Art is 80

Because I have no idea what yin and yang really are, I decided to go right to the source. It turns out that no one knows. Or, rather, while they are opposite each other and while they together make up everything, no one has any idea what they are. That makes me feel better. Because I clearly have no clue.

But here is a possibility: (1) yin (or yang) is related to the work being done by Harvard Professor Jeff Lichtman in mapping the human brain, while (2) yang (or yin) is the work being done by the various Chabad missionaries, spreading the word. Go ahead: prove me wrong.

I learned about Lichtman and his cohorts in the September-October edition of Harvard magazine. It involves coordinated research taking place in a number of universities to try to figure out how the brain really works. In part it focuses on habits and memories. How do they become habits and memories? Not surprisingly, this involves a lot of technical work: “He and colleagues spent the past decade analyzing one cubic millimeter of cerebral cortex (about the volume of a poppy seed) to create the first detailed map of connections in the human brain. Their analysis has revealed numerous complex structures of great beauty and unknown purpose: nerve fibers growing in whorls……, a new class of neurons with receptors (dendrites) that point only in two, diametrically opposed directions, and aligned with nerve fibers in an unconnected, underlying layer of white matter (none of the scientists have even a theory as to why this alignment exists); and powerful multisynaptic connections, rare instances where nerve fibers make as many as 50 or more connections to a single cell.”

Of course, I don’t understand any of that, and I become more at sea when I continue and read: “Surgeons removed the tissue used in the analysis from the temporal lobe of a 45 year old woman to gain access to an underlying lesion. After infusing and preserving the sample with a hardening resin, the researchers used a diamond knife to slice it into more than 5,000 sections, thinner than a thousandth of a human hair. “Any thicker”, say Lichtman, “and we can’t actually follow the wires through.” Each slice was scanned with a purpose-built multibeam electron microscope (the world’s first when the experiment began) at a resolution so high, he said, that to see all the detail in just one slice would require an array of 750 laptop screens wide by 500 high. Creating the images took six months, running the experiment 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Then came the hard part.”

All I can add is that “the hard part” was totally unintelligible to me, having to do with finding objects in each slice and stitching them together in a three dimensional pattern and color coding them, to obtain “seed sized” samples”, each with 57,000 cells, 230 millimeters of blood vessels and 150 million synapses.

The research, as you may have guessed, is ongoing.

The article, “Mapping the Human Brain” is by Jonathan Shaw, who may or may not have any idea what he was writing about.

As to Chabad, this comes from an article from the most recent edition of Moment magazine titled “From the Margins to the Mainstream” by Sarah Breger and Sue Fishkoff. The story of the rebirth of the Lubavitcher movement is itself well known – how it was brought to the United States by its leadership and reborn into a large, now again worldwide movement, after the destruction of World War II.

But some of the statistics and other facts brought out by the authors are interesting. As you may know, Chabad is centered in Brooklyn, in Crown Heights, but sends its “sluchim” out to create centers elsewhere. There are now approximately 5,000 such locations, of which 2,000 are in the United States, and 3,000 elsewhere in the world. Each is operated by a husband-wife team, and has as its goal pure outreach, reaching Jews of both religious and secular persuasions and giving them a place to congregate and to learn, with no pressure to become observant in any particular way. In fact, the article makes it clear that perhaps 90% of those who attend Chabad functions are not religiously orthodox and will never become so. But Chabad, which started off as what appeared to many as a dangerous fringe movement, is now accepted as mainstream. This is especially true around university campuses and the article claims that the Chabad House at SUNY Binghamton attracts, for its free Friday night dinners, approximately 450 hungry Jews at a time. And through its Jewish Learning Institute, which has 600 locations and a website that draws up to 50 million unique visitors yearly.

Perhaps both of these efforts (the Lichtman experiments and Chabad activities) are related. Perhaps Professor Lichtman needs to figure out why the human brain is so receptive to the Chabad rabbis and their wives (all Chabad rabbis are male, and virtually all married) and their events and courses. The secret undoubtedly lies in those synapses, and when it is discovered, the age old secret of yin and yang will finally be resolved. And the world finally made whole. And by the way, I think that both Professor Lichtman and the Lubavitcher Rebbe (may his memory be for a blessing) would agree.

Over the past two days, I have read James McBride’s The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. Highly recommended.

McBride is the son of a Christian African American father, and a White Jewish mother. He himself was brought up Christian (his mother may have converted, I am not sure), but he absorbed a lot of Jewish practice and culture, and these play a large role in his writings.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store takes place largely in the 1920s and 1930s in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. I have never been in Pottstown, a real place, but I have been in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, another real place.

I mention this because when I wrote about our July trip to Maine on this blog, I mentioned our stop in Pottsville, the home of the Yuengling Brewery, the oldest existing brewery in the country, and the boyhood home of John O’Hara, author of Ten North Frederick, among other books. (I also mentioned the coffee shop/book store where the books are shelved by color.)

Someone commented on my blog post that it was also the site of the plots of some of James McBride’s books, which I found interesting. But – I learned this weekend – that Pottsville is not the the location that McBride used to set his stories, but that he instead opted for Pottstown, another real place. Pottstown and Pottsville are about 50 miles apart. If you start in Pottsville, and drive southwest towards Philadelphia, Pottstown would pretty much be your halfway point.

Now, how close McBride’s Pottstown is to the real Pottstown, I have no idea. Today, Pottstown has about 23,000 residents, according to Wikipedia. It is approximately 72% White, and 20% Black. In 1930, it had about 19,000 residents, but I don’t know the racial makeup. It does have one Jewish congregation, a Conservative congregation with a Reconstructionist trained rabbi, Chesed Shel Emeth. The congregation apparently shares its site with a Black church, Bethel Community Church. In fact, due to declining membership, the synagogue, which used to own the building, sold the it to the church about 8 or 9 years ago, and is now a tenant in its former home. (By the way, Pottsville also has a synagogue, Oheb Zedek, a synagogue that predates the Civil War, but now apparently has fewer than 50 members.)

Well, it’s interesting that a Jewish and a Black congregation share the worship space in Pottstown, because the premise of McBride’s book is a close relationship between the Blacks and Jews of the city almost 100 year ago. There are really three groups in the book – the Whites (all Presbyterians, it appears), the Blacks and the Jews. There is a neighborhood in the city, called Chicken Hill, near (but far from) downtown that used to be populated by Jews, but is now mainly Black, with only a few Jews choosing to remain, while most of the Jews have moved closer to downtown. The Jews are active business owners in Pottstown, although new “greenhorns” continually move to town; most of the Blacks work for others in the city, and some don’t work at all, and many of them have recently come from the South.

The two Presbyterians featured in the book are a corrupt city council president, and a doctor who marches each year in a Ku Klux Klan parade, covered by a sheet that far from hides his identity. The primary Jewish family include the husband who owns a live performance space (where Jewish and Black groups perform) and his wife, the daughter of the founder of the town’s synagogue, who runs the eponymous grocery store on Chicken Hill. They live above the store. (There are a few other Jews in the book, of course, including twin Lithuanian shoemakers, three Yiddish speaking railway workers, a cousin who owns a more successful live theater in Philadelphia, and Nir Rosen, a gangster pure and simple).

The Black characters are more numerous and more varied, and many have personal relationships with the Jews, and particularly with the owner of the Heaven and Earth Grocery.

It’s a remarkable book, very readable, sometimes reading like a collection of short stories, sometimes like a novel with one plot overarching everything else. The descriptions of the individual residents of Chicken Hill and elsewhere reads like Robert Sherwood’s Winesburg, Ohio. The overarching story, which tells the tale of an orphaned young Black boy who is deaf but far from dumb, and is hidden by the Jewish couple with the help of their Black neighbor, reads like a thriller.

This is a very good book, and was written, according to the author, to show that people of different races and backgrounds really can live together and appreciate each other. At least that’s true of the Blacks and Jews. The Presbyterians? That’s apparently another matter.

I am sitting at Roasting Plant Coffee on Connecticut Avenue NW,  just below Dupont Circle, after a Sunday morning walk. I am about to take my first sip of a Sumatra Bold iced coffee. It’s an odd coffee shop in that they offer 10 different grades of coffee and they brew each order (from grinding the beans onward) separately. Each cup is priced about a dollar more than at a normal coffee shop. I have just one thing to say: it isn’t worth it.

My plan this morning was to talk about the new book Midnight in Moscow, the fascinating memoir of John Sullivan, our Ambassador to Russia during the last part of the Trump and early part of the Biden administration.

We saw Ambassador Sullivan at Politics and Prose about ten days ago. He is a charming Irish American with a smile and sense of humor that you would expect to find, say, in a charming Irish American.

Sullivan is a Republican (of the good kind) and a long time partner in the DC office of Mayer Brown, from which he has taken two (at least) lengthy leaves to serve in the government.

During the Trump years, he was appointed Deputy Secretary of State first under Rex Tillerson and then under Mike Pompeo. Although he was circumspect in the book, I think he was happy with both, and sympathized with Tillerson’s inability to get along with the president.

But he grew tired of the job, and when John Huntsman resigned as Ambassador to Russia, suggested himself as the best successor.

His thoughts about President Trump? For one thing, he never once spoke to, or saw, Trump after he was nominated. For another, he told me as he was signing my copy of his book, that Trump made his job very difficult as you never knew what Trump thought or what he was going to say next. It was clearly different under Biden.

His time as ambassador was clearly marred by Covid, when the entire embassy staff was isolated on the embassy compound. It was also marred by a step taken by the Russian government which limited the size of the embassy staff by suddenly deciding that the US could no longer employ third country nationals.

Sullivan did have contact with many high level Russian officials. You could, it seems, divide them into two types: unpleasant officials who were totally uncooperative, and personally delightful officials who were totally uncooperative.

Like many people, Sullivan expresses love for Russia and intense dislike for the Russians he had to deal with. He could never understand the apparently wide belief that the US and its allies were out to destroy Russia, pure and sumple, and that Ukraine was its current tool to do just that. He was ambassador when Russia attacked Ukraine and said that the writing was on the wall before the American government believed it would happen. When it did happen, he, like the others, thought that Kiev would fall in a matter of weeks.

