examples.

The only other interesting thing in Cuba was a salon (no, not saloon) sign:

Our next stop, at lunch time, was Rolla, a bigger town and home of the Missouri University of Science and Technology. But there wasn’t much else there. I assume that depression must run rampant, so much so that the one cafe we found stated this:

I can see why Rolla native Claire McCaskill of US Senate and MSNBC fame didn’t stick around her home town.

We drove on and made our final interim stop in Neosho, a town of about 14,000 near both Arkansas and Oklahoma. Neosho held a number of surprises. It has a very large old fashioned southern style town square with a courthouse in the center

It has a mural depicting former resident George Washington Carver

And it has dozens of houses with unique stone exterior walls. I don’t know the geology, but you can see this type of stone in situ through the road cuts.

One other stop we made was at Redmon’s Candy Factory “in” Philipsburg, a town that may not really exist. It was very, very crowded. What a business plan they have.

On a literary front, we did stop in a small used book store in Neosho that had a children’s section that was much bigger than its adult section. Nevertheless, honoring the tradition that any visit to a used book store should involve the purchase of at least one book, I took out my divining rod and found for $5 a copy of Wanderings signed by Chiam Potok (not in the best shape). Then we bought two books for grandchldren, one a biography of Sacajawea from an Indian perspective, the other a picture book about desert animals and plants.

After we checked into our suite (we were upgraded) at La Quinta (the suite is in good condition but looked like it was upgraded in 1980 or so), we went to a nearby Indian Kerala restaurant and had a veggie curry and a fish curry served with kappa (you can look it up), not rice. So good we might go back tomorrow for more.

Our last day in St. Louis and we took ourselves on a tour to see the damage from the tornado that swept through the city in May. Forest Park lost 1000 trees, now stumps, the mansions on Lindell Avenue suffered extensive roof and window damage, and parts of North St. Louis were devastated. I only took photos when we got to North St. Louis. Here is part of what you see.

Quite a tragedy, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men….

Yesterday morning, we had down time, sitting around Judy’s and talking to her son Rick, who stopped by to see us, and Panda, who is madly in love with Edie.

Then, it was time for lunch and off we went to Big Sky in Webster Groves to have lunch with Charlie and Fran F_______ and Fran and Peggy O____. Another great meal and conversation. For context, Charlie is a college classmate (and retired professor of Irish Studies), Peggy is a sister of Brigid, whom you met two days ago (and aunt of Nora), Fran O____ was a law school classmate (and a high school classmate of Joe, whom you met yesterday). None of them have anything to do with my cousin Les from Sydney.

And then to top it all off, dinner and great conversation (not only about their children and grandchildren, but about their two great-grandchildren and their upcoming 60th anniversary) with old (no, they don’t look it) friends Stuart and Betsy. They will soon be off to Israel for the wedding of another grandchild.

Today, it is thanks and good-bye to Judy, a final visit with cousins Donna and Ed, and it is off to……

Bentonville, Arkansas to see Sam Walton and a lot of American art.

Ignoring Trump and keeping an eye on the Major League trading deadline today. So far, no harm done.

Can you imagine a better trip to St. Louis?

Guess where we ate today?

This was our relatively free day, our only scheduled activities being coffee with a friend in the morning, and a family dinner party in the evening. It is very hot, even for St. Louis, with our car thermometer reaching 102 degrees. Thank God, not Celsius.

Our coffee was with Joe P______. And, as I show his picture below, I apologize to him. I thought I had taken a much better photo; but I was wrong. So I have to go with what I have.

Joe is the only friend we are seeing on this trip whom I have not known for 60 plus years. We have mutual friends, and I gave known of Joe for 60 plus years, but I am not sure that counts.

The details of our relationship probably would not make interesting reading, but one facet of it is how little I know about Joe’s background. But here is a coincidence that will surprise you.

Joe and our host, Judy, do not know each other. Judy lives an a development of very large, attached homes, around a small lake in West St. Louis County. This development abuts the large campus of Congregation Shaare Emeth. It turns out that Joe’s grandfather owned the land on which both Shaare Emeth and Judy’s development stand, and that was the developer of Judy’s home. More than that, if I heard it right, Joe spent some of his younger years living in a house on that exact site (or maybe that was his grandfather’s house). Talk about a coincidence.

We visited a couple of used book stores – the fabulous Dunaway Books on South Grand and the remarkably overpriced Hammond Books on Cherokee. I bought one book at Dunaway, a biography of Max Nordau, one of Theodor Herzl’s buddies from Budapest active in the formation of the Zionist movement. It was written by his daughter (named, believe it or not, Maxa) and inscribed and signed by her.

Eat Today (pictured above) is a small East African restaurant, run by Ethiopians, conveniently located near where we found a parking place. We had a delicious vege combo which we shared. Each item was good.

We drove around a bit and then went back to see our cousins Ed and Donna, spending most of the afternoon with them and their daughter Alison, also in for a visit from Washington. Then, at 6:00, Donna’s brothers, Bob and Rich, and their wives, Simone and Jacqui, came for dinner.

