Art is 80

I don’t know much at this point about the young man who shot and killed Charlie Kirk. But I have heard that a family member recognized him from one of the photos released by the police, and convinced him to turn himself in. Hold that thought for a moment.

The more we learn about Charlie Kirk, we learn two things. First, that he was charismatic and influential among young people  at levels we can hardly imagine. And second (and I think we will find out this more and more as time goes by), we learn that Charlie Kirk’s political philosophy was abhorrent and his language, if anything, worse. This obviously is not to excuse the murder, but it does need to be brought into the mix.

Bur, let’s go back to the family members who convinced Robinson to turn himself in. This was a very courageous step. Turning in a member of your own tribe, your own family.

Okay, now an imperfect analogy.

So many Jews, American, Israeli and otherwise, are repulsed by some of the actions taken by Benjamin Netanyahu, his government, and his military. What is our obligation to call them out? And how should that be done?

Over the past few days, Netanyahu has announced that there will be no chance for a Palestinian State, that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank will expand, that the City of Gaza will be leveled, and that a building in the independent country of Qatar would be attacked. And that is just over the past few days.

We all understand the fear and, yes, hatred of many, or most, Israelis directed against their neighbors, not only as a result of October 7, but as the result of over 75 years of hostility. We can also understand how the Arabs living next to Israel have hate towards Israel and Israelis after almost 60 years of Israeli occupation, and now because of Israeli actions in both Gaza and the West Bank.

But what will these mutual hatreds accomplish? As I have suggested before, Netanyahu is modeling himself after Americans of two or more centuries ago who eliminated American Indians, both by numbers and from positions of power or influence. The Americans were successful, and Netanyahu is betting that he will be as well. And that, over time, his methods will be overlooked or forgotten. Vladimir Putin, by the way, is making the same gamble.

But Netanyahu may be wrong. He may not succeed. His methods may not be forgotten. They may boomerang, as in many ways they already are.

Remember the Biblical prophets. Who railed against perceived shortcomings in Israeli and Judean societies over 2000 years ago. They did not keep quiet. Of course, whether they did any good is another question.

Compounding the problem, of course, is tendency of many to equate the positions of Netantmtahu and his coalition with those of all Israelis and, consequently, of all Jews worldwide. This happens more often than people might equate Putin with all Russians, for example, and it is obviously a concern.

But isn’t it more likely that being Jewish and Israeli will be more conflated if few Jews speak out? And of course, to the disadvantage of Jews everywhere, I believe, Netanyahu and, yes, the Israel lobby, want Jews to identify with Israel, complicating the matter further.

And of course, there is one other thing. Netanyahu might be right. There might be no chance for peace in Israel unless Israel expands from the river to the sea, as the Likud party platform has always encouraged, no matter what the cost. And that continued conflict for the land will just continue to take lives on both sides, for generations to come. And that it needs to stop with one final series of actions right now.

Do you see why I am continually confused about the Middle East?

Let’s get back to Charlie Kirk.

I knew nothing about Charlie Kirk. I knew the name. I knew he was a Trump supporter. That is all I knew.

I didn’t know what his individual priorities or beliefs were. I still don’t. I didn’t know he had a podcast with millions of listeners. I didn’t know that much of his emphasis was on college and university students, or how popular he was on campuses. I did not know how much he spoke on campuses, and what large and excited crowds he drew. Now, I know more.

But I have an obvious question. Why would someone want to kill Charlie Kirk?

He was not a political official. He was one of hundreds, maybe thousands, of activists with political positions that he espoused. I don’t think he himself personally was a target of hatred. Rather, he seems to have been a personally well liked individual.

This was not an accidental shooting. It was not unplanned. It was not a question of passion taking control of an individual. As far as we know, the shooting was not the result a personal grudge, although of course this is possible. It was very targeted and not a mass shooting. It could have been much worse.

So what does this remind me of? It reminds me of the case of Leopold and Loeb.

You may remember them. Two privileged young friends, undergraduates at the University of Chicago, who in 1924 murdered 14 year old Bobby Franks, the cousin of one of them. They did not hate Bobby Franks. They pitied him, because he was a less perfect person than the two of them.

In fact, Leopold and Loeb thought a lot of themselves and their presumed superior strengths and talents. They were convinced that they could kill Bobby Franks and never be caught. They were going to prove their superiority by perpetrating the perfect crime. They were wrong.

Back to Charlie Kirk. Could this simply be another example of an attempt to show the shooter’s assumed lack of vulnerability and ability to bring about the perfect crime? If so, why Charlie Kirk?

As I understand it, Kirk was a big supporter of the Second Amendment. And the State of Utah is a state which takes the Second Amendment very seriously. I have read that Utah is a state where you can carry all sorts of weapons, open or concealed. No permit required. The weapons can be fully loaded. And not only that, but specifically, on public university campuses such as Utah Valley University, anyone 18 or older can carry visible or hidden weapons. (Private Utah universities can make their own rules; Brigham Young University, down the street, bans all guns.)

I think the public university rule is something that Kirk would agree with. But Kirk was not so naive as to think that the spread of weapons would eliminate gun crime. In fact, he wrote or said that there would be murders by guns, but that this was a price worth paying in order to protect the Second Amendment.

If you were a modern day Leopold or Loeb and you were looking for a prominent victim, might not you choose someone who has publicly made that sort of statement?

We will see what this investigation comes up with. Of course, I don’t know and there are many possibilities. But I wonder if the shooter was simply someone who had a point to make. That he could do this. The next question is whether he wants to get away with it or whether he wants to get caught. There are obviously disadvantages to getting caught. But if no one knows he did it…..why even do it?

David Miliband, former UK Foreign Minister, is the chairman of the International Rescue Committee. I have seen him a number of times on TV and he always speaks with passion and clarity. I am looking forward to reading his short TED book. If it lives up to my expectations, I may drop it off at the White House.

But today, let’s not be too heavy. Have you seen the film, now showing on Netflix, The Thursday Murder Cub? If not, I think you should. Two hours of understated British humor and charm at its best.

A former convent (or its equivalent) has been turned into the most comfortable and appealing senior living facility imaginable. Each resident’s room is luxurious, matched only by the feel of the common areas. And the folks who live there are obviously special. After all, they include Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, and Pierce Brosnan.

And these three, along with a woman now in the hospice wing of the facility (a former police detective), have formed a small, elite group dedicated to solving “cold cases”, which were left unsolved by the local constabulary. Now led by Mirren (a former MI6 agent), and with the addition of Celia Imrie, a new resident with a medical background, they work to solve a 30 year old case with single-minded intent, diverted only by three contemporary killings that take place along the way.

I liked everything about the film, but especially the acting of Mirren and Kingsley, and especially especially Kingsley, to whom any role could be assigned, and in which he would look a natural. I wonder if he will still be as good when he reaches my age; he always seems to be just about 13 months behind me.

Before I get to Miliband’s Rescue, I need to finish Ignazio Silone’s Fontamara. Written in 1933, Fontamara tells of an Italian peasant village, its residence isolated from the rest of the world, which comes face to face with fascism at its worst.

It is structured more or less as a series of connected short narratives, spoken by various residents of the village, which together paint a full picture. The book was widely read and praised during the years preceding, and the years of, World War II.

Throughout all the tragedy and hopelessness of the book, there are flashes of humor which reminded me of, of all people, Shalom Aleichem. Yes, there is, I guess, quite a bit of similarity between Fontamara and Chelm.

Like just when the argument between the rich landowner and the peasants of the village over the usage of creek water for irrigation seemed impossible to settle. When giving half of the water to the town and half to the landowner satisfied neither, someone suggested “Let’s each take 2/3”.

Everyone was satisfied until the landowner took his 2/3. You can see that happening in Chelm, yes? Perhaps it did.

Last night was the second Haberman Institute class, taught by Gideon Amir, devoted to changes in Judaism during the Second Temple period. I jotted down some interesting tidbits. Tonight, U. of Maryland professor Marsha Rozenblit is speaking for Haberman before a live audience in Potomac. And tomorrow, is the second of Geraldine Gudefin’s three part Haberman series on Jewish communities in Asia.

Last night and tonight, I provide the opening words. That is one way to make sure I attend.

Oops. Wrong Supremes. Those were the good ones. Sorry about that. I am mixing up the three Supremes with the nine.

