Art is 80

This post is a companion to yesterday’s about Trump’s lack of an end game in his supposed pursuit to make Washington great again.

I took some out of town visitors on a tour of Washington yesterday. They have been to Washington a few other times and they had seen the main tourist sites, so we decided to skip those and see parts of Washington that tourists normally do not get to.

We left our house about 10:30 and returned about 2:30. We stopped and had a sandwich in the middle (30 to 45 minutes).

I report the following: no signs of National Guard or additional law enforcement.

As I said, we stayed away from the government buildings and major museums and tourists sites. We hit residential areas such as Westmoreland Terrace, AU Park, Forest Hills, Georgetown, Glover Park, Cleveland Park, Massachusetts Heights, and Kalorama. We visited the National Cathedral grounds and the Basilica grounds. We saw the campuses of American University, UDC and Catholic University. We visited embassy areas. We were in Rock Creek Park and the Dupont Circle neighborhood. We saw no law enforcement.

It seems clear that if we had gone to the National Mall, to Capitol Hill, to the major monuments, we would have seen National Guard contingents. If we had crossed the Anacostia and gone to Wards 7 and 8, perhaps we would have seen or sensed something. But we did none of these things.

I saw polls today in the Washington Post which show general opposition to everything going on. Polling maybe in the 80-20 range, although I did not see this by area of the city. But it is also clear that crime, for some DC neighborhoods and some DC residents, is a major concern. Even so, however, only 18% of DC resodents think that the inceased enforcement makes them safer and over 60% says it makes them feel less safe.

I did look at some of the crime statistics reported by the 8 DC administrative wards, which have approximately equal populations. We live in Ward 3, a geographically large ward, which has very little crime. Yes, some property crime, but virtually no violent crime. The homicide level for Ward 3 through August 20, 2025 for this year, for example, is 0. Wards 7 and 8 together have shown over 30 murders already this year.

The property crime situation, which I assume includes carjacking, is different. Although property crimes are not high in Ward 3, they are quite high in Ward 2. Ward 2 includes the downtown area, the Dupont Circle area, and some of the highly touristed parts of the city. The property crime situation, according to the statistics I saw, is higher in Ward 2 than it is in either Ward 7 or 8. This is something, if true, that I did not know, and would lead to thinking that more enforcement is needed. Apparently, this is because Ward 2 contains the most commercial activity of any area of the city and commercial activity attracts property crime. I don’t know.

But it goes back to so much of what the Trump administration does. Because so much is done to obtain emotional responses, rather than to actually solve problems, the type of thought that you would want to go into an activity such as increased crime protection is not there. I don’t think that anyone has matched particular responses to particular crimes. It’s just bring out the National Guard, and have the FBI ignore their other more important responsibilities and do night patrols in DC neighborhoods.

And then of course, there is ICE, involved in a very different kind of crime control, but one which gets conflated with violent crimes and property crimes. And unfortunately, the targeting of people speaking Spanish or with an accent and whisking them off the streets without knowing anything about them and without providing them with any semblance of due process, sometimes taking them, holding them incommunicado without an opportunity to inform family members as to where they are, or to obtain counsel, as outrageous as it is, is simply getting lost as one aspect of making DC safe again, something on which it has little, and maybe no, effect.

As all this activity is going on, are you being distracted from other things, such as the shakeup at all American museums, which are too woke, as can be proved by all of the negative information being provided on slavery, for example? That is the latest, so add it to the list.

Remember when the US went into Iraq? Or when we went into Afghanistan? Or when Israel struck back at Hamas? No end game. What will be done the day after?

I would suggest that this is exactly the position the Trump administration is going to find itself in here in DC.

Arrests in DC have picked up. Let’s leave out the ICE pickups of people who have not committed violent crimes; that is a different story and a large number of the arrests. Let us assume that these arrests have led to less crime, although there is no clear connection there. If you arrest someone for a driving violation, for example, the effect on crime will probably not exist.

