Art is 80

This is an posting about journalism. I wrote it after a book talk last night at Politics and Prose with Steven Brill, lawyer and journalist, podcast host, TV network owner, website creator, Yale Law instructor and author. His new book is The Death of Truth, the story of how the internet and social media have given “snake oil salesmen and demagogues the weapons they needed to destroy trust and polarize the world”.

One of Brill’s many activities is running the website Newsguard.com, which reviews and rates the truthfulness of websites (real and fake), newspapers and other written publications. He has statistics to show that there are now more fake news websites portraying themselves as local newspapers than there are real local newspaper sites, that the Russians have opened at least 167 fake news sites over the past few months, and that more people get medical advice from websites than from their medical professionals and the medical websites get their information more from people with opinions that from true medical sources.

He talked a lot about how real news sites spread false news from fake sites, how algorithms are able to adjust content person by person and how advertising follows these algorithms without human intervention. He also spent time talking about the major news publications – the New York Times, the Washington Post and so forth. While Newsguard rates them both highly, Brill did throw some criticism their way, particularly to the way they combine fact with opinion, without disclosing what is which. I have noticed that myself as I read through the print Times and Post most days.

But there is something else that I have noticed that was not part of his presentation and not brought up during the Q and A period. I remember in the good old days that journalists were taught to write their articles so that a reader did not have to read all the way through them to get the main points. They would state the main points in the opening three or four paragraphs, and use the rest of the article to fill in background and details and sources for those who wanted more information.

Now, it seems to me that all of this has been turned around. Now,  while you might get the gist of an article from the headline, you can no longer get away with reading only the first part of the article. The first part often contains fluff, perhaps interesting fluff but fluff nonetheless, and you need to read deep into the article to find out what it is trying to tell you. If it’s a front page article, you often need to turn to the continuation page to make sense of what the article is saying.

Now, why has journalistic style been upended, and why has opinion and fact been mixed together? I think the main reason for each is pretty clear, and the reasons are different.

I blame the topsy-turvy journalistic writing on the internet, pure and simple. Obviously, all newspapers are also online and, I think for all, the online readership is larger than the print readership. And no media outlet can afford to, or wants to, have two different articles on the same subject, one for print and one for the screen. So the needs of the screen prevail, and the needs of the screen are to force the reader to read as much of the article as possible. Thus, the most important points of the article and its conclusions are saved to the end. Otherwise, the reader would not read a sufficient amount of an article to allow him to see all the ads. And it is the ads that keep the websites in business.

As to mixing fact and opinion, that I blame on Trump and his coterie of lackeys. If Trumpers are going to say, three years after the election, that he was the real winner in, say, Pennsylvania, in 2020, a newspaper can’t ignore it (it is news, after all) and can’t simply report that as a possible fact. They have to point out that such statements are false, disingenuous and dangerous. Well, sure, that’s an opinion. But since we are dealing with people in important positions who you would normally assume are at least trying to tell the truth, but who in fact have no regard for truth, newspapers that don’t call them out throughout the paper, not only in editorial columns, would be complicit in the deception. And, as the journalists get used to throwing their “opinions” in these stories as a matter of necessity, they begin to develop the habit elsewhere, and opinions sneak into other stories as well.

It was a fascinating discussion. There was also a discussion about headlines.

And my headline? Well, like all media, I wanted it to say something that would lure you in. What nudes am I talking about, do I really mean ALL of them, were they physically fit or emotionally fit, and why and where did they sprint? It’s simply a play on the New York Times motto “All the news that’s fit to print”, and has no relevance to my post.

I remember the coup in Vietnam in the early 1970s, when Madame Nhu and her brother (as well as President Diem) were booted from office and someone reported that “All the Nhus were fit to sprint”. I like my version better. (And if you have ever visited a brothel in a city where the authorities are serious about closing them down (places where I have never visited, of course), you would probably find that there is quite a bit of truth contained in this headline. It’s a matter of self-preservation.

I generally have two rules when I write a post for this blog. I don’t say anything about anyone that could be traced to that person. I will refer to “a friend”, but not to the friend by name. Secondly, I try not to criticize for the purpose of criticizing – what’s the point? If I can change the world with my criticism (i.e., if I can convince someone to vote against Donald Trump and for someone who can defeat him), I will do it. But if I don’t like a play, why should I bother to criticize it? Especially if it is at the end of a run, and no one who reads this blog will likely ever see it?

But there are exceptions to everything and last night I wrote a very critical post (sitting in “drafts”) about the production of Lauren Yee’s The Hatmaker’s Wife that is ending its run at Theater J. And just because I did not find it a good play, and thought it even a worse production, who cares? Particularly since others must have liked it, and the actors got a 50%+ standing ovation at the end of the show.

My memory often fails me when thinking of things I have seen in the past (often I don’t remember seeing them at all), but my memory of Tom Stoppard’s brilliant play Arcadia involved a house where the current residents and prior residents interacted in mystical ways that looked real, but maybe weren’t. Maybe we were in a realm of dreams or mysticism. I don’t remember details, but I remember being overwhelmed by the play, which I think I saw at the Folger Theatre. Maybe 20 years ago.

Perhaps Arcadia was an inspiration for Yee, who has a young unmarried couple move into a house where the walls not only have ears but talk and write, and throw individual sheets of paper over themselves, so that the young woman can read the story of the prior residents of the house, and find herself enmeshed in it in a very personal way. And while the wall is writing this story and the young woman (not named in the play, and cited only as “Voice”) is reading aloud what is on the papers, the prior residents are also in the house, acting out what the Wall is telling the Voice about the past.

The young woman is, in the Theater J casting, an Asian-American (more American than Asian) , as is the eponymous [second day in a row using that word] “hatmaker’s wife” (who is more Asian than American), who lives with her husband, who is not Asian-American at all, but looks and talks like he just came out of a shtetl in deepest Romania, as does his neighbor and friend who plays a major role in the play. An unlikely duo for older people now dead – how many European born, ethnically identifiable, Jewish hat makers back in the day married Chinese Americans who looked like they just arrived in the country.

And then it turns out that this very Americanized young woman (probably in her 20s) is the daughter of this mixed couple (she resembles her mother only) who look like, if they were still alive today, would be in the 90s or so. And, as you watched the story, it looked like her father didn’t want a baby and simply lost her at home one day, when her mother went to the bathroom or something. How did he lose her? He didn’t love her enough, so she disappeared up into the sky (the ceiling of the room did not seem to stop her) and was never found again. Except she obviously landed somewhere, grew up not knowing about her parentage at all, and by chance moved into her parents’ house where the Wall could talk to her and write down this story to her, with pages magically flying to her over the wall, while we – the lucky audience – get to watch her parents story play out in real time?

Oh, and did I tell you about the golem? The monster who appears in the house and is at first scary, but then becomes the hat maker’s best friend (along with his neighbor to be sure) until the hat maker’s wife (who has left the hat maker and stolen his favorite hat to find another hat maker to make a replica of the hat but one that she could wear since her shtetl born husband refuses to make hats for women, who should never been seen in a hat). It turns out that the golem is not a friendly guy after all, because he has come as the harbinger of death for the hat maker’s wife, just hanging around until she returns. Who knew?

Have a told you enough? Let me end with this: there seemed to be no reason in the script for the hat maker to be European born Jewish, nor for his wife and Voice to be Asian or Asian-American. So what was Theater J trying to say? Damned if I know.

Okay, so this post is the exception to the rules which I outlined at the start. Some things just call out to be exceptions. And to my friend who doesn’t think I should detail plots of books, movies or plays……for you, too, this is an exception.

But, more broadly speaking, why do I tell you any of this? Because maybe I missed something? Maybe it’s obvious? Maybe this play will be a classic and the Theater J production will spoken of over the coming millennia? Only time (and the walls) will tell.

This is my 1940 vintage toy Sinclair truck. I also have a coresponding red Texaco truck. They are part of about a dozen vehicles that I have had for about 75 years. They were hand-me-downs from my older cousin Eddie Zerman, who probably never missed them. But I have dragged them with me since wherever I have lived.

We have had five house guests this past week, who range in age between 81 years and 14 months old. Our youngest guest has played with the cars, and our oldest guest and I began talking last night about the name Sinclair. (To be more accurate, I started talking about the name Sinclair and he humored me.)

I had learned years ago, when first reading Graham Hancock’s The Sign and the Seal, his fascinating book about the Ark of the Covenant and the Knights Templar, that Rosslyn Castle in Scotland, a building with many Templar inscriptions, belonged to members of the clan Sinclair, and that the clan’s founders had come from present day France and been named St. Claire. At least that’s my recollection.

[Digression #1: Everyone should read The Sign and the Seal]

Then I began thinking about whether or not the Sinclair of Sinclair Oil was related to the Scottish clan. After extensive (i.e., virtually no) research, once again I conclude I don’t know. I am sure you are surprised.

What’s more. I don’t care. But I became interested in Harry F. Sinclair, for whom the company is named, sometime last night and devoted a little time to learning more about him.

If you go http://www.sinclairoil.com, you can look at “How We Started”, and see a brief description of “The Legendary Harry F. Sinclair”, described as the founder of the company, a “brilliant, stubborn, ambitious risk taker”, who created the company in 1916 after merging several small petroleum companies and quickly built it into the 7th largest petroleum company in the country within about ten years. You learn he was the son of a druggist, who suffered a financial reverse when he was 21, losing the store along with everything else, but within 10 years was the richest man in the state of Kansas.

What a story!

[Digression #2] Remember Paul Harvey on the radio? A very professional story teller/journalist who would have a program discussing all of the great things someone like Harry Sinclair did and then remind you to stick with him during the commercial, because after the break, he was going to tell you “the rest of the story”.

OK, here goes. The rest of the story.

Yes, Harry Sinclair’s father was a pharmacist and Harry studied pharmacology at the University of Kansas, and took over the store, but the business failed. He became a lumber merchant, selling lumber to petroleum companies and began himself to speculate in buying and selling oil leases, became very successful, and indeed was a millionaire when he was 30.

With three friends, he bought and expanded a bank in Oklahoma and went on to found his eponymous [another word used in this blog the first time] oil company. He also found time to own a professional baseball team (the Indianapolis Hoosiers which became the Newark Peppers in the short lived Federal League) and a thoroughbred stable, which owned a Kentucky Derby champion, and three Belmont Stakes winners.

BUT, remember Teapot Dome? Or at least hearing about the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding administration, even if you don’t know what it was? Well, there was a large oil reserve in Wyoming, owned by the federal government as set aside as an emergency military reserve supply. That is, that’s what it was until Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall decided to lease the oil field to Harry Sinclair in 1921. Six years later, the Supreme Court voided the leases, saying that they had been issued corruptly.

Harry Sinclair and others were indicted for violating various criminal statutes. The judge declared a mistrial in his criminal trial, because it was discovered that Sinclair had hired a detective to follow each of the jurors. This led to new charges and a conviction. And jail time.

Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, while in the DC prison, the authorities allowed Sinclair to work as a pharmacist and to travel outside of the prison to provide medication to prisoners on work details, leading to continuing accusations that he was being given special treatment. Which he was.

When he got out of prison, his personal reputation was ruined for life, but he went back to the presidency of Sinclair Oil, a position he held until 1949. He passed away in 1956.

So let’s go back to the Sinclair Oil website. You remember when Trumpist Kellyanne Conway talked about “alternative facts”, right? With Sinclair, we clearly have “selective facts”. Where is Paul Harvey when we really need him?

The (excellent) presentation this week at my Thursday morning breakfast group was about Babi Yar, the ravine in Kiev which was the site of the massacre of at least 100,000 (mainly Jews) by the occupying Nazis in 1941. For a long time, there were no memorials placed at the site by the Soviet Union.

Yevgeni Yevtushenko, young Russian avant-garde poet (then in his late 20s), visited the site in 1961, twenty years after the massacre occurred, and was saddened by what he saw. He immediately wrote what remains his most famous poem, called simply “Babi Yar”. Here are excerpts:

“No monument stands over Babi Yar

A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.

I am afraid.

Today, I am as old as the entire Jewish race itself…..

“I see myself an ancient Israelite.

I wander o’er the roads of ancient Egypt

And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured

And even now, I bear the marks of pain………

“There is no Jewish blood that’s blood of mine.

But hated, with a passion that’s corrosive,

Am I by antisemites, like a Jew.

And that is why I call myself a Russian.”

(1996 translation by Benjamin Okopnik)

When the poem was published, it was very polarizing, as you might imagine, within the Soviet Union. Although I have never studied the reactions, the reasons seem pretty straightforward. The official Soviet policy was to deny the existence of antisemitism and, more than that, to disregard the entire concept of ethnic differences among the Soviet people. Of course, in real life, this policy was more absent than observed. Even when monuments were placed at Holocaust sites, the references were never to “Jews”, but to “Soviet citizens”.

Yevtushenko called out Soviet antisemitism, but did so carefully enough not to touch Soviet ideology. But his message was clear. In addition, as you can see, he referred to himself as a Russian, and not as a Soviet citizen. This too could have ruffled some feathers. This, by the way, was before the movement to permit Soviet Jews to leave the country picked up steam in the United States and elsewhere. While I don’t know this as a fact, I would assume that Yevtushenko’s poem was one of the things that influenced the creation of that (eventually successful) movement.

But while the poem was criticized heavily in official circles, it was highly praised in others. And one of Yevtushenko’s supporters was Dmitri Shostakovich, the composer, who decided to write a symphony (his 13th) based on Babi Yar and several other Yevtushenko poems, a symphony designed to be played with an accompanying narrative.

Shostakovich was perhaps the best known Soviet composer of his time, and once he wrote his 13th Symphony, it didn’t take Kirill Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic long to premiere the work. You can listen to the 1962 performance on YouTube, and I recommend you do so.

Both Yevtushenko and Shostakovich were able to escape the dangers of being judged an antisocial artist in the Soviet Union of their time. How they managed to do this (with some close calls, as I understand it), I don’t know. [This is where it is appropriate to say: “If he don’t know anything, how come he thinks he can write about this?”]

The poem and the symphony begat even more references to Babi Yar in the Soviet Union. Take for example, a book by Anatoly Kuznetsov, a Soviet writer who published in 1966 a book called: Babi Yar: a Document in the Form of a Novel. I haven’t read it, and probably should. Kuznetsov wrote the book, had it published in a shortened censored (or perhaps self-censored) version, and then was able to defect in 1969, bringing his original manuscript with him on microfilm).

[And this is where you might ask: Kuznetsov? Didn’t he used to play with the Washington Capitals? In fact, Kuznetsov is, according to Wikipedia, the third most common name in Russia. There are 85 Kuznetsovs with their own articles on Wikipedia. And – for your further edification – a “kuznets” is a blacksmith in Russian. So, Kuznetsov = Smith. Thank you.]

Antisemitism continued to be an ongoing problem in the Soviet Union, of course, and Shostakovich continued to be outspoken in his attacks on antisemitism. For example, from his memoirs:

“I often test a person by his attitude toward Jews. In our day and age, any person with pretensions of decency cannot be anti-Semitic….

“I never condoned an anti-Semitic tone, even then, and I didn’t repeat anti-Semitic jokes that were popular then. But I was much gentler about this unworthy trait than I am now. Later I broke with even good friends if I saw they had anti-Semitic tendencies….

“It would be good if Jews could live peacefully and happily in Russia, where they were born. But we must never forget about the dangers of anti-Semitism and keep reminding others of it, because the infection is alive and who knows if it will ever disappear.”

BUT YOU MUST READ THIS (if you have read this far). Shostakovich’s memoirs were published by Solomon Volkov, a Russian music scholar, four years after Shostakovich died, and there has been a lot of debate as to whether these are really his memoirs, meant to be published as such, or a collection of older essays, or a combination, and even whether included are things that Shostakovich never said, but Volkov thought he would say. There are people who agree with Volkov that these are Shostakovich’s words, those who think this is a novel posing as memoirs, those who say that Shostakovich wrote some but not all of this, those who say that Shostakovich didn’t write all of this, but that everything in the memoirs conforms to Shostakovich’s positions. And there are other people, by the way, who originally thought the memoirs were the composers, but then changed their minds. And still others, who originally thought these were not by Shostakovich, but later changed their minds. As to the accuracy (or actual authorship) of the paragraphs copied above, I have – of course – no clue. [This is where you may return to the first bracketed statement in this posting]

Is this post too long? It takes about 4 minutes to read it (and another 4 if you didn’t understand a word of it and have to read it again) and another 55 minutes if you listen to the symphony and other material in the link. So, is an hour today devoted to artis80 too long? You decide.

Every day, I have to figure out what to write about. Sometimes, it’s obvious. Something I read, somewhere I went, something I remember, some place I ate, something on the news.

But sometimes, it isn’t obvious at all and I say: take a deep breath …… and go.

I started thinking about people who illustrate books, and how their works don’t hang in galleries. I’ve thought about this before, and one time I ……. well that was then, this is now.

I picked up a rather old book I have, a simple book, not something worth a lot of money (at all), but with really nice illustrations. The book is a 1912 edition of The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith, and the illustrations were done by a man named William Lee Hankey.

I looked Hankey up and there he was, right on Wikipedia where he should be. He was an English painter and book illustrator, who was born in 1869 and lived until 1952. He painted portraits and landscapes, lived in England and France, and was very well respected. I think his work is beautiful. You can look him up, if you want to.

He made these illustrations sometime around 1900, but Goldsmith wrote the book in the 1770s. I have had this book quite a while, and have no idea where I bought it (or stole it, or found it), but I never paid any real attention to it. It just sat in a closet. Until today.

Now I know Goldsmith as the author of The Vicar of Wakefield (another book I have not read) and She Stoops to Conquer (a play I have not seen), but really don’t know much about him. I knew nothing about The Deserted Village, which is a lengthy poem whose lines end with rhymes (e.g., dear/year; race/place; power/hour; prize/rise; etc, from page 14 of my edition), and which is pretty easy to follow. It is both an elegy for times which are passing, and concern for what is coming. This makes it pretty contemporary.

Goldsmith remembers the England of his youth, the rural villages, the pleasant life, active communities. They are now disappearing and the Village of Auburn has been totally deserted, its buildings falling to ruin. The reason? Goldsmith blames it on the Enclosure Laws, which took and privatized communal lands used for grazing and planting, and created large estates for the gentry, at the expense of the rural peasantry. With no land to farm or graze, with jobs scare and money scarcer, the rural towns, he says, were fast vanishing, their residents fleeing from England, many going all the way to the New World, impoverished farmers going to English colonies such as newly opened Georgia, in North America.

What kind of a country does such a thing? What kind of a country favors the gentry, the nobility, the wealthy, over the masses? What kind of a country lets the rich get richer, the wealth gap between rich and poor expanding more than ever before?

The villages will not be restored. The country will be changed forever. The displaced poor will never be able to recreate the lives they once had, whether they remained in England or left for other places.

So, the poor-rich gap is not a 20th or 21st century development. People were worried about it in the 18th century. But apparently unable to arrest its progress.

Goldsmith’s political positions are not fully known. He was not a politician. He is known as having a strong leaning towards nostalgia. He favored old fashioned values over change,a small self-reliant homogeneous community over a larger, more diverse kingdom. As he said: “I love everything that’s old – old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.”

As to Hankey, living until his mid-80s gave him a lot of time to make art. And a lot of his artwork is available to purchase. His paintings are generally in the $5,000 to $10,000 range. His etchings are mainly about $300 to $750, although some are more and some less. I found one I liked for only $195. A bargain.

“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you know lies”? Actually, it was “ask me no questions, I’ll tell you know fibs”. Perhaps the most famous line of ….. Oliver Goldsmith?

Or how about: “He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.” Or: “All is not gold that glitters….”

All right, so my friend told me that I am not to write about more than one topic per day. And he told me that there he does not need to read the plot of a book that he will never hear about again. Okay, BUT…..another friend last night told me that he LIKES to see the plots of books he won’t read, because this lets him learn a little about something he would otherwise know nothing about. So what’s a blogger to do?

It reminds me of the story (which I am making up right now) about how Shakespeare was once approached by his boyhood friend Yitzhak ben Yinglish, who said to him: “Why do you keep writing about Kings of England? I get so tired of reading about those. Can’t you find a more interesting topic?”

Shakespeare, who respected his friend Yitzhak, decided to change his subject matter to honor his friend, and he wrote The Merchant of Venice. Yitzhak never spoke to him again.

So we Bards have to be careful, you see.

My plan was to write about Yael Dayan’s book, My Father, His Daughter, about her relationship with her father Moshe Dayan. You remember Moshe Dayan? Israeli military leader and politician, who became the GOAT after the 1967 war and the goat after the 1973 war? He was a bright, talented leader, and his daughter, who became a writer, and died a month or so ago at 84, was equally not just an overage Joe. She wrote this book in 1985, a few years after her father passed away.

I read it at the suggestion of a third friend. (I know what you are saying: “He has THREE friends? Who knew?” I will admit that this is about all there are, and so goes life.) This friend is an academic, a biblical scholar, and I was surprised that she recommended this book, which seemed out of character for her, so I thought I better read it. I prepared to be impressed.

But I wasn’t.

Sure, there are interesting things. For those of you who saw the film Golda, starring Helen Mirren as Golda Meir, you might remember the scene where, during the most worrisome part of the 1973 War, it appeared that Moshe Dayan had a nervous breakdown and was out of commission for a while. This never happened, according to his daughter, but……maybe it did?