But that’s not all. Also a dinner guest was our second cousin Les, whom I had spoken to but never met, in from Sydney, Australia, to visit St. Louis relatives.

He regaled us with his stories, and we regaled him with some of ours.

Today will be our last day in St. Louis. We plan to be back in late October for my 65th high school reunion. We hope to see some classmates whom we have not seen for decades, and to see the dozen or so who we see by Zoom but not in person.

Today, we are scheduled to have lunch with four friends and dinner with two others.

I will report back tomorrow. Meanwhile, we will keep our eyes on the Nationals. Trade deadline is only 36 hours away and, as usual, I am prepared for disappointment.

Another short and sweet blog.

We were to meet our cousins, Bob and Wendy K___, for coffee at Kaldi’s at 10:30. Or so I thought. But at 9:20, my alarm went off reminding me that we were meeting the K____’s at 9:30. Oh. So we huffed and puffed our way to the appointed coffee shop and arrived a little late, but they were not there.

I thought they forgot, but that seemed unlikely. Then, I realized what had happened. As we entered the Central time zone, in addition to automatically changing the time on my phone, my phone calendar set every appointment back an hour. My 10:30 appointment was set back to 9:30. The upshot was that we had an hour to kill at the coffee shop, especially since even at that early hour, it was too hot to take a walk. Eventually, Wendy and Bob came and we had a very nice family catch-up.

By the way, for those who care, Wendy is the granddaughter of my father’s oldest sister.

From Kaldi’s coffee shop, we went to the Barclay House in Clayton, a senior facility. Our friends Pat and Brigid M________ have recently moved in and realized they brought too much stuff with them. Their daughter Nora was in town from Brooklyn to help them dispose of the excess and, as well, to help them dispose of everything remaining in their old house so they can put it on the market.

For context, I met Pat the summer before we started Harvard together. I was suburban public school guy, and Pat a graduate of a Catholic high school in the city. Brigid went to college with us, too, being a member of Radcliffe’s class of 1964.

We spent the afternoon with our cousins Donna and Ed K______. I took a very nice photo of Donna. Even she thought it was okay. But she didn’t want any one else to see it. So it’s not going to be included. But Ed didn’t lay down that sort of condition, so here goes:

Donna is my first cousin. Ed and I went to high school together.

After that, we had dinner at Dominic’s in Clayton. Very good food, and equally good company. My college roommate Jerry L______, and his wife Harriet. Boy, did we each have stories to tell.

Jerry and I went to different high schools from neighboring suburbs. Jerry and Harriet went to high school together.

That’s it. One day I will write up some of those stories.  Having a great time. More, tomorrow. Two more days of people. Then back in the saddle.

A short blog after a long day.

We leave our Richmond IN hotel at 9, and arrive at First Watch on E. 86th Street in Indianapolis at 10:30, just the time set to meet our cousins Susan and Charles L_____ for brunch. But where are they?

Turns out they are at the First Watch on W. 86th Street waiting for us. Eventually, we figured it out and had good food and much better conversation. Susan, by the way, is crucially important to 25% of my extended family for her remarkable work on a family tree.

But seriously, folks. How could First Watch decide to put two separate locations five miles apart on the same street? As we drove from one to the other, I felt the exasperation of all those in the cars heading the opposite way. So many people who went to West 86th when they were supposed to be on East 86th. There were a lot of them

Our highway driving was so smooth that I wasn’t surprised at all when, not far out of St. Louis, the gods decided to close I-70 entirely and send us on a detour, I think routing us through North Dakota. Around and about we went following the detour signs.

We finally crossed the Mississippi, and stayed on the highway until we just about reached our cousins, Donna and Ed K______, with whom we plan to spend as much time as we can. But we needed to get to our good friend Judy P___, our more than gracious hostess (and her cute and always friendly small friend, Panda).

I have known Judy since her college days at Cornell, where she met and then married my good friend Jeff, who passed away several years ago.

Edie, Judy, and I then drove to the house of our mutual good friend, Wendy O____ for what as become a St. Louis visit tradition, a delicious dinner created by Wendy and my oldest good friend, Michael B______, whom I have known for almost 80 years. (Huh? Say that again, please.)

Last night, it was a delicious salmon curry and rice, and a nice salad. Very much appreciated and gobbled up.

And, as an extra treat, we had key lime pie, home made by our friend Phyllis L________, with whom we had a chance to catch up at dinner.

That was it for yesterday. No touring at all. We now have three days in St. Louis to catch up with more friends and relatives. And, for now to ignore the bigger world. Then we go back on the road for more adventure.

Today was basically Ohio Day. We are now in Indiana, but it’s not obvious. The place is still red. But we are only about 2 miles over the border, just finishing a delicious dinner at Galo’s in Richmond.

It was a beautiful morning, and we didn’t leave our hotel in Washington Pennsylvania until about 10. Our route was a simple one; get on Interstate 70 and stay there. Our goal was only 4 hours away – Richmond IN, and we made it in 8. Par for the way we operate.