We have to wonder (because that is all, at this time, we can do) as to how history will look not only at the second Trump presidency, but how they will look at Trump’s Supremes. Because the Republican Senate under Mitch McConnell refused even to consider President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland (because the nomination should belong to the future president) and rushed through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett (because the nomination should not belong to the future president), we have a Supreme Court with a heavy conservative bias, with twice as many Justices who lean right as opposed to those who lean left. This can be seen in a number of ways, but most clearly by their rulings (those with full opinions, and those on the Court’s “shadow docket”) since Trump was elected again last November. At least, this seems apparent to me. And to virtually everyone else.

Nevertheless, Justice Barrett says that I, and all of you, just don’t understand how the members of the Court approach the law. The members of the Court, she says, do not rule in accordance with their political leanings, but simply on what the law is.  S⅕e says the Constitution is doing fine. There is certainly no constitutional crisis.

We have to respond to her, don’t we? We need to say to her: “With due respect regarding this statement (to the extent that respect is due), we must tell you that you are obviously wrong, and are either being ingenuous, or believe that we have no ability to think for ourselves, or you yourself are being deluded (or are delusional).” Simple as that.

Otherwise, why are so many cases 6-3 in favorite of government positions (or, maybe, 5-4, when the conservative voting against the government knows that their vote won’t swing the decision the other way)? Why are the three liberal justices left to their own devices, the most powerful being writing stinging dissents?

Of course, I don’t think that Justice Barrett’s position came out of nowhere. I think that the conservative members of the Court have been fooling themselves, and fooling too many of us, for a long time, by claiming that “originalism’, a legal philosophy emphasizing that decisions should be based on the meaning of the original text as seen by the composers of that original text (okay, that is my briefest of descriptions) was the theory on which the Court should base its conclusions, and – more importantly – was the theory on which they, the conservative justices, would base their own decisions.

Hogwash, balderdash and you know what else. The easiest example of the use of the term “originalist” relates to the Second Amendment, which the conservatives of the Court has given an absolutist interpretation, in spite of the more moderate treatment it had been given for the 200 years preceding the Court’s decision in the Heller case in 2008. The Court majority decided that the original interpretation of the Second Amendment would not have limited the right of citizens to have firearms to those citizens who participate in, or might participate in, a militia (that is the term used in the original text), but that the right was of an individual to have a firearm outside of that. Their conclusion was that the text used the term “militia”, only because that was the right term to use in the late 18th century, and had the Constitution been written in a different century, (earlier or later) different words would be used. (Okay, the decision doesn’t say this in so many words; I am extrapolating their reasoning.)

The four justices who voted the other way, saying that the text meant what it said (“a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state…..”), saying that an individual, as individual, did not have a right to unlimited possession of “arms”, also said that they were, in this case, originalists, relying on the original language of the text.

What does this tell you? It tells you that, just like you can find support for anything you want to in the Bible, you can find support for anything you want to in the language of the Constitution. And no matter where you come out in a particular case, you can call yourself an originalist.

As I have said before, the word “originalist” is meaningless in and of itself; it is simply a cover for voting as you would like.

By the way, of course, the original case did not, I don’t think, deal with the definition of “arms”, the word used in the Second Amendment. A pistol, a rifle, an assault weapon, a tank, a land to air missile, an atomic bomb? Where does the words “arms” stop? Should it be used to include only those weapons the founders knew of at the time the Amendment was written? Or should it be modified to include weapons developed later? And, if the latter is the better answer, when does a weapon get so lethal that the Second Amendment does not protect it? Or does that ever happen? And in this case, which group – those conservatives who take a broad definition, or those liberals who would narrow the scope of the amendment – could more legitimately lay claim to deciding its position on an originalist basis?

Going back to the original question as to how history will look at this Court, I will assume it will be very, very critical.

It will criticize its partisan bent. It will criticize its kow-towing to the president and its breaking with its own precedents with regard to the limits of executive power. It will criticize its constant willingness to intervene in cases before they would reach the Court in normal order. They will criticize its continual issuance of shadow docket decisions without any written opinions. And, all of these criticisms will come before any critiques of the substance of any decisions.

As to substance, I will limit myself to one comment. I am repeating what Morgan State Professor Jason Johnson said on Ari Melber’s show last night. We have a Supreme Court that says that ICE can stop people on the street because they are speaking Spanish or look Hispanic, but a university can’t take either of those things into consideration when deciding who most needs a helping hand to be admitted to college.

Johnson says this is a constitutional crisis. He may be correct. It is certainly some kind of crisis. Some kind of supreme crisis.

I know I have said this before, but I have to say it again. Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and DJT himself, have accused Fed governor Lisa Cook, California Senator Adam Schiff and Manhattan District Attorney Letitia James of fraudulently claiming two residences as their primary residences. This would presumably constitute mortgage fraud, a criminal offense. All three claims are unproven and, as of today, no charges have been brought, although Cook has, maybe, been fired from her position “for cause”.

Pulte has stated that fraud is fraud, a crime is a crime, and if you signed two applications claiming two primary residences, you clearly don’t need to know more.

CNN, among other news outlets, has pointed out that the same charges could be brought against two Trump cabinet members, as well as the head of the EPA. To my knowledge, neither Pulte nor Trump have commented on them.

But last night, I saw a Reuters “exclusive” saying that another evidence of two-resident mortgage fraud had been uncovered, perpetrated by a couple who bought primary residences in both Michigan and Florida. The couple? Bill Pulte’s parents!

It doesn’t get much better than this.

Now you may know “Pulte” as a name connected to a very large housing development company. So you may think him eminently qualified for his position, right? Well, think again, this is the Trump administration. The original Bill Pulte was this guy’s grandfather. (My grandfather was a pediatrician. Want me to treat your kids?) Our Bill Pulte has never been in the housing business. He graduated from college and at a tender age, he started an investment operation, about which I know nothing. And today, he is only 37 years old.

By the way, this presumably unqualified Trump toady, who has just condemned his own parents, is also head of FannieMae and FreddieMac, the result of a Trump consolidation and of Trump’s habit of giving at least 3 full time jobs to every appointee.

And, if you look up Pulte Capital Partners, Bill Pulte is still listed as managing director.

So what will happen to Pulte’s parents? Probably nothing, but maybe their son has learned a lesson.

Maybe not.

Bill Pulte’s father, by the way, is what is called a luxury home builder. He doesn’t build the Pulte subdivisions you see all over. He builds fancy houses in places like Palm Beach, where he has sold them for as much as $122,000,000. What does he do with his money? A fair amount goes to the Republican Party. This undoubtedly helps his (somewhat hapless?) son get three jobs from DJT. He is also very active in the Pulte Family Charitable Foundation. I looked around its website quickly. Seems okay. Its specialty? Looks to be DEI.

Go figure….

For those who don’t believe that the Washington Commanders are going to move into DC from Prince George’s County, just look at what is happening at the site of the proposed new stadium. Not London Bridge, but RFK Stadium, is coming down.

RFK was the home of the Redskins for 35 years, and for shorter periods the home of both the Senators and the Nationals. Google it, and you will see it has had quite the history, but like us all, its days are limited, and its final years less than prime. But it gets recognition:

This afternoon, we attended a program at the Capital Jewish Museum, co-sponsored by the Haberman Institute, featuring Vanderbilt Professor Shaul Kelner, author  of the recent acclaimed book, Cold Exodus, and U. of Maryland researcher Yelena Luckert, who was born the Soviet Union. Both were excellent. The topic was the decades-long American movement to enable Soviet Jews to leave the USSR or openly practice Judaism, basically a study in a grassroots organizational movement, focusing on methods to mobilize and define goals that are still in use today by movements with very different goals.

These were our presenters. Quite a coincidence that they look so much like the photos behind them, I think.

I told the audience in my brief remarks that it was too bad I hadn’t met Prof. Kelner before, because he could have interviewed me about my 1972 trip to the Soviet Union. Not that it had anything to do with the movement to free the Jews, but I did learn a lot about one Jew, the young Soviet medical student who befriended me.

He seemed fearless and was confident that one day, he would wind up in the US. Did he? I don’t know. He wrote me after my return to Washington, but I didn’t write back to him. I was afraid that our correspondence could backfire on him, and I wanted no part of that.

I called him fearless. That’s because he was unafraid to taunt authority at a time when he could have been kicked out of school or even jailed for just that.

