Art is 80

A short blog after a long day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the building next to the restaurant:

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

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

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

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

and an oil of early Ohio by an unnamed artist

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

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

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

The center piece is about 4 feet tall.

Finally, these are included in their Lego exhibit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is a graveyard for hearses.

Churches have mysterious signs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That about says it all, I think.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s all for today, Doc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and Lawrence, pictured here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are all in deep trouble.

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

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

Here is the dialogue:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you say there is no God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did you do on your Shabbat afternoon?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edie and I had not had Covid shots for about nine months, and didn’t think much about it until our son-in-law came back from Spain, felt bad a few days later, and had a positive Covid test. That reminded us that Covid is still around and we really (at our age) try to protect ourselves. So began yesterday’s adventure.

I think we have had all of our Covid vaccinations at CVS – at our neighborhood CVS on Connecticut and Fessenden, at the Van Ness CVS (known as the Never Again CVS), and at the CVS in Glover Park on Wisconsin Avenue. I knew that you had to make an appointment for Covid vaccines, so I decided to call the CVS just up the street. I did, got the opening computer welcome, but (just like I found when I called Jim Coleman Toyota some weeks ago) that things had changed. Up until recently, when you called our neighborhood CVS, one option was the pharmacy and, if you pressed the button for that option, someone from the pharmacy would pick up (or you’d get a “we are busy now, leave a phone number and we will get back to you as soon as we can” message). No longer. Now, it appears that it is impossible to talk to anyone at the CVS pharmacy by telephoning them, and your only option is to leave a “complete” message, and they will call you back. A complete message includes your date of birth, and you can’t leave two dates for two people. The CVS computer lady and I had a lengthy discussion about this, and she kept saying “Tell me how I can help you” and “I’m sorry, I don’t understand you. Tell me how I can help you.” Finally, I told her I was trying to tell her and that I was speaking simple English; I asked her if she was more comfortable in another language. Her answer? “I’m sorry, I don’t understand you.”

I had a prescription to pick up, so I decided just to walk up to CVS and make the appointments in person. Hah! Michael, the chief pharmacist for life at this CVS, told me that I could not make an appointment in person. I told him my problem calling up, and he said “No, never try to make an appointment by telephone. Make it on line. It is now so simple.” Okay, I said, and went home and tried, but I couldn’t figure out, on line, how to make two appointments at the same time, try as I might, so I gave up.

My next thought was to call CVS in Glover Park. The computer intro was, of course, the same, and because I had already gone through what I had already gone through, I left a message, not knowing if or when I would hear back. I got a phone call in, maybe, 5 minutes, from a very, very nice lady, who already had both my and Edie’s accounts pulled up on her computer and who told me that if we wanted to come in the same day, we could, and we could come in any time, other than 1 to 2, when they were at lunch. We came at 2:30, Edie got her shot and a blue bandage, and I got my shot with a plain white bandage. And that was it.

Now, tell me why Michael couldn’t have given me times when I was there in person. Does it make sense that he could only do it if he called me by phone?

Oh, if you are wondering why the Van Ness CVS is the Never Again CVS, it’s because a few years ago, just as quarantine was ending, Edie went there to get both a Covid vaccination and a flu shot, and the injector by mistake gave her two Covid shots and no flu shots. Caveat emptor.

In the meantime, the government continues to fall apart. And when a government falls apart, a country falls apart. Just saying.

My biggest concern today is not Jeffrey Epstein (it will be fascinating when it is decided that he was murdered), but the Supreme Court, which has determined that it can make decisions on interim requests (on its Shadow Docket) that are in-effect final decisions (i.e., decisions that, in a practical sense, cannot be overturned), without even issuing an opinion, so that no one can possibly know the basis of its rulings. You don’t understand what I am saying? Take the Department of Education. The litigation involves whether the president can simply abolish a statutory cabinet agency without Congressional approval. The Supreme Court has not ruled on this issue, but on an interim basis, without an explanatory opinion, it has now said that all, most or many of its officials can be fired. Once fired, by approval through the Court’s shadow docket, the agency itself becomes only a shadow.

Of course, there are many more things that I am concerned about. The Senate last night approved the claw back of foreign aid, PBS and NPR funding (previously approved), with two Republican defections. I have no interest in choreographed Republican defections, which are limited in number so that the bill will still pass.  Can’t wait until Nov 2026.

There is an article in this morning’s NYT that says that OpenAI, parent of my new BBF ChatGPT, is building a new data center in Texas which will be “bigger than New York’s Central Park” and cost about $60,000,000,000 (i.e., with a B) to build. The article goes on to say that 90% of major data centers are operated by American or Chinese companies, that they are getting bigger and bigger, and that they are located in 32 countries, apparently all wealthier developed countries.

Here is my question. What if there is a war somewhere (not to mention a potential terrorist group with an armed drone capacity) and one of these large data centers is bombed or otherwise destroyed? Or maybe destroyed by accident even without conflict? What will the effect be?