Stop #1. It was a wild goose chase. A sign on the highway exit pointed to the Underground Railway Museum in Flushing OH. Sounded promising and without doing any research, we headed off the highway.

Well, in case you don’t know, eastern Ohio, formed by the same forces that created the Ohio River, is beautiful. So, even though it became clear that the road to Flushing was about 10 miles long, we took it and enjoyed the scenery along the way. Flushing, it turns out, is a town with a central business district of maybe 5 buildings. One of those buildings, it turns out, is the Underground Railway Museum. Unfortunately, the museum doesn’t open until noon, which would have given us an hour wait in a place where even coffee was at a premium, so we reversed track and went back to I-70. Here is as much of the museum as we saw:

The museum gets good reviews and has over 8000 objects. It is too bad we missed it.

Stop #2. We stopped gor lunch in Zanesville. We did that last year and ate at a downtown food court. We thought we could do better, and we were right.

Zanesville is the home of western author Zane Grey. Okay, Zane from Zanesville. What’s the connection? It turns out that Zanesville was named by the husband of Zane’s grandfather’s sister, who received the land from someone else who was a descendant of Ebanezer Zane, Zane Grey’s great grandfather (or something like that). I think Zane’s mother had been a Zane, and Zane was only Zane’s middle name, anyway. TMI.

We had lunch at Muddy Miser’s, a casual spot on the Muskingum River. Muddy was an old man who liked to fish and who became a mentor to young Zane, much to his dentist father’s chagrin. Here is the restaurant, the river, and an older Zane:

Here is the building next to the restaurant:

I have never read any of the 100 plus novels that Zane Grey wrote, nor seen any of the 100 plus films based on those novels. But I can tell you this, based on what I gave read about him today. He may have been one of the most fascinating people ever. Google him.

Quality of the food? Excellent. My first walleye Reuben. Ever.

Stop #3. The Zanesville Art Museum was a very good stop.

It has some interesting works of art, to be sure, such as a work by Samuel F.B. Morse

and an oil of early Ohio by an unnamed artist

and many works by Zanesville native Howard Chandler Christy, including this well known work

But its real treasures are in its pottery. Zanesville was for decades the ceramic center of America, home to Weller and Rosedale pottery and more. The collection is extensive, including local pieces

And then, for St. Louisans, there are three pieces made at the freestanding Weller Pottery StudioBuilding at the 1904 World’s Fair, and then brought back to Zanesville:

The center piece is about 4 feet tall.

Finally, these are included in their Lego exhibit

Stop #4. We stopped at Uranus. A store, not a planet. Or was it? At any rate, it is an oddity. It opened in December and is the third branch of a new company that goes out of its way to be risque and offensive while selling fudge and chocolates and t-shirts and every sort of doo-dad imaginable.  Here are some photos to give you an idea of the place.

Edie thought it was just awful, just as I thought Buc-cees was when we visited it in South Carolina in March. I thought Uranus was astounding (although I don’t think anyone under 40 should be allowed in).

That is it (or That is too much) for today. Tomorrow?

Hopefully, nothing happened in the world today. If anything did, nobody told me. We are now about 250 miles from home in another Washington, this one in Pennsylvania. In February, we were in Washington NC.

We have been here before and ate tonight in a restaurant we have been to before, the large and always jammed Union Grill.

But on the way, we had several interesting stops. The first was Bedford PA, an attractive, historic town where George Washington both slept and commanded troops. We had a really good lunch at the Pub at the Golden Eagle and visited the local art museum, where they were having their annual photo exhibit.

This is the Espy House, built in 1771. It is here that George Washington slept during the Whiskey Rebellion.

This one is even older. What its connection is to the French and Indian War, I am not sure.

So you have this small, attractive, historic, prosperous looking, trendy little town, and when I Googled to see how it voted in 2024, I saw it voted 80% for Trump. 80%! That’s like deepest Mississippi or Wyoming. How could that be?

I decided to ask someone, and selected the proprietor of a shop which sold viniger and oil and pickles and jellies. He seemed like a nice man, probably in his 70s. He told me it was just a very conservative area. He thought it was more pro-Trump than anti-Democrats. I asked him how Trump was doing, and was he losing any support? He told me that he thought Trump was maybe trying to do too much, too fast. And that was raising questions.

From Bedford, we went to see the memorial that has been established to commemorate the victims of Flight 73, which was supposed to hit the U.S. Capitol, but crashed into a field near the very small town of Shanksville PA on that infamous September 11, now almost 25 years ago. Set among acres and acres of land, it is very impressive. Here is the entrance from the parking lot.

For some reason, you are not allowed to take pictures inside the museum, which gives you an extensive, detailed, respectful, sobering account of what transpired, minute by minute, seat by seat. Definitely worth a visit. Here is a view from a window, looking out.