But let’s assume for the moment that those being arrested include many whp are intent on committing future crimes (although no one really can tell that and intention to commit future crimes is not a crime itself). Or, let’s divorce the increase in law enforcement personnel from arrest statistics entirely, and simply conclude that their presence will deter some crime. That is highly possible.

But what is the end game? Whether the federal occupation deters crime by its simple existence, or by its specific activities, what is the end game?

Unless the occupation is to remain forever, at some point it will be over. (Arthur, at last you have said something everyone can agree with.) And then what? What is to stop crime from returning to its former levels?

Mayor Bowser was, to a large extent, correct when she said: give me more money to increase the MPD by the number of folks you have sent to town, and I will increase arrests and bring down crime, too. Just like you say you are.

She is probably correct, and that would be an appropriate end game. Increase the DC budget for increased law enforcement, and increase the annual federal payment (or find an equivalent resource) accordingly, and you have an end game. But that is very unlikely to occur.

And, I think there is another problem. The DC police force is already a few hundred officers short of its current approved capacity. This is a problem everywhere, it seems. There are not a sufficient number of qualified people to take on this stressful and dangerous occupation. And without a large enough group of candidates, this, too, is not an end game.

So what are other answers? Poverty relief programs, after school activity programs, criminal rehabilitation and post-confinement programs, more drug enforcement, stricter gun laws, more mental health support? The list could go on and on, as you know. And somewhere in this long list of possibilities are recipes for success.

You need the right leaders, sufficient funding, and the freedom to experiment. All three of these. Do we have any now? And obviously the Trump administration has different goals. It goals are to exaggerate crime in blue cities, show that Trump is tough on crime, accuse Democrats of being soft on crime, and hope to hold onto Congress in 2026. (Of course, they have other ways to hold onto their political power, some of which may in fact include criminal activity, but that is for another day.)

Another thing to keep in mind. When law enforcement success is measured by the number of arrests, mistakes will be made in the process. Innocent people will be arrested, innocent people will be terrorized. This is what happens in most totalitarian societies. You can eat off the streets, you can walk through dark alleys at midnight. But you are at risk of being whisked off the streets at any time, for good reason or for no reason, by government forces. And recourse, if it exists at all, is limited.

So, back to the beginning. What is the end game here? Until we know that, nothing can be really accomplished.

(1) Question: What are two promises that are impossible to believe? First, Putin saying, “Just give me part of the Ukrainian land I have been demanding, and I promise I will never try to get more.” Second, Trump saying, “Don’t worry. If Ukraine gives Putin that part of its land he now wants and Putin later tries to take more, we will defend Ukraine as if it were a part of NATO”.

So, today is a big day. Zelenskyy and Trump meeting. What will happen? Will Trump want to say, “Vlod, take this deal or not one more penny from the US.”? Maybe. And that is why, to make sure he doesn’t, the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, NATO, and the EU are interrupting their August and coming to town.

(2) I read that the addition of federal DEA and FBI and ICE agents, along with the DC National Guard, when added to the 40+ police forces already in the city, are not enough to bring down DC’s already falling crime rate. So we are adding Guard members from West Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio. It is like a big party filled with people you would never want to invite to a party. Other than innocent people being swept up off the streets, and maybe some injuries and deaths, nothing will come of this, I am sure.

(3) Let’s go on to something more interesting and, only because of the passage of time, less depressing.

You remember the French novelist Emile Zola, who stood up for the innocence of French-Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus, who was accused of treason. Do you know how Zola died? Zola died in his early 60s of carbon monoxide poisoning due to a clogged chimney. Did you know that?

Did you know that it was ruled an accident, but that Zola’s great granddaughter reported that her grandfather (Zola’s son) told her when she was young that a man came to see him some time after the incident and told him that someone the man knew, a chimney sweep who just passed away, told him before he died that he had been paid to block Zola’s chimney so air could not escape?