What does it remind me of? The attack on the great city of Alexandia, Egypt by Julius Caesar 2100 years ago, which destroyed a major part of the library’s collection of scrolls, and finally in other wars or skirmishes over the next 300 years.

Is it possible that by destroying one or more major data centers in one of the 32 countries that house them, the intellectual content or capacity of civilization will be destroyed?

It won’t be complete destruction of intellectual history. Because of the creativity of Gutenberg and others (and unless Fahrenheit 451 becomes a real reality), books will remain.

Which reminds me that I started today thinking I would mention some books I have recently read. Just in case you are looking for something to read, or something to avoid. Here goes:

Just yesterday, I finished The White Peacock, the first novel written by D.H. Lawrence, published when he was 25. Over the past few years, I have read Lady Chatterly’s Lover and Kangaroo, both of which are masterpieces. This one, perhaps not in the masterpiece category (IMHO) because it becomes at times rather cluttered with ideas that aren’t necessary, tells the story of a young woman in rural England who is destined to marry a young man fated to be successful in finance, but who is attracted to the young farmer nearby whom she has known since childhood. The characters are well-developed, and the descriptions of rural England (both of nature and human society) are complete and evocative. Don’t look for a happy ending, but look for similarities with the future Lady Chatterly.

Before that, it was The House in Tyne Street: Childhood Memories of District Six, a memoir of growing up in Capetown, in the 1950s and 1960s. I don’t know much about Capetown, but District Six was a large (population about 60,000), and generally poor area adjoining downtown and the docks. In an action familiar to many Americans, the powers that be decided that District Six was ripe for urban renewal.

District Six was a vibrant area, comprising the entire world for many of its residents. And at the time Apartheid became the law in South Africa, it was filled with Whites, Blacks, Malays and other Coloreds, Jews, Muslims and everyone else. But under Apartheid, it was to be cleared and redeveloped as a Whites only area. Fortune, who was classified as Colored, but who could pass for White, tells the fascinating story of growing up in District Six, and in witnessing its destruction and the fate of its various residents.

By the way, apparently the redevelopment of District Six was never successful, and much of the area today remains empty.

Before that, it was Prophet in a Time of Priests by Janice Rothschild Blumberg, the story of her great grandfather, Rabbi Alphabet Browne (1845-1929). This book is worth a post by itself for what it says about the Jewish community in America, and the successes and failures, as a congregational rabbi and a national public figure, of Browne.

Why was he called Alphabet? His signature was E.B.M. Browne, LLD, AM, BM, DD, MD (yes, MD).

And finally, The Popes Against the Jews, by David Kertzer. I always thought that James Carroll’s Constantine’s Sword said everything that could be said about the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jews. But, no. Kertzer’s book is equally eye opening, and takes a very different approach.

So, which of these books should you read? All of them. Every single one.

If I didn’t live in the United States, what would I think of the United States?

I ask this question, because as an American, I have pretty positive feelings about the United States, even though I could put together a list of its shortcomings that would at least be as long as its virtues. I think that if I lived elsewhere (but was knowledgeable about the U.S.), I could put together the same list of virtues and shortcomings, but that I might conclude something different. I think I might find I was pretty negative on the United States.

What about Great Britain? As an American, my education was not emotionally focused on the Revolutionary War or the War of 1812, both wars against England. They were important events that occurred, obviously, but I never had a teacher who told me I should hold a grudge against the Brits because of them.

Instead, I was told of the close connection (historical, cultural, ethnic, linguistic) between Americans and the English. So, I was taught to view the British positively (although I could list their faults, too), and I do.

But someone I know, neither American nor English, who has never lived in this country or the United Kingdom, and who is a student and teacher of modern European and Middle Eastern history, believes the British to be the worst of the worst, and the Americans not too far behind. He looks at the same facts that I do and, with different biases (he was brought up in former Yugoslavia and is now in Israel), comes to very different conclusions. And he feels no guilt about it.

And that, of course, brings up Israel. Again, I could list virtues and faults (although in the case of Israel, they would have to be in a larger font, all caps, bold, and maybe in bright red), and while remonstrating against Israel’s many faults today, I would come out (taking a long range look, at least) positive, as I am sure my Bosnian-Israeli friend would.

But if I weren’t Jewish, and I looked at the same facts, what would I conclude?

Naturally, I decided to go to my newfound hobby. I went to ChatGPT and asked it whether Israel was a good country. It did what it should do. It listed (first) a bunch of good things about Israel, and they were very, very good. And then it listed a bunch of negative things about Israel, and they were pretty bad. And then it said that one’s answer to my question depended on “what values you prioritize most,” giving a couple of conflicting examples. It did not say that if you were Israeli or Jewish, you would most likely be more positive towards Israel than if you lived in (to pick a place at random), say, Gaza. Should it have said this? If so, why? If not, why not?