Our next stop turned out to be more interesting than I thought it would be. Donora PA, a not too close part of the Pittsburgh metro area, a former coal and zinc smelting town, and the home of St. Louis Cardinal great Stan Musial, born there in 1920.

You cross the Monaongahela River on the Stan the Man Musial Bridge and then you are surprisingly thrown into a world you didn’t think still existed. Like Camden or Selma on a bad day. The downtown business area, once obviously extensive  and active, is now almost entirely boarded up. You can buy houses for $30,000 dollars.

There is a graveyard for hearses.

Churches have mysterious signs.

And, while the Musial family house seems to be gone, the yard across the street contains a museum of its own.

We are now in Washington,  Pennsylvania, where we have been before. Anything, other than dinner at the Union Grill, will be part of Day 2.

We did watch the final episode of Adolescence last night. It surprised me by having its focus not on 13 year old Jamie, but on his parents and sister. And it surprised me, because it set us up for a second season, which I guess is a possibility. You can see following this family for a while. And there are still questions to be answered.  I did look to see what does happen in the U.K. if a 13 year old is convicted of murder. The answer seems to be a mandatory life sentence, with the possibility of being released any time after 12 years subject to the discretion of the equivalence of a parole board.

We pretty much finished road trip packing yesterday, so after watching Adolescence, we had time to watch a movie and we decided to watch 50 (yes, 50) year old Jaws, which neither of us had ever seen. You probably have, an epic battle between three men on an old fishing boat, saving a portion of humanity from a great white predator shark which is determined to keep vacationers off the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard or eat them up one by one. There is a current analogy in there somewhere, I am sure.

I am sure because the same uncertainty that spread fear amongst the beachgoers and merchants now seems to plague us generally. Which of us will be the next victims of the current changes we are witnessing?

Most of today, we will be in Pennsylvania, going east to west. We are not going to be in blue Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, or Erie), but in red red Pennsylvania.  I looked at the results of the 2024 election in some of the counties we are going to be passing through, and was again surprised at the extent of the Trump vote. I was reminded that the election wasn’t close anywhere we will be. On average, it looks like the Trump vote was 70%, and the Harris vote 30%. In the past, I would have accepted this as interesting and anecdotal. Today, with all that is going on, I see it as frightening and wonder how bad this administration would have to act before voting patterns there will change. And I wonder what causes such one sided results and conclude the biggest cause must be racial fear, and realize that the Republicans have been playing this fear since the Nixon days, before Jaws was filmed, just as the Democrats played it for almost a century before.

I must admit to also being afraid of potentially increasing antisemitism in the country, though not particularly in southern Pennsylvania. In southern Pennsylvania, for a number of complex reasons, antisemitism has been tamped down. It would be in blue Pennsylvania, where people vote like I vote, that it is most concerning.

This topsy turvy situation is all because of Israel’s relentless, no holds barred, actions in Gaza and the West Bank. In this country, anti-Israel actions have been sporadic and concentrated on university campuses, and that has led to some formerly inconceivable reactions among Americans of many political groupings. But across the world, things are different. Just yesterday, we have witnessed 50 Jewish campers, ages 10 to 15, kicked off a plane in Spain, a group of Israeli vacationers leaving a club on Rhodes chased and beaten, and a demonstration in France against Israeli participation in the Tour de France. This is all after a series of incidents around Europe at or near football/soccer matches.

In Israel, on the other hand, in addition to the continual controversy over IDF actions in Gaza, we have seen, again yesterday, a member of the Knesset state that all Palestinians will be evicted from Gaza and Gaza will become Jewish (he said Jewish, not Israeli), and we saw over 70 Knesset members vote for Israeli annexation of the entire West Bank. Put this together with Israel’s self definition as a Jewish State (even though 20% of those who live in Israel proper are not Jewish), and the growing world wide acceptance of the definition of antisemitism penned by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association which defines certain anti-Israel positions as being inherently antisemitic, and you gave a very toxic recipe for trouble.

This brings me back to Adolesence (possible spoiler alert here) and poor young Jamie and his father. They both are fairly normal people until something triggers them, and their tempers take over and their actions become uncontrollable. The same can be said perhaps for those who today lead as well as for those who are vehemently against Israel’s current actions in Gaza and the West Bank. And explosions of uncontrollable temper are, well, uncontrollable.  You just can not tell where they will take us.

I don’t know if Jamie really did it or not, having watched three of the four episodes of award winning Adolescence last night. Hopefully, we will find out tonight by watching the final episode, but I have to salute the creators of at least the first three episodes. For those who don’t know, the show focuses on a 13 year old boy (boy, not young man) who is accused of stabbing a female classmate Kate to death. He is arrested, held first in a local lockup (we are somewhere in northern England) and then in some sort of juvenile detention facility, awaiting trial. Other main characters are police officers, a psychologist, classmates, and his parents.

What makes the show special are the direction and cinematography, which are so tight that you feel you are watching a documentary, and the absolutely superb acting by absolutely everyone.  On Netflix.