And, the descriptions of the two times Moshe Dayan slapped his daughter very hard seem out of character with their otherwise close and loving relationship. What was their relationship really like? Dayan clearly seemed to favor his daughter over her two younger brothers (so says his “favored” daughter), and took her along with him whenever she wanted to accompany him, to review secret military locations, to review the troops, whatever. Sort of irresponsible, it seems to me.

You probably know that Dayan lost an eye. It happened during World War II, and he wore a patch after that. You may also know that he was sexually very active and his wife of thirty some odd years, according to her daughter, accepted his various affairs. (She also said that a doctor once told her that he felt that Dayan’s head injury which led to the eye loss might have also led to uncontrollable promiscuity. “Hmmmm”, as they say, the number of “m’s” reflecting their credulity.) Yael would never write a memoir called My Mother, Her Daughter, because her relationship with her mother hardly seemed to exist. Maybe her mother favored her brothers? Who knows? (We do know that her brothers were not in favor of her writing this book, and she respected their wish to be mentioned only now and then in the book, so there is more to the story of this family.)

Eventually, Yael’s mother Ruth, who passed away at 103 a few years ago, did leave her husband. And Moshe became more involved with other women, and now Yael seemed less approving, criticizing both her father for his bad taste in women, and the women themselves, about whom she was never complimentary.

But what goes around, comes around, as somebody once said (and others repeated repeatedly). When Dayan died at the age of 66 of long term heart issues, he left a will which he had written just written a few months before. He left everything to his girl friend, with whom he had been living for some years, and who didn’t get along with Yael or her brothers at all. He left Yael a letter saying that he did that because his children had enough money to take care of themselves, but his girl friend didn’t. There was no question that he was of sound mind when he wrote the will, but to say it was disappointing to Yael and her brothers is an understatement of the greatest magnitude. The Dayan house, and everything with in it, and all of his archeological treasures (he had many) went to his friend. Nothing went to his ex-wife of 35 years.

Moshe Dayan does not come across as very likeable. Neither does Yael. She was very much an elitist, whether or not that is how she looked at herself. You can almost read at the end of every paragraph the words that she did not, but could have written. Something like: “My father was an exceptional man, and I am his exceptional daughter.” I just didn’t like her. And I didn’t think the writing was very good – but who am I to say that about anybody else?

My friend who recommended the book says she knows someone who knew Yael, and that I am misreading her. Perhaps so. But, if so, I think she is deserving of my misreading.

Okay. The end. Yes, this it too long. No, I didn’t go through the plot of the book (to satisfy my first friend) but I did say something things about it that you might otherwise not be aware of (to satisfy my second friend). No, I did not talk about more than one thing. And did I proofread this post? That will remain my secret.

And I tried to satisfy my third friend (whom I don’t think has ever read my blog), by at least reading the book.

I started my day having breakfast with an old college friend (of course, all college friends are old) in Shirlington, which is 20 minutes from his house and 22 from my house. This means that if you travel from his to mine via Shirlington, the trip would take you about 42 minutes or (to put in another way) you are better off using your GPS.

We ate a Busboys and Poets (named for Langston Hughes, who earned a living for a while as a busboy at the Sheraton Hotel in Washington, and Zora Neale Hurston, who didn’t and is therefore known only as a poet. As I understand it, owner Andy Shallal was trying to bring them back together after they quarreled and broke up a long and close friendship.) I was looking forward to a bowl of oatmeal and some coffee, and was shocked and gobsmacked (I have been using so many first time words recently; bet you haven’t noticed) to discover that they had no oatmeal on the menu and I was stuck with getting an egg dish, buttermilk pancakes or corn beef (you can substitute tofu if you dare) hash. I chose a Western omelet without the ham (which I dubbed a Midwestern omelet, much to the confusion of the European born waitress who may never have heard of the Midwest). My side was grits. I ate the grits (with a little butter), and about two bites of the omelet. I paid a pretty price.

My friend is a reader of this blog and he complemented me effusively before saying to me “Do you want to know what I really think?”. Of course, I said “of course”, and he told me four things. First, that sometimes they were too long. Second, that I should only talk about one thing at a time. Third, that no one is interested in the plots of books they won’t read and films they won’t see. And fourth, I need a proofreader. I both agree with and disagree with all of these points, and I will take them under advisement.

I am not going to discuss his comments here, but will say the following. First, this post is probably too long, but the best may come at the end. Second, that I will try to start only discussing one thing at a time…..tomorrow. Third, that I was going to write about a book no one was going to ever read today, but in deference to my friend, I will put that off until tomorrow as well. And fourth, my wife wants to be my proofreader, but I push that “publish” button fast, and no one has been able to catch me yet.

Okay, enough of that, and on to something else. I want to talk about a book I will never read, Donald Trump’s (really Tony Schwartz’s) The Art of the Deal. After breakfast, since I had a free Juneteenth today with no responsibilities, I decided to drive on to Manassas VA for my semiannual trip to McKay’s Used Books, which is a terrific book store, IMHO. As in most book stores, each book is marked separately, but at McKay’s they seem to be priced with no rhyme or reason whatsoever.

I went to the biography/memoir section, as I usually do, and started with the Z’s, working backwards through the alphabet. When I got to the T’s, I saw a copy of The Art of the Deal. Now, I generally only buy books that have been signed by the author, and what chance would there be that this pristine copy of this ridiculous book was signed by Donald Trump? And besides that, this was a pristine copy of a book that was written in, when, the 1980s?

It turns out that the Trump campaign, in 2016, republished The Art of the Deal as part of his presidential campaign. And some of these included fancy-dancy book plates which were personally signed by His Disgrace. And this was one of them.

So, I bought it. Now, remember what I said about McKay’s irrational pricing policies? Maybe I reached that conclusion too quickly. As I looked through the store, I thought that I could sense that books by Republicans were all very inexpensive. Was this because McKay’s didn’t think they were worth any more, or because McKay’s really wanted to sell these books quickly so that people would read them? I don’t now.

But before I tell you the price, let me tell you that there are three signed copies of this edition of this book, looking identical to mine, for sale on the Abebooks website. They are listed at $725.00, $860.00, and (for some reason) $1500.00. What did I buy this book for at McKay’s? 50 cents.  Talk about the art of a deal.

That’s it for today. It’s already after 8 p.m. in the East – my latest posting ever. Below are two photographs. The first shows the $0.50 price for the book, and the second – perhaps – the license plate of the individual who put that price on it.

One night last week, we watched “Out of Africa”, filmed in 1984, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. Had we seen it before? Maybe. Who knows?

It’s a beautiful film. At the 1985 Oscars ceremony, it won seven, including best picture. It is based on the writing of Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), a Dane who married a British (?) Kenyan colonist, lived on a farm somewhere between Mombasa and Nairobi for about 15 years, was never really in love with her husband, but fell in love with free spirit Robert Redford (or his real life equivalent), divorced her husband and left Africa after her Redford was killed and her farm taken over by creditors. There you have it. And, oh yes, there was also World War I, and the Germans were in Tanganyika. It was the first two decades of the 20th century.

Africa, in the film at least, was beautiful and fairly empty, except for the wildlife, the natives, and the fuddy-duddy colonists. And Redford and Streep.

I have never been to sub-Saharan Africa, and I guess never will be. People who go as tourists generally go for camera safaris and love it  The politics, the economies, the cities rarely make the news.

Nairobi wasn’t founded until the very end of the 19th century. During the time the film was set, it looked something like this:

By the time I was born, it had grown to a population of about 100,000. But today, Nairobi has about 4,500,000 residents and Kenya has over 50 million. This is contemporary Nairobi.

I don’t know much about Kenya today. My smart phone tells me that the cost of living and inflation are high, as are urban crime rates. Sound familiar? Add  in high unemployment rates, something we don’t have (or maybe we do but it’s hidden because of how we measure employment). And, just like here, it’s apparently safe for tourists more or less.

Kenya and the rest of Africa are becoming more and more central to world economic growth. As they say, Africa is the future. Actually, I am not sure that anyone says that, but they probably do. They should.

I have two personal memories of Nairobi. First, in the 1950s, I was a big fan of Ernie Kovacs. Remember his Nairobi Trio?

Did anyone even think this might not be politically correct?

And then, when I was at Yale at law school, there was this extraordinarily attractive and always dressed to the nines young woman (known then as a girl) who would show up at events now and then, and put everyone in awe. Was she a Yale graduate student (this was before undergraduate Yale went co-ed), a student elsewhere, or what? If I knew them, I don’t remember now. But I learned she was an Ismaili Muslim (think the  Aga Khan), very rich, very smart……and from Nairobi.

My guess is she is no longer in either Nairobi or New Haven. Her name? I don’t think I ever knew it. Her name was not important.

You may have already guessed it, but today I am writing about Aaron Burr. And, yes, sort of about Donald Trump (just sort of), because there is a connection.

My biographical information comes from David Stewart’s book “American Emperor”, which I finished last night.

All you may know is that Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. (“I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and I wouldn’t lose a vote.” See what I mean?)

Let’s learn a little more. Burr was a lawyer, a New Yorker, a widower and womanizer, a Federalist, a narcissist, and a man who was brilliant, charming, easy to like, easy to upset, and excellent at making enemies. Especially making enemies among other Federalists (such as Hamilton).

He ran for president against Thomas Jefferson and finished second. Under the rules of the day, this made him vice president president under a member of an opposing party. He thought Jefferson a dunce, was upset that as vice president he had nothing to do except chair Senate sessions and, with all that, was furious when he was dropped as Jefferson’s second term vice president.

What to do? Basically (no reason to get too detailed), Burr decided to raise his own army, with the help of some high ranking, but not necessarily clear thinking, Jefferson appointees with a number of quite immodest goals in mind. For example, convincing the residents of the newly purchased Louisiana territory to rebel and create their own country. Secondly, to attack Spain and wrest away Florida and the Gulf Coast. Thirdly, to extend the war against Spain and capture Mexico and then perhaps more of South America.

He accomplished more than you might expect, drawing others into his plans and ruining the lives of most of them until they turned against him. And then, of course, his plans just fizzled out. And his efforts, long rumored, were publicly confirmed.

Now, remember, Aaron Burr was not an ordinary Joe. He was a former vice president AND there were murder indictments pending against him in New Jersey and New York for the murder of Hamilton. He couldn’t set foot in either of those states and extradition was always a possibility. Living in a new western country, being a hero, would save his skin. Get the picture?

Burr was in fact arrested in Virginia and charged with many crimes, including treason and (by virtue of his plans to move against Spain) violation of the Neutrality Act.

About a third of Stewart’s book is devoted to the trial which was presided over by Chief Justice John Marshall, acting as a circuit riding judge. Again, I will spare you details, but there were weeks of arguing about juries and witnesses and allowable evidence and definitions of terms like treason (very narrow) and jurisdiction and on and on.  So, yes, we have never tried a former president for felonies, but there are lessons to be learned perhaps from the trials of Aaron Burr, even though the American legal system was then in a much different state.