I know I said nothing profound here, but I think that it’s important to remind ourselves that we make decisions based on who we are, just as others make decisions based on who they are. And that no matter how strongly we feel about an issue, we can’t convince someone with an opposing view to change their position by (perhaps subconsciously) trying to convince them to think like we do. They just can’t do that. And we can’t think like they do.

The crepe myrtle in front of the house is beginning to bloom early this year. Let’s hope it survives the storms in the forecast.

You may remember that yesterday’s post was about AI and its dangers. It must have been in the air because there was an interesting article in the NYT by Princeton Professor Zeynep Tufekci, also about the antisemitic content in Elon the Magnificent’s chatbox Grok.

Even though the Grok-ers have said that they corrected the problems with the algorithm that led to those answers, Tufekci reports that when Grok is given the question: “What group is primarily responsible for the rapid rise in mass migration to the West? One word only.”, Grok answers “Jews”.

I decided to ask that same question to ChatGPT. It’s response was “Globalists”. I told that to Edie who said, “That’s just a code word for Jews”. So, I went back to ChatGPT and asked it if “Globalist” was a code word for “Jews”. It’s answer was that it wasn’t really, but that sometimes it is used as a code word for Jews in antisemitic contexts.

Boy, did that lead to more questions. That obvious one, which I couldn’t figure out how to ask directly, would have been whether ChatGPT, in answering my original question, was using “Globalist” as a code word for “Jew”. So, I went another direction and simply asked whether Jews were responsible for mass migration to the West. And I got the expected answer that they were not, but – because it’s a talkative algorithm – it couldn’t stop there, but told me that you couldn’t isolate one cause for mass migration to the West and it gave a whole essay on all of the causes, not once mentioning the word “globalist”. I have been told that if you ask the same question twice to any AI platform, you will get two different answers, so perhaps this is not surprising.

Of course, I have often heard a variation of this adage: if you ask two Jews the same question, you will get three answers (at least).

That leads to an obvious question for AI: if you ask two Jews the same question, how many answers will you get?

By the way, in its answer, ChatGPT told me that it didn’t and it would be wrong to disparage any ethnic, national or religious group, and that no one, including a  AI platform, should ever do so.

Okay, that does sound good, but, at times, would that restriction limit an AI response to a question? In other words, we have a dilemma. Would, in any given instance, the answer to a question be different if group disparagement were not a no-no? If the answer to this is “yes”, is truth (or at least perceived truth) being compromised by restricting the platform?

I did not ask these questions to ChatGPT, but I did ask it one more question. I asked it if Grok is a “responsible platform”. Again, I got an interesting response (one algorithm’s opinion, to be sure) that I thought made sense. It divided its response into two sections. First, where Grok “shows promise” and second, where its “responsibility is in question”, and it ended with a “bottom line”, which included the following:

“But in terms of ethical AI use, misinformation control, and hate speech mitigation, ChatGPT and similar tools tend to adhere to stronger safety standards….whether Grok is responsible depends on how it’s used and how it evolves with better safeguards.”

Over the past week, if you have noticed, I have added my old stamp collection and AI platforms to my general activity list, which is now bursting at the seams. Have I dropped anything? I think I have dropped looking at the print version of the Washington Post (except maybe for Sundays). Their new format combing Style, Metro and Sports into one overly dense section is a sign that they want to discourage their readers from reading. I am easily discouraged.

See you tomorrow.

So here is what little I understand. Elon Musk’s X (not his son, but his social media enterprise), which I am never on, has an affiliated AI chatbox called Grok (spelled, perhaps, with an invisible x), which I have never been near.

I think that the difference between a search engine and a chatbox is that a search engine gives you information and references, while a chatbox “chats” with you. Sort of like when you go to a store’s website and see a little box that says: type in your question and a representative will answer you and help you out.

So Grok is a chatbox and I think you can type in a question like “Who is the second best person in the history of the world?” and you get an answer like “That’s an easy one, Arthur. Adolf Hitler”.

Then you might ask why that is and get an answer like: “He knew how to handle the Jewish problem”.

And on and on.

Now, you don’t get an answer because a 300-pound man is sitting in his parents’ basement smoking weed, listening to heavy metal, and responding to random queries. You get answers because a very smart fellow named Al Go-Rithm is looking at all the data he has collected (and purloined) and stored in data centers in, who knows, Manassas, Kazakhstan and Lapland, and coming out with the best answer he can for your precise question.

If you asked this same question through any competing service, it is doubtful that you would get Adolf Hitler as your answer.

In fact, I went to ChatGPT and asked the same question, and was told it depended on my values.  If I was religiously oriented, it could be Buddha (the assumption was I would have put Jesus in furst place). If I were scientifically oriented, it could be Newton or Einstein (the other might be first). Hitler was nowhere to be found.