One other point. Someone at P & P asked him what he thought Putin thought about Trump. No hesitation in his answer: “I think he thought he was an easy mark.”

Sitting in a coffee shop without the book next to me,  I am not doing it justice. So let me end with this: This is a very readable book, filled with insight about Russia today and our relationship to it. Highly, highly recommended.

It was good to see Jesse Jackson alive at the Democratic Convention this week, although he is mightily weakened by Parkinson’s, a disease from which he has now been suffering for a number of years. But it was good to see him attend, and it was good to see the recognition he received from the convention and from the delegates.

I only met Jesse Jackson one time, and very fleetingly at that. But I always had great respect for him.

Everyone, though, at least for a time, did not. You may remember when Jackson (should I call him Jesse, like everyone else? I am just not a first name guy with people I don’t know.) called New York City “Hymietown”, and by implication at least, called Jews “Hymies”. This was during his campaign, now almost 40 years ago, for the Democratic nomination for president, and happened during a private conversation, which he may have thought was off the record, that he was having with, of all things, a Washington Post reporter. When the remark became public, he at first said he didn’t even remember saying it, but later apologized, both for the reference and for his initial denial. I think he was caught by surprise and the denial came out of his mouth before he had time to think, and then he was simply embarrassed. He denied consistently that his remark was meant to be, or that he was, antisemitic or anti-Israel. This was at a time when Black-Jewish relations had gone downhill, and when Black Muslim Louis Farrakhan was spouting serial anti-Jewish comments, and was one of Jackson’s most visible supporters for the nomination, bringing with him to the campaign an important and active segment of the Black population.

Until that day, Jackson was a favorite of liberal Jews, but that day his relationship to the Jewish community (which, among other things, was providing a significant amount of the funding for his campaign, I am sure) changed forever. I don’t think it ever recovered.

I always took Jesse Jackson at his word. I did not, and do not, think him an antisemite and, in fact, never even found the reference to be insulting. As I recall, it certainly had not been used in a statement that otherwise insulted or denigrated Jews. It was an off hand remark, something he probably thought was “cute”, and his apology to the Jewish community (both for the use of the phrase and for claiming that he didn’t recall even saying it) was, I thought, honest and sincere.

Looking back at it today, I think it was a very early (maybe the earliest) example of the “cancel culture” that we are still hounded by today. You say something, it gets interpreted in a negative way, and you are toast. And, as you know, you cannot untoast a piece of toast.

For years, I had a client, based on the West Coast, in Los Angeles, who managed low income, government assisted housing projects all over the country. At one point, I think they were the most active manager of this type of housing in the nation. They were not builders or developers; they generally bought existing properties, often very troubled properties, and tried to turn them around. They were usually fairly successful; sometimes they were not.

They were also very close to Jesse Jackson (and I am talking largely about the 1980s), spoke very highly of him, providing some funding for his campaign I am sure, and had a good personal relationship. My client was a large privately owned organization. Its two principal owners were both Jewish, as was the majority of its senior staff employees. I liked all of them quite a bit.

They purchased a property in Prince George’s County, Maryland, not too far off Rhode Island Avenue (with which you are now all somewhat familiar), called Glenarden Apartments. It was a large, sprawling, government assisted property – garden apartments, several buildings. And it had a terrible reputation for drugs and crime. I always thought its main problem was its location (nothing could be done about that) because it was conveniently located just off a Beltway exit, so that you could jump off the Beltway, enter the development, do your drug deal, and be back on the Beltway in minutes, your escape from possible enforcement action accomplished.

The project had a few hundred units, mainly large apartments, and like Brookland Manor, which I wrote about a week or so ago, housed large families, who had no money and often no regular male head of household, the hardest kind of development to keep in check.

My clients determined to rehabilitate Glenarden, and make it an example of what could be done. It should be noted that, although it looked for several years that they had succeeded, in fact, this was a failure and the development slipped back into its old habits. They eventually sold the property, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development eventually foreclosed on its mortgage and tore it down, selling the land for a different type of redevelopment. (Shortly after that, the president of the company suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, and the entire company became a shadow of its former self, but that’s another story.)

When Glenarden’s rehabilitation was completed, there was a celebration, a grand affair with balloons and food and games for the kids, and the star attraction was Jesse Jackson (that’s the one time I met him). He was at the height of his prominence, and the Hymietown conversation had not yet occurred. What was amazing and surprising to everyone was that he arrived on a helicopter, landing somewhere on the grass of the development. He got out of the helicopter, came over to the celebration, was introduced, was in a very jovial mood, and he gave a short speech.

I remember part of his speech. He talked about the problems of low income housing and how very lucky the residents of Glenarden were to have such a completely attractive, rehabilitated development. And he was right. But he went on to say something else. He went on to say that while the physical shape of a property might be important, it wasn’t the most important part of one’s home. He talked about the importance of keeping a family on the right track, with all of potential diversions and pitfalls of poor Blacks in the 1980s. It is possible, he said, to take a slum and make it a beautiful home. And it is equally possible to take a beautiful home and make it a slum. The message to the residents was clear: it is up to you to keep this property as nice as it is today.

And this turned out not to happen.

The Hymietown remark did not change the relationship of my clients to Jesse Jackson. They remained close, and they defended him whenever asked. I heard a number of Jesse Jackson stories from them. I knew that he never pulled away from his Jewish friends or supporters (at least those who did not pull away from him). And there was no repetition of anything like the Hymietown incident.

Jesse Jackson is just about one year older than I am. I have felt sorry for him from the day he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. I remember when he also got Covid, and it was touch and go as to whether or not he would recover. I wish him the best. I am glad I got to see him again this week, if only on television, and in spite of his serious disease.

(1) This is fact: if you throw a baseball at a window, there is no harm until the baseball hits the window.

This may seem a simple minded conclusion, which it is. But how about this?

When a president signs a bill into law, the law has no effect until it is implemented. Is that equally simple minded? You would think so. But……

Why do I even bring this up? It’s because I am tired of hearing the Republicans look at everything that is happening during the Biden years that is problematic, and blaming it on Biden. My theory (totally unproven, but logical to me, and something that no one seems to say) is that the actions taken by a president may sometimes (or most of the time, or almost always) have no effect until the next president comes into office. This would be true for good and for bad.

For example, if a president implements policies which may lead to inflation, it is possible that the inflation won’t show up until the next president takes office. If, say, during the Trump presidency, choices were made that led to increased supply chain problems during the COVID period, and therefore to excess inflation from pent up demand as those supply chain problems were resolved by the next president, who is the cause of the inflation? The president whose policies led to the problems, or the president whose policies resolved the problems?

Looking at it the other way, the Democrats like to talk about the infrastructure bill that has been passed during the Biden administration. But the infrastructure projects themselves are just now beginning to become shovel ready and they will be apparent to the general population during the term of the next president. Who is going to get credit for those projects, Joe Biden, or his successor?

It’s like a big ship, heading in the wrong direction. You can change captains, but for even the best captain, the process of turning the ship around will take some time. If the new captain turns the ship around as quickly as humanly possible, but it takes a day or two to point the ship in the right direction, it will be possible to take photos of the new captain leading the ship in the wrong direction. But whose fault is it?

(2) Perhaps a small point, but Trump (foolishly) keeps calling Harris a Marxist or a Communist, and the other day began referring to her as Comrade Harris.

Let me just say that “comrade” is not a title which a capitalist or even a socialist would give to a Communist. It is not a title like Mister or Ms. or Lieutenant. It is more akin to calling a fellow sorority member “Sister”, or a good pal “Bro”.

In other words, only a Communist can call another Communist “comrade”. It is a title of relationship, not of status.

So, if Trump calls Harris “comrade”, it means that he and she are members of the same club, doesn’t it? What is Donald hiding?

(3) I thought that the Harris acceptance speech last night deserved an A or an A- for content, and an A++++ for delivery. I mark it down for content because I think that the Democrats could be a little more careful in how they say some of the things that they say. For example, to say that Project 2025 is the playbook for a second Trump administration, when Trump keeps saying that it isn’t, is probably a bit too much. They can make it clear that many things in the Project 2025 book are the same as Trump or Vance promise, they can say that Vance wrote a cover blurb for the book, they can say that the authors are among Trump’s closest advisors, they can say that Trump has previously blessed the effort or that the authors of Project 2025 have previously said that Trump supports their efforts. All that would be accurate. But to say point blank that Project 2025 and the Trump policies are identical and that we can expect a Trump presidency to implement all of them just goes too far.

Another example would be whether Trump would “with or without Congress” implement a nationwide ban on abortion. He has consistently said that he would not do that, and I have no idea whether he would want to or not. It would be fair to say that “we think Trump would implement a nationwide ban on abortion , with or without Congress, even though he denies it”, but to leave off that final clause goes too far. Same with the concept of appointing someone who would in effect be a White House “anti-abortion counsel”.

(3) On the first day of the Democratic convention, the delegates unanimously approved the party’s platform. I was really surprised when the woman introducing the resolution to adopt the platform said that it had been finished by the party’s platform committee in July. This means that it was approved when it was assumed that Joe Biden would be the party’s nominee for the presidency. Clearly, Harris will change some (we don’t know how many) of the Biden positions on various platform planks. Yet the party platform as approved does not reflect the Harris candidacy. Of course, it would have been difficult to modify the platform on short notice. It would be hard work. But as Kamala Harris has said again and again “We like hard work”.

They should have done something more than they did. It will come back to bite them, I think. Probably not bite them fatally, but bite them nevertheless. (I have already seen one Republican criticism that the party platform refers again and again to candidate Joe Biden.)

(4) One more thing surprised me. In one of the segments on Project 2025, they had some citizens on the screen bemoaning how its implementation would adversely affect them (and by extrapolation others). It was a pretty effective segment, I thought. One of the provisions discussed was the book’s determination that the Department of Education would be eliminated. And they had, as the citizen affected, a woman who, as I recall, described herself as a mid-level manager in Washington at the Department of Education, and she expressed distress that her job (and her Department) would be totally eliminated if Donald Trump was elected to a second term.