Do you know also that the French government interred Zola in the Pantheon and that Alfred Dreyfus was at the ceremony? Did you know that someone shot Dreyfus at the ceremony and wounded him? Did you know that it was Zionist leader and writer Max Nordau, Herzl’s associate, who tackled the would be assassin, and turned him over to the police? And did you know that the shooter was tried, but found not guilty of attempted murder on the basis of his testimony that he did not intend to kill Dreyfus, but just to injure him?

(4) It is August in Washington DC and my phone tells me it won’t get higher than the low 80s all week. My phone is very optimistic.

Tired of Trump? Then read on. Want to read about him? I guess you should come back tomorrow.

I went to another random shelf in our dining room not to look at the books per se, but to look at the art works in the books. Not that there was anything special about the art work in these books, all books of fiction, but that was the point. Book illustration itself is often a unrecognized art form and should not be ignored.

The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler. Illustrated by Andre Durenceau (1904-1985). Durenceau was a French born painter, muralist, jewelry designer and stage and costume designer, as well as book illustrator. He may be best known for mural work for the 1969 New York World’s Fair.

Tolstoy’s War and Peace, with woodcuts by Fritz Eichenberg (1901-1990).  Eichenberg, who taught at the New School and at Pratt Institute, was a prolific book illustrator. Born Jewish in Berlin, he came to the U. S. in 1933 and became a life long Quaker and pacifist.

The illustrator of a oversized edition of Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey is Everard Hopkins (1860-1928), born in England, brother of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. He illustrated this book in 1910, and along with illustrating several others, he was a cartoonist for the British magazine, Punch.

John Austen (1886-1948) illustrated an edition of Lord Byron’s Don Juan. A Beardsley-like illustrator, he also created advertisements and advertising posters.

A volume titled The Golden Tales of Anatole France was illustrated by L.A. Patterson. Here is an example of the book illustrator problem. L.A. Patterson (Lawrence A. Patterson, 1896-1964) was a California native, a junior college art teacher and illustrator of a small number of books. I could not locate him on a Google Search. Thank you, ChatGPT. The illustrations in this book are his best known works.

What do you think? Trump is more interesting?

I did finish The Jungle. And I know a lot about Chicago in 1905. Stock yards, steel mills, machine shops, immigrant conditions, taverns, brothels, Lake Shore Drive mansions, jails, unions, politics, capitalism, trusts, socialism. Quite a tour de force by 27 year old Upton Sinclair. You really should read it.

What is a “press conference”? According to ChatGPT, it is an event when someone speaks to a group of journalists and answers their questions. Using that definition, the event led by Trump and Putin in Anchorage last night does not qualify. They answered no questions. In fact, they avoided speaking about the matters which led to their summit. Putin gave a undergraduate-level talk on Russia-American relations in Alaska over the years. And Trump bad-mouthed Biden, talked about the “Russia hoax” and told everyone again what a great relationship he has with “Vladimir”. No other details were given.

The one thing that is certain? There are a lot of journalists who wonder why they took the trouble to fly to Anchorage.

My day was pretty quiet. Took Edie to the ophthamologist for her day-after-cataract surgery visit, and sat around with her most of the day to make sure she didn’t bend down below the waist. (I actually first wrote “below the waste.” That, too.)

I did watch a bad (but very well acted) film on Netflix once again. This one called Night Always Comes. But even a bad film can prove a point. The point is that American cities (in this case, Portland OR) contain some people who are down and out, and who are destined to remain down and out. Lynette (Vanessa Kirby) grew up in an impoverished house with a selfish and incompetent mother and an older brother with developmental disabilities. Her father had deserted the family. Kirby had got involved with drugs and sex when still underage and, try as she might, was never able to fully break away. She lives with her mother and brother in a small rented house and works more than one job to keep the family afloat and her brother out of an institution. The house goes up for sale and Kirby and her mother have saved enough for a down payment to become homeowners and have some stability for the first time. But her mother torpedoes the deal the day before closing by spending all her share of the down payment on a car (about $25,000. Kirby has until the morning to come up with the money that her mother decided to spend elsewhere. She turns out to be resourceful, but also reluctantly both unethical and criminal, as she (with the help of a co-worker) threatens to blackmail a married lover, steals a safe from her girlfriend’s apartment, and sells the cocaine found in the safe.