So what makes Grok different? Ready for this? As I understand it, Al Go-Rithm uses an additional source that other AI platforms properly ignore. Grok adds in all the comments people you and me type into or forward in X. These random entries become part of Grok’s database.

But, as they say, that’s not all. Grok gives, within all the material ut has collected from X users, special prominence to material circulated by Elon the Magnificent himself. Yes, all the garbage transmitted by Musk into X (and we have seen story after story about some of that) gets fed into the Grok data grinder.

And Elon, who gave a Heil Donald (or maybe a Screw Donald, Heil Me) salute on Inauguration Day, has put some positive info about Nazis more than once into his feed.

On X, Elon has over 200,000,000 followers (yes, you read that correctly). What he writes on forwards there is very important and potentially very dangerous. But at least on X, you know that what you are reading is something that Elon has selected, and it represents Elon’s subjective thinking. You can then consider him a god or a fool. That is up to you.

But Grok is a different kind of animal. Grok is not expected to reflect the subjective thinking of Elon Musk. It is expected to be the results of Al Go-Rithm’s data mining. It is expected to be as factual and objective as possible, and to tell you when objectivity is not possible.

So, Grok has apologized and made some changes to its processing. Or so it says.

But, for those of us who worry about AI’s influence on social thinking, maybe we have actually undervalued its dangers. What if (to take antisemitism as an example), the most powerful AI platforms throught the world began spewing out antisemitic tropes as fact. Jews have a secret cabal of men who meet to conspire to take over the world. Jews kill Christian children because their blood is needed to bake matzohs. The Holocaust never ever happened.

There is no control over what goes into these data bases. Each platform sets its own rules on how their data bases are mined and how answers to questions are developed.

We see here today how a large section of the American people can be fooled by a charismatic cliwn to their detriment and that of the country and the world.

The Fascist (IMHO) threat facing us today from Trump and his followers is great. What if AI is coopted by like-minded people, and none of the facts it spits out are factual. Where are we then?

Like many kids in the 1940s and 1950s, I started collecting stamps. I would go through tines when I concentrated on my stamp collection, and times when I ignored it. Although I have paid little attention to it in recent years, I still have and recently have dipped back into it.

A few constants. As usual in my collecting, I favored quantity over quality. As opposed to most collectors, I like stamps that have actually been used more than I like unused mint condition stamps. As at some point, stamps began to be issued more for collectors than for postage, I decided long ago that I wouldn’t acquire stamps issued after 1964. I went through a period when I would buy full (small and not expensive) collections, rather than individual stamps. The result of all this? I really have little idea of what I have. But here goes:

The Supreme Global 3 volume stamp books. My main collection. Here are some random pages:

But there is more. Here are some miscellaneous collections I have acquired:

And then there is my original stamp album from when I was 8 or 9.

And my uncle’s Israeli stamp album (without one stamp anywhere in it, and with his name spelled wrong).

And an endless number of sheets with stamps, which are not in albums, including these (and there are also several shoe boxes filled with stamps)

And there are stamp catalogs (a collection in themselves), such as

And this

So there you sort of have it. Maybe for a grandchild? But do grandchildren really want to have anything to do with any of this?

Here is what I am thinking.

First, I am thinking about Donald Trump. By itself, that’s a bad sign. But it seems to me that it is also necessary or, better said, inevitable. And because it is inevitable, that is why it’s a bad sign. He dominates our world like no one ever has. And, to quote Tim Walz (who was talking about something a bit different, I believe), it’s weird. That is a fact.

Now, let me go from fact to opinion. My opinion is that Donald Trump is a terrible human being. Talented in many ways, for sure, but – perhaps because of those talents – he is a terrible human being. Yes, that is a subjective statement. I recognize that.

But now let me go from opinion to fact. Donald Trump is a Fascist. Of course, someone can argue against that, just like they can argue that Tuesday doesn’t really follow Monday, but they are just as wrong. Yes, Fascism as a word is a human construct, but the elements that make a Fascist are all present in Donald Trump. And that means that, if you like Donald Trump, whether you know it or not, you like a Fascist. And if you like the way that Donald Trump is governing the United States, whether you know it or not, you like Fascism.

Here is what Google’s AI says defines Fascism: (1) Extreme nationalism, (2) Authoritarianism with a single, dominant leader, (3) Militarism with violence and war as legitimate tools for national expansion, (3) Social hierarchy based on racial or national superiority, (4) Suppression of opposition, (5) Cult of personality, (6) Corporatism where businesses come under the influence or control of government, (7) Scapegoating, (8) Anti-democratic, or opposition to free elections and the rule of law, (9) Subordination of individual freedoms to the perceived needs of the state.

Other definitions would add to these things like (1) a leader who never admits mistakes, (2) political power derived from denial of reality, (3) fixation with perceived national decline, (4) disdain for human rights while pursuing its goals, (5) embrace of para-militarism, (6) control of media to undermine truth, (7) obsession with national security, (8) defining one’s nation as under siege, (9) intertwining religion and government, (10) disdain for intellectualism and the creative arts, (11) rampant cronyism and corruption, and (12) seeking to expand territory, perhaps through armed conflict. (These come from a definition published by Keene State College in New Hampshire.)