A few more simple truths about the trial. Politics, politics, politics. Shenanigans, shenanigans, shenanigans. If you think things are wild today…..

And, oh yes, Federalist justice Marshall seemed not very happy with Democrat president Jefferson’s vendetta against Burr, and Burr was found innocent and freed.

Burr, by the way, was also always short on funds and deeply in debt (that’s the one thing he shared with Jefferson), and now had lost all of his friends and supporters. So he went to England and France to enlist their help against Spain’s territory in the Western Hemisphere. Struck out there, too.

No money, no friends, almost not allowed back in the country, his one grandson killed by a fever, his only daughter killed in a ship wreck. He returned to New York and lived to 80, an apparent shadow of himself. And clearly at 80 too old to run for president.

(this post written in the West End Tatte coffee shop. All errors are theirs.)

I hope that’s a relief.

It has to do with Craig’s List. Now, I have never used Craig’s List for anything. I say that with neither pride nor regret. Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.

Until a year or so ago, I gave Craig’s List no thought. It was just one of those things that was just there, and had nothing to do with me. Then I learned that there really was a Craig. A man named Craig Newmark. And I saw a YouTube presentation he made to some group here in DC, and decided to listen to it. I could have watched it, of course, but I was in my car, and I don’t drive a Tesla with an IMEX screen, so I had to be satisfied with the sound.

I learned a little about Newmark, that he was an engineer of some type, and that he had founded Craig’s List sort of as a lark, as a small way to bring community to his neighborhood, or to people he knew, or something like that. I learned it was a for-profit operation, and that Craig Newmark had made Millions (with a capital M) and was giving it away almost as quickly as it came in. I also learned that he was a character, a one of a kind character, who had been hooked on science fiction books since he was a kid, and who had grave forebodings about what Artificial Intelligence might bring us down the line. And I learned that he was funny, and had a self-deprecating sense of humor.

Last week, Craig Newmark spoke at a relatively small luncheon (maybe 75 people at the most) hosted by a friend of mine on behalf of Moment Magazine at the National Press Club here in Washington, and I went. Moment was presenting Newmark with an award of some sort. He was introduced by Judy Woodruff of PBS and interviewed by Robert Siegel, recently retired from NPR. I found it a lot of fun.

Going back for a minute to Craig Newmark and his particular “style” and brand of humor, I must say that it apparently is not for everyone. At least two friends at the session were not impressed by him at all. As one told me, “Craig is not on my list.”

Well, I dissent. Craig Newmark looks to me like someone I could be good friends with under other circumstances. He is about 10 years younger than I am (Craigis70), and a couple of inches shorter than I am (always a good trait in a friend, I think), and a few pounds heavier than I am, and slightly balder than I am and, besides that, he makes me look like a fashion plate. You can see the photo that I am including in this post, and you can ask yourself if you would dress like that going to speak to and pick up an award from Moment Magazine and its supporters. He, by the way, is a supporter of the magazine.

Robert Siegel was a great choice to be the interviewer. Not only does he have the perfect voice for anything (maybe other than opera, I don’t know) that requires a voice, but he is low key and seems to be actually listening to, and reacting to, the answers of the questions he poses. And, he is about as short as Newmark, so the stage didn’t tilt either way.

To learn more about Newmark, to get basic background, just go to Wikipedia. And, by the way, Newmark is a major supporter of Wikipedia, and a major fan (as am I), worried that Wikipedia is going to be more and more attacked by fake news sources and wants to make sure they have the resources to fight it.

Free, honest and truthful news is one of the aims of Newmark’s philanthropy, as are Veterans programs, cybersecurity, family leave support and environmental programs. He apparently donates, through his charitable foundation, between $50 million and $100 million a year.

So there was a lot of conversation about fake news, artificial intelligence, and in general the dangers of the modern world. There were also discussions of birds. Newmark is also a vocal birder – not that he hunts birds obviously, and he doesn’t photograph him as far as I know, he doesn’t paint or draw them. He just watches them and feeds them. He lives in Greenwich Village and he says that the variety of birds there is limited, so he spend a lot of time watching pigeons, many of whom are “regulars”, whom he can identify. He is particularly jealous of one male pigeon who is now on his fifth mate. He is jealous of him because he, as a bird, is so much more socially adept than Newmark is as a human being.

Craig Newmark seems like an accident. He was in high school, he says, the very definition of a nerd, with his pens in his short pocket, and became an engineer, working for IBM for 17 years (hard to imagine, that, IBM the white shirt company), starting Craig’s List for just a few friends, before it mushroomed. The idea that his service for his friends would grow into such a big business is hard to imagine, especially for Newmark.

Siegel asked him if he ever wanted to own a media company himself, rather than making contributions to so many others. “I don’t have that kind of money”, he said, “I’ve given all mine away.”

This is a sort of a lazy post, because all I am going to do is repeat what I read in an article yesterday in the Washington Post. It would be even easier, of course, simply to post a link to that article, but the Post has a paywall and I don’t want you to miss it. So all credit goes to Post reporter Joel Achenbach.

The article, on page 2 of the first section, was titled “NASA unsure how long revived Voyager I can keep exploring deep space.” It contained some of the truly most amazing things I have ever read. And not only that – but I bet that it also contains some of the most amazing things you have ever read.

A little (very little) background. On September 5, 1977, NASA launched the Voyager I spacecraft to explore some of the outer reaches of space. It later launched Voyager II for the same reason. Both have been extraordinarily successful in their missions, and both continue even today traveling further and further from Earth.

When I say traveling further and further from Earth, I mean traveling further and further from Earth. For example, Voyager I is now 15,000,000,000 (that’s 15 billion) miles away. [OK, you need a little context? That means that for every mile away from Earth Voyager I is today, Elon Musk will earn $4 this year. But I digress.]

That means that Voyager I, having photographed Uranus and Neptune and Pluto, has continued on beyond the edge of our solar system. Again for context, if you traveled to Pluto, you would only be 1/3 of the distance Voyager I has traveled so far.

Because Voyager I is so far from the sun, it cannot operate on solar power, but it still is able to perform somewhat because it is powered in part by plutonium, which has a lengthy half life. It also is powered by what the article calls a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Not surprisingly, I have no idea what that could possibly be, but it seems to work.

The goal of NASA apparently is to continue to obtain some information from Voyager until it’s 50th birthday on September 5, 2027. It appeared, last November, that this goal would not be met. Everything went silent. Voyager I stopped sending back any information.

But leave it to NASA. Here I quote Achenbach: “A ‘tiger team’ of engineers at JPL [The Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA in Pasadena] spent the ensuing months identifying the problem – a malfunctioning computer chip – and restoring communication.”

OK, let’s repeat that in our own words. There is this spaceship 15 billion miles away, out of the solar system, which was still sending back information and then it stopped. These NASA folks were able to locate the problem as one malfunctioning computer chip – and fix it.

Now, I looked up a definition of a computer chip at amazon.com, and this is what I got: “A computer chip is a tiny wafer of semiconducting material with an embedded electronic circuit. It contains millions of microscopic electronic components called transistors that transmit data signals.”

I don’t know how many computer chips are in Voyager I, and Voyager I was not transmitting any data back, and it was 15 billion miles away, and nevertheless NASA was not only able to identify the particular problem, but solve it and put the ship back in business.

Of course, even after it stops transmitting data, Voyager I will continue to travel. I now go back and quote the article:

“Voyager I is heading toward the constellation Ophiuchus, according to NASA, and in about 38,000 years, and it will come within 1.7 light years of an unremarkable star near the Little Dipper. But although it will have long gone silent, it does carry the equivalent of a message in a bottle: the “Golden Record”.

“The record was curated by a committee led by astronomer Carl Sagan and includes greetings in 55 languages, sounds of surf, winds and thunderstorms, a whale song and music ranging from Beethoven to Chuck Berry to a Navajo chant. The Golden Record is accompanied by instructions for playing it, should the spacecraft someday come into the hands of an intelligent species interested in finding out about life on Earth…..

“But the advanced spacefaring civilization may not be an alien one, NASA scientists point out. It’s conceivable that the cosmic message in a bottle could be picked up by a human deep-space mission eager to examine a vintage spaceship.”

Enough said. Keep me posted.

There are so many big things going on the world that are irritating, it is very sad that there have to be small irritating things, as well. But there are, and many of them fall under the category of “TV Ads”.

I thought I’d tell you the ones that irritate me the most, the ones which convince me never to buy the products they tout. And I already know that this listing will be incomplete. Otherwise, it would be a book, not a post.

And, I am not listing them in any specific order of irritatedness. Just random. They are all over the top irritable.

What about the juvenile band that plays on the Kars for Kids ad? I think I have seen those pre-teens for the past ten years. They must be all out of college, married with children, driving SUVs for now. I turn the sound off. Even forgotten the tune by now.

And what about those ads of the animal protection groups – the ASCPA and the Humane Society – that drone on and one with pictures of emaciated dogs, scenes photographed by cameramen who clearly have no sympathy for the posing canines. Again, the sound goes off, and sometimes even the TV.

But it’s not only the dying dogs that get to me. It’s also the sick children, who populate the 90 second ads for Shriners Hospital and St. Jude’s, some smiling and singing like good little children and others clinging to a crying parent, while the other parent sings the praises of the hospital. I understand that both of these hospitals treat very sick children without charge, and I am sure they do a very good job. And although I don’t know about Shriners (I have never looked), I know that St. Jude’s is a fundraising machine, and has more money than it will ever need. Don’t believe me? Google it.

When those ads show on CNN, I switch to MSNBC. When they appear on MSNBC, I switch to CNN.

And then there are those ads that just do not seem to work as assumed. Take the new PNC Bank ads that tout PNC as perfectly boring, claiming that people want a boring bank. The fact is that no one wants a boring bank, as I expect PNC will find out one day. But if their ads were simply boring, perhaps that would be okay. But the ads are considerably worse than boring, and the fellow they pay to talk about how boring befits the best bank is not only boring, but looks like he would rather be somewhere else, somewhere more interesting.

And then there’s Botox. I watched a new Botox ad today, probably the third or fourth that I have seen. They are before and after ads, and as I watch each of them, it seems to me that the “before” picture is better than the “after” message. that Botox makes people look worse. Do the Botox people know that I (and the other I’s) feel this way? How could they not?

Then, there are the “screamer” ads, ads that are intended to catch your attention because they have an unpleasant, loud, rude person at the center. Like the insurance company that produces the ads that star Mayhem, the disheveled rascal that puts everyone he sees in trouble. Real trouble. Or they Kayak ads. I know Kayak has something to do with travel arrangements, I just don’t know exactly what. I don’t know exactly what because I turn off the ads as soon as the lady involved goes ballistic. I don’t need to put up with that.