The point is not that you should applaud Kirby for falling further into criminality as the night goes on, but you can see how it could happen when you are at the bottom of a well, with no visible way out.

I always wondered what I would do in such a situation and thought about how easy it might be to wind up there. I have a law degree and that, of course, meant a lot. But I am a very untalented person and not at all a risk taker by nature. If I had found myself without professional credentials, money, or connections (and even more so if I had a mental illness, a phtsical disability or a drug, alcohol, or health problem), what would I have done? What could I gave done? And if on top of that if I debt, or enemies? It’s a frightening thought and watching Night Always Comes, you realize that this is a central facet of American society. The country is filled with people without economic hope. And we obviously take this for granted and, as a society, do not really care.

But Putin and Trump weren’t talking about poverty in the US or Russia. They were talking about territory in Ukraine and maybe about rare minerals.

Rare minerals? Yes, remember our deal to get a share of Ukraine’s rare minerals? You haven’t heard much about it since the day it was signed.

That’s because most of these rare minerals are located in the four Ukrainian provinces claimed by Russia. So here’s my latest thought: the US supports terratorial shifts to Russia in return for a deal (now kept secret) to give us a share of those rare minerals. Add that to my theory about Trump and Russian real estate.

We will find out details of their conversation when they are made public or  leaked. My guess is, once again, Trump will look foolish.

One thing we know. Russian bombardment of Ukraine will continue. There was no ceasefire.

Just like there was no press conference.

And speaking of “no”, why is Russia one of the only countries with no tariffs?

Help. This morning, Pam Bondi says that she is making Terry Cole emergency Chief of Police, and DC’s Mayor and Attorney General say that is illegal and does not have to be recognized. I just heard that DC sued Trump over this latest move. What a mess.

Cole knows nothing about policing and nothing about Washington. The plan must be to create absolute chaos here in order to prove that even more draconian and fascistic steps are needed.

Trump is on the way to Russian America to meet with Russia’s leader. Maybe he will give back Alaska to Russia in return for the right to finally build that hotel in Moscow. Russia is prepared. A Putin aide said that the flight from Moscow to Anchorage was just a domestic hop.

Alaska, by the way, is the only state that I have not visited. I know I should take one of those cruises, but I understand it is on a boat, so I will demur. I will have to fly or, better yet, drive. Whatever happened to the Alcan Highway? I assume it is still there.

It goes from Dawson Creek BC to Delta Junction AK, about 1300 hundred miles. And from our home to Dawson Creek is about 2700 miles. So the total trip will be 4000 miles each way. Times 2 equals 8000 (higher math). And that’s before side trips.

I would like one of those trips to be to Sitka, the former capital of Russian America, but I know I cannot drive there until someone builds a bridge. Vladimir, are you listening to me?

Of course, Trump doesn’t want to lose his Alaskan Republican House and Senate votes, so the arrangement we might see is this. If Alaska continues to vote Republican, nothing will change. But if one Democrat or Independent candidate is elected, the State of Alaska will automatically become the Federated Alaskan Russian Republic. Yes, Alaskans will have a choice.

Remember this from when you were young? What did Delaware? A New Jersey. Are you sure? I think so, but Alaska. That joke was important in my life. It is when I realized that all jokes are not funny. Some are just stupid.

Oh well, did you hear the one about the man who started to meditate for an hour every morning and how it changed his life? First, he was late to work. Eventually, he lost his job. And then his wife left him. Meditation really changed his life.