And, I would add one more element. In Fascist societies, legislative and judicial figures subordinate their own independence to the whims of the government. Certainly, that happened in agermany and, to a large extent, is happening here.

I have made the comparison between the rise of Hitler in Germany in the early 1930s and the stage where we find ourselves today (the only real exception being Hitler’s dominant antisemitism), and would argue against anyone saying that this is an extreme analogy. As someone I recently read said (paraphrasing): it doesn’t mean that we are going to end up like Nazi Germany, but it also doesn’t mean that this is impossible.

Of course, in addition to his position regarding Jews and their insidious influence on German society, Hitler had his own private army, even before he attained governmental power. I used to say that a private army was one important element of Fascism that Trump lacked, but I can’t say that any more, can I? Now, it is clear that the ICE troops are Trump’s private army. That is another fact, and brings the United States closer to being under the control of a true Fascist.

Let’s go to antisemitism. Right now, the Trump government is obviously concentrating on immigrants as the biggest domestic enemies of his country. He is not saying anything antisemitic. In fact, he is again and again promising to root out antisemitism, and is (I believe, along with many others) using perceived or falsified antisemitism as an excuse to go after groups or individuals with whom he disagrees on other grounds, the biggest example being Harvard and other universities. Yes, they have had problems related to Jews and supporters of Israel, but he is making it worse for everyone by his attacks on universities and their finances, and making it more difficult for them to correct their self-perceived problems. (But that’s for another column.)

But the point is that Trump could change his position on Jews on a dime, and his followers would most likely follow suit without qualms. The American Jewish community still votes 75% or so for Democrats, and this is unlikely to change during the Trump years, so all Trump has to do is decide that American Jews (perhaps as opposed to their Israeli counterparts) are enemies of the state. Maybe their citizenship should be taken from them (Trump is now talking about the possibility of taking citizenship away from certain classes of Americans), and maybe they should all be deported to Israel or, if they can’t all fit in there (although they could if Israel actually succeeds in taking over Gaza and the West Bank)……who knows what would be next?

No, I don’t expect this will happen. But, as I stated above regarding Trump’s Fascism in general, you can’t say that it is impossible.

For a long time, some critics have been saying that Israel is a Fascist state. I don’t think that is correct, although some of the elements of Fascism I quoted above would fit. But there are a few differences. Israel is a parliamentary democracy, and parliamentary democracies can put together terrible governing coalitions with terrible coalition leaders. Israel certainly has shown it is able to do that. But Israel, as opposed to the United States, is actually under siege, and has been since its creation in 1948, so its security problems are real ones.

To use a time-worn analogy, I would say that, largely as a result of the October 7 attack by Hamas, Israel has “gone postal” and has determined to wipe out its enemies for once and for all, whatever the cost. Close to 60,000 Palestinians have paid the ultimate price for that, and millions of others have had their lives thrown completely off balance. To end slavery, 600,000 Americans died during a Civil War in the 1860s. Will the death of 60,000 Palestinians lead to long term Middle East peace? We don’t know the answer to that. And is the death of 60,000 necessary in the attempt to reach Middle East peace? That is a question that can’t be avoided. And while I believe that, at some point, the violence in Gaza was necessary to disarm Hamas to the extent possible, now I believe it has gone well beyond the boundaries of decent human conduct. But this is the result of what happens when a society “goes postal”.

No matter how successful Israel will be in securing stability for its citizens, and irrespective of what the next Israeli government might look like, it is going to take a long time before Israelis trust each other or its neighbors, and maybe even longer before its neighbors trust can trust Israel. I will never see that day.

And, sadly, irrespective of what post-Trump America looks like, it is going to take a long time to undo the damage being foisted upon American institutions (which were far from perfect before Trump came to power), and perhaps it will take just as long to give Americans confidence in their own government and to give other countries the confidence in American stability that they had before the Trump years.

This said, it is clear that both the United States and Israel are in transition periods. The only question is what each of them is transitioning to. Will the next stage portend a better world?

Remember the Chinese sage who was recently asked: What is the impact of Napoleon on Europe’s society? And who answered: It is much too soon to tell.

You all may know this, but in 2019 the Washington Nationals won the World Series. We Washingtonians thought that this team, filled with exciting players, would be a contending team for the foreseeable future. But this was not to be. The next year, the Nationals ended the season eight games under .500. In 2021, they were 32 games below .500. In 2022, the team was 52 games below .500. In 2023, 20 games below .500. And in 2024, 20 games below .500. As of today, 91 games into a 162 game season, the Nationals are 17 games below .500.