I remember telling him that, in the United States, I could often tell who was Jewish by looking at them, but that in Moscow, I could not tell.

He told me that he could, and for the rest of the time I was with him, he played that game to the hilt.  We would walk down the street, and he would spot someone and ask them if they were Jewish. They always were, and no one minded the question. We went into a restaurant for lunch, and he asked the man who seated us the same question. He was Jewish as well. I was surprised that no one’s feathers looked at all ruffled.

There were more such incidents, but the highlight, and that which made me most fearfull of winding up in the Gulag, is when we walked by an office building, and I  was told that it held the headquarters of Sovietische Heimland, the official Soviet Yiddish language magazine, published to convince people outside the USSR that Jews inside the USSR were, as they say in Yiddish,  hunky-dory. I told him that was interesting, and he immediately said, “Let’s go meet the editor”, and then, ” Don’t worry, we’ll be okay.”

And we did. And we were. The editor was short, somewhat elderly, quite thin, with a pencil mustache (as I recall). He looked a little uncertain but less nervous than I was. I was introduced, to my shock, as a regular American reader of the magazine, someone who could read Yiddish, but not speak it. Whoa! (By the way, I could then – not now – understand  some basic Russian).

I was afraid he would ask me what my favorite recent article was, and after a few minutes, I suggested we let the editor get back to work. We left the building. I took a deep breath.

What do Trump’s Secretaries of Transportation and Labor, and his EPA administrator,  have in common? They all have taken out mortgages on multiple properties that they called primary residences. What do Adam Schiff, Lisa Cook, and Letitia James have in common? They have all been accused by Bill Pulte of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board of mortgage fraud for the same reason. Mortgage fraud is a crime. Pulte says if you committed mortgage fraud, you will be convicted and punished, whoever you are. And, he says, if you signed two applications claiming two primary residences, you are guilty, circumstances be damned.

Keep your eyes open. Let’s see what happens. First, we will see if Lisa Cook, who has been “fired” by Herr Trump, gets to keep her job.

By the way, in case you missed it, there is another (legitimate) FED opening, and Trump nominated Stephen Miran, chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisors. The problem is that Miran does not want to (or has been told not to) abandon his current position, only to take a brief “leave of absence”. So much for FED independence, I guess. I understand. You can’t have an independent central bank in a dictatorship, even if you still call it a democracy. Just ask your favorite Turk.

Moving on….Trump is proposing to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, bringing ambiguity to that age-old question, “how’s the DOW doing today?”. Okay, maybe not ambiguous in print, but think radio.

Now only Congress (60% vote in the Senate) can change the name officially, but in a dictatorship that hardly matters. Trump has already, of course, changed the name of Mt. Denali and the Gulf of Mexico, and there seems to be no limit. Why does he permit Ukraine to keep its name? What would be wrong with South Russia? And didn’t someone already suggest that Greenland (or Grønland) could become Redwhiteandblüeland? It would be easy for the Panama Canal to become the Trump Canal, and the to-be State of Canada could become, say, North North Dakota.

Now, the Department of War was named the same day the US military demolished a Venezuelan boat, allegedly bringing drugs to the United States.

What could be wrong with this picture? It was an act of war, and we are not at war with anybody? We killed 11 people, but don’t know who they were, or whether they were guilty individually of anything? Bringing drugs into the US, if that is what they were doing, is not a capital crime even after arrest, trial, and conviction? The boat may have been heading to Trinidad, not the U.S.? I could go on with this…..

And then there is the Department of HHS, to be renamed the Department of SIS, Sickness and Inhumane Services. Tylenol, if taken by pregnant women, causes autism. Where have I read that before? That’s right. Nowhere. I wonder why.

Now, I have my own suspicions. I think Fox News  causes a mental condition that I term Fatal Nonsense Creep (or FNC). If I were in charge of SIS, you can be sure that no pregnant woman in this country would be allowed to watch Fox News. This would save an entire generation of unborn children from FNC and put this country on the road to revival.

Alright, that is enough for today. By the way, assuming there is a 2028 presidential election, do you think Vance will win reelection?

All of a sudden I got very scared. Uncontrollably anxious.

What if my name is on the list?

I started asking myself questions.

Did I know anyone named Epstein? Answer: yes.

Have I ever been on an island? Answer: yes.

Have I ever been on an island in the Caribbean? Answer: yes.

Have I ever been on an island where there were rich men? Answer: yes.

Have I ever been on an island where there were pretty women? Answer: yes.

Have some of those women been underage? Answer: yes.

So there you have it. I may be guilty unless proved innocent.

I am not trying to belittle anyone’s trauma. I am trying to focus where we are today.

Do we think that the Trump administration will have to make more documents available together public? Yes. Will they name names? Yes. Will some of these names be the names of prominent Trump foes? Yes. Will they include the names of prominent Trump friends? Maybe, but probably not. Will they include the name Trump? Very, very unlikely.

What will the names prove? They will probably show some, but not all, guests of Epstein. We will never know who was omitted. And why they were left out.

And of those whose names are on the list, we may never know why they were there, what they did while they were there, or what they saw.

I can’t say that I follow this word for word, but what I understand is that, with all the survivors who have spoken and who are now speaking, why isn’t anyone being named. We hear over and over that Maxwell induced them to come to the island, and then Epstein seduced them, or forced them to give him massages or engage in sexual activities. No one else, with one exception, that I know of has been accused of these activities or of anything else. So, if they are “on a list”, what is next?

ChatGPT says there are 10 well known people who can be presumed to have visited the island. The only one who has been implicated with improper activity is Prince Andrew, and his accuser is dead.

There are many ways to get more details to the public. Perhaps the DOJ files show the results of a proper series of investigative activities, but if we can’t trust the information, more investigations may have to take place.

And if names are released, with or without accusations, the reputations of individuals will be besmirched, and they will wind up involved in endless expensive proceedings. P

And, finally, since the DOJ records are under the control of DJT, and DJT spends all of his time discrediting Democrats and Democratic voters, we know that any records released by DOJ will have been edited and manipulated.

I must be missing something. Maybe the Epstein survivors who met with Congressional members yesterday told them more than we know. Maybe there are reasons why that testimony has not been made public.

On Jan Psaki’s show last night, I watched Cong. Melanie Stansbury of NM talk about the Epstein situation. And I assume what she said was accurate. She described millions of dollars floating around the world through Epstein, connected to sex trafficking and money laundering, and who knows what else. I don’t know what this means. Rich men would make money through illegal activities and pass it through Epstein accounts where it came out clean and untraceable? Epstein would take his cut and pay back the rich men for their business by providing them a steady string of 14 year olds? Is this what happened? Can somebody please help me out out?

Trump says it is all a Democratic hoax. Democrats says it will bring down the presidency. Heartland MAGAs wonder if the teenagers on the island were the same girls who were abducted at that famous pizza parlor in DC three blocks from our house and wonder, since they can’t go to Epstein’s island any more, where they go after the Comet basement  gets too crowded. You wonder how they got to that basement in the first place, as there is no basement. I say, maybe they go the basement of the nonexistent laundry next door.

For the first time in a while, I bought a bottle of wine at Mom’s, along with some groceries. The cashier said “Can I check your ID for the wine?” I said, “Really?” She said, “It’s the rule.”

I thought I looked over 21, but I guess she just couldn’t be sure.

I have seen at some stores (not at Mom’s) a brand of flavored water called Liquid Death. Can someone tell me why that was the best name they could come up with?

I understand that it started as sort of a joke. Like “let’s do something with our water that isn’t rivers and pine trees.” The founders were, I have read, part of what is called the underground music scene, and that this name fit their cultural ID. Their tag line is “Murder Your Thirst”. Pretty pathetic, if you ask me.

Of course, neither you nor anyone else has asked me. Certainly not the architects of Liquid Death.

Have you tried it? I guess a few people have. Last year, Liquid Death sold $1.4 billion of water.

It reminds me of a restaurant that was located in South St. Louis County during my high school years called “Wilde’s House of Poisons”. I never ate there. Maybe no one did. It only lasted about two telephone books. Maybe if they had sold Liquid Death at the House of Poison, they would still be in business.

Today, I also came across a brand of foamy hand soap called Mrs. Meyers. I was intrigued by the bottle because it said that the scent was that of Iowa pine trees. Not knowing that Iowa pines have a particular scent, I thought that our next road trip should include the pine forests of Iowa.