Whoa, I said (to myself). Isn’t this an obvious violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from partisan political advocacy? I expect that the federal employee involved is going to hear something about this. They should have known better, and used a recipient of assistance from DOE, not a federal employee, to make their point.

It is now after 5 p.m. and I am first publishing today’s blog. Shameful, I know, after almost 650 straight days of timely posts. But that’s what happens when you have to give a presentation at 9 a.m., and then attend a 2 p.m. funeral. So, I will do the best that I can.

My presentation, to my Thursday morning breakfast group, was about Giuseppe Garibaldi and the unification of the Italian peninsula. You probably don’t know much about Garibaldi, except perhaps his name and that he was involved in the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in the middle of the 19th century. I actually wrote a blog post about Garibaldi on June 5, which I suggest you read, or re-read, and which gives the outline of his amazing life.

He was born in 1807, and died in 1881. I am not going to repeat what I said on June 5 (although maybe I should), but I want to add a few things. He was world renown, and all for good reason. He was a friend of Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo. Historian A.J.P. Taylor said that he was the “only wholly admirable figure in modern world history.” That should tell you something.

There were three men who were the leaders of the movement to unify Italy. They were about the same age, but had different goals, so their relationships were sometimes close and sometimes less pleasant. Giuseppe Mazzini, Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Count Cavour.

Giuseppe Mazzini was the founder of Young Italy, a secret organization dedicated to unifying a peninsula whose divisions had recently been confirmed by the Congress of Vienna after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. At that time, Italy was divided into many separate states – the Kingdom of Sicily (capital – Palermo), the Kingdom of Naples (capital – Naples), the Papal States (capital – Rome), the Kingdom of Sardinia and Piedmont (it’s capital was Turin, on the mainland not on the Island of Sardinia), the Kingdom of Lombardy (capital – Milan), the Kingdom of Venice, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (capital – Florence), Lucca, Parma, Modena, not to mention tiny San Marino, which remained independent even during the Napoleonic years. You can see the challenge.

Mazzini was a 19th century intellectual social democrat, anti-monarchist, anti-clerical; he wanted to see Italy as a unified republic.

Cavour was the chief aide to the King of Sardinia, his foreign minister and prime minister rolled into one. He wanted to see the peninsula united as well, but he wanted to see if united under the King of Sardinia. He was a monarchist, an aristocrat, a staunch Catholic, and anti-republican.

Garibaldi was in the middle. He wanted to see Italy unified. Period. End of story. Philosophically, he was much closer to Mazzini, but he was willing to work with Cavour and the Sardinian royal family if that was the best way to reach his goal. Changes could always be made later.

During Garibaldi’s exiles from Italy, he was involved in revolutionary movements in South America and in commercial shipping activities everywhere else where he traveled or lived. His honed his military leadership in Brazil and Uruguay, where he also created his “red shirts”, his Italian Legion, 60 members of which he brought back to Europe.

His relationship with the King of Sardinia was fraught. At first, when he aided a rebellion in the King’s navy, he was arrested and sentenced to death. Later, although he was never pardoned, he helped Milan rid itself of its Austrian overseers which allowed it to become part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. Then, in his most successful enterprise, he worked to free both the Island of Sicily and the former Kingdom of Naples (which had combined to form the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) from its Bourbon rulers, and handed that large territory over to the King of Sardinia in 1860, thus allowing the King (whose troops had been moving south and conquering Tuscany and neighboring jurisdictions) to call himself now King of Italy, a unified Italy lacking on the territory around Venice, and the large Papal States (which extended from south of Rome on the west side of the country to north of Ravenna in the east), and of course – San Marino.

Garibaldi wanted to conquer the Papal States for the King, but was turned back by the army of France which came to the Pope’s defense. When he tried later, the King (now of Italy) told him to stop, fearing a return of the French troops, and arrested and exiled Garibaldi once more. Garibaldi turned his attention to Venice and Venice joined the Kingdom of Italy in 1866. Garibaldi then “retired” to his house on the small island of Caprera, off the northern coast of the large island of Sardinia.

In 1870, France of Louis Philippe, and Prussia of Bismark, went to war. This meant that France needed all its troops to fight the Germans, meaning that King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy was able to march into Rome without fear of French resistance, and the unification of Italy was complete. Garibaldi had helped set the stage, but was not there at that time.

Of the three unification leaders, only Garibaldi lived long enough to see the results of a unified Italy. Cavour died in 1861, just after the major unification was accomplished, and Mazzini in 1972, shortly after the conquest of the Papal States. And of course Mazzini’s idea of a unified republican Italy never occurred, as the Kingdom of Italy lasted until the advent of the age of Mussolini in the 1920s.

There is much more to the story of Garibaldi, and it is possible that the definitive biography has not yet been written. Those few biographies that do exist, and his extensive autobiographical writings, have not been given great reviews. Nor has there been an epic film of his life. Roberto Rossellini directed a film titled Garibaldi in 1961, but it only deals with the conquest of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and IMDB gives it a review that is mediocre at best.

But there is a lot to look at on-line, including Wikipedia and Britannica, as well as the website of the Garibaldi Museum on Caprera, where his house can also be visited. There is another small museum on Staten Island, and there are statues of him in Uruguay, in Russia, in the U.S. (On Manhattan and in DC, and perhaps elsewhere), and of course in Italy.

Not taking the time to proofread today – it’s almost 6 p.m.

And the Democrats are trying to make his prediction come true with their late, late, late night convention here in the Eastern time zone. I am not used to staying up watching television until midnight, and then getting up early to perform baby sitting duties, as I am this week when camps are closed and so are schools.

But the convention is now 50% over and I watched everything that C-Span has shown, with the exception of the roll call. During the roll call, I watched the Nats playing the Rockies and when the game ended, the last state to be polled, California for some reason, was just finishing: “My name is Gavin Newsom, and the Great State of California casts its thousands, or is it millions, of votes for the next president of the United States, who will not be me”, or something like that. Was it just a coincidence that things worked out this way, did the DNC and MLB plan it that way, or is this a reason why you shouldn’t stop believing in a God?

I have been trying to compare the Democrats’ convention with the Republican convention that I watched not quite as religiously a month or so ago. I remember virtually nothing about the Republican convention. What I do remember is (a) I thought the Republicans put on quite a good show and wondered if the Democrats can match it for showmanship (I think they can’t), (b) I wondered what that Teamster president was doing talking about things that had nothing to do with partisan politics (he wanted to speak at both conventions, but the Dems limited the union speakers to those from unions who are supporting Harris – that may be all of them except for the Teamsters, who are still officially neutral), (3) I remember the recent Harvard grad whose excellent talk badmouthed my alma mater for the way it has been handling anti-Israel/anti-Jewish protests (he wanted to speak at both conventions, as well, but hasn’t shown up yet at the Dem convention – my guess is he won’t, although he is apparently a Democrat – what I would call a self-hating Democrat?), and (4) I remember that Trump and Vance both spoke, but neither convinced me that they were the A-team.

I must say this: most of the speeches at the Democratic convention are better than those at the GOP convention, and the showmanship is, if not as good, not painful. With the exception of Patti LaBelle. Now, I don’t know much about Patti LaBelle, except I now think she is different from Patti Lapone (or is it LaPone?), something before I probably wasn’t too sure of. I have seen Patti LaPone (or is it Lapone?) perform a few times, and never thought she was an A+ entertainer, and now I can say that Patti LaBelle is in the same category, and that – thus – perhaps they are the same after all. All I heard, as I saw her face, was a lot of screeching. A lot of screeching. Oh, well, one man’s torture is another man’s………?

I also must say this: No one could have given a better speech than the one that Michelle Obama gave last night. No one, not even her husband, who gave the next speech which was a very good speech, but didn’t compare to his wife’s. She looked terrific, she sounded terrific, and who could not love her remark, after talking about Barack and Kamala, when she said that maybe someone should tell Donald Trump that the presidency is one of the “Black jobs” he refers to?

There have been other good speeches as well. Two of the best were by AOC and Bernie Sanders. Another was by Trump’s former press secretary Stephanie Grisham – her address should be played over and over and over to MAGA audiences, or at least to audiences comprised of the undecided. I was also surprisingly impressed with Angela Alsobrooks, the Democratic candidate to replace Ben Cardin as Senator from Maryland. I had never heard her speak before, and really not paid attention to her campaign (she is polling well ahead of former governor Larry Hogan, whom everybody does like). She’s a Maryland native and a graduate of Banneker Academic High School, the DC magnet public high school where my son in law teaches, and then Duke and the University of Maryland Law School. And she can deliver a good speech – content and style, both. Oh, yes, and one more speaker: Hillary Clinton. Her talk was gracious, on point, and persuasive. I wonder if she has ever thought about the presidency.

I was a little disappointed with the speech that Doug Emhoff gave. It was very personal, about his relationship to his wife, and the dynamics of their blended family, and there was nothing wrong with it, although it was a tad too personal, I thought. But I am sure that is what he was asked to do. But it lacked dynamism – he spoke in a very laid back style that under normal circumstances might be fine, but I thought lacked the oomph you needed if your wife is running for President. My talk will be much different if Edie throws her hat in the ring. Oh, I forgot, she really doesn’t have any hats, other than a baseball cap or two.

Other than that, although no one gave a bad speech, the speeches were easily forgettable. Twelve hours after they were given, I have forgotten them already.

Tonight? Bill Clinton (I am looking forward to him, although he looks and sounds so old, old, old – his wife, the same age, still looks and sounds like she is in the prime of her life), Nancy Pelosi (she just isn’t the best speaker – and, by the way, neither is her counterpart Shumer, who spoke last night), and Tim Walz. Truth be known, I am still undecided about the Walz choice. I will accept that he is a very pleasant guy, and a fine all-American fellow, but is he ready for prime time? I am not yet sure. So I will watch and listen closely to him tonight (if I stay up that long – but of course I will – I can sleep when I’m dead. I forgot).

You may have noted that there is someone I left out. A guy named Biden. I heard his speech. It was a good speech (“As I leave you, let me tell you all the wonderful things I have done. And, oh yes, I am not leaving you quite yet.”). But, perhaps sadly, he is already part of the past. There may be important decisions that have to be made between now and January 20, and he is the President who will make them, but…….he really is part of the past. And, assuming he is listening to or watching the full convention, how bittersweet is must be. Because, although his name is mentioned now and then (and always accompanied by “Thank you, Joe” shouts from the crowd), one thing is clear. He really is the past.