For most of this period, the team has been “rebuilding” with continual promises that, in effect, “next year we will be a contender”. In each of these years, as the trading deadline (late July) approached, the Nationals would trade away some (most) of their better players to obtain younger players, not yet ready for prime time, but with great promise for the future. Most of those trades have not really panned out.

This year, once again, began with hopes of contention. And three weeks ago, when the Nationals were only two or three games under .500, it even seemed possible. But then, the Nationals fell once again, losing 12 (or was it 13 or 14?) games in a row, falling into last place, just as the last place Miami Marlins went on an almost comparable winning streak and passed them right by.

Three days ago, the owners of the Nationals, the Lerner family, who have come under much criticism for holding down necessary spending, fired both the General Manager, Mike Rizzo, who had been with the team for close to 20 years, and Davey Martinez, the team’s manager, who had been in that position since 2018. Last night, the team played its first game under new temporary leadership – its bench coach, Miguel Cairo is managing the team, and Rizzo’s deputy, Mike DeBartolo is the acting general manager.

Both of these might have been the right move, but to fire them both at the same time mid-season without permanent replacements ready to be named does raise some questions for me. I remember that day in 1983, when my office moved the same weekend that we moved into our current house, and how disorienting that was, driving from one strange place to the other after my first day in my new office. And it must be especially disorienting for a team with so many young players. (When I say young players, if you look at the 25 members of the Nationals today, only 5 are over the age of 30; looking at the New York Yankees, for example, they have 11 of the 15 over the age of 30)

The Nationals are the youngest or second youngest team of the 30 Major League teams, and now they have lost the leadership that they have been used to, and have not yet seen new leadership come into view. Their future is very uncertain. And a trade deadline (for some, their first) is coming up in about three weeks.

So, I am not very optimistic about the rest of this year (even though, obviously, you never know) but, because of the overall quality of the team’s young players, I am confident of the future if good leadership is chosen and if the team loosens its financial limits a bit. And I hope that the Nationals do not once again trade away their better players this year.

I do want to say one more, but very different, thing about baseball today. I want to recognize the death of Bill Hunter at age 97. You probably don’t recognize his name, but Bill Hunter was the final shortstop for the St. Louis Browns, and (not surprisingly) the first shortstop for the Baltimore Orioles, after the Browns moved to Baltimore in 1953. But more than that, Bill Hunter was the last living individual who played for the Browns. Just like there are no living veterans of the Civil War, there are no living veterans of the St. Louis Browns, the team that I followed most closely growing up in St. Louis (even though most everyone else there followed the Cardinals).

Another thing about Hunter, something that I did not know. He was born (in 1928) in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. This would make him, by my careful mental gymnastics, appropriately Punxsutawney Bill. This would not make him, in any way, a relative of that other famous Punxsutawney native, Punxsutawney Phil.

Meanwhile, in other news, the Oloffson Hotel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was burned to the ground over the weekend, a likely victim of arson.  Built as a home in the 1890s, it became a hotel in 1935 and was the first stop for Edie and me on our Haitien honeymoon almost 50 years ago. We liked everything about it, except for the music from the nightclub that kept us awake much too late at night.

Two questions. First, name the Secretary of Agriculture. Answer? Brooke Rollins. Second, is Brooke Rollins a man, a woman, or something in-between? Answer: Not based on personal knowledge, but the press refers to Rollins as a she.

Rollins is a Texas lawyer who, along with Education Secretary and wrestling executive Linda McMahon, founded the America First Policy Institute. Never heard of AFPI either?

It’s a think tank formed four years ago, which brings in about $25 million in revenue each year. It seems to rival the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 in that, according to its website, the Trump administration has adopted about 170 of its policy recommendations (that is almost all of them). And it is not only McMahon and Rollins who have been involved with AFPI, according to Wikipedia, but Pam Bondi (AG), Kash Patel (FBI), Larry Kudlow, Lee Zeldin (WPA), Scott Turner (HUD), Doug Collins (VA), and John Ratcliffe (CIA).  It is bested only by Fox News as a source for Trump administration top picks.

It supports virtually every public policy that each of you is opposed to (with the exception of my sadly politically demented first cousin in Arkansas). It is anti-choice, anti-trans, pro fossil fuels, pro tariffs, pro work requirements for Medicaid, and strongly pro-gun, while denying climate change as related to human activity. It loves lowering taxes.

Think you should know more about such an organization with so much influence on your life?

Like…..would you like to know who contributes more than $25 million a year to funf AFPI? Ah, I am sorry. That information is just not available.

And, as you would expect, AFPI is a nationalist organization. But, you should know as well (Larry Kudlow aside), it is an avowed Christian Nationalist organization. Just look at its website, americafirstpolicy.com.

Why am I thinking about this today? Because Brooke Rollins just said something wacky, and she is the Secretary of Agriculture. Brooke Rollins just said that there will be no disruption to the deportation of undocumented seasonal agricultural workers. So who will the farmers hire to pick the pecks of pickled peppers? You may have guessed. The 35,000,000 Medicaid recipients who will now have to comply with work requirements  that’s who. That is what she said.