Actually, I assumed that Mrs. Meyers must live in Iowa and was just being patriotic. But, no, Mrs. Meyers seems to make her soap in Wisconsin.

I also noted that, next year, this soap may no longer be available. It is marked as a “limited edition scent”. What does that mean? They’re running out of pine trees in Iowa? I am not sure.

But Mrs. Meyers has about a dozen other scents available for their foamy hand soap community.  Some, I understand.  But can someone tell me what Acorn Spice hand soap would smell in your bathroom? Or, how about Rain Water scented? Or Snowdrop?

At any rate, it was a busy day. Driving to Rockville, stopping at McDonalds for coffee, filling up the gas tank, my regular Wednesday leadership meeting for the Haberman Institute, a little sushi for lunch, stops at two groceries, a bakery, and a fish store. Setting the table for three dinner guests ( including old friends and former neighbors who tomorrow are moving into an assisted living facility) , picking up and driving the dinner guests home, watching half of the Nats game on TV, reading Thomas Mann’s novella Tristan, and a few things more. Like writing this post.

I must admit that I am tired of hearing about Jeffrey Epstein. I understand the trauma which continues to affect his victims, but will be surprised if the current push to release more information will give them the closure they want and deserve. I don’t know if there was a sign-in sheet for his island visitors, or a “client list” (whatever that means), or a little black book. I take it for granted that a lot of well known people visited the island, and that there were many underage girls there. I don’t assume that their age was pointed out to those who were Epstein’s guests, or obvious to an onlooker.

I assume Epstein and Maxwell did some terrible things. Epstein is dead (I really don’t care if he committed suicide or not). And Maxwell? I am sure she will come to no good eventually, and Trump’s treatment of her is just one more example of “Trump being Trump”.

If there was any evidence, or if there was even any hint of evidence, that Trump participated in any illegal or even immoral activity with any underage women, I would feel very different. But I have not heard anything of Epstein’s victims accuse anyone, much less Trump, but Epstein and Maxwell of bad acts. Perhaps, at this morning’s scheduled press conference, someone will say something about someone. But I doubt it.

To me, of all of the distractions that Trump and his sycophants throw around to keep our minds off the horrible things happening in this country, the Epstein distraction is the biggest and the most unnecessary.

I just read Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. I probably have read it before, but honestly don’t remember. I did see one of the films made of this short book. I knew the simple story line before I began to read.

Death in Venice is a shocking book, I think, more so in light of the Epstein scandal. Our “hero”, Gustav von Aschenbach is a middle aged writer whose wife has died. He needs to get away and decompress and chooses to go to Venice, where he has been before. He stays in a small, upscale hotel on the Venice Lido. A wealthy Polish family with four children is also staying there. One of the children is a presumably very attractive 14 year old boy, and Aschenbach falls in love.

For a month or more, Gustav stalks young Tadziu (or is it Wladziu?). He spends days watching him on the beach, in the hotel dining room, everywhere. He describes him in god-like terms. He never approaches him. Their eyes sometimes lock. Now and then, there might be a smile.

This goes on a month or more, the Polish family gets ready to leave, Gustav dies sitting under an umbrella at the beach.

That’s the story. The boy was 14. When he wrote the story, Mann was about 35.

But it isn’t the entire story. Apparently, Mann had taken a trip similar to the one Aschenbach took. Well, not altogether similar. Mann was accompanied by his very much alive wife, and young daughter. But he did see a Tadziu. And he wrote this story based on a real person, a real experience.

Yes, there are many differences between Mann’s story and Epstein’s. Aschenbach was not wealthy, was very shy, took no action (other than stalking), and wrote about it. Aschenbach, by the way, did not regret his feelings. He regretted not being strong enough to take any action. Aschenbach wished he was Epstein.

It does show that Epstein’s obsession with young bodies (of any or all genders) is not limited to Epstein. Of course, we all know that. This is why the child pornography industry is so pervasive. This is why, in some societies, at some times, these activities would be looked at as normal, or at least not criminal. Thomas Mann was a happily married man, they say. One wife. Six children. But not embarrassed to write this story or publish this book.

Jeffrey Epstein took his obsession in a different and more horrific direction. But nothing can be done now to repair the damage Epstein caused. Concentrating on all of this, I am sorry to say, is of interest (because this sort of thing is always of interest), but a distraction. Fiddling while Rome is burning.

And Rome, indeed, is burning.

The New York Times reports that Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narenda Moti had a phone call where Trump said that it was because of him that the recent hot war with Pakistan over control of Kashmir calmed down, and that he wanted Modi’s support for the Nobel Peace Prize. Modi responded by saying that Trump was not the reason the war calmed down and that Trump did nothing regarding that war that would merit that prize.

Since then, Trump and Modi have not communicated, India has become a country whose exports to the US are taxed higher than any other countries, and Modi has traveled to Beijing and had long discussions both with Xi and Putin.

Now, I am not a fan of Hindus über Alles Modi, but this country has long looked to India as our counterbalance against China, just as we had potentially looked at Russia in the same way. Now, we have brought those three countries closer together. While I am sure they will be unable to be allied with each other for long, the fact that for now, none are allied with us cannot be good.

In the meantime, it’s a new month. September and October are usually the best months in Washington. The temperature and humidity break, the sky is generally blue, and in October, the leaves change colors, often starting with our front yard maple. Of course, eventually, we get to January and February, two months I could do without (thankfully, February is short), but they are both a long way off.

This fall promises to be an awful one for Hispanics in Washington DC.  I mentioned yesterday that about 10% of the city is Hispanic. So far, the ICE push has not reached our suburbs, but both Montgomery and Prince George’s counties are more than 20% Hispanic, and with Maryland Governor Moore so forcefully opposing Trump’s talk about crime in Baltimore, you never know what might happen.

Of course, consistent with Trump’s push against India because of Modi’s opposition to him, Trump has selected DC, Maryland, California, and Illinois for attacks. He ignores high crime cities like Little Rock and Shreveport because they are in red states. He also ignores Texas, which is 40% Hispanic and perhaps has more Hispanic non-citizens than any other state.

Yes, Trump picks favorites. That is the way he governs on any level. He doesn’t understand why everyone doesn’t praise him. After all, it is so easy. And then, once someone praises him, he becomes a favorite, no longer a pariah. So simple.

This is, by the way, what is meant by calling Trump a transactional president. The easiest and simplest of transactions. You like me? I like you. You don’t like me? Too bad for you.

A transactional presidency is necessarily a presidency that picks favorites. You need to decide with whom to be transactional. Political favorites. Ethnic favorites. Religious favorites. State and city favorites.

And now, corporate favorites. The US now apparently owns, or will own, 10% of Intel, the first of what may be many such arrangements. Once the US owns equity in a corporation, that corporation becomes too important (if not always too big) to fail. Picking winners and losers like this has, of course, always been anathema to Republicans. But no longer. Whether this is creeping socialism or just another facet of fascism, I am not sure. Or a combination of both. Hitler, after all, called his fascist party the National German Socialist Workers Party.

Tough times ahead, even if it is September and October. The calendar says the fall cometh? But, as to Trump, whence comes his fall?

Now, first, this may be the largest blog post title ever. I understand that. But I am not planning on retyping it in its correct place. Sorry about that.

Okay, back to our story.

While everyone knows that DC has a crime problem, everyone also knows that every big city has a crime problem. But everyone should also realize that crime in DC is primarily concentrated in certain areas of the city. For example, in Ward 3, where we live, violent crime is virtually nonexistent. And, although the White House (and maybe right wing media) refuses to admit it, violent crime has been going down city-wide. Furthermore, according to ChatGPT, the DC metropolitan area’s overall crime rate puts it in the bottom 25% of US large metropolitan areas.

Donald Trump was able to win the 2024 presidential race because he was able to politicize immigration as a threat to American security. There were plenty of reasons to oppose the Biden border policies, but security (i.e., fear that immigrants were committing crimes) should have been way down the list. Statistics showed that recent immigrants (for reasons that should be pretty obvious) were less likely to commit crimes, but that didn’t matter. Since Trump views honesty as a weakness, not a virtue, he was able to concentrate on a few tragic incidents, repeat them over and over, and convince the gullible that people were crossing the border for the sole purpose of terrorizing the country.