I am now going to formally stop, even though I am not ahead. Happy Friday.  (BTW, my chief critic says that this last paragraph is not at all necessary. Please feel free to ignore it if you wish.)

The confusion has already begun. DC citizens sitting on their front porch were arrested or questioned for smoking marijuana. My understanding is that a porch is private property and marijuana legal. They were told to go inside.

Another was arrested for throwing a Subway sandwich at a DEA patroller . Now, throwing a sandwich is a bad idea, to be sure. But is it a felony?

National Guardsmen have been patrolling both the Monuments and Georgetown. Those areas are almost crime free as the inside of my house. As I said yesterday, all for show. And who cares that the Guard members have to leave their jobs, etc., to fulfill these unneccessary duties?

And last night, in the very busy and safe 14th Street district, filled with restaurants, theaters and more, there was a massive operation, including random car stops and at least one person handcuffed and carted away.

The motto on the sides of DC police cars is something like “We are here to help.” If ever true, no longer.

Okay, let’s change the subject, although the federal takeover is front and center in everyone’s mind here.

I am spending the morning waiting for Edie’s cataract surgery to be over. Maybe another 90 minutes or so. She has had one eye done before; I have had both eyes done. I especially enjoyed my first surgery, because I think the anesthesiologist gave me LSD by mistake, and I spent the entire time being entertained by colorful hallucinations of intricate designs. He must have realized his mistake the second time, because there were no hallucinations. I thought about asking for a discount, but then realized I wasn’t paying anything, so I let it go.

During my wait, I am going to continue reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which I started reading yesterday when I spent another morning in “waiting mode”, that time at a car dealership while my car got a post-trip checkup. My copy is the Penguin edition, which used the smallest font I have seen in a Penguin.

If you can read this, you do not need cataract surgery. Edie could not read it. I can, but it’s a struggle.

I am only about 25% through the book, a novel set in the Chicago stockyards in 1905. Sinclair wrote it when still in his 20s. I find the writing extraordinary. Unbelievably descriptive, and written with enormous detail. Detail that draws you in, not that pushes you away.

Yesterday, I was reading while I was sitting at the Corner Bakery, across the street from the car dealership. I was sitting at an outside table, nursing my daily green tea. A man walked by. I would guess he was in his 50s, unshaven, moderately dissheveled, looked half asleep. He surprised me by asking me what I thought of thr book. He told me he had just read it last month. We pretty much agreed on the book’s pluses. Who knows? Maybe everyone is reading The Jungle. It would be a good use of your time.

I would suggest reading The Jungle is better than living in one. In DC today, perhaps we are.

As I understand it, DC’s Metropolitan Police Department is authorized and funded to employ 4000 officers, but it is 800 officers short because there have not been sufficient qualified candidates to fill the empty spaces. I also understand that this is a national problem, not a DC problem alone.

Because of this shortfall, the idea of additional law enforcement personnel coming as part of the federal takeover is welcomed by the police and in particular by the police union. I would bet, however, that this is not because they think this is going to significantly decrease crime, but because it will take the pressure off them to work double shifts, excessive overtime, and the like. And for all of us, this is important. Our police will do a better job if they have less pressure, have time just to kick back, and can get a full night’s sleep.

That is the first point I want to make. The counterpoint, of course, is that those being brought in by the federal government are untrained to do police work. You don’t simply get hired by MPD and be given a badge. You undergo a full course of instruction at the Police Academy, and you have to pass that course. There are not only physical requirements, but there are many intellectual requirements, such as knowing DC laws, knowing police protocols, and knowing how to deal with all sorts of people. That does come easily or quickly. The federal newbies will make mistakes. The residents of the District will suffer because of them.