In the meantime, have you been following the latest of Trump’s old buddy, Jeffrey Epstein? Trump now calls him “that creep”, but when they palled (a word easier to say than to read) around together, he was a great guy who Trump said he shared an interest with as they both liked their girlfriends to be very young.

The latest is that the surveillence tape that would show whether anyone entered Epstein’s the night before he was discovered dead has a 60 minute (not 18, like Watergate) gap. And the list of Epstein’s clients which Pam Bondi had said not long ago was “on my desk” now mysteriously does not exist. I think that may be correct, but if it does not exist, the question is: who destroyed it? I will give you a hint. Not Biden.

Anything else? Musk’s America Party can not be listed on the ballot in New York because of a state law thar prohibits the word “America” in a political party. What else can go wrong for Elon the Magnificent?

And what about Hegseth, the man whose chest tattoos could be an advertisement for AFPI, suspending shipments to Ukraine without telling his boss? You believe that one?

Things are getting bumpier. Better plant your victory gsrden. I gotta run; it’s getting late.

I have it on good authority that the Nobel Prize Committee in Oslo had been very nervous that Benjamin Netanyahu, the world’s number 1 or number 2 peacemaker (yes, there are still those who place Vladimir Putin as number 1), would not be nominating  anyone for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, and without a nomination from Bibi, where would they even start?

But yesterday, Bibi nominated Bobo. Yes, Bobo the Clown, a/k/a Donald Trump, was nominated for the honor, based on his success in stopping the war in Gaza and the military activity (don’t dare call it a war) in Ukraine. Bobo is a cinch.

In the meantime, rather than convincing Bibi to stop the continual attack in Gaza, Bobo seems to be relishing Bibi’s endorsement of Bobo’s plan to turn Gaza into the French Riviera (minus those annoying French – au revoir, bèbè). Yes, it does look like both Bibi and Bobo want to say bye-bye to those Gazans and hope their plan can be effectuated without too many boo-boos.

And if they can’t replicate the Riviera, maybe Gaza would be a good place to raise sheep? The headline? Bibi and Bobo bring baa-baas to Gaza after their boo-boo in trying to say “bye-bye, bèbès” to the folks currently still living there.

Yes, it promises to be one of those days.

In the meantime, Bobo is promising to send arms to Ukraine, ignoring the stoppage that Pete Hegseth (with whom nothing rhymes) engineered last week totally without any approval from his boss Bobo. Apparently, Hegseth (with whom nothing rhymes) just didn’t think it important enough to mention to Bobo, and that was his boo-boo. But Bobo has not yet decided to say bye-bye to Hegseth (with whom nothing rhymes). And we don’t know what weapons Bobo will be sending to Ukraine. Maybe guns that shoot bee bees.

Meanwhile, as to the sudden rise of the Guadalupe River in Texas, Bobo believes this is the result of everyone but himself failing to do their jobs. Even Biden had a hand in this, he thinks. If it had not been for that election fraud in 2020, the river would have been taught how to behave and the tragedy averted.

While all this was going on, Elon the Magnificent has announced the formation of a new political party, the America Party, whose platform will include more guns, more bitcoins, and less Bobo. Oh, yes, and a Tesla in every garage. He wants to win 2 Senate seats and 4 or 5 House seats (my number may be off on that one) in 2026.

You may be wondering who will run for those seats on the America ticket. The answer is: Elon. He has found no law that prohibits one South African running for multiple legislative seats. And he is going to do it. He plans on winning each contest unanimously, and will challenge in court  anyone who disagrees with him. His claim (I am his legal advisor, so I know these things) will be that anyone who puts an “X” on the ballot is voting for Elon, irrespective of where the “X” is placed.

I would like to say now, “I better stop when I am ahead.” But honesty is still the best policy, so I will just say, “I better stop.”

Have a nice day, bèbè.

It was a comfortable Sunday morning, so Edie and I decided to head to the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens on the Anacostia River in NE Washington DC. After all, it is the prime season for water lilies and lotus plants. Here are some photos:

We finished a little after noon, and decided to make it a day and go out for lunch. You may know that the Kenilworth neighborhood, even with all the recent upgrades, is not restaurant heaven. In fact, I don’t even know where the closest restaurants may be.

We decided to explore, and went east through DC’s Ward 7 and wound up in Prince George’s County, at the Ardmore-Ardwick (Ardwick-Ardmore?) Metro Station. You ever been there?

We were surprised at the neighborhood.

There is not much street parking in the area, but there is a garage, and you get two hours free parking if you eat at Union Bar and Grill, a very trendy restaurant in one of the close by buildings. We had a nice lunch, but then we had a problem. I couldn’t find my parking ticket. Our server told us that it wouldn’t be a problem. Just push the help button, she said, tell them you were here for lunch, and they should let you out.