He is now working on the 2026 midterms. He has ICE and other federal agencies engaged in their own terrorizing activities as they go after foreign-born people and unceremoniously try to send them to Venezuela, Uganda, and South Sudan. To him, this is a continuation of his 2024 narrative about immigrants and crime, and he expects it will be politically successful.

His anti-immigrant push is the focus of his “anti-crime” activity in DC. If you come from a Spanish speaking country, it does not matter if you snuck into the country and escaped detection, if you came into the country legally and are claiming asylum, if you are here on a valid visa (expired or not), if you are have a student visa or a tourist visa, if you are in the process of applying for citizenship, if you were brought into the country when you were a child or an infant, if you are married to a citizen, if you are 90 years old and have been here 75 years, if you work hard and pay your taxes, if you have served in the US military, and sometimes even if you are an actual bona fide US citizen. You are at risk of being scooped up off the streets and sent to a distant site where you will be held incommunicado. This is the reality of America today.

As you would imagine, there are many neighborhoods in the city with high levels of Hispanic populations. Over 10% of DC is Hispanic. People are afraid to go to work, afraid to go to the grocery store, afraid to walk their children to school. Neighbors have gone into action, aided by immigrants support groups. Some non-Hispanics shop for their neighbors. Other walk their neighbors’ children to and from school. And so on. They are well organized. And this is America today. Anyone from a Hispanic country is now a political pawn of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

In the meantime, the city is being economically strangled. Trump does not care. We vote against him, so we are expendable.

The National Guard serve no practical purpose  except to pick up trash. The increase in arrests is largely related to ICE enforcement. Crime appears to be down a bit, but crime is always low in non-democratic countries. And as Trump himself has said (I paraphrase): if a dictator brings down crime, maybe people prefer a dictator.

Enough said. Have a good Labor Day (those who celebrate). What’s this holiday about, anyway?

Last night, we watched Six Degrees of Separation, a film from the ’90s that we had never seen. In fact, it is possible that we haven’t seen any films from the ’90s. We were busy with other things.

Six Degrees, starring Donald Sutherland, Stockard Channing, and Will Smith, among others, is based on a true story, sort of. And that is how we came to watch it.

I should start at the beginning. The beginning starts in the city of Trondheim, Norway, a city we have never visited. Trondheim, the third largest Norwegian city and the northernmost large city on earth, has long intrigued me.

Our friends Michael and Wendy just got back from a Norwegian cruise which I think visited Trondheim. My cousin Richard in Germany, whom I have never met in person, also just finished a Norwegian cruise. A college classmate moved to Trondheim and may be there still. A Norwegian Facebook friend often writes about Trondheim. And I read something about the small Jewish community there and how, in a climate where sometimes the sun barely sets and sometimes barely rises, they set the time for the beginning of Shabbat.

By coincidence, something about traveling to Trondheim appeared on my Facebook feed Thursday night, leading to my opening up the Trondheim Wikipedia page and, after learning – among other things – that Trondheim has over 50,000 university students living there – I went to the list of “famous people” born there.

I had never heard of any of them, but for obvious reasons, the name David Abrahamsen interested me, and then I looked him up. I discovered that he was a member of an long established Trondheim Jewish family, that he was trained as a medical doctor and psychiatrist, and he moved to the United States, becoming an expert on serial killers. He wrote books on David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”) and on Jack the Ripper, among other things.

He had a daughter named (after her second marriage) Inger Elliott, who became a well-known expert and importer of Asian textiles, who once told a writer friend of hers, John Guare, about a young Black man named David Hampton, who came to her New York apartment, telling her untruthfully that he was a friend of one of her children and Sidney Poitier’s son, and needed a place to stay for a night, but that he turned to be a conman. She awakened to find him engaged in a sexual liaison with another man in her guest room and called the police, who arrested him.

Her story became the basis for Six Degrees of Separation.

I thought the film was awful, by the way. Dumb, racist, artificial. But I seem to feel that about at least half the films I see.

Six Degrees, by the way, was a play before it became a film. Unfortunately, it was never made into a musical. But if it had been, perhaps it would have been written by Stephen Sondheim.

Had it been, he may have wanted to express his gratitude to Inger Elliott for starting this particular ball rolling and, at the same time, honoring her father David Abrahamsen, for fathering Inger Elliott, by premiering the musical in his home town.

This is just a long way of suggesting that we have  missed the  possibility of hearing Sondheim in Trondheim.

Anyway, (1) Trondheim, (2) Abrahamsen, (3) Elliott, (4) Hampton, (5) Guare, (6) Channing, Sutherland, or Smith [you choose]. Six degrees of separation.

Maybe tomorrow, we will go back to Trump. He grows more evil by the hour.

I had breakfast with one friend yesterday and lunch with another. Each told me a secret that I am not allowed to repeat.

On another topic, I ordered pancakes twice recently at First Watch. Actually, at different locations, so I will rephrase. I ordered pancakes twice recently at two First Watches. OK, that is not clear, either; you might think I ordered four pancakes, and that would be false

So I will try a third time. On two different recent occasions, I ordered a pancake at First Watch, but guess what? The pancakes were different, and so we’re the First Watches.

I am not going to identify the two First Watches. You can guess, if you want. I will only give you one hint. Here it is: Since June, I have been in four First Watches, and two of them have no connection with what I want to say.

Okay, that was not really a clue. And it also isn’t really accurate. But to explain would be totally confusing and just lead to more questions. And we don’t need that, do we?

To get on with our story, let me say this. If I were asked to grade the two pancakes, one would get an F and the other an A+.

Why am I telling you this? Here is a big clue for this question: because you do not want to hear any more about Donald Trump.

The F pancake was their carrot pecan pancake. I ordered it because it seemed healthy and interesting. It was both. But it wasn’t edible. It was the first time I had ever ordered a pancake at a First Watch, and I vowed I would never order a pancake there again.

Thus (so, therefore, ergo), when I went to First Watch the next time, I ordered a pancake. This time, a multi-grain pancake. With a little syrup, it rated an A+.

By the way, their coffee is quite good. It comes from a district in Colombia, and not the District of Columbia. You order a cup; they give you a pitcher. The Washington Nationals should go to First Watch. Boy, do they need a pitcher.

There are 535 First Watch locations. That means that if you decided to eat every day at a different First Watch every morning and started on January 1, 2026, you would finish on June 19, 2027. That assumes two things. Can you guess what they are? First, you don’t miss a day. Second, the number of First Watches does not change. (I could elaborate on both of those points. But, I won’t.)

By the way, they have 14,000 employees. That seems like a lot, but remember Walmart has 2,100,000 employees. That means, for every employee First Watch has, Walmart has 150. This, by the way, is the first time that this comparison has ever been made. Ever.

Sometimes, I am sure that you wonder why you bother to read this blog. Today, I bet, is one of those times.

But stick with it. When all is said and done, you will know the answer to that question. And this I promise you. I will never let you down.

Former Judge J. Michael Luttig said something a few nights ago on MSNBC about the state of the American government today and especially about the state of the American judiciary. He is very critical of the Trump administration for all of the obvious reasons, and he is very critical about Congress for all of the obvious reasons. He is harshly critical of the current Supreme Court.

But Judge Luttig has nothing but praise the the United States District Court judges and, I think, the judges of the appellate courts. They, he says, form the only branch of the government standing up for America.

As to the Supreme Court, we know we have two conservative justices for every liberal justice. And we recognize that this is not the Supreme Court we should have. Not only not the Court we deserve or would like, but not the Court that should exist.

We were cheated out of one justice who would have been appointed by Barack Obama, but for Mitch McConnell’s unprecedented refusal to allow hearings for the nominee, much less to allow the nomination to come to a vote. He took the spurious position that the nomination should belong to the next president, to be elected later that year.

And then, four years after that, to add salt to the wound, McConnell completely reversed his position without a hint of embarrassment and pushed through the nomination of Justice Amy Coney Barrett with unprecedented speed, even though she was nominated only four weeks before the 2020 presidential election. That’s just what happens when you control the Senate, he said. Mitch McConnell is just a bad guy.

And the McConnell Supreme Court (mistakenly called the Roberts court, at times), often surprisingly and very consistently, has backed positions taken by the Trump administration, much being done on its “shadow docket”, without normal process and even without written opinions. Before this past year, who even knew the Court had a shadow docket? For shame!