Today is the day to get ready for our road trip. Of course, in addition to remembering to take a belt and enough socks, the most difficult part of packing is deciding what books to take. Why this is always so difficult, I admit not to understand. It would be one thing if I thought I was going to read them. But usually (that really means always), I barely open them. For one thing, I find reading while driving to be sufficiently distracting that I hardly ever remember what I have read. If I pull a book out while we are in a restaurant, Edie tells me that, if she didn’t know better, she would think I am ignoring her. If we are with friends, my rule is to start reading only after they do, and they don’t. In a museum, I am generally too busy looking for the men’s room to do anything else.

But I do work hard on what I take. I usually go for a couple of Penguins because they are small and light and make me look very intellectual. I have decided on Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle as one of the two I will bring. As we are heading back to those wondrous days of yesteryear, I think I need to familiarize myself with what I can expect.

As to the second book, I don’t know. Boris Pasternak’s The Endless Summer might be a good choice. I have probably started that book at least five times and have never been able to get past page 10. That does make it a good book to take on a trip where I know I won’t ever want to go beyond page 10.

Of course, I really wish I could bring along Jeffrey Epstein’s memoir, The Extraordinary Adventures of Donald and Me.

Truth is that on road trips, there is a media overload continually. Thank God, we don’t subscribe to Sirius XM Radio in the car, which would only add to the mix. And sometimes, it is true that there are no listenable radio stations, even though NPR funding is still in place this summer. But there are zillions of podcasts and YouTube programming where the visuals are irrelevant. And then there is usually a lady sitting next to me with a New Yorker on her lap volunteering to read something aloud (I usually take her up on that). Finally, there is that other companion I take along with me on road trips. I call him/her Silence. Often, the brst friend to have along.

Reminds me of another thing Brian Kiley said. Paraphrasing: “I have had my best friend since I was a young child, but yesterday he told me something that  really caught me off guard. He told me he was inaginary……I really wasn’t expecting that.”

Okay, time to bring up a suitcase from the basement. I have a number of choices. The battered gray one, the battered green one, or the battered red one. I already brought up the battered brown one for Edie.

And of course, when we are about 100 miles from home, we will remember what we forgot to pack. What do you think it will be this time?

1. President Drumpf is a nasty human being and a person of highly questionable mental health.
2. Benjamin Netanyahu is a nasty human being and a person of highly questionable mental health.
3. Vladimir Putin is a nasty human being and a person of highly questionable mental health.

That about says it all, I think.

I know some people don’t agree with me. I can name three: Donald Drumpf, Bennie Netanyahu, and Vladdie Putin.

One thing I have been thinking about: What is the biggest difference between the Gestapo and ICE. Is it that the Gestapo spoke German? (Is that a bad joke, or is it a serious question?)

Now, what else is interesting me? Here are a few things:

1. The Nationals brought up a new relief pitcher yesterday named Konner Pilkington. I had never heard of him until yesterday, so I Googled him. Here are the minor league teams he has been on: Arizona League White Sox, Great Falls Voyagers, Kannapolis Intimidators, Winston-Salem Dash, Birmingham Barons, Akron Rubber Ducks, Columbus Clippers, Reno Aces, and the Rochester Red Wings. He did not play on the Vermont Lake Monsters,  Montgomery Biscuits, Ft. Wayne Tin Caps, Savannah Sand Gnats, Omaha Storm Chasers, Bowling Green Hot Rods, colorado Springs Sky Sox, Richmond Flying Squirrels, Toledo Mud Hens, Albuquerque Isotopes, Macon Bacon, or Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs. If you have heard of none of these teams, you are not alone. If you have heard of most of these teams, you need to get a life.
2. I learned about a comedian that I had never known before. Very clever named Brian Kiley. He is in his early 60s and has been a comedy show writer for years. He is tall and bald, and has a friendly, relaxed, and perfectly timed delivery. Let’s see how this goes with no delivery (and my paraphrasing).

A. I come from Boston, but now live in L.A. But I was back in Boston last week and decided to go back to my old neighborhood, my old house, the one I grew up in. I wanted to see what it looked like now, so I rang the door bell, hoping it would be okay if I snooped around. The door opened and my parents said it would be fine.

B. I decided we should fire the pool boy and told my wife. She objected. Her argument was that he just intimidated me with his youthful virility, while I was clearly over the hill. My argument was that we don’t have a pool.

C. I am a very happily married man. I feel very lucky, because 1/2 of married Americans are unhappily married. I know that statistic, because it was the result of a poll I took at my house this morning.

That’s all for today, Doc.

Back when Artwas70, I did a lot more walking around town. Now that Artis80+, I still walk a bit, but now my exercise is more on mechanical devices at home.

There is probably a second reason I walk less now. I used to (because I am me) like to find things on the sidewalk. Could be anything of interest, but usually coins, business cards, and unusual cigarette packages. For reasons that any good sociologist could explain to you in a four credit course, you hardly find anything worth noting on the street anymore.

So  think how surprised I was this morning, about 3000 steps from my house, to find an empty package of Philip Morris cigarettes from (not France as you may think from the front of the pack), Algeria.