Then, there’s Fisher Investments, which tries to portray itself as different from other financial advisory firms because they do better when their clients do better. It’s hard to believe that when the people that pretend they are Fisher employees are so swarmy, isn’t it? (By the way, my computer doesn’t think that swarmy is a word. It likes smarmy better, but I sort of like swarmy, because that’s what those actors are. Let’s make it a word.) By the way, I have looked up Fisher Investments. If they do such a wonderful job, guess what? They’re customers don’t know it.

And then of course, there is no longer just one commercial. Usually, six or seven of them are banded together, and go on and on. And most of the time, one of those six or seven has a much greater volume. Impossible to listen to. You run to the remote to turn the volume down, only to have to turn it up 30 seconds later. What is the purpose of that, I ask? It never used to happen.

I am going to stop soon. I know this is getting long. I just want to add one category: pharmaceuticals. I wish all of them would disappear. They are equally bad, I think. The only exceptions to my general feelings about pharma ads are the ads for Skyrizi. This is not because their ads are better. I can’t even tell you what the ads look like. It’s also not because I have a disease (or know I have a disease) that Skyrizi is meant to treat; I can’t even tell you what those diseases are. It’s just that I have decided to like Skyrizi. Pure and simple. That is it.

So, what’s this all about? One thing I realize is that I remember the bad ads more than those that don’t offend me. So maybe this is all a trick of the advertising world. Want to sell your product? Create an annoying ad. That way people will remember it. And when it’s time to buy something, maybe we, without knowing, head right to them. Fool me once…… Fool me twice…..

Let’s start with music. A friend recommended to me the Trumpet Concerto by Mieczyslaw Weinberg. Do you even know who Weinberg is? He was one of those Soviet composers who was virtually unknown in the West, and who is now being discovered (not rediscovered, but discovered). He was a good friend of Dmitri Shostakovich, and very well known in the Soviet Union. He lived until 1996. His concerto might remind you a little of Stravinsky, a little of Shostakovich and, for me at least, a little for Russian contemporary art of the early 20th century. I recommend you listen to it.

Let’s go to a podcast. I listened this week to a presentation by Douglas Murray, a conservative British journalist and associate editor of The Spectator. He spoke about antisemitism, the war in Gaza, and to a lesser extent about American campus protests to an audience in Rotterdam, Netherlands. I recommend you listen to/watch it.

Murray is a conservative, to be sure, but I think that what he says makes a lot of sense. He talks about the historical foundation of antisemitism, and how it relates to the way that so many in the world react to Israel even if they aren’t conscious of it. Why they react to what the Jews are doing in Gaza, more than what Gaza wants to do in Israel, and more than what non-Jews are doing in, say, Ukraine, South Sudan or Yemen, to name just a few places. In his presentation, he does mention the church as an important institution in the development of antisemitism, but in response to a question from the audience, he lists “envy” as perhaps the most important contemporary cause of continuing antisemitism.

This is in contrast to Rabbi Yossy Goldman of the Sydenham-Highlands North Hebrew Congregation in Johannesburg, whom I also listened to and watched recently, and who thought the prime cause today of antisemitism is that Jews are “disturbers” whenever they are in the minority. Their ideas as to social justice, globalism, and so forth are often at odds with the majority community.

Perhaps it is a combination of the two, and these two presentations do give you ways to think about the problem that might be helpful and useful.

Going back to Douglas Murray, I should add that he talks not only about the causes of antisemitism, but the results. Wherever there is pervasive antisemitism, he says, there is a society in trouble, trouble beyond the antisemitism. The Jews, he says, are the canaries in the coal mine. But rather than treat them as such as search for what is wrong, it is often easier, apparently, simply to shoot the canaries, as if this will help. It doesn’t.

That’s it for my writing today, because I would like you to at least start these attachments, in the hope that you will want to see them through.

Part One: We went to Politics and Prose, our neighborhood book store, tonight to hear retired U.S. Court of Appeals Judge David Tatel speak about his new book, Vision. It was, not surprisingly, an overflow crowd (a few hundred, I would guess), many of whom were friends of the author, or attorneys who had appeared before him or otherwise interacted with him.

The reviews for Vision have been very positive, and David Tatel, who I have heard speak before, talked not only about the contents of the book, but about how and why he wrote it after retiring from 30 years on the bench.

For those of you who do not know, Tatel is blind. Like our friend economist Sandy Greenberg (who wrote his memoir Darkness My Old Friend), he was not born blind, but lost his sight as an adult and achieved more than the typical sighted person could ever hope to do. Tatel made several important points about blindness today. It is easier to be blind, he says, because of the technological changes, which among other things allow the written word to be converted to audio, thus allowing him to read and write pretty much on his own. On the lower tech side, he spoke warmly about his seeing eye dog Vixen. He had no seeing eye dog until he was in his 60s, if I understood him correctly, and says that it changed his life. Before he got a dog, he used a cane. A dog is much safer crossing streets, he said, and if he drops something, the dog can retrieve it, something that he could not do himself. And, for the first time in 30 years, he can go for a walk with his dog on a country trail without another human being. He finally can get more thinking time and alone time.

As to the law, he said some very pointed things about today’s Supreme Court, being careful (“judicious”, as he called it) not to speak about any individual justices. He also said he only wrote about cases in which he was involved in Vision, and not about others. His problem with the Supreme Court he said is that it is an activist court, arrogating more and more power to itself, making itself the most equal among the supposed three equal branches of government. And it does this by ignoring the principle that the court should only involve itself when it has to, by ignoring precedents, by incorrect readings of the law and so forth. He went on to emphasize that the only way to reform the Court is through voting, and he thinks that our failure to vote sufficiently is a shortcoming that we should be able to end.

He was asked about, and did speak about, gifts to judges. No one ever gave him a trip to Bali, he said. And the only extra income he ever earned amounted to $500 and was reported on his disclosure forms. As to recusal, he said that he recused himself whenever his presence on a case might raise questions (such as a matter, which he discussed, involving blind people). But he added that it was more of a problem for Supreme Court justices to recuse themselves. When an appellate judge recuses himself, another judge is appointed to take his place on the case. When a Supreme Court justice recuses himself or herself, the number of justices hearing the case is simply diminished.

All in all, Tatel comes across as a very nice and very ethical individual. So different from so many who we are now used to in public life.

Part Two: Which reminds me. Did you see the article today about 25 year old Valentina Gomez, who wants to be the Republican candidate for Missouri Secretary of State? About four weeks ago, she had an ad which showed her burning “queer books” with a flamethrower. Another showed her jogging on a country road, saying to the camera “Don’t be weak and gay”. Yesterday, she said that Brittney Griner should be sent back to Russia. “Brittney Griner should be rotting in a Russian prison, not going to the Olympics”. [This from LGBTQnation.com]

For MAGA Republicans, remarks like this seem to be more and more the rule, and not the exception.

Part Three: On a totally different subject, I went into a pho restaurant today for lunch. I was in Prince George’s County on University Boulevard, it was lunch time, and I pulled into a small strip shopping center. I first went into the Salvadorean restaurant, but there was something about it I didn’t like (such as no customers), so I went a few doors down to Pho 75. I have been to Vietnamese restaurants before, of course, but never to one that served pho exclusively. Maybe you all have, and you know that pho is virtually always made with beef. This restaurant served 17 different kinds of pho. 16 of them were made with various cuts of beef. Only one with chicken. That’s the one I chose.

I am not a soup eater, so don’t usually order this type of a dish, but it was very tasty, very filling, and very inexpensive. For $10, I got a “small/regular” bowl (much bigger than what I would consider a regular bowl) with a fairly tasty broth, thin slices of white meat chicken, sliced onions, basil, and of course rice noodles. I was given a second plate of bean sprouts, hot green peppers, cilantro leaves and slices of lime, which (as I watched other people) was to be poured into the bowl of pho. I also added some hot sauce (which some people tell me is a no-no, but there it was on the table, looking like something I should add). Very, very tasty, I thought. Of course, I couldn’t finish it.

The only negative is that, after I was done, and walking back to the car, I had a feeling that there was too much salt in the broth. I am sure my feeling was accurate. Doesn’t restaurant broth usually have too much salt? Or maybe it wasn’t salt,but MSG.

Okay: that’s it for this morning.

Have the Nationals developed the G.O.A.T. scoreboard?

Let’s give credit where credit is due. But, of course, I don’t know whom to credit But I think that the new Nats scoreboard is about as good as it could be.

I am not going to be able to do it justice, but referring to the two photos above, let’s work through what you can learn by looking at the scoreboard, even if you decide not to look at the game.

First, it should be obvious that the Nationals are playing the Atlanta Braves, and that the Braves are up to bat. And that the current Brave who is at the plate is Adam Duvall. In the center, you see his picture, you see that is uniform number is #14, you see that his major league debut was on Hannah Hessel’s birthday in 2014, that he was born in Louisville in September 1988, and that he bats and throws right handed. You can see that this year, he has hit 122 times, has had 23 hits and scored 14 runs, has doubled four times, hit no home runs or triples, has been on base 27.5% of the times he has come up to bat, and has a slugging percentage of .369.

(You should know that the center screen does not stay this way. It is where you see live feed, whether it’s the batter coming up to the plate, or a replay of the play after he has finished batting, or (in later innings) a list showing what he has done in previous appearances during the game, and – between innings and before the game – ads, promotions, the national anthem singer, information about the game and whatever else they want to show you.)

And one more thing. If Duvall happens to hit his first home run of the season (he didn’t), right below his picture, you would see another chain of numbers, showing statistics about that home run: how far it went, what was the speed of the ball off the bat, and what was the angle of its arc. That is all new stuff.

To the left of the middle screen, you see the Braves hitting line up, its 8 position players and its designated hitter, in the order in which they will bat. For each player, you see their position and their uniform number. You will see that Duvall is hitting fifth, and because he is at bat, you see a little more information about his – his current batting average, the number of home runs he has hit, the numbers of runs he has batted in, and his OPS. If you don’t know what an OPS is, it’s a calculation based both on the number of times a hitter gets on base and the number of times he gets extra base hits. It’s an arcane measure, and all you really need to know is the higher the better, and Duvall’s is not very high. Those who are having a good year at the plate may find their OPS at .900 or even higher.

Now, if you move to the right of the screen, you see information about the Nats, who are in the field. Obviously, when this inning ends, the information you see about each team will reverse.

You start at the top with the identity of the Nats’ pitcher, who is Mackenzie Gore. You see his uniform number is #1, and that he is a left handed pitcher. We were still in the top of the first inning when I took the picture, and Gore had thrown 19 pitches (pitchers usually don’t throw more than about 100 on a good day), of which 7 were balls and 12 were strikes (you’d like to see a pitcher throw twice as many strikes as balls). You also see something about his last pitch. It was an 86 miles per hour curve ball.

Below the information about Gore, you see an outline of the ball field, with the name of each Nationals position player at the place where he is playing. You also see that the name of one of the Nats position players, Abrams, playing short stop, is circled. This shows you that when the Nats come to bat, Abrams will be the next (in this case the first) to get to the plate.