Okay. The past is past. And as Bryce Harper used to say “The best is yet to come”, and as my first cousin once removed Al used to say “You ain’t seen nothing’ yet.” And yes there is work to do between now and November 5, and as Tim Walz has said……..

I have finished about 60 percent of my walk up Rhode Island Avenue and, as I am fairly house bound this week, I thought it would be good to look back at a few of the places I mentioned over the past few days, but perhaps gave short shrift to.

I will start with Maryland Meadworks:

Maryland Meadworks: “Our meads range from sweet to semi-sweet to dry. We offer both still and sparkling mead varieties and will have up to eight meads on tap in the tasting room. We produce traditional mead as well as exciting new varieties that incorporate fruit, herbs, spices and other natural flavors such as coffee, tea, and hops.”

Open mic night this Thursday, live music on Friday, karaoke on Saturday and an Irish brunch on Sunday.

Sang-Froid Distilling:

“For our seasonal brandies, we use heirloom fruits from our own orchard in western Maryland, we forage for wild fruit, and we purchase fruit from Maryland and Pennsylvania farms……..For our whiskeys and gins, we source our grains from Maryland farms.”

The location in Hyattsville is a cocktail bar, retail store and pickup location. Open only Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Streetcar 82 Brewing Co.:

“As a deaf-owned business,  we have the support of a large deaf community because of our proximity to Gallaudet University……Many of our regulars will respond to us in ASL.”

Seafood Boss owns a chain of food trucks that roam the area and ten years ago, they started a restaurant with a large outdoor space, in Brentwood. Rated 4.9 on Google. Obviously,  Black owned.

Zeke’s Coffee:

“At Zeke’s, we use an environmentally friendly Loring coffee roaster, which uses 80 percent less energy than your typical roaster… We roast in small batches. It guarantees freshness. Our roaster holds 25 pounds of coffee, compared to the 150 pounds that a standard roaster holds.”

And……

remember streetcar Line 82. Line 82 started on 5th and G NW DC, and then paralleled Rhode Island Avenue all the way to College Park. It stopped running in 1958, 66 years ago. Progress is not all it’s cracked up to be.

And that’s the rest of the story.

When Democrats held their convention in Chicago in 1968, in the midst of extraordinary dissension about the war in Vietnam and when we all knew (for better or for worse) that we were on the cusp of The Age of Aquarius, The Age of Aquarius (the last eight words to be sung, not read), we had a hard time trying to decide if we wanted to watch the shouting inside the convention hall or the shouting outside on the streets (and in the parks). Hopefully, this week’s Democratic convention, back in Chicago, will hold less drama, but……

the advocates for a Gaza ceasefire will be out in big numbers, with some estimates ranging up to 100,000 protesters and marchers. While each of these marchers will have their own ideas as to why they are marching, and what they would like to see happen, the overarching goal is to influence the Democratic ticket to change the country’s policies towards the conflict, the goal being a ceasefire, and the cessation of the United States sending military equipment to Israel that can be used in Gaza where it can continue to be used against non-combatant citizens, including children. They point to a number of things, including an American law that prohibits the transfer of military supplies to foreign governments who might (could? are likely to?) use them in furtherance of war crimes. And they point to various activities of the Israeli Defense Forces which they (and, to be sure, others) have concluded constitute war crimes.

As I have said before, the leadership on neither side seems to want a ceasefire. That makes things tough. I think there are two main reasons for this. First, each side wants to win a war that may be impossible for either side to win. Hamas wants to so destabilize and isolate Israel that it will in effect destroy itself, giving non-Jewish Palestinians the right to take over the governance of the entire area (with or without some Jews remaining). Israel’s current ultra, ultra, ultra right wing leadership wants to rid both Gaza and the West Bank of any semblance of Arab governance, and certainly to lessen the number of Arab residents, leading to a larger Israel. In other words, each side wants control from the river to the sea.

The second reason is that the leadership on each side wants to maintain its personal control of the two governmental bodies. Benjamin Netanyahu wants to remain out of prison on his various corruption charges and, in order to do so, is willing to bring together a coalition of right wing political parties who are unabashedly in favor of Arab displacement and Jewish expansion. Yahya Sinwar, political leader of Hamas, wants to stay alive (for one thing), but wants to make sure that the Palestinians do not fall under the influence of rival political groups on either the left (Islamic Jihad) or the right (the Palestinian Authority).

Both sides put their rationales in front of a third factor. That is, they both put long term goals, and short term personal status and protection, above the interests of their current citizens. If 40,000 Palestinians have been killed to date (that is Hamas’ claim), that means there are 40,000 martyrs. If it becomes, 80,000, glory to God. If the continuation of war in Gaza stokes more conflict in the West Bank (where for the first time in decades the Israeli government has approved a brand, spanking new settlement), or if it even brings about deeper conflict with Hezbollah forces in Lebanon or with Iran itself, so be it. It will be a tough conflict, Israeli leadership says, but we will survive and come out on top.

A few other things are clear. The Israeli lobby in the United States is very strong and very well funded, and is composed these days not only of numerous Jewish moneyed individuals, but has the support of much of right wing Christian America. Supporting the cut-off of military supplies to Israel, which after all is our ally and is a democracy and is refuge of the Jewish world, could come at a heavy political cost. If it comes at a truly heavy political cost, the choice would do no good, since the weakened advocate of the cut-off might never be elected in the first place. Refusal to cut off military supplies, on the other hand, could simply lead to continuing and growing protests, which could have a wide effect across the country, including increasing antisemitism, among other things.

So it is a real dilemma, and will constitute an early test for Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz.

I think it was Golda Meir long ago who said that it was a tragedy that young Israelis had to be killed in battle. But she added that it was a bigger tragedy that young Israelis had to kill, and learn to kill, young Arabs.

I think this is right, and it was the reason it was so difficult last night (Sunday night) to watch Ayman Mohyeldin on MSNBC when he told of camps being run by Israel in the Negev where Arabs captured from Gaza are being held, and where there have been many allegations of torture, including sexual torture, claimed by prisoners and their advocates. As you may have read, there have been several Israeli soldiers detained on account of these charges, and there have been large protests against their detention. It is one more very disturbing aspect of this entire situation, and parallels accusations of the way some West Bank settlers have treated their Arab neighbors and, of course, of some accusations of improper treatment of the citizens of Gaza inside of Gaza.

It’s easy (sort of) to discount all of this and say either (a) they are exaggerating for obvious reasons, or (b) well, this is war. But the allegations are too pervasive to allow us to do this. One of the documents cited last night on Ayman was a recent paper issued by B’tselem, a left-wing (to be sure) Israeli human rights organization, titled “Welcome to Hell: the Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps”. You can read it at http://www.btselem.org. In fact, the entire B’tselem website is instructive (they castigate Palestinians as well as Jewish Israelis), if you can stomach it.

Those of us Americans who think fondly of Israel for all sorts of good reasons, who have traveled there back and forth many times, and who have relatives and friends there, find it hard to believe some of these things, or – if we do – rationalize them as being necessary since Israel is under constant threat and/or attack by its neighbors. But we may be getting to the point where these excuses just won’t fly.

With the current Israeli government seeming now entrenched for an extended period of time, and with no chance of its Prime Minister giving up his power and immunity, and no chance of his dismissing his most despicable ministers for fear of upsetting his entire coalition, Israel may be in for more than just a bumpy road. A paradigm shift (yes, with international help) is crucial before Israel becomes not a light to the nations, but a source of perpetual darkness. But how and when such a shift will take place is far from clear. And Golda Meir’s statement will not only remain true, but will become something more. It may become a meme (I really don’t know what that word means, but others use it whenever they want, so I will, too) that will accurately describe the country for a long time to come.

You know what week is coming up? It’s the week before DC schools start, and the week that summer camps and programs don’t operate. That means it’s the week we will have grandchildren with us, so there will be no time to continue our trek up Rhode Island Avenue. So, the next installment will wait a while.

But we will wait in the middle of downtown Hyattsville, and today we will walk there from where we left off in Brentwood. It will be an interesting walk of about 1.5 miles (round trip twice that).

Here is a good spot (here are good spots) to start. A small office building.

From here, we walk past one of a number of auto repair shops, one of two Latin restaurants with wall art, and The African American Cafe, where it says you can get a sandwich for $5.

Then, a change. No buildings for a while. A park. Bike trail. Basketball courts. A skate park. A bridge over untroubled waters, the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia Watershed, a 21 mile long stream that flows through both Montgomery and Prince George’s County into the Anacostia River.

Nearby, we see our first historic marker (surprising that it’s the first), honoring the suffrage movement, similar to those we saw in Occoquan VA a few weeks ago.

We move on and ease into Hyattsville. Hyattsville is not the PG county seat, but it is home to many county offices.

And to an odd statue of a police bird, which is said to honor Prince George’s police officers killed in the line of duty. And near that, another piece of public sculpture — horns.

We pass a museum that doesn’t seem to have outlived Covid, but whose building still stands and who outside art work remains.

And then we get to town.

An active retail and arts center. Here are a few photos, all from the south part of central Hyattsville, because when I got to Franklin’s,  I stopped and had lunch. We will continue in a week or so.

And a little more street art:

This last one is on the side of a small machine shop. Maybe not so small.

Before we go on, I need to respond to a question about the Dudley Beauty College.

It’s located at 20th and Rhode Island NE, on the same corner with the Dudley B Sharp Music School, and the Dudley Real Estate company. I was asked who Dudley is.

Looking at the websites, I see that Joseph Dudley owns the beauty school (one of eight across the country) and lives in North Carolina,  that Daryl Dudley, a local musician, owns the music school, and that the realtor is Cornelius Dudley. That is all I know. You will have to connect the dots.

Okay, moving on.

At Eastern Avenue, about 50 blocks from where we started this exercise, we cross from DC into Maryland.  There is no “welcome” sign to the state (in the opposite direction, you are welcomed to DC), but there is this:

Yes, you enter the town of Mt. Rainier, built as a suburb along former street car line 82, as this terrific mural shows. How do they get such perspective?