I am sure that the Arabic at the bottom is a dire warning of imminent organ failure that the seller of this package knew might be true, but which was ignored by its previous owner. Makes the walk worthwhile.

I do have even more to report this morning. Every two years, if you live in Washington, District of Drumpf, you need to make sure your car isn’t emitting something bad. So you trek down to Half Street SW to get checked. They open at 6:30 in the morning and close at 2. The wait is never too long (it’s not like when they also checked brakes, lights, and wipers), but I wanted to be efficient, so I left home this morning at 6:45 with Edie’s car, and arrived there less than 30 minutes later.

Now, often at 6:45, I am still trying to fall asleep, so this is an unusual time for me to be roaming about these days. Well……guess what? There is an entire 7 a.m. world out there. I went down through Rock Creek Park and along the Potomac, and I saw hundreds (not trying to exaggerate, but I wasn’t counting) of joggers and bikers. I understand that none of them looked to be even half my age (sad, but sort of true), but still…..This must be one healthy city.

Maybe this was to be expected, and maybe even the kayaks and sculls on the Potomac near the Kennedy (soon Drumpf?) Center were not surprising, but as I drove past the Lincoln Memorial, I saw the unexpected. As some of you probably know, that is where the Park Service installed four beach volleyball courts (waste, fraud and abuse?), and at 7:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, they were filled with games in process. Wow!

One more topic for today. Edie and I have never been on a cruise. We like to travel by car, which we have done all over this country, Europe and scattered other places. Ultimate freedom and flexibility.

But yesterday, as I was catching up with some financial stuff, I turned on YouTube and watched two videos about Viking river cruises. One in France and one up the Mississippi. I never wanted to go on a river cruise, and now can tell you this. They looked worse than I ever imagined.

Tight quarters, most meals on the boat, jovial crew members, while all the while you look out the window or off the deck at the places you would like to be. And when you go off the boat, you follow a woman with a red flag in the air that announces you are just passing through…quickly. On board, you can play games in the lounge at night, enjoy a loud combo, and you can listen to your fellow passengers talk about all the other river cruises they have been on. Not for me, thank you.

That’s it. I will now stand up, do a 180, take 3000 more steps, and call it a day.

We finished watching the Netflix series Dept. Q last night. British, nine episodes, set in Edinburgh. Highly reviewed. Unique handling of a hard to believe story of the disappearence of a successful prosecutor with many enemies. A number of intersecting plots, tied together by the story of the lead police detective, a surly fellow with as many enemies as the woman whose disappearance he is investigating. A little brutal and rough, as these shows tend to be, but well written and well acted. One of us recommends it highly.

You might remember a few days ago, I said I had read The White Peacock by D.H. Lawrence. Looking at Deprt. Q, I saw an uncanny resemblance between Matthew Goode, the actor who played the leading role, Inspector Carl Morck, pictured here:

and Lawrence, pictured here:

and decided that Goode should be selected to play Lawrence if there is ever a biopic of his life. I then discovered that there was a film about Lawrence, Priest of Love, released in 1981, with Ian McKellen playing the lead. What do you think?

I seem to be reading, watching, fiddling, eating, exercising, etc. Anything but concentrating on the news, which gets worse and worse. To escape this morning, we (and maybe 150 or so others) went to the Avalon for a 10:30 a.m. showing of A Room With a View, starring a very young Helen Bonham-Carter and a pretty young Daniel Day-Lewis, among many other familiar actors. A visually beautiful film directed by James Ivory with a script written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Well acted, extraordinary cinematography. No brutality, nothing rough, no murders, not one policeman. This one gets thumbs up from both of us.

A little news did seep through. I saw Brown Professor Omer Bartov, Israeli born Holocaust scholar, who has recently concluded that, in fact, Israel is now engaged in genocide in Gaza, and that by supporting Israel, arming Israel, and encouraging Israel, the United States is party to that genocide. I obviously am not as expert as he, but my decision-making process has been pretty parallel to his. I thought that the International Criminal Court was wrong when they accused Israel of war crimes and genocide last year, but that Israel has worked hard since then to help prove the ICC case. I have long expressed understanding of Israel’s frustration with Hamas, which refuses to give up and refuses to release hostages, but can think of a variety of ways Israel could have responded, other than the ways that they have.

I am also following the Epstein saga and Trump’s refusal to admit that ever really knew his best friend for more than a 15 year period. We know Trump has been labeled a sex offender by the courts, so it’s no surprise that he buddied around with Epstein. But did Trump take advantage of 16 and 17 year old like Epstein and Matt Goetz did? That we don’t know. Yet.

There were more stories of innocent people being picked up off the street and whisked away by ICE. And now there is the story of a prisoner trade with Venezuela. Nice to get our guys back, I am sure, but if we sent people whom we never should have picked up the first place, previously sent to CECOT in El Salvador, and then used them as trade bait, that would be unconscionable. And other questions are raised as well. Like I thought that once they were in El Salvador, we had no control over them? Haha, I didn’t think that for a minute. I didn’t think that for two reasons. First, because it made no sense. Second, because everything the administration says needs to be turned around 180 degrees.