Looking below everything I have mentioned so far, you see the traditional center of a baseball scoreboard. An inning by inning account of the runs scored by each team. At this point in the game (the top of the first inning), no runs have scored. (By the way, to take away the suspense, the final score will be Washington 7, Atlanta 3.) To the right of the inning by inning scoring, you will see the total runs to date, the total number of hits each team has had, the total number of errors (if any), and the number of times left that there can be a visit of catcher, manager or coach to the pitching mound (the total allowed per game is only 4).

Then, to the right of that, you will see statistics regarding the person presently at bat. You will see that there is one ball (four balls and the batter advances to first base, just as if he had hit a single), and two strikes (three strikes and you’re out). Under that you will see that there are already two outs – one more out, the inning ends, and the Nats come to bat.

Even further to the right, you see a promotion for a Mike Rizzo (he’s the general manager) bobble-head on June 14. That promotion stayed up on and off throughout the game. But each time a batter finishes, the display changes to show what happened to the batter in the “language” one would use if he/she were filling in their own scorecard. For example, if a hitter grounded out to the second basement, who then through to first, it would GB 4-3. If the hitter, struck out with a called strike, it would say K. And so forth. (There is a whole language here – Google it if you want to learn more)

That’s pretty much it for the big screen. But remember that the large center panel changes and changes, as I described above.

But the big screen is not all. Below, in front of the first deck spectators, the wall going down to center field shows more, as you can see from the second photo. To the right, you see what is going on in every other game being played that day; that, like the inning scoring, is an old standard for baseball scoreboards. But to the left, you see information that there just was not room for above. This is information about the pitcher, again in his case Mackenzie Gore. I took this photo a few innings later, so the info doesn’t correspond with the first inning information on top.

Here you see that Gore has pitched two innings, struck out three, allowed two hits, and walked one batter (BB – base on balls – is the official name for a walk). Below that, you see Gore’s statistics for the entire season – he has pitched 65 innings, struck out 77 batters, has a win-loss record of 4-5, and has allowed an average of 3.46 runs to be scored against him per every 9 innings (a game). This is actually quite a good record; the 4-5 win-loss statistic is a result of the Nationals weak hitting record so far this year. (The Nats overall record today is 30-35, five below .500).

This tells you pretty much what you will learn from the scoreboard. Of course, if you sit in the outfield seats, you won’t see the scoreboard at all. You will be much more basic statistics shown down the first base line, but you really miss out on something, I think.

And for those of you who knew nothing about baseball, if you study this post, you will learn about 10% of what you need to know to really understand the game.

And is anything missing from the scoreboard? What about a clock. Usually, I think a scoreboard has a clock. At Nats park, the clock is located above the Nats bullpen. Not a problem (and it’s digital, so you don’t even have to be able to tell time).

We went to hear our friends Little Red and the Renegades play their always good Zydeco music Saturday night at Greenbelt’s New Deal Cafe, and – for reasons that should be clear to you – Zydeco music reminds me of New Orleans.

I haven’t spent a lot of time in New Orleans, but I have been there quite a few times, usually just for a few days. And not for quite a while. But I started thinking about the times I had been in New Orleans and what I remember.

The first time I was there was in 1958, on a trip with my parents, sister and maternal grandmother. The trip was actually to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, but we went into New Orleans for a day or two. I think we spent all of our time in the French Quarter. We had dinner at Antoine’s, then the most famous and (maybe) one of the best restaurants in the city. I don’t think that’s the case any more. I just looked at a list of the best 38 restaurants in New Orleans on the Eater New Orleans website, and it isn’t listed. And on Yelp, it only gets a 3.3 rating. I remember we got a tour of the restaurant, including the wine cellar. I think the food was OK, but my father wasn’t impressed. He thought the place 65 years ago was dingy and old. “In St. Louis”, he said, “I’d never set foot in a place that looked like that.”

I also remember, on that trip, that we were looking at the art work on Pirate’s Alley and we ran into the mother of someone in my high school class (this was 1958, remember, I was a 15 year old sophomore). I was very surprised to see my friend’s mother wandering around New Orleans, especially since she was by herself. I remember her telling my parents that sometimes she just wanted to be alone, so she got in her car and drove to New Orleans for a few days. I just didn’t know what to make of that – one the one hand, I couldn’t imagine one of my parents just taking off on a solo trip, but on the other, it seemed to me an example of admirable independence. I got a better idea of what might have been going on when, a month or two later, my friend’s mother committed suicide.

The only other things I remember is being surprised that the main tourist church was called St. Louis, and that beignets were really good.

The next time I was in New Orleans was about ten years later, when I took a road trip from St. Louis with a friend and New Orleans was our furthest destination. I remember we stayed at what I guess was a bed and breakfast. I remember a white house, with a garden and a white picket fence in front. But – believe it or not – I don’t really remember anything else about that trip, although memories of one trip or another often do get confused.

Another ten years or so passed, and Edie and I got one of the only two time share invitations we ever responded positively to. We were told that we would be flown to New Orleans from BWI, that we would be put up in a time share development on St. Charles Avenue in the Garden District, that we could select the time we wanted to come, and that all we had to do was listen to a sales pitch for an hour (or maybe two). Sounded easy, we looked at the calendar, picked the time of the New Orleans Jazz Festival, and went. The festival then was a lot of fun, even though it is nothing like what it is today. It was about the 8th or 9th annual festival, I think, and there were multiple stages, but all in the same area. The crowds were manageable, and we heard some good music (I don’t remember who we heard), including music from some of the city’s krewes (google it). I don’t know if the krewes today take place in the jazz weekends, or just at Mardi Gras.

We also got a chance to see the Garden District, the St. Charles and Desire streetcars, and – I am sure – more. The building we stayed, a converted apartment building, was not a place we would want to return to. I remember we watched a film about the building, took a tour, and then spent an hour with a nice young man, who tried to sell us a time share not by talking about the building in New Orleans, but by using our time share time to travel the world. He did a fine job, but he was very new to the business. I asked him what he had done before. “I sold cemetery plots”, he told us.

I went to New Orleans several times on business trips. I remember going there by myself, I remember going for a conference or two, and I remember traveling once with a client. Because my mind totally blanks when I think about who most of my clients were and what I did for them, I don’t remember who I traveled there with or why, but I remember that he and I spent a couple of evenings just walking around the French Quarter talking, and that I ran into someone I new from Washington, who seemed to be doing the same thing.

At any rate, I have explored the French Quarter thoroughly in my day, I have gone to Preservation Hall (it’s closed now?) and heard a lot of music. I have witnessed New Orleans drinking, and been amazed at the early hours the bars open, but don’t remember ever over-imbibing myself. I do remember going alone into a bar once and ordering a drink. I think I watched a hockey game at the bar, and started talking to a stranger doing the same thing. He was in town on business as well, and I was surprised, when I asked him where he lived, when he told me Edmonton, in Alberta, Canada. I couldn’t imagine a more different town in North America, especially since this was winter and it was spring-like in New Orleans and clearly not so in Edmonton. I asked him how his family (if I remember they were Irish, although maybe something else, but European) established themselves in Edmonton of all places (I now know that a lot of people moved to Edmonton, which now has a population of over 1 million), and his only answer was “I think it was summer”. (By the way, my smart phone tells me that the average high in Edmonton in June is 70.)

And I remember going into a small corner grocery years and years ago. The owners were a young couple who came from India and who spoke with heavy Indian accents. They had two young children running around, maybe 4 or 5. The children had no Indian accents at all. I was really surprised. I guess I never had thought about it as a possibility. You think times don’t change?

What else? I remember being in New Orleans in the summer when it was hot (to be sure), and humid (even more humid than hot), and when the skies broke loose with thunderstorms every afternoon at 4. I remember, on one trip, spending a day driving around the bayou country, which I found fascinating. I remember driving to Baton Rouge to go to what was then the country’s largest used law book store. I remember crossing Lake Pontchartrain several times on that wonderful bridge that is so long (20 miles?) that you can’t see either shore from the center.

But I have never really toured all of New Orleans. I’d like to see the Tulane campus. I certainly would like to see the new Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience that just opened within the past couple of years. And the other museums in the city – if you Google New Orleans museums, 49 come up. That would fill a weekend.

The funny thing about all of this? Except for that night in 1958 at Antoine’s, I do not remember one restaurant in New Orleans that I have ever eaten at. And there were probably dozens of them. Strange?

We went to Nationals Park yesterday to see if the Nats could extend their one game winning streak. And guess what? They doubled it.

Sitting near us was a woman with a lot of tattoos. She was as interesting as much of the game. Was she pretty? I have no idea. My eyes never got above her neck.

I have written about tattoos before, generally negatively,for reasons I am not going to repeat here. But there are always exceptions. And this woman, with her not yet full body set of artistic tattoos is an exception.

I obviously only could see some of this art work. And you can see even less from the photo. You can see the red vehicle on her back and part of a slogan that ends “be nice”. You can see the Ferris wheel on her shoulder that is part of an amusement park display. And beneath the amuset park, covered by the bar in the photo, is a 1950 style blond bathing beauty in a two piece bathing suit. And there was more.

So that reminds me of a short story by H.H. Munro, or Saki as he was known. Written before World War I (Saki was killed in the war), and titled “The Background”, it tells the sad story of M. Henri Duplis, a middle class resident of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg who, by chance, comes into a little bit of unexpected money.

He decides to splurge and spend it all in one place. He decides to get a tattoo, and travels to the north of Italy, where the continent’s most renown tattoo artist lives. He agrees to a tattoo which will cover his entire back, from his neck down. It will be an artistic rendition of The Fall of Icarus.

(By the way, Henri did not know what The Fall of Icarus was about, but that’s another story.)

The cost of the tattoo is 600 francs, the precise amount of our hero’s windfall.

Two unfortunate things happen. First, Henri spends some of his money on other items. Second, after finishing his work, the tattoo artist dies, leaving collection of the 600 francs to his widow.

When Henri tells her that he can only pay 430 francs, the widow becomes livid, consults a lawyer, and determines that under Italian law, the tattoo does not become the property of M. Duplis until the full bill is paid. Recognizing that it will never be paid, the widow does the most logical thing. She, a civic minded individual, decides to donate the work to the City of Bergamo, which happily accepts it.

Legal actions ensue and the courts determine that Bergamo has full rights to this work of art. Bergamo determines to exercise its rights, first by telling poor Henri that he is not allowed to display this work of art in public or in private without their specific permission. Secondly, that he cannot get it wet, by means of swim, bath or shower, for fear of diluting its value.

This is too much for Henri. He realizes he must leave Italy and return to the friendlier environment of Luxembourg. But not so fast, Henri.

He is stopped at the Italian border. Don’t you know, he is asked, that it is illegal to take public art out of the country?

Like Charlie on the MTA, it looks like he is stuck.