But the Supreme Court has often been a problem, even before Trump packed the Court. There have been many harmful and unnecessary decisions in recent years. Decisions decimating the Voting Rights Act and stating that the courts should not interfere in partisan gerrymandering disputes. Decisions expanding the definition of free speech, defining corporations as “people,” and cutting off limitations on corporate contributions to political campaigns. And, of course, decisions defining the Second Amendment in absolutist terms, restricting restrictions on guns and other weapons.

Statistics that I have seen show that 80% of homicides in the District of Columbia are the result of gunshots. Other statistics show there are many more guns in the country than there people.

Yet, along with his stated, but undoubtedly insincere, determination to cut homicides in the District, Trump’s recently appointed US Attorney, Jeanine Pirro, has stated that her office will no longer prosecute anyone found to be illegally carrying a firearm. How does this make sense?

One year, it’s at a grade school in Connecticut, then it’s a high-school in Florida, then a grade school in Texas, and now a church school in Minnesota.

The Court’s position on the Second Amendment is different today than it had been for most of this country’s 249 years, and probably one day will be reversed again. But not soon.

Of course, in the best of possible worlds, government officials would all recognize the problem and sit down to try to resolve it. In this country, today, we are unable and unwilling to do that. We can not reach any agreement that crosses party lines, even if the lives of children are at stake. For shame!

On whom should the blame be put? On the MAGA Republicans, who are truly deplorable (remember what that description led to?), or the non-MAGA Republicans, who are scared to death? Or on the Democrats, who made some mistakes during the Biden years, and who nowvl often seem hapless and divided?

Or do we put the blame on ourselves? A recent Bulwark opinion suggested that somewhat over 40% of Americans support fascism, whether they know it or not. This might be our ultimate problem. A problem to which there is no apparent answer.

But we do need to find one. And that really means the Democrats must get their act together, something that becomes very difficult when it seems they don’t even know what their act is.

Or should we simply blame all of it on the bossanova?

If you ask white Americans whether Black slavery was wrong, I would think that almost all would agree with that. The same would be true if you asked about the treatment of native Americans during the colonial period and early years of the Republic.

But white Americans today by and large give little thought to those questions, and, as we see, many Americans, including many who rank high in our government, not only don’t think about them, they don’t want to think about them. They do not want to interrupt their appreciation of the life so many of us lead by thinking about how we got here. And even among those who might think about those things now and then, the questions “If I had been alive then, what would I have thought and how would I have acted?” rarely comes to mind.

Now, let us switch to the Middle East.

Let’s look at Israel 100 years from now. There are at least five  possibilities. I am going to list them, but am not going to give odds as to which are more or less likely.

1. Israel no longer exists as a sovereign state, and the area from the river to the sea is free of Jews.
2. Israel no longer exists and the area comprises a different country with a mixed Jewish-Arab population.
3. Israel exists, and Gaza and the West Bank contain a Palestinian state or states at peace with Israel.
4. Israel exists, and Gaza and the West Bank contain a Palestinian state or states always in a hot or cold war with Israel.
5. Israel has expanded to include Gaza and the West Bank.

The right wing of the Netanyahu coalition, and by now, maybe Netanyahu himself, are banking on scenario number 5. They discount the possibility of scenario 3 and the others are unacceptable. 

Getting to scenario 5 might be brutal, just like getting to today’s United States was brutal, but once you get there, the brutality will be limited to history books. Or, as we see today’s tendencies in this country, the brutality may not even make it big in those books.

Of course, scenario 5 may never be achieved, but the other four possibilities (plus others that you could add to my list) should be, they think, much less appealing to those who want to minimize conflict in the 22nd century. They see the necessity of increased conflict in the 21st to achieve future stability in the 22nd. They feel themselves the bringers of peace to Israel. And they are betting on the potential of achieving scenario 5, and that the conflicts that lead there will largely be forgotten, tacitly approved, or at least understood.

You and I don’t live in the 22nd century. We think about a much shorter term future. We disapprove of how the Palestinians are being treated, just as we strongly disagree with how most Palestinians seem to be thinking about their own future.

After all, a Palestinian could have written the post. His or her scenario 5 would be very different.  Palestine from the river to the sea. Jews exiled or turned into barely second class citizens. And it is that opposite vision that makes scenario 4, a scenario that no one wants, a possibility.

The right wing Israelis and the right wing Palestinians are each willing to sacrifice the 21st century to bring about their version of the 22nd, a version characterized as peaceful, forgetfulness forgiving.

Who are we, looking into the future our own 21st century preferences is likely to bring about, to say they are wrong?

I think of two quotes. First, Senator Joni Ernst, who said, “We’re all going to die”, so (I add) whether it’s by disease or violence, does it matter in the long-run? And Pres. John Adams who talked about the necessity of fighting wars, so that yhe next generation can bring about prosperity, and so the generation after that can enjoy literature and music.

Not a sermon. Just a thought.

This is a good way to start today’s post. Clearly, it is true. What to do about it is another question.

It puzzles me that the further Trump’s popularity falls, the appeal of the Democratic Party falls farther. I don’t understand it, but it seems clear to me that three of the reasons are Chuck Shumer, Halim Jeffries, and Ken Martin. “Ken Martin?”, you ask, “who is he?” That is part of the problem. He is the chair of the party and has made no impression on you.

As to Shumer and Jeffries, I have no problem with either, as legislators. In fact, I like them. But as voices, spokespersons, faces? Clearly not. If they were right for those positions, the Democrats would not be where they are today.

For one thing, both are from New York. The Democrats need leaders from places like Kansas and Texas and Florida. For another, they are both members of perceived minority groups, and the Democrats are in a position where they need to appeal to Trump’s populist targets. That does not mean that the Democrats should become a white man’s club, but they should have some more white faces in their leadership.

On the other hand, the Democrats shouldn’t give up on DEI, although it needs to be managed better. The Democrats should make it clear to all minority groups that, without some recognized form of DEI, their continued progress in this country does not stand a chance.

Perhaps more than anything else, the Democrats need a platform. Not one of overwhelming detail, and not one so specific that it will be subject to change every time the sun comes up. A platform of unchangeable principles. Perhaps as simple as a set of Democratic Ten Commandments, or a Democratic Pledge of Allegiance.  Not a pledge of allegiance to the Democratic Party, but to a set of invioble principles. You can start with some old ones, like “liberty and justice for all” and build on them.

Similarly, the Democrats need to counter everything bad in Trumpism. A list of, say, 20 no-nos. The list could be longer of course, but for its purpose, maybe even 20 is too many. Examples? “We will not turn the military on American residents.” “We will not whisk people off the streets and hold them in secret locations, not allowing contact with family members or attorneys.” “We will respect the authority of governors and mayors.” Simple, obvious things.

And, perhaps more important than anything else, the Democrats need not only  be prepared to support the integrity of American elections, but to convince the public that our election systems, as constructed and operated state by state, are honest, and the results are accurate. As it stands now, our 2026 election is at enormous risk.

Who is it in The Mikado who keeps “a little list”? The Democrats need to keep a number of them, with contents suggested above. And they need to be published in every way possible in today’s media environment. Again and again and again and again.

Yesterday was a strange one for me. I will try to explain.

My jury summons required me to report to the courthouse, coincidentally (I am sure) located near the Judiciary Square Metro stop, at 9 a.m. I left the house dressed in fresh khakis and a red plaid button down shirt at 8:15, and walked to the Metro, about 15 minutes from the house.

It was not overly warm, but I had done a lot of walking over the past several days (10,000 steps plus on two of the last three) and my legs felt it. In addition, my left foot bunion, which I have been able to ignore for more than 30 years, is finally making its presence felt, so my steps are not as carefree as they have been.

Whatever they reasons, when I got to the Metro (quickly discovering that the street escalator was not functioning), and on the train, I was already, as some used to say and some may still say, plumb tuckered out. How tuckered out was I? So tired that, along with one other man who kept his eyes closed the whole time, I was the only person on the entire and crowded subway car that wasn’t looking at their smartphone.

I got off at Judiciary Square just on time at 8:50, walked to the still sleek and attractive Moultrie Court House, and arrived early at the juror intake room. It was 8:58.

I stood in line for a few minutes, and then it was my turn. Two of three clerks were fighting over me. I told them I could only be in one place at one time. The one with the biggest smile (they were both smiling) won out. She looked at my summons and my driver’s license and said simply: “You want to be excused?” I said that I would like to be because I had a number of things scheduled for the next day, and she said,”Okay, you will get an email telling you that you are permanently excused.”