To complicate matters, policing in DC is more complicated than in other locations throughout the country. Not that crime is more prevalent, but because the city is home not only to the MPD, but to numerous other police forces, some of which are, in fact, federal. There are the Capitol Police, the Park Police, the Secret Service, and, according to ChatGPT, 23 other federal uniformed police forces. ChatGPT also lists 11 uniformed locally run police forces, and 8 university police forces. And, of course, this does not include the police forces found in the many suburban jurisdictions making up the Washington metropolitan area. All this must be coordinated.

And none of this includes the National Guard being activated, nor the FBI and ICE officers, all untrained in police activity. The National Guard, I would guess, will not be expected to do much, and are there mostly for show or to help in administrative tasks. And that is wrong on so many levels.

We don’t how all this will work out on the ground. Or who will be calling the shots. We don’t even know who will be keeping the statistics.

As a DC resident, I have my own ideas as to what we will see over the next 30 days. I think we will see arrests. How else can success be measured?

To be a little more definitive, I expect arrests of persons deemed engaged in criminal activity at any level, homeless individuals of all ages, perceived non-citizens without appropriate paper work, people without any guilt or suspicion of guilt who are deemed simply to be talking back to officials and who will quickly be deemed as resisting arrest. I expect these people, once picked up, may be transported to far away places ((they would overwhelm local facilities) to undisclosed locations, to be treated poorly, not allowed counsel, and so forth. The pattern set generally by ICE will become the norm. And it will happen quickly.

Will crime go down? Maybe. In fascist and other forms of authoritarian countries, crime can be non-existent. Pull the tongues out of the mouths of a few jaywalkers, and jaywalking will become a thing of the past.

Yes, we can have a perfectly safe and clean capital city. I can point out one to you that functions very well today, and just might be Donald’s model.

The name of the city is Pyongyang.

The president’s action is only good for 30 days. So, 27 to go. From what I hear, there shouldn’t be 60 Senate votes to extend it. I can already hear the “Dems are soft on crime” chant.

SPOILER ALERT: the answer to 10-down in this morning’s NYT puzzle is “bigmess”. The definition could be “what Donald Trump is creating in the District of Columbia”.

A Washington DC with no crime. A Washington DC with no criminals. A Washington DC with nobody homeless. A Washington DC spotlessly clean. A Washington DC with no graffiti. A Washington DC with no slums. A Washington DC with no illegals. The Washington DC that is  about to materialize thanks to the promises of Donald John Trump.

On a more personal level, after living in the District of Columbia for over 55 years, I am looking forward to being able to leave my house without fear that any minute, someone was going to attack me. Never did I think I could be freed from that overwhelming sense of dread. But now, with the National Guard, the FBI and ICE patrolling our streets, all fear has been lifted. What more could I ask for?

But seriously, folks….

Could you ever imagine a US president lying about the condition of the nation’s capital for all the world to hear for the sole purposes of offending the 700,000 residents of DC (almost all of whom voted against him) and of extending his authoritarian rule in one more brand new direction?

Remember (as if you could forget) that Donald Trump is no ordinary president. He is a criminal himself, a convicted felon. And he is the president who pardoned 1500 other convicted criminals who participated in the January 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, including many who viciously attacked law enforcement officers on a day when he did not call out the National Guard.

Years ago, I heard community organizer Saul Alinsky speak when a heckler called out, “What do you think of Communists?”, and heard Alinsky cooly respond, “Our Communists or their Communists?”

So, “Mr. Trump, what do you think of criminals?” “It depends? My criminals or other criminals?”

Already, a lot has been written about today’s executive announcements and I am not going to repeat what others have been saying. There will be much time for that. I want to look at something very different. Let’s get our minds off Donald Trump.  Let’s look at a few of the many, many  rabbits hanging out at the Montgomery County Fair.

And at a cow

And at granddaughter Joan engaging in a very long Connect 4 game with Officer McCloud of the Montgomery County Police, who is able to spend his time playing games because the County, as opposed to DC, is already, I suppose, crime free. In fact, four other (only two shown below) County police officers were able to spend their morning watching the McCloud-Joan game.