I wanted to tell our neighbor at the stadium about the story, but was afraid her boyfriend might send me from Section 205 down to Section 105.

As Groucho would say: “Lydia, oh Lydia, Lydia the tattooed lady.”

You think that’s really her name?

It is almost 10 o’clock in the morning, the weather is good, and I really should take a walk. But I want to post something first before the day gets away from me. But what do I want to write about? After all, I have posted something every day since November 15, 2022. That means this is the 572nd straight post, and I don’t want to stop here. After all, Lou Gherig played 2130 consecutive games, and Cal Ripken played 2632. What am I? A wimp?

Now, I admit I know very little about those two records. And, they are both records. Gherig’s lasted 56 years, and Ripken’s ended in 1998 (you do the math).

So, you ask, what’s new? Let’s do it another way. What’s news? I don’t really know because I am tired of watching TV news, and that’s rare for me. I think the reason I am tired is that I got sick of watching the coverage of the Trump New York trial. As you know, New York doesn’t allow trials to be televised, but they allow reporters into the courtroom and into an overflow room (where the trial is in fact televised), so we had reporters running in and out of the courtroom, reporting to their TV hosts, everyday for weeks. And then, when the trials broke for the day, the reporters stood outside of the courthouse (rain or shine) and reported exactly what they had already reported, and then the networks got a bunch of reporters together to confer on whether they saw the same thing, and then the reporters disagreed about exactly how long Donald Trump had his eyes closed, and what the significance of that might be (in a perfect world). Then, after a short break where the reporters could get tuna on whole wheat, it started again, because then the reporters who had spent the day in the courthouse came to the studio, wearing fresh clothes and new makeup, and talked about what they had seen in court that day, how many steps they had taken that day running in and out of the courtroom, what they had said standing outside after the day’s trial ended and how the weather was, and then of course, the quality of the tuna fish and the whole wheat bread.

Now, they want to do the same regarding Hunter Biden’s trial, and to tell you the truth I have very little interest in Hunter Biden’s trial, and I agree with his wife (wife?) that she should have thrown out that gun, and I think everyone should throw out their guns. I just don’t like guns and don’t think they do anyone any good except for those individuals who make their money off guns, and I don’t care of those individuals make money or not.

And the border. And Biden’s new executive order (the details of which escape me at the moment) and how does it get to be enforced? As I understand it, we can stop letting in people on any day when the number of unauthorized migrants who come into the country is more than 2500. Okay, we have a 2000+ mile border, right? And people come in by swimming across a river, by hiding in trucks, by walking across a bridge, by climbing a wall or digging under it. All sorts of ways along a 2000+ mile border. Who is counting? Do our border agents start the day with a “let ’em in” notice and then at some point, they get an alert on their smart phones saying “keep ’em out”? It makes little sense to me.

Poor Joe Biden. First, he’s a week older than I am, and that’s old. Second, and I have been saying this for two years now, his border policies will cost him the election – and now, six months before the next election, he has changed his policy and looks like Donald Trump (minus the wall). This doesn’t please his supporters – some of whom want more people to be able to seek refuge here – nor his opponents. I give him a D on the border, and that’s because I am generous (to a fault).

But I will tell you this. Something that I have noticed. Except for my family and my closest group of friends, no one speaks English any more. I was at the post office on Veirs Mill Road in Rockville yesterday. There was a spirited conversation going on between one of the clerks and another customer about the proper way to send a certain package. The conversation was going on in Spanish. And what’s also true? That seemed very natural to me. In fact, as I go about my business (ha, my business?), I never hear English. I hear a lot of Spanish, I hear a large variety of Asian languages, and I hear people speaking totally unintelligible languages – which I always assume is Portuguese, because this is a language which I find totally unintelligible. And I do commemorate all those Brazilians and Portuguese folk who pretend they understand each other speaking this unintelligible language, and seem to get along in the world as well as anyone else.

That reminds me of something. When I used to spend summers working (ha, working?) for my father at 722 Chestnut Street, St. Louis (the building was mysteriously called the International Building – I never knew why since the only international event that ever happened in the building was that, if you went to a high floor and looked east, you could see over the border into Illinois, which by the way was something no one wanted to do or ever did), I often ate at the restaurant (think one step below a 1950s coffee shop) hidden away on the first floor, away from the street so that no one knew it was there. I’d sit at a formica table. The fellow who ran the restaurant would stand behind the counter (where you could sit on a stool, but I thought that too intimate) and every day at about 12:30, the mailman would come in.

Now the mailman was White and the restaurant owner was White, but they would talk in Korean, because they had both served in the Korean War and knew enough to say “Good morning. Hot outside? You feel OK? See you tomorrow?” That’s about all they could say, but they were sure to say it anyway everyday for the benefit of me and the one or two other customers eating their tuna on whole wheat. This, to me, was a miracle. These two men speaking a foreign language. Now, if I could turn the clock back and go back to that restaurant with my 2024 mind, and if I heard them speaking Korean or Tagalog or Urdu, I’d think nothing of it. But if they spoke English, I’d probably stare.

Well, time for a walk. It is now 10:20. I am not going to read this over to see what I wrote. No, siree. Or no, ma’amee.

Obrigado pela leitura. Ate Amanha.

When you were busy celebrating (or not) the turn of the millennium on December 31, 1999, and concerned that the year 2000 was going to bring about the complete destruction of all of our time sensitive technology systems, Boris Yeltsin was resigning from the presidency of Russia, and handing the country over to one Vladimir Putin. I don’t remember ever reading, or seeing clips from, Yeltsin’s resignation speech, but it included the following: “Russia has to enter the new millennium with new politicians, with new faces, with clever, strong and energetic people. And we, who were in power for many years, must leave….” He then apologized to those who “believed that we could, in one big swing, in one thrust, jump from a gray, totalitarian past into a bright, rich and energized future. I believed this myself…..it seemed one thrust, and we would do it. We did not…..I’ve done all I could. A new generation is coming to replace me….a generation of those who can do more and better.”

This excerpt (obviously translated from the Russian) was quoted by Arkady Ostrovsky, now a columnist for “The Economist”, a Russian born journalist, in his 2015 book, The Invention of Russia, which I highly recommend. And it clearly shows the frustration of the outgoing, alcoholic, quite popular first President of the Russian Federation after his attempt to create capitalism and a western-oriented society in Russia was clearly on the road to failure. And, after he was replaced by the quiet, KGB trained Putin, even an attempt to create a Russia that looks like the countries of western and now central Europe was abandoned.

Ostrovsky’s book, like so many others, attempts to tell the story of what happened, and it succeeds by looking at the passing events from a Russia-oriented viewpoint, but explained to a western-oriented readership.

Obviously, I can’t tell you everything that is in the book. You will have to read it if you want even to come close to that. But, a broad outline might be possible. Ostrovsky starts with the death of Stalin and the immediate cessation of the type of dictatorship Stalin ran – the terror, the purges, the sporadic attempts, often successful, to push Russian science and industry forward, the famines, the strict collectivization, the tragedies of World War II. We know that Stalin was succeeded by Malenkov and then by Khrushchev and others, but what I had never thought about was that these individuals were not inevitable choices, nor unanimous ones. That there was a large amount of behind the scenes debate and political jockeying, trying to figure out who should come next, and what should be the next stage in the life of the Soviet Union. He explained how, within this in-fighting, hung the specter of Stalin, his strength, the fear he engendered, but also how on some level he held the respect of everyone engaged in this secret debate, as all of the owed their position to Stalin’s favor. And the true shock when Khrushchev, at the Party Congress in 1956, gave his secret (but leaked) speech on the vices of Joseph Stalin, and their deleterious effect on the Soviet Union.

Things changed then. No more Stalinist terror. But the Soviet Union remained the Soviet Union, under ambitious and charismatic (Khrushchev), or ambitious and bureaucratic (Brezhnev) leadership, until it was clear that things were heading in the wrong direction, that the economy was faltering, the satellites getting more and more restless, and the West was moving ahead further and further.

Then came Gorbachev. Gorbachev was right about some things and wrong about other things. Sadly, he was more wrong than right. He was right in thinking that change must happen, that the USSR was on a downward trajectory, falling further and further behind the West, and that it couldn’t be corrected without massive changes. He was probably right when he said that one of the changes had to be the opening up of the political system. He was wrong thinking, as a life long Communist, that you could open up the political system and remain a Communist or Socialist country, that the majority of the citizens would agree with him that holding the economic course was crucial. And he was wrong in not seeing that so many, or all, of the Soviet Republics would try to break away from control by the Russian Federation. Whether he could have stopped the collapse of the USSR is a question; it is a fact that he didn’t try very hard and that, once he made clear that military action to stop an SSR from exiting was off the table, there was no stopping the breakup.

Regarding Putin, Ostrovsky makes a number of points. First, that Putin was relatively unknown and therefore not feared, particularly when he came with the imprimatur of Yeltsin. Second, that although Putin had a KGB background, no one really focused on that; times were changing and that just didn’t seem to be very important. Thirdly, that as the opposite of the extrovert Yeltsin, Putin was not only very quiet, but he was quite secretive; he was very good at making people think he agreed with them at first, he was very good at playing a role.

Ostrovsky of course also talks about the evident failures in bringing capitalism to Russia, something that can be ascribed largely to the eight years Yeltsin was in power. As you can see from the quote at the start of this post, Yeltsin was a Westerner at heart, and he thought the transition to capitalism would be relatively easy and relatively smooth. He did not recognize (and maybe his much too frequent alcoholic state had something to do with this) how a small group of ambitious men (all men, to be sure) were able to wrest control (sometimes with Yeltsin’s help) of the major industries in the country, how the “voucher” program which distributed putative shares to all Russian citizens to be invested in business enterprises didn’t benefit the shareholders, but simply gave this small group of would be oligarchs another target for their greed, leaving common citizens without any share in the new capitalistic economy.

The Oligarchs became all powerful (until one or another of them lost favor under Putin) and this power not only extended to their business activity, but to involvement in and control of Russian media, especially all-influential Russian television. He describes times when Oligarchs battled each other, and times when they cooperated, each time having great influence over Russian policy, but always in coordination with Putin. Once the system was established, cooperation between Oligarchs and government was needed to keep the country again from going on the path to self-destruction.

Ostrovsky also discusses the typical Russian views on various topics and how they influence and help Putin. Certainly there were Russians who became totally Western and globalist in their thinking, but they were far from the majority, and many of them have now left Russia behind for greener pastures elsewhere. Most Russians, though, are not globalists; they have no experience as globalists. They are proud Russians. And for them what is important is that Russia be a powerful, independent country, acknowledged as such throughout the world. And they generally feel that the only way for this to be accomplished is for the Russian “state” to be powerful. Yes, Ostrovsky says, Russian people like freedom, but if they had to choose between a powerful state and freedom, the powerful state would win hands down.