Mt. Rainier is known as an artist mecca, as are the next few towns we will visit (Brentwood and Hyattsville), with a small downtown stretch, some galleries and more studios, art supply stores, and lodging for artists of limited income. It is far from a wealthy town.

Now, remember that I am sticking to Rhode Island Avenue (US Route 1), and that does limit what we see. But there’s enough to keep us going.

As you can see, you can eat, you can see a diorama in the Make Art box, and you can get your own studio and loft.

Unfortunately, you can also see a number of empty store fronts, although you can buy oriental rugs and antiques, if you so choose. And eat some more.

As you walk on past houses and Saint James Catholic Church, you cross into Brentwood and North Brentwood. It is probably economically similar to Mt. Rainier, and both have a 30-30-20 Black-Hispanic-White mix. Here’s the church.

Brentwood doesn’t have the “downtown” stretch you have in Mt. Rainier, but does have some things of interest.

This apartment building, one of several, has studios and galleries for artists, apartments for regular people, and a food court with four or five restaurants, a fancy herb shop, and a big bar on the ground level.

I was in the food court mid-afternoon. There were several filled tables beyond the bar, which you can’t see, and the bar clearly lights up at night. It has been open about 5 years.

Here is  another apartment building across the street, also directed towards artists.

Next to Studio 3807, you find several depictions of Don Quixote. “Oh”, I thought, “local art”. But no, it comes from Maine. For a local art center, there is a surprising lack of public, outside art.

But things will change on the next segment of our walk, as we head past the North Branch of the Anacostia Watershed into Hyattsville  which is a metropolis compared to Mt. Rainier and Brentwood.

In the meantime, you can see a portait of happy, or perhaps perplexed, customers on the wall of the Brentwood Animal Hospital.

That’s it for today.

So, there are negotiations going on in Doha to try to resolve the Israel-Gaza dispute, end the hostilities and bring home the hostages. As someone might have said somewhere in the ’50s, “Rotsa ruck”. (Where did I get that from? Nowhere? Somewhere? Where?)

You have two sides fighting, neither of whom want to stop. One of the sides has not sent anyone to the ceasefire negotiations (“You guys, go on and negotiate. When you’re done, tell me what you want me to do, and I will let you know what I think.” Wink, wink.) The other has sent a group with no authority to speak for their government, or reach any agreement.

On the Hamas side, the Long War (I think it deserves capitalization at this point) continues, with leadership taking the position: “We will eventually win this fight. Period. Sure there will be more than 40,000 martyrs in the process, but……big deal. Allahu akbar.”

On the Israel side, it’s more like: “If I am honest, there are two things that are more important than ending this war. First, it is important to keep the current Knesset coalition together, and second, it is important that this coalition continue to work to keep the present Prime Minister in office and out of jail. In the meantime, things will be tough, but we can be tougher.”

To quote Mr. Vonnegut, “So it goes.”

And what should the United States do? We have no idea what the Trump position is. He is waiting for Biden (whom he now calls Harris) to fail and use this failure in his campaign against the Democrats. If Trump is elected, we have no idea what he will actually do.

We think we know the Harris position (which will be a continuation of the Biden position, but she will be pressured by certain elements (some anti-war, some pro-Arab, some antisemitic) of the Democratic Party whom she will have to keep satisfied, including a large number of Michigan voters, a state which she needs.

The result is that the American position will become a campaign issue, or maybe campaign ploy. Neither candidate’s campaign statements might reflect what the candidate would do if elected, but because of its potential campaign importance, you can be sure it will be an increasing issue between now and November. And it may become an issue strong enough to influence the results of our election, which is a frightening thought.

Now, to the north.

We have conflicting positions between the candidates on the Russia/Ukraine war. Harris wants to support Ukraine (and NATO); Trump wants to pull support to force an end of the war on whatever terms. We’ll see how in this plays out during the campaign.

Meanwhile, while the same-old, same-old of the Gaza war continues on and on, the news out of Ukraine is always fascinating.

The Ukrainian excursion into Russia’s Kursk province is really exciting. I think. I keep reading things about the Russians’ surprise at the invasion, about the Russian army’s weakness, about the need to move Russian troops to Kursk from other places, and even the possibility of the FSB revolting against Putin at some point. It all makes for very interesting reading. We will have to see what happens. It is doubtful that this will affect our election the same way that the Gaza War might.

What’s most interesting, however, is that the two campaigns really seem to be ignoring both of these important events for the time being, and concentrating on their dislike of their opponents on a personal basis. Maybe that is just as well.

Sometimes, I do think about the similarities between these two wars. In each case, a larger and older power (Russian and Arab) has invaded a smaller and newer nation (Israel and Ukraine), claiming that they are simply trying to take back historic lands. The smaller powers respond by saying: this is not your historic land, it’s ours; we have been here longer than you. Are these really just the same war in a different location?

Happy Friday.

From the first time he said it, I wasn’t happy with Tim Walz’ describing Donald Trump and JD Vance as weird. Weird is not necessarily a bad thing, you know. You don’t want your leaders to be ordinary. And sometimes, isn’t weird a complement? Keep Austin Weird! They wear that with pride don’t they?

Frankly, I would be happier if he had said that Trump and Vance were “just plain crazy” or that they were “just plain nuts”. But he didn’t, although it would have described them better. Been more accurate. And, perhaps generated even a stronger reaction.

As Trump seems to be imploding, I have a theory. That is, that if you once supported Trump and you turn away from him, you can’t go back again. You see the emperor without the clothes, and you are embarrassed you didn’t see him that way before. At least, I hope that will be the case.

But – and this is true as well – Harris has to be able to pull it off. And Tim Walz can talk about only 80-some odd days, and “we can sleep when we’re dead”, but wishing does not make it so. Hard work, energy, knowing your message and sticking to it, and being able to respond quickly to new circumstances. If Harris and Walz can do this, they will be shoe-ins.

Next week is the Democratic convention, four (?) televised nights. For those of us who remember 1968, we remember Democrats and Chicago as a volatile mix. Riots and noise, on and off the floor, and a Democratic loss to Richard Nixon. Chicago doesn’t have a fiery Richard Daly as mayor any more and, within the party hierarchy, opposing voices have been moderated, but Democrats are Democrats and – to quote Mr Walz – sometimes things can get a bit weird. I hope that none of that happens.

Because if it doesn’t, Harris will get a bump which will give her, at least temporarily (although if my theory is correct, permanently) a bump of a few points that could make the difference.

She has many things going for her, including her gifted oratory and her general appeal. She also has the ability, because of her background, to bring in large numbers of voters who might otherwise stay home. First, of course is Black women. Black women can be a very determined group, you know, and they can influence not only each other, but they can influence Black 18-30 year olds, and they can influence Black men, and they can influence Black seniors, for whom voting might just be too much of a chore. Combine Black women with Black pastors, and everyone will come out and vote, to be sure.

And then there are women in general. Hillary Clinton, for reasons I myself cannot understand still, was not able to generate sufficient female excitement, although she would have been the first female president and was, if anything, over qualified for the job. She came close (since she won by several million votes – but that’s another story), but she couldn’t carry the battleground states, the states where, as the saying goes: the cities are Democratic, but the rest of the state is Alabama.

But things have changed. For one thing, the overturning of Rowe has lit a fire in supporters of women’s right to choose and women’s health, that was not necessary to demonstrate before. For another, women now have had the experience of seeing a favored female candidate lose – and they aren’t going to want to lose again; they will come out and vote.

The fact that Harris is relatively young (compared to Old Donald) is important, and the fact that she can relate to younger people is important. She needs to bring out the young vote. This can be tricky, since so many young voters (like young voters were in the 1960s) anti-war, and support of Israel is a policy that no American candidate is going to change. So, she needs to be careful here. She needs to be able to say things that no faction will fully agree with, but which won’t seem to outlandish to them that they will turn against her.

And she needs to appeal to Latinos, and I am sure there will be a major effort to do this, again tricky, because of the complications at the border. But, a triple “minority” (I know this is not the right term here, but you know what I mean), a woman, a Black, an Asian, has to appeal to another minority group, like the Latinos/as. We will see. Verdict still out. But I am confident. After all, Trump is weird.

But of course there is the albatross on Harris’ back – otherwise known as Joe Biden. I am not being critical of Biden as president, but he is an albatross, and it is very difficult for a sitting vice president to run for the presidency as an agent of change, to separate herself from her administration’s more controversial provisions, yet remain loyal and respectful. I am glad I don’t have to navigate this one.

And then there’s the “brat” question. Of course, I had never heard the term or used it in today’s context, but I did look it up. To be brat is to, as I understand it, enjoy life, visibly enjoy life, even the parts that – to an outsider – don’t look so enjoyable. So far, Kamala Harris is very brat. So is Tim Walz. I hope that continues.

Right now, everything seems like it’s on the right course. There will be big hiccups, of course, there always are. When there are hiccups, any quality of being brat that I otherwise have, I lose. (I guess that means I am not brat at all.) But I hope that Harris and Walz don’t. But you never know. Things can happen. We almost lost one candidate to an assassin’s bullet; it could happen again, but worse. Illness can strike when you least expect it. The international situation is so fraught that we could find ourselves involved in who knows what, just at the wrong time. Natural disaster can strike to throw everyone off balance.

American presidential campaigns have been lucky over the past 200+ years that catastrophes have not struck us during presidential elections. But that was then and this is now, and like good Boy Scouts (sorry, and like good Scouts), we must be prepared.

And yes, I am sure Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are not perfect. They will have a lot thrown at them. She will have a lot of her earlier actions and positions (many of which have changed) to explain. What does she really think of fracking in Pennsylvania, what will her policy be? Does she really agree with Trump that there should be no taxes in tips (something that seemed out of the questions until – when – the day before yesterday?). And so forth. And she will have to be able to respond successfully, although I do think that criticisms that come from Trump have less weight than they used to, and more weight than they should.

And Trump. Is he weird? Maybe not more than the rest of us. But is he crazy, is he nuts, is he deranged, is he too old? Those are the questions that the Harris campaign must answer. Because once you answer these questions the right way, you just can’t go back. Not only “we won’t go back”, but “they can’t go back”.