Pretty soon, we will be able to have similar good times right here in safe Washington, and not have to venture out into distant parts of the metro area for fun.

It’s important to increase your vocabulary. That’s a lesson I learned in elementary school, and one that is important even today.  The word I learned today is “tengai”, also (and this is a hint) known as “tengai hat”.

I learned that word because my cousin in Denmark, Kiku Day, wore a tengai when she played the shakuhachi at the Danish commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. I saw the video of the ceremony, but do not have a still shot. But I do have a still of Kiku (I think) in a practice session.

As I understand it, the hat is worn to separate the music from the musician, eliminating both distraction and ego. What a great idea.

And now, you too have a new word in your vocabulary.

I watched a video yesterday about Franco and Spain. It had a few things I hadn’t focused on before, like Franco’s youth and early army years, and how his military career was boosted by his cruelty and fearlessness.  And how, after the Spanish Civil War was won, Franco went after his enemies and perceived enemies in the country. If I recall correctly, he had once said that he was going to save Spain, even if he had to kill half of the Spaniards. That was Franco.

This last item was of interest to me because, even if it isn’t accurate, Donald Trump sometimes (and on purpose) gives that same impression with all of his comments, his threats, his forced resignations and firings, his political mischief, his purported investigations, and his law suits. You have to watch the video to see how familiar it seemed.

I saw an interview with an individual who has been targeted by Trump. Put aside whether this individual will ever be found to have behaved improperly either civally or criminally. The stress of what he and his family members are going through, the monetary cost of defending himself, the effect on current income, and more, show that, come what may, Trump is working hard to punish those he deems not on his side.

Nicole Wallace, on her show the other day, talked about, while our democratic principles have been torn to pieces, life basically proceeds normally for most Americans.

It reminds me of my first trip to Spain in 1972. Franco was still in control 35 years after the Civil War ended, and had long silenced most of his opposition. You couldn’t see the pain that so many had suffered, and yes, life looked normal. In some ways, better than normal.

But the country’s national police, the Guardia Civil, was ever present. And more than once I was warned, even though as a tourist I was pretty safe, to take those guys very, very seriously. The country was still governed by fear.

Today, Trump is giving a speech about DC. What will he do? Bring out the National Guard to patrol the streets. Round up the homeless and transport them to the Everglades? Rename the Commanders? Take over the schools? Move into our guestroom? So many possibilities?

As to his remarks about eliminating the homeless from DC, remember Martin Niemöller: “First they came for the Communists…”

First they came for the aliens, then they came for the homeless….

You might say we had a bad Shabbos. You can certainly say we had a Bad Shabbos Shabbos. That’s because we went to the Avalon to see the new film, Bad Shabbos. Rotten Tomatoes rated it 85%. IMDB 7.1. The Edie Art Rating is well below either of those.

Here is the premise. (Okay, SPOILER ALERT, although it seems hard to spoil a film that is this rotten to begin with.) The Catholic parents of Jewish David’s fiance are in New York to meet his quirky, but religiously observant, parents. They were invited for Friday night dinner at the parents’ Upper West Side apartment. Also at dinner will be David’s sister and her boyfriend (whom nobody, including David’s sister, likes) and David’s younger brother, who, let’s just say, has some issues.

Before the Catholic parents arrive, there is a little squabbling. The result of course is that the disliked boyfriend winds up dead in the bathroom. The goal of the family is then  to dispose of the body and, at the same time, to entertain their guests as if nothing is wrong. Of course, everything and more goes wrong. That goes without saying.

Now, Edie and I both thought it a terrible film. When Edie thinks a film is terrible, she simply thinks it is terrible. But I gave this one a bit more attention.

I decided that, as terrible films go, this one is pretty good. That does not mean that I think it less terrible than other terrible films. Not at all. Simply that if you put all the terrible films together, and rated them as exemplars of the genre of terrible films, this one would rate pretty high. Again, it is clear that this is a very bad, horrible, terrible film. But as a film in that genre (“let’s set out to make a good example of a terrible film”), this one is a great example.