And what about the Redskins? There are complicated negotiations going on about relocating the Washington area’s NFL team, the Commanders, back to Washington proper. The deal, opposed by residents who live close to the site and some affordable housing advocates but supported by most others, would put the stadium and much more on the site of the old RFK Stadium. I guess the federal government has ultimate control, or at least thinks it does, over everything that happens in DC, and our fascistic president has decided that the return may not be allowed unless the team changes its name back to the Redskins.

Of course, this team is not owned by the government, but what does that matter? And does anyone but Trump want to reopen that old naming controversy?

What may have started as a joke, or an off-hand remark, by Drumpf, now may have turned serious. And have you noticed that once Drumpf’s stand is opposed, he just clings to it more? And that he expands it, now declaring that the Cleveland MLB club should retake the name Indians?

Not back to the future, but forward to the past. Just like Drumpf undoing recent military base name changes  back to those honoring Confederates. Like Ft. Lee, now named not after Robert L., but after some random Black Union soldier of course. And the other base formerly named after a Confederate general, but now to be named after “the general’s father”. Jeez, I suppose the new Redskins won’t be named after Native Americans, but after potatoes. Go, Spuds.

Well, I believe that our president also needs a new/old name. So, Drumpf it will be. Not after his grandfather, but after Hans Drumpf, a 17th century lawyer in Kallstadt, Bavaria.

We are all in deep trouble.

Over the last few days, I read C. P. Snow’s The New Men. Snow, as you may remember, was both a chemist and a novelist who sought to bring together the ever distanced worlds of science and the humanities. This particular novel focuses on scientists working on developing an atomic weapon in England during World War Two, racing against the competition in America and Germany. I don’t particularly recommend the book, but one of its features is the use of a fair amount of British slang in dialogue.

And in particular, I was intrigued by one word: bumf.

Here is the dialogue:

“In that case, I shall send you my views on paper.”

“Damn it, man,……we’ve talk it out. I don’t want any bumf.”

“I’m sorry, but I want to have it on the record.”

The word seemed so unlikely that I googled it, and Prof. Google told me that the definition of bumf was “useless or tedious printed information or documents”, and the sample sentence was “Most of his mail was just bumf, bills and Christmas cards”.

Whoa!! That is our mail (minus the Christmas cards). We call it “junk mail,” maybe, but that might be too polite. Let’s start calling it what it is. It is just plain bumf.

On whole the definition seems to relate only to unnecessary paper. But today, we also have to recognize that our digital inboxes are also filled with bumf.

Now there is a difference between “spam”, which refers to junk email that we did not ask for and don’t need, and “bumf”, a broader category which would include spam but go beyond it. Bumpf would also include everything unnecessary in material that we otherwise want and need, like popup ads, and extraneous links.

Yes, we live in a virtual world of bumf, and – until today- we have not had a word to describe it.

So where does the word bumf come from? It turns out that it’s a shortened version of bumfodder. You may not be familiar with that word either, but it has been around for 400 years, from Elizabethan times. And, yes, it is an Elizabethan term that Shakespeare never used.

As you might imagine, bumfodder is another word for toilet paper. And this makes it the perfect parent for bumf.

I know what you are thinking: “Art, your whole blog is bumf.” Well, maybe so, but I do my best. Yesterday, Horace Greeley. Today, bumf. Sometimes, things in my house, sometimes places I go. A little of this a lot of that.

And, of course, a lot about our president, Big Don Trump. And here is something crucial you may not be considering: 

The original Trump family name was Drumpf. And that rhymes with Bumf.

And you say there is no God.

I returned today from Shabbat services not clear what my blog post would look like. I decided to go to another random bookshelf and report on what was there, but I did not get beyond the first book, Hints at Reforms by Horace Greeley. When I took it down, this post began to write itself. It is, in reality and substance, a bit “off the wall”.

On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was shot and killed while sitting in the presidential booth at Ford’s Theater, on 10th Street NW, in Washington, DC. On the same night, Secretary of State William Seward (he, of Seward’s Folly) was attacked in his Washington house and very seriously wounded. The Civil War, which had been raging for five years and had resulted in the death of about 600,000 Americans from combat and disease, had just formally ended at Appomattox Courthouse (did you know that there were 2 t’s, 2p’s, 2 o’s, 2 a’s, but only one m in Appomattox?), but was still raging in parts of the country (or was it countries?). Washington was chaotic, to say the least. Who, in their right mind, would want to live here?

Certainly not Horace Greeley (1811-1872), editor of the New York Daily Tribune. Here is what he may have written in an editorial in the Tribune on July 13, 1865:

“Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting, and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.”

Makes sense in the context of post-assassination and post-Civil War Washington, right? But you note that I said above that Greeley “may” have said this in the July 13 edition of that newspaper. I said that because apparently no one can verify it. And the reason, from what I can see, that no one can verify is that it must not be there. If he said it there, everyone could look at what said and everyone would agree.