Before we leave yesterday’s neighborhood and walk over the DC line into Maryland, a few more points of interest.  We have three places of business with intriguing names:

Any thoughts?

We also have one more church, which appears to be a branch of a church headquartered in Nigeria, in Lagos.

Its website says: “Absolute holiness within and without as the greatest spiritual insecticide and a pre-requisite for heaven is taught openly.”

Yes, union activity.

Teamsters Local 730 represents, among its several thousand works, the employees of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission. Local 22 of the Stage Employees Union has almost 500 members.

I had no idea that the oldest (and smallest??) Catholic church in the area was here. This building is almost 100 years old. Previous buildings were burned down in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Civil War, it appears.

Finally, the Veterans Administration has a presence here.

Now we head towards Maryland. A few residential blocks like we have seen before, followed by a last gasp or empty lots and closed buildings.

And now, across Eastern Avenue,  the DC boundary street.

As the crowded commercial area near the Metro, clearly in transition, is left behind, we enter a few blocks where the development is less intense. I think this is ahistorical and is the result of buildings having been torn down, although, with one exception, I can’t really prove that. But we do see a few vacant lots, which I am sure weren’t always empty.

We walk past one of the city’s largest apartment developments, formerly called Brookland Manor, but now with signs that say RIA (I bet you can figure that one out).

Here is one building, but there are many, with something like 1700 separate apartments. Built in the 1940s for working class families, the property was acquired by a former client in the 1970s, and rehabilitated as Section 8 subsidized housing. It provided an important city resource as it contains, if memory serves, many three and even four bedroom units, of obvious importance for large families and rare in government assisted housing. But it was always controversial, was viewed as harboring too many children and too much crime. It was, in part, because of its age and size difficult to manage and maintain and I think my clients, serious people, did as well as possible.

Then my client decided it needed a full scale rebuilding that became very contentious. I am not sure where things stand today. It looks the same (still looks well maintained), the name has changed, but I am not sure what the plans are today. Probably still in flux. On the lot on Rhode Island next to this property was a small, old strip shopping center that was part of the problem. It was purchased by my client and has been leveled. That is one of the empty lots. Keep your eye on that space.

As we continue,  we see more transition in action. New rental or condo buildings are interspersed among older buildings and some commercial properties along with the vacant lots and vacant stores. This, for example, was a Wallgreens.

But never fear. The McDonalds, the 7-11, the laundromat right across the street – they are still there.

We walk on. And then again the neighborhood changes and we now enter several blocks of active commercial activity that looks like what you might see in older cities across the country. Yes there are still some vacancies, but most buildings are well occupied.

There are several small restaurants, including a Jamaican restaurant (which I just heard has closed), pizza, and a restaurant that also serves as a culinary school. There is also a Chinese carryout.

There is a wonderful coffee house, where you can watch the friendly, busy staff, pack the beans, grind them, roast them and make your drink.

There are no big churches here, but some smaller ones. And not everyone here seems to be religious in a conventional sense, or to know how to spell.

And oh yes, there is a beauty school, where you can learn to do this.

Finally, we don’t want to forget where we are. And on the side of the now closed Public Option pub, we remember.

We might see a bit more of this neighborhood next time. Then, we will walk a few exclusively residential blocks, after which we will tiptoe into the State of Maryland, and everything changes once again.

Remember when last week, I mentioned a book I bought. Reminisces and Comments by Adolf Kraus, Czech-Jewish immigrant, Chicago lawyer, Board of Education member and B’nai Brith president. It was published in 1925 and discusses each aspect of his fascinating life, including his early life in the town of Blowitz (now Blovice), his first struggling years in the U.S. and his early days practicing law.

Among other things, Kraus got involved in Chicago politics, especially through his relationship with Carter Harrison, who was mayor of Chicago during the late 19th century. To show you where ex-President Trump may have received his ideas, let me quote from page 59 of the book, referencing the year 1981:

“In one of the precincts of the eleventh ward, the ward in which Harrison lived, the judges sat behind closed doors, with challengers and watchers on the outside. A small hole was cut in the door about six feet above the floor, through which the voter was required to reach up and deposit the ballot. What was done with the ballot on the inside nobody on the outside could tell, but in this precinct the Cregier [Harrison’s opponent] delegates were certified to by an overwhelming majority…….

“In the precinct on West Monroe Street, in the block east of Ogden Avenue, the votes were cast in the ratio of approximately two votes for Harrison to one for Cregier. Notwithstanding this, two of the judges signed a certificate showing the election of the Creiger delegates, and handed it to the third judge for signature. Now it turned out that the ward boss had made a mistake in the selection of the third judge, who was an ex-prize-fighter, and favored Harrison. He said to the other two, “I will not sign this, but you either sign a correct return or fight , and I am ready to whip both of you.” They reluctantly signed a correct return…..”

“As town of Lake was democratic, it appeared that Harrison would surely be elected, since he always carried the town of Lake by a large majority, but until after midnight, not a single return came in from the town of Lake. It was learned afterwards that the returns from the town of Lake had been held back in order to ascertain how many votes Cregier might need to be elected. It seems that the person in the City Hall whose business it was to tabulate the returns and determine the number of votes needed by Cregier made a mistake of two thousands in the addition, the result being that more votes were actually needed for Cregier than he reported as necessary. The returns, when they were finally received, showed a remarkable increase in the normal vote of that territory. Precincts which had ever before polled more than three hundred votes, came in with more than five hundred votes, nearly all of which were for Cregier.”

A couple more things from the book:

For a while, Kraus was Chicago Corporation Counsel (in effect, the attorney general of the city), when Harrison was mayor. He received several messages from a man he did not know. The messages were, generally speaking, demands that he, the writer of the messages, be allowed to take Kraus’ place as Corporation Counsel, and that if Kraus refused, he would kill him. Kraus called him in for a meeting, and told him that he agreed with him, that they could switch places that day. Clearly, this is not the message that his visitor expected to hear, and he excused himself to think it over. Kraus told the police to follow and arrest him, but they lost him. The message writer, that evening, went to the house of Mayor Harrison and assassinated him. He then turned himself in to the police.

Rather shocking, no?

Kraus met President Grover Cleveland twice. First in Chicago at the time of the 1893 Pan-American Exposition, and several years later at the White House. When they met in Chicago, Cleveland said to Kraus “I know we met before.” Kraus says he didn’t want to argue with the President of the United States and commended his memory, although they had never met. Later, in Washington, the President told an aide that he wanted to speak with Kraus and they arranged a White House meeting. It turned out that the President wanted an update on various political goings on in Chicago, which Kraus reported to him on, feeling good that he made a good impression on Cleveland and that Cleveland respected his opinions. But then the President said something like “Mr. Kraus, I really appreciate your coming to see me today. It is really surprising, isn’t it, that we have never met before?” Again, Kraus responded simply that it was because they lived in different cities and that they were both so busy.

Finally, for 20 years, Kraus was the President of B’nai Brith, the largest Jewish social service organization in the country. The last part of the book talks about what was going on with the Jews of the world during the first quarter of the twentieth century. Pogrom and riot, riot and pogrom. By looking at the correspondence to and from Kraus as B’nai Brith president, and reading excerpts from newspaper articles of the day, you see how much anti-Jewish activity was occurring. In Russia, and in other parts of eastern Europe, especially. Hitler clearly didn’t arise from nowhere. He had very fertile ground to plow.

What an interesting book.

Our last walk up Rhode Island Avenue ended at its intersection with North Capitol Street, where we crossed from the northwest to the northeast quadrant of the city. Now, we move on.

The topography changes and the walk becomes a bit hilly. Unfortunately,  it’s not all downhill from here.

The first few blocks are like the last few, as we get close to the turnoff for my daughter Hannah’s house. We see row houses, apartment and condo buildings, and a few churches. When we get to 4th Street, everything changes.

We then find ourselves on a complex part of our walk that takes us to a neighborhood that has old and new residential development, old and new commercial development, a few more churches, two shopping centers just off the road, and a Metro station to boot. It has everything but a personality.

Old and new residential buildings;

Churches:

A Metro station with surrounding development:

Shopping centers with a Home Depot and an Alamo Draft House and Cinema:

A few other points of interest include

A carryout restaurant with an interesting menu:

A brand new cannabis store and a place to check in if you are out on parole:

In addition,  there is an overhead passage for the Metro and another for foot traffic, steps if you are inclined to take them, and seven very mysterious silos:

Next, we will head further to the northeast. Twelve more blocks or so, and we will be in Maryland.

Yesterday, we went to the Glenstone Museum in Potomac. For those of you unfamiliar with it, let me describe it for you. Two brothers, the sons of a real estate entrepreneur, go into business for themselves and begin buying up companies and properties, and before you can blink your eyes, they are multi-billionaires. One is now in his early 70s and one in his late 60s. The younger brother, Mitchell Rales, owns a swath of property in suburban Potomac, Maryland, and builds a fancy house there. He collects art, and gets involved with a number of Washington DC museums. Even today, he is the president of the National Gallery of Art, the largest art museum owned by the U.S. government.

Rales has been himself a major collector of contemporary art for some decades. What to do with it? Oh, I should have said that the swath of property he owns, which is in one of the most high end areas of one of DC’s wealthiest suburban areas, is about 300 acres in size. What a perfect place for a museum.

So, ten or fifteen years ago, Rales establishes Glenstone, hires some well known contemporary architects, and builds two museums (one considerably larger than the other), and two separate restaurant buildings (one more casual than the other), installs part of his art collection in the museums, and invites the public to come and view the art and the setting (around which he has placed a considerable amount of contemporary sculpture) for free (the food isn’t free).

Yes, there are some rules. And they are, as Tim Walz might say, weird. No children under twelve is one of them. Another is that there can be no photography inside the galleries, only outside.

And right now, there is a problem for visitors, in that the main gallery, the Pavilions he calls it, is closed for renovations, to be opened sometime after the start of 2025. But there is more than enough to see now, both on the grounds and in the smaller gallery. But you have to go because, as you now know, pictures are verboten. Let me just say that virtually every work of art in the, say, six or seven gallery building is a work of art. Works by artists you know (or should), and primary works, not secondary.