And that was it. On the one hand, I was surprised. On the other, I was a bit hurt. But as I thought about it, I realized that I had reported for jury duty over 20 times through my adult life and never served on a jury. So, really nothing had changed.

I also should say that I was planning on reading E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End while I was sitting around waiting to be called for a voir dire, but it was not to be.

I decided to walk to the Gallery Place Metro stop, and stay for a while reading at a café, and bought coffee at Gregory’s, where the coffee is always good, but my heart wasn’t in it. So I went to the station, saw four National Guardsmen, all unarmed and bored to death (as well as being cruelly overdressed), and got on the train.

Since I got home, I have taken one of our cars to the service station because it developed a flat tire over the weekend, all on its own. The tire, when placed on a thingamabob to test it for repair, looked just like my bunion. The tire will be replaced. I am stuck with the bunion.

By the way, I did go to a podiatrist several decades ago. He told me I would need surgery. I asked him if anything could go wrong. He said that the surgery might not work, the bunion might reappear, it may make things worse, there may be complications, or I may die. Enough said.

I also closed my eyes for ten minutes (opening them over a half hour later), and then went to the post office, bought a sandwich at Subway, and did a brief grocery run.

Still tired when I got home, I pulled together my strength and picked up my phone, going to Facebook and watching short “reels’ for almost 45 minutes, as they rotated between Rodney Dangerfield clips, short segments of terrific piano playing, and odd examples of Hasidic rabbis dancing with each other. Then, I wrote this much of this post.

Then I watched more clips. Many of the piano performances were from this year’s Cliburn competition. The winner was a young pianist from Hong Kong, named Aristo Wang. We will hear more from him. He was born in Hong Kong, had his early education there and in London, and has a degree in economics from Harvard, and music degrees from both the New England Conservatory and Julliard.

The rest of the day was quiet. J finished the biography of Max Nordau that I have been reading, and went back to Colum McCann’s Thirteen Ways of Looking, which I had started earlier.

I watched, out of the corner of my eye, the Nats-Yankee game. The Nats are shut out for 8 innings, allowing the Yankees to score 10 times. Then, in the 9th, the Nats score 5. It may be that the Nats are in last place in their division, but they are in first place in all the Majors in scoring in the last 2 innings of a game.  And, as I understand it, that is what really counts.

In DC, it is “one day or one trial”. In other words, if I am selected for a jury, I am there for the trial, no matter how long the trial lasts. If I am not selected, I am only on duty for one day. Once you are dismissed, you can not be called for two years. There are no formal exemptions, except for medical exemptions where you have a note from your doctor.

So I have been called for jury duty many times, but never selected. Sometimes you just sit around all day and never even get called for a panel. Sometimes, you get called for a panel, and a panel can be 50 people, with the lawyers looking to whittle it down to 12 jurors and 2 alternates. I have been on several panels, but because I am a lawyer, or because I look too shifty, I have never sat on a jury. Edie, on the other hand, has been on several.

The times in DC are undoubtedly strange, as Donald seems intent on punishing us for voting against him. So far, the biggest effect seems to be on restaurants downtown since potential customers are afraid to be caught in a crossfire, and area residents with Spanish accents, who are being rounded up and shipped off in great secrecy. Terrible times here, and it will only get worse.

Don is now threatening other cities as well (pity the poor Guardsmen and women whose lives are being disrupted), including neighboring Baltimore. As you may recall the Key Bridge on the Baltimore Beltway was damaged by a commercial ship a year or two ago. Our wonderful leader has told Gov. Moore of Maryland that, if Baltimore and the State doesn’t do everything that he orders them to do, he just not pay for the federal share of the cost of a new bridge.

Did I ever tell you that Donald Trump is a terribly evil and bad person, and that if you have Trump Derangement Syndrome, you should not be ashamed, but proud?

Over the weekend, we went to the Smithsonian National African Art Museum on the mall. It is such a delight (the museum itself as well as the art work) that I always feel sad that it never seems to draw a crowd. It appears to draw fewer than 150,000 visitors a year and in 2024 drew only about 130,000, or an average of about 350 a day. That compares to 750,000 at the Hirshhorn down the street, for example.

Part of the problem is that most of us don’t have sufficient context to fully appreciate what is on display in this three story museum, and part is ……. I think there are many reasons.

It is located on Independence Avenue SW, and the entrance is one of three in the Enid Haupt Garden.

I took a few photos of work I especially liked. What do you think of these?

Or these?

I did take some brief notes on the origin of these pieces, some of which are hundreds of years old and some of which are not. But let’s just appreciate them for how they look today.

I left Budapest by train. I had no idea of the amount of space between Budapest and Prague.  It is somewhat more than 300 miles, and the trip took most of the day on Communist era trains. And, to tell you the truth, nothing seen from the window was memorable.

I was in a compartment with only a middle-aged, well-dressed couple. Again, our mutual languages were limited, but over the course of the trip, I guess we spoke quite a bit. They were Hungarian. They were Jewish. They were party members. He was in the diplomatic service. They were stationed in Prague. He was the Hungarian Economic Minister to Czechoslovakia.

I told them my sad story with my reservation in Budapest. We all hoped that would not happen in Prague, but as a failsafe, they gave me their phone number, written on a now long-lost business card.

Arriving in Prague, I went to the then new Park Hotel, the pride of the city, only to find out that they, too, had never heard of me, and that they had a room for that night, but not the following night. There were two American men, probably in their 40s, checking in who expressed their sympathy.

I saw the two men an hour or so later when I went to the hotel restaurant and they invited me to join them. What an experience that was. They both were economists working for the United Nations labor office in Geneva. They were in Prague on business. They were both from New York, and one of them knew everything there was to know about any subject you could throw at him. At first, he told me more than The Encyclopedia Britannica could have about Czechoslovakia and the UN’s office in Geneva. But then it turned out he had an absolutely encyclopedic knowledge about baseball statistics over the last 50 years or so. And then opera – who sang what roles where and when, and what the critics thought. I was astounded. I had never met anyone like that.

For those who have been in Prague during the past 25 years or so, it is probably impossible to conceptualize how sad and depressing and lifeless it was in 1973. I saw the castle and the Old City and the Jewish quarter (synagogues and cemetery). It was about 5 years since the Prague Spring, and it looked like the city was wallowing in despair.

And I had no place to stay the next night. I found a pay phone and somehow figured out how to call my train companions for advice, and they (reluctantly, I am sure) gave me directions to their apartment. It must have been dangerous for them to invite an American to  stay.

I took a street car out of central Prague to an area of Soviet Era high rises, a large number of identical, dilapidated gray buildings with no landscaping, and found the right one. The elevator was broken, the lobby was very drab and unwelcoming. I remember little about the apartment itself. I had supper there with them. They were very friendly and accommodating.  I don’t even remember if they had a second bedroom or if I slept on a couch.

When I left the next morning on a train for Frankfort, they wished me well, but warned me not to try to send them a thank you note or anything. The evening, they said, never happened. Or at least that is what I think say said.

I was intrigued when the train stopped at Marienbad (I had seen the film and didn’t even know it was a real place) and at Pilsner, and I was ecstatic to get out of Czechoslovakia.

Deep breath. Frankfurt. Immediately change trains. Swiss Alps. Rome. Naples. Pompeii. More adventures. But you are tired of this trip.

I will tell you more if you ask. The exiled member of the Russian nobility. The young lady in Rome. The train strike in Naples and how I almost lost my life crossing the street. The drugged out American teenagers. Even the surprise visit from the FBI after I got back home.

But tomorrow – back to 2025.

My only frames of reference for judging Communist Hungary in 1973 was to compare it to East Berlin in 1962 and Moscow and Leningrad, which I visited in the winter of 1970. East Berlin, the year after the wall was built, was empty and sterile. And I know that housing conditions in the USSR in 1970 were terrible, but I wasn’t in anyone’s dwelling units then, so all I saw were the public sections of the cities. I was not restricted in any way, so I made my way around the two Russian cities anywhere I wanted to go. The streets were busy, everyone seemed well-dressed, the stores were busy, restaurants were filled, I went to the ballet, to museums, to the circus. I was surprised at how relaxed and liveable it seemed from the eyes of a visitor. On the other hand, the elderly women cleaning the streets at dawn, the concierge on every hotel floor, the lack of laughter in the streets, and the fact that each shop was government owned made it clear that this was not Kansas.