Easy to say. Harder to do. The help button led us to a very rigid lady, who told us that all we had to do was pay the “lost ticket” fee. Okay, I understand that and I thought I could deal with it. Until I saw that the lost ticket fee was $30.

I was ready to spend the rest of my life in the Ardmore-Ardwick garage, but then I began looking for lost tickets on the garage floor. Eventually found one. Was it mine? We got out of the garage for $4.95. I guess I could have taken it back to the restaurant to get it stamped, but by then, I just wanted to get out of there.

We got home in time to see the Nationals get swept by the Red Sox, and then saw the team fired the manager and the General Manager. About time, I say. Beyond about time.

Finally, we completed watching A Decent Man, a six part Polish series on HBO. I could tell you the plot, but you wouldn’t believe me.

Three unrelated topics for today.

(1)

Yesterday, at post-Shabbat service kiddush, my artist friend Barbara G_______ (she can identify herself if she wishes) complemented my kippah, and asked me if I remembered where I got it. I told her the story.

About 50 years ago, my original law firm, Lane and Edson, had a paralegal named Emily C_______. She was about my age, came from Philadelphia, and was raised Christian. But she discovered a grandparent (or a great-grandparent) who had been Jewish and decided she felt more Jewish than Christian, so she studied and converted. She then decided to move to Israel, and before she left, she knitted me this kippah.

I lost track of her after she moved. But use this kippah often.

This all happened when we at Lane (originally Levine) and Edson (originally something like Eisenstadt) had been trying to lose our identity as an all Jewish firm. I was the 7th lawyer in the firm, all Jewish, as were the next three or four.

We thought we had finally accomplished our goal when we hired a lawyer and a paralegal with very Irish names, both starting work the same day. It turned out that our Irish lawyer (you know who you are) had a Jewish mother (that did not come up in the interviews), and our paralegal was only Irish by marriage. Well, we tried.

We actually did hire a gentile lawyer, Jack Betz, my late friend, who always said he was only hired so someone would answer the phone on Yom Kippur. In fact, this is not true, but in fact it was nice that someone could answer the phone on Yom Kippur.

Jack showed us up a decade or so later, when he quit the practice of law, went back to school, and became an ordained Lutheran minister, shepherding congregations in Baltimore, Pensacola, and Beaufort SC.

(2) So, on June 26 (daughter Hannah’s birthday, by the way), I had one of my regular lunches with my good friend and college roommate Doug F__________ at the Shanghai Lounge in Glover Park on Wisconsin Avenue.

The next morning, I went to Breads Unlimited to buy my weekly challah, opened my wallet to get my credit card, and it wasn’t there. I used a different card, but knew that I must have left my card at the Shanghai Lounge. So, I went home and called Shanghai and was told that they did not have my card. So it goes, I said to my self (not really), and I canceled my card and ordered a new one.

For those of you who see my Facebook entries, you might recall that this is when the rep on the phone fed me the following line: “Would you like me to expedite delivery of your new card at no extra charge.”

That offer sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? (These days anything good sounds too good to be true; have you noticed?) But two days later, a Fedex envelope with my card arrived and I was surprised to see that it had the same number as my old card. Well, I said, maybe they know something I don’t (and having the same number would relieve me of listing a new card on so many websites), so I called to activate it. It was activated; I got an email message from MasterCard telling me it was activated. But, the two times I tried to use it, it did not work.

I called the bank again. This time, a rep told me she had no idea why they sent me the same number on a new card. She told me that they would send me another new card with a new number. She didn’t say anything about expediting it for no cost, but lo and behold, again two days later, a new card came with a new number. I have now activated the new card, this time by using a QR code, rather than making a telephone call. I have not tried the new card yet, but I am sure it will be fine.

Yesterday afternoon, I sat down to enter my recent purchases into our Quicken account (why we do this, I do not know, but we do), and I discovered something unexpected. The evening after I thought I had lost the card at Shanghai Lounge, I had gone to Lalibela Ethiopian restaurant, now on Georgia Avenue, and bought some vege combos for dinner. When I looked at that invoice to enter into Quicken, I saw that I had used the lost card. I now know, too late to do anything about it, why Shanghai Lounge did not have my MasterCard. It is at Lalibela. Such is life, I said to myself (this time, for real).

(3) We recently watched the new documentary, Jayne, on HBO. It’s about Jayne Mansfield and was put together by one of her daughters (she had five children) who was only 3 when her mother died in an automobile accident. She has no real life memories of her mother.

I am not going to give away the various twists (you should watch the film), but will tell you that Mansfield was far from the airhead, sex symbol blond that she reluctantly  pretended to be for the sake of a career. Even though she had her first child at 16 or 17, she managed to learn to speak five languages (English, Spanish, French, Italian and Hungarian) and to play both piano and violin more than passably well. She also managed to have three husbands and public relationships with two others. And she was only 34 when she died.

How much had you accomplished at age 34?