The art work is all from the period following World War II. The full collection now is comprised of approximately 1300 pieces. Glenstone is the largest privately owned art museum in the United States.

You enter at the “Arrival Center”, and from there, it is about a half mile walk, past the Pavilions, through the meadows, to the Gallery and cafe. There is cart service available. There are several trails which blend the natural beauty with the sculptures placed here and there.

The number of visitors each day is limited to about 600, and you generally need advance reservations on line (a very easy process) and, with the main exhibit space closed, it might be easier to get immediate access now. And, oh, yes, it was over 90 degrees yesterday. That is actually too hot to do much wandering. You probably want to pick a cooler day.

The net work of Mitch Rales and his wife is in excess of $5 billion dollars. I don’t know if that includes the value of the museum, museum site and art collection. Since it is privately owned, I assume that it does. But maybe not, as Glenstone is actually owned by a foundation created by Rales. It is said that the value of the assets of the foundation itself is $4.3 billion dollars. That is a lot of money, no? In fact, it puts the worth of Glenstone on a par with the worth of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Try to process that for a minute.

Two more points. First, the entire area is landscaped organically, with native plants only. Secondly, the Rales family have planted about 13,000 new trees since acquiring the property. And nature is as much a target as the art.

And even one more point. The guides in the gallery (and there are many of them) are terrific. They are all (I think) art or art history students or graduates, they are there to talk to guests as well as to protect the art work, and they know everything. Don’t be afraid to ask them a dumb question. Their answer will be very smart.

After Glenstone, we went to Nats Park to see the Nationals play the Los Angeles Angels. The Nats won 5-4 in 10 innings. What was most interesting about the game was the Nats’ third baseman, a young fellow named Jose Tena. Jose Tena came to the Nats fewer than two weeks ago from the Cleveland Guardians at the trading deadline (July 31) in a trade that sent Lane Thomas to Cleveland. Tena is an infielder who had done very well in the minors and was considered to be a sold future big leaguer. He was assigned to the Nats’ Rochester NY AAA team, but called up yesterday (the Nats sent another young infielder back down to Rochester).

It was, I think, an unexpected call up, and Tena arrived in Washington a little before 4 p.m. for a 6:45 game. That meant, although he was the starting third basemen, that he hadn’t even had a chance to meet or say hello to many of his new teammates. He had two hits, and drove in two runs. One of his hits was a walk off hit in the 10th, when the Nats’ fifth and winning run scored. It was a good debut. He probably won’t do that every game.

Many were unhappy when Thomas, who had played in the outfield for a number of years, and was a good steady ball player, was traded. For three years in a row, the Nats have traded some of their better players (especially those in their late 20s or early 30s) away at the trade deadline to get younger prospects. The Nats, and their farm teams, are now filled with young prospects. But I would hope that these prospects can do something for the team before they, too, are in their late 20s and early 30s and just get traded away at the trading deadline. Just saying.

You may have seen this on Facebook. I remarked that, gender aside, this looked like me and my conscience at a book store. And my conscience seldom wins.

(1) For example, a few days ago, I had to run a simple errand in Rockville. It would have been easy enough to finish my errand, turn my car around, and drive home. But, no. I said to myself “I should stop at the Second Story warehouse. They may have something I need.” Of course, they always have things that I want. After all, they have an enormous number of books. They say that have more than 500,000. I myself have never counted them. But it sure makes it easy to visit again and again and never look at the same group of books twice.

I stopped by after my errand, deciding I would only spend a few minutes looking around. I went to the “vintage books” section, a section I really never look at. It is fairly large, and contains books of all kinds, all mixed together. I, of course, was looking either for something that I thought really unique, and/or which included a signature or inscription by the author. On the third shelf I looked at, I picked up a book titled “Reminisces and Comments“, by a man named Adolf Kraus, which he inscribed to his friend Lewis Fabrikant. The book, in quite good condition, was published in 1925.

It was the subtitle of the book that intrigued me: “The Immigrant, The Citizen, A Public Office, The Jew”. Who was Adolf Kraus?

I don’t know everything about him, to be sure. I saw that he came from Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) when he was 15 and penniless in 1865. He eventually wound up in Chicago, where he became a lawyer (by reading law in a lawyer’s office, not by going to a law school), founded a law partnership with a friend, Levy Mayer (now the firm is known as Mayer Brown – not sure what happened to Kraus’ name), became involved in Chicago politics, became chair of the Chicago Board of Education, because Chicago head of B’nai Brith and involved with the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (the governing body for American Reform Judaism) and was a friend of presidents.

I picked up the book last night and started reading it, getting through the first 50 or so pages. It turns out to be very readable and it is certainly interesting to see how a young immigrant from what he terms Bohemia, after several false starts, decided to “read law” and make his way in Chicago. He came to Chicago in 1871, right after the great fire destroyed much of the city, deciding that this should be a place where a future could be secured. He was obviously fluent in Czech (again, he calls it Bohemian), and says that Chicago had about 30,000 Bohemian immigrants at the time, but no Bohemian speaking lawyers. This provided a spark for what obviously became an impressive career. I think I will read some more.

By the way, as I always do, I looked on the Abebooks website to see if other copies of the book are available for sale. There were three, one of which was also inscribed by the author. The two unsigned copies are each for sale for $100 at a well established bookstore that specializes in rare Jewish books. The signed copy is for sale for $230. I paid $10.

(2) Read these statistics involving Ferguson, MO, the St. Louis suburb where Michael Brown was shot and where the reaction created major headlines in 2014, and think about how racism still stalks aspects of American life, particularly housing and school integration. The statistics reflect the percentage of Ferguson residents (the total population is about 20,000, just as it was over 60 years ago) who are Black:

1970 – 1%

1990 – 25%

2000 – 53%

2020 – 70%

Enough said on that.

(3) The New York Times this morning reports that the United States’ national debt is about $35 trillion (that is $35,000,000,000,000), and that eight years ago, it was “only” $20 trillion. In the Trump and Biden years, the debt has risen about $15 trillion dollars, half under Trump and half under Biden. These are big, big numbers. The Times also reports that Trump’s tax cutting plans (even if you include any projected revenue increases) would add about an additional $4 trillion, while Harris, who has yet to state any specifics, is suggesting that the Biden budget proposal would be close to hers. It projects a debt reduction of about $3 trillion over a ten year period.

Just saying…..

Last night, we turned on a film on Netflix that is not at all like the type of film we usually watch. The film was The Woman King, released in 2022, starring Viola Davis and Thuso Mbedu. It got 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, and IMDB gave it 6.9 out of 10.

The story is fiction; the setting is historical. One character (I think only one) is based on an historic figure, King Ghezo of Dahomey.

In the film, Davis plays Nanisca, the leader of an all-female military force (the “Agojie”), who, after a victory over a neighborhood dominating tribe, is selected by King Ghezo to serve along with him as a female king. She had defeated the leader of the Oyo, a neighboring and dominating tribe. Within the mix is the relationship of the Dahomey, the Oyo, and other tribes, to the enslavement of fellow Africans.

The story is sort of silly – with a young Thuso Mbedu (Nawi), joining the Agojie at age 19 and becoming a top recruit, learning she was the abandoned daughter of Nanisca, falling in love with a half-African, half-Brazilian man who accompanied a slave trader to visit his mother’s homeland, and deciding – after the battles were won – that she was an Agojie, and would forgo leaving Africa with the man she loved. Throughout were Agojie’s participation in battles, showing great courage, a more luck than a real person could possible ever have.

But what the film did was get me into looking at the history of Dahomey (basically now the nation of Benin, although it was still Dahomey when I was young and actively collecting stamps) in the 19th century. And, what little I looked at, is pretty interesting.

The Oyo tribe dominated the region from what is now Nigeria I think, collecting tribute from neighboring tribes, including the Dahomey. Both tribes were also active participants in the slave trade, collecting people (often after military victories) to sell to traders, who landed at their port of Ouidah. In the film, the traders were Portuguese speaking Brazilians. In fact, they may have been the most common traders in Ouidah, as the buyers of more slaves than any other New World groups.

At the same time, the smaller Dahomey tribe was known for a number of things, including their use of female warriors, the Agojie. And King Ghezo was a real monarch, ruling for about 40 years during the earlier years of the 19th century.

Agojie fought for centuries for Dahomey, but their numbers were increased by King Ghezo from about 600 to about 6000. As in the film, the Agojie fought to end the dominance of the Oyo in the 1820s. The film also has a subplot where Nanisca convinces the king to stop participating in the slave trade, and instead concentrate on the production and export of palm oil. This didn’t really happen. There apparently was an attempt to export palm oil at this time, but it was not very successful, and participation in the slave trade did not end until the 1850s. In fact, according to Wikipedia, more than 1 million enslaved people were sold in and transported from Ouidah.

It apparently also true that, during the time the Agojie were active, there were Women Kings in Dahomey. They were selected by the Male King (they were not his sexual partners or queens) and shared power with him (with the King having ultimate say, when they disagreed).

During the 19th century, Dahomey and most of Africa was still free of European political dominance. France took over Dahomey as a colony in 1894, and all this changed (well after the events as portrayed in the film). It was at this time, I have read, that the last Agojie were disarmed and dismissed.

The film itself gets an A for energy, a C for plot, and a B for general interest. It is leaving Netflix in 3 days. If you happen to miss it…..that is okay.

I know little about Artificial Intelligence. I have never used ChatGPT, and have no plans to, although if I did, maybe my blog posts would be more interesting and better written. But many that I know have been using ChatGPT, or other similar programs, for research or for first drafts of documents they continue to massage, either my their own editing, or by refining their AI questions (which I understand to be an art in and of itself).

But there is one way I would use AI. I don’t think it is able yet to do what I need it to do. If I am incorrect, please let me know.

I want AI to take my dreams and turn them into real images that can be streamed or printed out and shared. If AI could do this, I’d be sold.

You see, my most interesting dreams are often architectural dreams, or (and this is closely related) cityscape dreams, and I would like to have them recorded.