Budapest in 1973 was different. It could have been Chicago or Boston. It was alive, there were what appeared to be private stores and restaurants, people smiled and laughed. I felt a bit off center because there were no familiar labels and no western cars, so there was some feeling of being in a parallel universe. But it seemed separate but equal.

I wasn’t there long enough to do everything, but I did do quite a lot. I ate in restaurants that looked like this

where I could get a full, multi-course meal with wine for $3.

I went to the opera

where I saw Don Giovanni (I think) in Hungarian, which made it sound to me like they were using made up syllables. The opera, pictured above as it looks today, was unrestored and drab in 1973. I was able to get into the Doheny Street Synagogue before it was fixed up after being damaged in World War II, when it was closed to the public, not being used, and still had holes in the roof where water fell on the Bima and the seats. Today, it looks like this

Then, not at all. I was lucky to get in. There was a workman doing something and he opened the door for me.

On our more recent trip to Budapest, Edie and I went to the opera and toured the synagogue. To say it was night and day is to understate the differences.

From Budapest, I went to Prague by train. Night and day again. I think I will tell the Prague story tomorrow and then come back to 2025.

To get context for this post, please be sure you have first read yesterday’s.

After six hours of a relatively monotonous Danube shoreline, Budapest, spreading on both sides of the river, came as a total shock, its beauty fulfilling all of the hype given me on the boat. If you have been there, you know what I mean.

The castle on the Buda side.

The parliament building on the Pest side.

It was late afternoon, as I recall, when we arrived, and I bounded up the stairs on the dock with a feeling that I had arrived in paradise and nothing could go wrong. Following the instructions from my travel agent, I located the small office of Ibusz, the state tourist agency, near the dock, where I was to collect my hotel voucher.

I arrived just as the two young employees, one male, one female, were closing for the day. They were about my age and, because I was now an energetic young fellow who had just entered paradise, I was sure they would become my best friends.

I told them my name and why I was there and showed them my receipt from my travel agency. They each had the same response – a blank stare. They had never heard of me. They had never heard of the travel agency. They had no hotel room for me. There were no hotel rooms in Budapest available that night. I should get on the next train and go back to Vienna.

Now, had I been Arthur Hessel that day, that is probably what I would have done. But I was Super Art, invincible, and I could control my own destiny, Ibusz be damned.

I told them that there was no way that there was no room in all of Budapest for me and that, if we worked together as the perfect trio I knew we were, we would find me a place to stay. Again, normally they would have ignored me, but because I was Super Art, they happily agreed to stick around, keep the office open after hours, and man the phones. After about half an hour, they found a place.

It was not a hotel, and  airbnbs had not been invented, but they had found a room in the apartment of a woman who could use a little money.

She lived in a typical Pest tenament building. From the street, these late 19th century Budapest neighborhoods sort of look like the Bronx, but the overall footprint of the buildings is very different because they are built around large open courtyards with the apartments reached by external stairs within the courtyards, like this:

But hers, of course, was not nearly as fancy.

She was an old woman and spoke no English. We could communicate with my high school German but not perfectly. I know nothing at all about her and didn’t find out much then, either. Her apartment (cold water only) was very run down. The furniture was old. She clearly had no money, but……

She told me she had a grandson, and more than anything else, she wanted to buy my blue jeans (obviously then a valuable commodity in Hungary) to give to him. In fact, this poor, old woman kept raising the price she would pay me for my jeans until she got to the equivalent of 40 US dollars. $40 in 1973 would be close to $300 today.

I was aghast. How could anyone pay that much for a pair of jeans? How could this woman, seemingly lacking everything, pay that much? Even had I been willing to get rid of my jeans, I would never have taken that much from her. I would rather just give them to her. But then what would I wear the rest of my trip?

Of course, there were other possibilities. Maybe she had no grandson. Or no grandson who wanted jeans. Maybe this was simply a business proposition. Maybe she knew she could sell them for $50. I will never know.

But I did realize that I had made a mistake. Had I brought a few extra pairs of jeans with me, I could have paid for my entire trip. Or perhaps wound up behind bars.

Guess what? I am out of space again, and I still haven’t told you about my time in Budapest.

Come back tomorrow, OK?

For some reason, Budapest has a special attraction to me. It isn’t that I have any connection to the city. I certainly have no feel for general Hungarian history. And the Hungarian language is obviously a mystery to me. But if I had to move to Budapest, I think I would immediately feel perfectly comfortable and at home. I have only been there twice, first in the early 1970s when Hungary was Communist, and once about 35 or so years later.

What, or who, is responsible for my feelings? I blame it on a number of Hungarian-Americans I met on a hydrofoil traveling down the Danube in 1974. Let me explain.

In my earlier years, I took a number of solo trips to Europe. A Moscow-Leningrad trip. A Spain-Portugal trip. A week in Florence trip. And a trip focused on Budapest and Prague.

In the early 1970s, few Americans were traveling behind the Iron Curtain. It was not considered “the thing to do”, logistics were difficult, and there was a fair amount of trepidation involved. But I had been told there was a travel agency in DC (its name will remain unknown to protect the guilty) which had connections and specialized in trips to Communist countries, so I went to see them for a trip that would take me first to Vienna (I had been there before), and then to Budapest and Prague, and finally (on my own) to Rome, Naples and Pompeii, where I had also been previously. Two or three weeks altogether.

The travel agency made my reservations from Vienna to Budapest by boat. I went to and from Prague by train. I am not sure who arranged for that. The agency made hotel reservations, three nights in Budapest and two in Prague, for me

I flew to Vienna. I don’t remember if I had hotel reservations there or if I found a place after I arrived. I probably had reservations (just one night) and probably the travel agency booked it for me as well. It was one of those European style hotels that actually occupied one floor of an office building or apartment house, and it was awful. It was on the dingy-spooky side, and the room I was given (the only one available) was so narrow that lying in the small bed, I think I could touch both walls. There was a dresser whose drawers could not be fully opened and a small window that looked into an air shaft. For the first and (so far) only time in my life, I suffered from acute claustrophobia.

It was in the old city of Vienna, inside the Ringstrasse, and I remember having a nice meal with a glass or two of good Austrian red wine at an old restaurant nearby that claimed to have been Franz Schubert’s favorite spot. I guess I was gullible back then, and remember wondering whether this was where Schubert ate his famous Unfinished Dinner. (Okay, I just now made up that last line.) But the restaurant was filled with Austrian gemütlichkeit, and my mind relaxed.

I went back to the hotel, went to bed if not to sleep, and lay there with the walls closing in on me, even in the dark.

At some ungodly hour, well after midnight, I got up, dressed and zipped my suitcase, left the hotel

I could stand no more, and wandered the streets. I think I found another and better place to spend four or five hours, but my mind is rather murky on that. I don’t remember sleeping on a park bench.

At any rate, the next day I made my way to the hydrofoil dock on the not very blue (and in Vienna not very attractive) Danube and boarded the boat (as I recall, a new contraption at the time) for my 6 or so hour trip to parts unknown.

It was a beautiful day, the sky was a bright blue. The boat was festive and crowded.

While that section of the Danube is not especially awe inspiring, it was a pleasant trip. I remember three things.

First, it was not that long after leaving Vienna that we had Czechoslovakia on our left and Hungary on our right. I could tell we weren’t in Kansas any more because, I think in both countries, there were armed guard towers at very regular intervals, obviously to make sure no one was going to dive into the river with the goal of escaping the country. Second, I remember passing by Bratislava and wondering what it would be like going into a second tier Communist city, one that then probably never saw Americans.

But third, I remember the Hungarian-Americans on the boat, most 20 or 30 years older than me. Many were going back to  Budapest for the first time since the aborted 1956 revolution, when they escaped the country. These folks were elated to be going back. They LOVED Budapest. It was the MOST AMAZING CITY IN THE WORLD. I was going to have the best time, eat the best food, meet the best people. Their excitement was more than contagious, it was all enveloping. I was hooked. I couldn’t wait.

Then…….

I now see that I have a full blog post thinking about Budapest, but only talking about Vienna and the trip down the Danube. Maybe, we will return to this thrilling tale of yesteryear tomorrow. There is quite a bit to say.