Then, I thought about that sterling organization, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the folks who give out Oscars. They provide winners in many categories. Drama, Comedies, Documentaries and so on. But they don’t have a category called “Terrible Films”. I suggest they create this category, awarding the prize not to the most terrble film, and not to the film that barely snuck into the category, but to best Terrible Film of the year. Bad Shabbos would certainly be  finalist.

1. How many times have you asked, or heard others ask, “If you had lived in Germany in the 1930s, what would you have done?” All of a sudden, that question becomes relevant.

And what is the answer now for those of you who had answered, “I would have stood up and fought?” Or what is the answer now for those who said before, “I don’t know”?

I have seen it said about Germany then that approximately 1/3 opposed Hitler, 1/3 supported Hitler, and 1/3 kept quiet. Today, in the US, Drumpf’s base is a little over 1/3, and maybe the rest are pretty equally divided between activists and ostriches.

As Walt Kelly (Google him if you need to) could have said, “We have met the Germans and they are us”.

2. Because we were on the road for the last two weeks, I did not have a chance to see what new old books are for sale at the DC area book shops, so today I went down to Second Story at Dupont Circle to see what they had on their outside $4 carts. I bought two books. One was a fancy limited edition of Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian of North America by Theodora Kroeber. Because it is a limited edition put out as one of a series of books called “Legends of the Longbow”, it does have some value. But, the other was more special. It was published in 1852, and written by Edmund Ruffin.

Who was Edmund Ruffin? He was a Virginia planter and Virginia State politician, who was born in 1794 and died in 1865. He was a dyed in the wool believer in slavery (he owned 200) and was one of the first southerners to suggest that the South should secede from the Union. He made a special effort to attend John Brown’s execution after Brown’s failed attack on Harper’s Ferry. He claimed to be the man who fired the first shot of the Civil War (fake news), and he stated in 1864 that he would die, rather than live in a country where Blacks were free. After the surrender at Appomattox, Ruffin promptly killed himself with his pistol. He left 11 children.

The book I bought had nothing to do with the Civil War, but was one of the books that Ruffin (also the founder and editor of a journal called The Farmers’ Register), an agricultural reformer, wrote on farming. The book is titled An Essay on Calcareous Manures, and (I checked) does not smell. While it is called an “essay”, it is in fact 500 pages long.

At the back of the book, there are several pages listing other offerings by the publisher, J. W. Randolph of Richmond VA, including An Essay on Slavery by William and Mary College president Thomas R. Dew, which the publisher claims to be “the clearest and ablest defense of the institution to be found in the English language”. Randolph also writes, “We believe that all parties are agreed as to the evil of emancipation without removal.”

And you think times are bad now.

By the way, Ruffin did leave a suicide note, saying (“with what will be near my latest breath”): “I here declare my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule – to all political, social and business connections with the Yankees and to the Yankee race. Would that I could impress these sentiments, in their full force, on every living southerner and bequeath them to every one yet to be born! May such sentiments be held universally in the outraged and down trodden South, though in silence and stillness, until the now far distant day shall arrive for just retribution for Yankee usurpation, oppression and atrocious outrages, and for deliverance and vengeance for the now ruined, subjugated and enslaved Southern States!”

“Retribution”. “Vengeance”. Sound like anyone else you know?

3. Texas. I will make this simple.

(A) In the 2024 presidential election, Republicans got 56% of the vote, Democrats 42%.

(B) Texas has 38 Representatives in the House. If the 56-42 ratio held, there would be 21 Republicans and 17 Democrats.

(C) With gerrymandering that has already taken place, the Texas representation has 25 Republicans and 13 Democrats.

(D) If the proposed redisticting takes place, Texas will have 30 Republicans and 8 Democrats.

See the problem?

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.