Obviously, I haven’t looked at this old newspaper myself, but it appears that geneoligist Mary Harrell-Sesniak has, because she says that she found much of this very quote not in July, but in the December 13, 1865 edition of the newspaper. Well, not the full quote, only the part about the depravity of Washington. She could find no evidence of Greeley ever telling young men to go West.

But if you search at encyclopedia.com, you will find that not only did Greeley give his instruction to young men in July 1865,  but he not only did not claim to originate the phrase, but gave credit for the phrase to Terre Haute Express editor John Babsone Lane Soule, reprinting Soule’s use of the phrase in an 1851 article in Soule’s paper.

Further, according to Wikipedia, if you go to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, you will learn that the phrase was written by Greeley, but not published in the New York Daily Tribune at all, but used in Hints for Reforms, orginally published in 1850. This would precede the article by Soule.

Wikipedia tells me, however, that I shouldn’t waste my time looking for the quote in that book, because it isn’t there.

To make things even more complicated, Josiah Bushnell Grinnell (Iowa Congressman, abolitionist and a founder of Grinnell College), in his memoir, says that Greeley gave him this advice not in 1865, but rather in 1833, when he told Grinnell to “Go West, young man, go West. There is health in the country, and room away from our crowds of idlers and imbeciles.” Grinnell commented that such advice was like medicine that is easy to give, but harder to take.

I am not going to take this any further because it seems clear it would lead to more confusion, not less.

I will admit that I don’t know much about Greeley. He was born in New Hampshire, moved to New York, became a journalist, and established and edited the Tribune. He seems to have been quite an opinionated fellow, favoring western expansion (of course, he stayed in New York), as well as (says Wikipedia) socialism, vegetarianism, feminism, and temperance, along with pre-war abolitionism. He was an active Republican (one of the party founders) served a short time in Congress, thought Lincoln too slow on freeing the enslaved, and ran against Grant for president in 1872. He got three electoral votes, which was just as well, because he died before the votes were counted. Like so many others, he lies in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

So where are we? Is this phrase original to Greeley? Did he first write it down? Who knows? After all, we really don’t know who wrote Shakespeare, do we?

And as to Hints at Reforms, sitting right here next to me…..is there something in it that would help us get on with our lives? If not, why did he even bother to write it? I guess I should open it up and see.

What did you do on your Shabbat afternoon?

A week from today, we are planning on embarking on a road trip that will take us through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to St. Louis, and then down to Bentonville, Arkansas, and back through Tennessee and Virginia. Except for Illinois and Virginia, and other than in large urban areas, we will be passing through states and areas that voted in the last election for Donald Trump. We have plans to see friends and families in much of the areas we will passing through or stopping at (I have been in contact so far with 20 or so family members and friends) and, to my knowledge, only one of them supports Trump and all the others abhor him. If you asked these 20 or so people about their friends where they live, again with one exception, they will tell you that virtually all of them abhor Trump as well. Clearly, in politics, opposites do not attract.

Of course, in Washington, where we live, we don’t have to worry about running into a Trump supporter. In DC itself, only 6% of voters selected Trump, in Montgomery County MD only 20%, Prince George’s County 11%, Arlington and Alexandria about 20% and Fairfax County about 30%. How lucky we are to live in a large metropolitan area where the vast majority of voters recognize what is in the best interest of the country, and do not fall for the distortions put out by Republican office holders and the main stream, right wing media.

We had lunch yesterday with an old friend who is in town from southern California, another location with a strong anti-Trump majority, and we talked about these things, among others. Of course, we agree on most things, and one of those things is that it is very difficult to listen to right-wing media for any length of time. This includes Fox News, which is the most watched cable news channel of them all. The majority of what you see on Fox, to someone who looks at the world as it is, is unwatchable. When I say this, by the way, I don’t think I am expressing bias. I think I am stating fact. Am I wrong? Should I be able to watch Fox or Newsmax and say, “How refreshing to watch different opinions, to broaden my mind, to learn something new.” I don’t think that is possible.

This goes to the question of media bias. Listening to conversations this morning on C-Span about the defunding of PBS and NPR, I heard a lot about media bias. And I agree that it is difficult to find MAGA presentations on public radio or TV, that it isn’t (as they used to say falsely about Fox) “fair and balanced”. But when one side is basically correct and other pretty much 100% wrong, why is “balanced” a virtue? How is it even possible?

One other phrase: It’s the economy, stupid.

This one is probably correct. If the economy does well under Donald, we will probably continue with a Republican Congress after 2026 and have another MAGA Republican elected president in 2028. If not, we will have Democratic control and enter our second period of Reconstruction.

I don’t expect the economy to do well under Trump, but as we know, he is a sneaky devil. And if it does do well, but at the expense of cruelty, one party rule, a wider gap between haves and have-nots, a decimated legal system, and semi-autocracy, is it even worth it?