Take last night. We (I am not sure who the “we” in “we” is) were driving from place to place last night. I don’t know exactly where we were. It was in this country and I now think we were in the South, maybe Mississippi, but I don’t know if this is what I thought (or knew) during the dream. We decided to take an “old” road, one that would have been used in the past, rather than a modern paved road.

The land was very flat and mainly forested (the kind of forest that’s a jumble, not one you can see through). The road itself was not paved (I remarked on that), but was something more improved than I dirt road (although I remarked on how it must have been in years past to drive down this road when it was only a dirt road, especially after a rain, or something). I don’t think the road was graveled either. I can’t tell you exactly how it was constructed, but an AI representation could, I am sure Because at the time, I knew exactly.

Because the land was so flat, you could see far down the road. And the road was as straight as it could be. You could see miles. We passed at least one perpendicular cross road. Perfectly perpendicular to the road we were on. Equally straight, equally flat.

We passed on house on our right. It was an old house, hard to tell if it was one or two stories. It had eaves and things, so probably a story and a half or something like that. Made of a yellowish, or yellowed, cut stone blocks. Not particularly attractive. Was it occupied? Couldn’t tell.

Then, all of a sudden, and to our surprise, we were pulling into what looked like an old town. We weren’t on the main commercial street of the town, but were driving parallel to it, just a block off. So, looking out of the car on the driver’s side (I was the driver), you could see the back of what we knew were adjoining buildings containing stores at street level and probably apartments above. The buildings seemed to be for the most part two or three stories. There were back doors, steps in back leading to the upper floors, full size balconies, etc.

What was unique about these buildings is that they were not only very old (that was apparent), but they were all constructed on what appeared to be unpainted wood, and they seemed in disrepair.

We drove to a cross street, turned left, and then turned left again to see the front of these buildings. There were probably three or four long blocks of them. They were falling apart. Completely abandoned. None of them seem to be occupied; the stores were clearly empty. Yet, there were a few cars parked on the street in front of the stores. The cars were old (not Model Ts, but old), and I would like AI to be able to capture these cars as well, just to see what kind of an engineering designer I was, in addition to an architectural designer.

It was eerie driving down this street. We wondered where we were, what this town was, how long it had been like this, whose cars were these. We went back to the cross street we had used before, but rather than continue our journey (or maybe we couldn’t have continued, because our road ended at a T, now that I’m thinking about it)), we stayed on the cross street. To the left, again the driver’s side, there was, on a very large lot, a large building, also made of wood, very, very ornate, also in a state of disintegration. We didn’t know what this building was. We thought maybe it had been an old resort hotel. It was too big for a house. It had been beautiful.

We continued. Now we came to a more active scene. More old buildings on our left. These might have been brick or stone. They were in the process of being demolished. There was a lot of demolition equipment there, but we didn’t see any people. But I think some of the equipment was moving about, tearing down buildings. Maybe an old factory or something.

The road we were on then seemed to come to its end. At the end of the road were two stone columns. Fancy ones. There should have been a gate between them, but there wasn’t. It was like you were entering private grounds, and we kept going. There were some yellow brick buildings up ahead of us. Again we saw no people, but we decided this was a boarding school for high school students (probably). Our assumption was that the school was functioning, although we weren’t positive. But we were almost positive. How, we thought, could parents send their children to such an isolated place? How could the school even function here?

That was it for the dream, as far as I can remember. But going to strange towns, seeing unusual buildings…..I do that all the time when I am asleep. Why can’t the images be preserved? (Of course, if I had any artistic talent, I could perhaps put them on paper myself.)

One more thing. Music. I don’t compose as often as I design in my dreams. But sometimes I do. And I write very good music. Classical. Jazz. A combination of the two. Very detailed – notes and rhythm both. I’d like AI to be able to preserve these as well.

If anyone has any ideas for me…..let me know.

We start today at Rhode Island Avenue and 3rd Street NW. And we will end at North Capitol Street, where NW becomes NE. On these three blocks, we will see houses, churches, and restaurants, and end with a surprise. Or at least I wI’mas surprised.

We are leaving out one thing at the beginning. We omit the headquarters of the United Planning Organization, at the corner of 3rd and Rhode Island. We omit it because we can’t see it. There’s a small berm, followed by a fence, and then a parking lot. So you can’t see the large UPO building (large for Rhode Island Avenue, smaller than, say, the Pentagon). UPO is a social service agency created in 1962 as part of the Johnson War on Poverty and going strong ever since.

We then come to brick row houses from the early 20th century, many of them recently renovated. You can buy them from about $750,000 to well over $1,000,000.

We also come to our first church, Mt. Pleasant Baptist.

Mt. Pleasant Baptist is primarily a Black Baptist church (I say this from looking at website pictures), which has been here for 75 years, having bought the property in 1950 from a white congregation that moved away. It looks to be thriving.

On the next corner, you see the Mt. Bethel Baptist Church. This is an impressive building, about 120 years old, with extensive stained glass windows. Sadly, it is abandoned, as the church sold the property for almost $6 million to a developer, and moved to a different location. I don’t know who bought it or what their plans are.

The church itself has moved onto 9th Street, not too far away, into a modern, large facility.

When you get close to 1st Street,  you pass three restaurants which share one building. Boundary Stone is a typical pub, El Camino is a typical Mexican restaurant, but Sylvan Cafe is more interesting. It’s an Ethiopian/bagel shop. As you can see, they serve New Jersey bagels (sometimes spelled “bagles”, like they might do in Gondar) and great coffee, and Ethiopian food.

The interesting thing about these restaurants is that they share the former Sylvan Theater. The Sylvan was the first theater in DC built for movies, opened in 1913. It closed in 1965 and the building has been used in various ways afterward,  including serving as the home of the Back Alley Theater, the city’s first live Black theater.

We are now in a neighborhood known as Bloomingdale,  which is filled with rowhouses and restaurants. If you turn the corner onto 1st, you find more restaurants, including the popular Red Hen and the equally popular Big Bear Cafe. As well as a yoga studio and a real estate office, where you learn that this neighborhood might be old, but isn’t cheap.

There are two more restaurants on  the other side of Rhode Island. One is Turkish and the other Vietnamese. So, you see, quite an ethnic mix. And let’s not forget Show Time, known as a dive bar with music every night until 2 or 3 a.m.

We cross 1st Street.  Only one block until North Capitol. A primarily residential block, where about a third of the town houses seem to be under renovation. One house has a for sale sign. It’s part of a group of 11 houses with identical doors. We also see an iconic bicycle art display. The bikes stay constant. Their decorations are seasonal.

Finally, North Capitol Street. Here is the photo I took looking south from the bridge that carries Rhode Island over North Capitol.

Then, I decided to test my phone’s zoom lens. I took the same picture from a few feet back.

See you next time from Northeast DC.

Months ago, I said that Joe Biden was not going to be the Democratic candidate in 2024 and people told me that I was wrong. I wasn’t. When I made that prediction, it was not that I felt that Biden was not able to fulfill his responsibilities as president, but it was clear that he was getting older, and the idea that he would be a safe candidate for four more years seemed misplaced.

I didn’t know how his withdrawal would come about. I certainly didn’t forecast the disastrous debate with DJT. I also didn’t assume that Kamala Harris would be his successor. At the time, I thought that there would be a internal Democratic debate to come up with a candidate and my favorite would have been Cory Booker, but (among other things) Booker didn’t seem too interested in the job.

After the debate, when it looked like one way or another Biden would have to drop out, I was pleased to see everyone rally around Harris, because it was clearly too late, and politically dangerous, for an internal debate within the party, which would have clearly involved everyone’s weaknesses being put out into public for the Republicans to use in the campaign.

The next question of course was who was Harris going to select for her running mate. Again, like yesterday, maybe she has selected someone by the time you read this, but I will pretend that she hasn’t. The field narrowed to eight candidates. All seem qualified. So the question is which candidate would help her the most. And helping her the most means helping her win the purple swing states. Two candidates are from open states (Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Kelly of Arizona), and they seem to be the ones being talked of as having the inner lanes. And Shapiro particularly has his detractors, from his co-Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman to those who don’t trust him on Gaza to Jewish voters who are afraid of a Jewish candidate and so forth. Kelly is obviously a man of many talents, but of little executive experience.

When all of this discussion started, I suggested that Andy Bashear of Kentucky would be a good candidate – a two term blue governor of a red (if blue grass) state, I thought he had the administrative experience, sufficient charisma, and – at least as far as I know – no real enemies. He was the candidate who would offend no one, and who – although he came from a red state – could attract Republican or at least independent voters in all of those important midwest states that are up in the air, and maybe southern states as well. He is one of her six choices, and although the media has not been focusing on him, he is consistently ranked well by the gambling sites. So we shall see. Or, perhaps, we have seen.

But another question arises. Will Biden resign his presidency? Should he? For those of you who see me on Facebook, as well as on this blog, you might know that I have been in an active discussion with one (actually more than one) of my west coast cousins, who leans (shall we say) to the right. His position is that Biden is today unfit for office and either should resign or should be subjected to action under the 25th amendment to the Constitution. I have maintained that nothing has occurred yet to lead me to conclude that Biden isn’t fit for office, even if his ability to communicate has been compromised. That we don’t know that he has been diminished in any other way. But…..

Sunday night, CNN had an hour long program on Biden’s capacity, filled with examples of problems in his speaking, as well as in his movement, and filled with interviews of his allies in the Democratic party talking about what they have noticed recently. This, I will say, has me rethinking my position.

But there are problems with this, as well. For one thing, as vice president, it is easy for her to be given no, or few, assignments over the next three months, so that she can be a full time campaigner. If she were all of a sudden a p7thresident (our first female president to be sure), that would really cut down on her campaign time, and that might well offset any advantage she would have as an incumbent.

If Biden left the presidency before the January inauguration of the next President, there is another issue to dwell upon. We would have no Vice President, and that means that if anything happened to Kamala Harris before she (or DJT) is inaugurated, our president would be Speaker Mike Johnson. That is something we really don’t want to see happen.

Yes, the 25th Amendment does provide a mechanism to select a new Vice President, but it requires approval of both Houses of Congress. Can you imagine the Republican led house approving someone to fulfill this role two or three months before an election?

On balance, let’s just sit tight. The time is short.