Further, the Russians have never forgiven Gorbachev for what they believe is the destruction of the USSR (and they haven’t forgiven Khrushchev for his 1954 “gift” of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR). His failure to hold the Soviet Union together made him as unpopular in Russia as it made him popular in the former Soviet republics and in the West.

These observations of Ostrovsky, assuming they are accurate ones, go a long way to explain Putin’s actions, both domestically and with regard to Ukraine (and perhaps other former SSRs – at least those with Slavic majorities). They go to explain the internal support Putin gets at home, how is personal power is not begrudged, how his aggressiveness is tolerated, and how his fear of being subordinate in power to the United States and a united Europe is shared by many.

Ostrovsky talks about the “fake” elections, about the continuing role of the media, no longer Oligarch controlled, but controlled by the Kremlin, giving its audience the news “it needs to know”, helping create support for administration goals. And he talks about the original entrance of Russia in the Ukraine into Crimea and the Donbass region, once the pro-Russian president of Ukraine was deposed. To Putin, all of that was a Western operation designed solely to make Russia look weak and evil, requiring Russia to respond as it did. Want proof? Look at Russian TV

For this reason and others, The Invention of Russia is, I believe, well worth a read.

Many (or most) of you know that in addition to writing a blog and counting my daily steps, my wife and I buy and sell books through an on-line business we have been operating for the past dozen years or so. It started as a way to downsize my large book collection, but since one of my most favorite thing to do is to search for books and then buy them, it hasn’t served that goal very well. Okay, it hasn’t served that goal at all. (It has served another goal -which is accumulating income for the purpose of helping the education of our grandchildren.)

We ship our books through the United States Postal Service (USPS). We have shipped between 2000 and 3000 books across the world, with remarkably few problems. In fact, we have never had a problem with a domestic shipment that I recall. We have had some overseas problems – the Royal Danish Post Office lost a book after it informed our customer it was waiting for him, twice the French postal service had been unable to find the addressee and returned books to us (in neither case did the recipient ever surface), and the German post office has failed to allow books through their customs giving us one bureaucratic excuse after another (we simply stopped selling in Germany).

But last month, the inevitable happened. We sold a book to someone in Liverpool, in the UK, for $450. That is an expensive book for us. The purchaser gave us an additional $30 to cover postage to the UK (our standard UK postage charge), but because the book was expensive and I didn’t want it languishing over the Sargasso Sea, I splurged and gave the Postal Service $86 to send in “priority express”, so that it would get to Liverpool in three or four days (rather than a week or two). We all know that no good deed goes unpunished, and this good deed was no exception.

The book arrived late, and it came with a note from the British postal authorities saying that they had received it from the Americans damaged and that it had to be repacked. The book arrived in Liverpool with the cover spine virtually pulled off, what almost looked like a knife had cut it evenly, although it could have been pulled off, I think.

The letter from the British postal service gives no details – it was just a form letter. In fact, as I think about it, I don’t know if it was in the package, or just accompanied the package. It doesn’t even identify the shipment; it’s really just a form. The buyer, who has been very accommodating, sent us pictures of the damaged book.

I tracked the book on the USPS website, and the website gives a very detailed description of the book’s journey until it gets on the plane heading over the ocean. But it does not say anything (I understand it never does) about damage along the way. So the damage could have been in the US, or on the flight, or even in Britain.

So, the story is, I guess, that we really don’t have a story. The book was insured up to $200 by USPS. I didn’t spend the few dollars it would have taken to insure it up to the purchase price because I have never had to make an insurance claim before. I am going to file a claim for this one (my local postal clerk told me “good luck”; that proving responsibility and valuation on international shipments was always complicated).

USPS has, on its website, precise instructions on how to make an insurance claim on an international delivery. Too precise, in fact. They have an on-line form you have to fill out, and a way to upload and send up to ten supporting documents.

So we have three levels of frustration. First, the fact of the damage itself. Second, the exercise of filing a claim. Third, what I anticipate will be a problem collecting.

As to filing the claim, USPS does not make it easy (for me). Filling in the form is easy enough, but uploading my exhibits (the order, the shipping receipt, the British letter regarding repacking, and the two pictures) is a little complicated.

You see, most people assume, because I have a blog, because I put all sorts of things on Facebook, because I send emails through multiple addresses, because I look things up a lot, and because I can even put together a rudimentary (emphasize that word) Power Point presentation, that I certainly can manipulate documents and pictures on my computer. In fact, I have no clue. Back when I was working, and used earlier editions of Windows, I in fact was able to do more than I can now. Now, I have little need of sophistication. I can type a document in Word, but when I save it, I save it by name only. I used to save things in folders, like I do with my email, but now, everything in one place and I rely on my knowledge of the alphabet, my sense of when something was created, and my ability to name a document so that I can later identify it. That’s OK; I can deal with that.

But I am at a loss regarding photos. I have no idea what to do with them. In fact, I use my smartphone for photos. I have thousands of photos on my phone, I have most of them organized, I can find them, and I can send them or post them as required from my phone. But my phone is not synced with my laptop (at least if it is, I don’t know where to see that it is). When I want to save a photo on my computer, I email it from my phone and then save it on my computer.

And to make things more complicated, I don’t know how to store photos, and therefore I don’t know how to find them. The obvious ways don’t really work and they seem to be here and there, and I don’t know where all the heres and theres are.

The USPS form requires that all attachments be downloaded as PDFs. That means not only do I have to find things, I have to make sure they are in PDF form, and I have to have them in one place, so that when I will out the form and get to the attachments, I can pull them all up one after another.

Because you see there seems to be another problem. It does not appear (to me) that you can fill out the USPS form and then save it until you get your exhibits together. You fill it out, add the attachments and transmit it as one action. Otherwise, you have to start all over again.

You see my frustration?

Meanwhile, my buyer wants to keep the book. He has asked for insurance proceeds (if any) and has not asked anything from me directly (yet). He is going to see about rebinding the book and I told him I would help him with the cost of that. I think rebinding is probably a good idea.

Oh, the $450 book. You are interested in what it is? It’s a 1944 copy of The Secret State by Jan Karski, which Karski inscribed twice, once in English and once in Polish. It was in good condition for an 80 year old book, but certainly not pristine condition. It was one of my favorites. I hated to see it go. And now this…..

I did my usual. I got in my car to drive to Rockville, opened my phone to YouTube and selected a talk about a subject I thought might be interesting to listen to as I drive. Being tired of podcasts on Ukraine and Gaza, I decided to learn a little about Garibaldi, the architect of the unification of Italy in the mid-19th century. I know the name Garibaldi; you probably do, too. But who was he and what did he do? I listened and was amazed.

I am doing this from memory, so don’t cite this post as evidence in a court of law (that includes you, Michael Cohen), but here goes.

You may know him as Giuseppe Garibaldi. But in fact, he was born (when Napolean was still lord and master of much of Europe) in Nice, on the Riviera, and given the birth name of Joseph-Maria Garibaldi. His parents were Italian born, but they lived in a French speaking land, and Garibaldi was fluent in both languages.

His father was a business man from Genoa and teen age Garibaldi went to sea, coming back to shore when he was about 21 and earning his living as a tutor and teacher (Garibaldi, you see, was one very smart guy). But travel called.

In addition to being smart, Garibaldi was an inveterate traveler. Over his life, he went everywhere. First, in his mid-20s, he went to Russia, as a crew member of a ship delivering oranges. There, he met a man involved in the early Young Italy movement. Garibaldi decided to go to Italy and get involved, and stayed there a short time, becoming a political activist, something that would last him his entire life.

Italy, of course, during this time was not one country, even after Napoleon was no longer around. There was part of northern Italy occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There was part ruled by the Kingdom of Sardinia. There was part ruled by the Kingdom of Sicily. And there was part under the control of the papacy. Unification, for most, seemed a daunting task.

Having been involved in pre-revolutionary activity in Italy, and marked for arrest, Garibaldi escaped and went to Tunis, in north Africa. Then, his journey continued and he went to South America, where he apparently lived for almost 15 years, first in Brazil and then in Uruguay. In both places, he got himself involved in more revolutionary activity, in an attempt to separate the state of Rio Grande de Sul from the rest of Brazil. It was called the Ragamuffin War and you, like me, probably know nothing about it. But the Riograndense Republic resulted from this rebellion and existed for about ten years before it lost its independence. Again, at some point during this conflict, Garibaldi decided to leave Brazil and went to Uruguay.

Uruguay was a relatively new country, a barrier land to separate Argentina and Brazil, and it had its own political turmoil, which led to a civil war. Garibaldi collected a large number of Italians (I assume expatriates who had moved to Latin America) to form an army (this is where he adopted the “red shirt” uniform he became known for) and fought on the “good guy” side of that war, trying to keep Uruguay from being gobbled up by the military leaders of Argentina. He lived and fought in Uruguay for about six years. During this time, he also married, had several children, and became involved in the Freemason movement, guided not so much by Masonic imagery, as by the Masonic ideal of non-denominational, ethnically based, freedom.

A new pope, Pope Pius IX, was elected when Garibaldi was about to turn 40, and for the first time since he was in his mid-20s, Garibaldi began to think again about the unification of Italy, something that it was rumored the Pius favored (he really didn’t). He decided to return to Italy, taking a number of red-shirted army members with him from Uruguay, to help with the unification of his homeland. (Well, not really his homeland, I guess, French born as he was)

Garibaldi wanted first to help the King of Sardinia, but that didn’t work out, but he led armies against the Austrians (unsuccessful) in the north and against the French in Rome (who were protecting the Pope and the Papal States). He escaped with a few of his men (the majority if his army left him after the defeat in Rome) to San Marino, and then was able again to leave Italy, and he wound up this time in Tangier. He stayed there a short time only and, in 1850, when he was 43, Garibaldi came to New York, where he took up residence, perhaps surprisingly, on Staten Island.

He worked in a candle factory for a year or so (his wife had died in San Marino), and then went with a friend to establish business ventures in Latin America. They stopped as various points in Central America and then went all the way around Cape Horn and up to Lima, Peru. Throughout all of these travels, Garibaldi was treated very well, and known as an Italian patriot and military leader. In Lima, he was apparently given command of a trading ship of some kind, and he went on a still further journey, traveling to China, to the Philippines, and to Australia. He became one of the most traveled celebrities of the 19th century.

Garibaldi sailed the ship back across the Pacific to Chile, where it was loaded with copper and wool, and then he against went around Cape Horn and brought the ship to Boston, where it was unloaded. He then went back to Staten Island, but was soon given a ship to take across the Atlantic, taking goods from New York to England, so he said good-bye to America and found himself back in Europe. He was now 43.

It would be too much to describe his next six years here. Let us just say that he went back to the Italian peninsula, this time allied himself by and large with the Kingdom of Sicily, but working with others managed to remove the Austrians and wrest everything from the Pope except for what is now Vatican City and then combine the kingdoms of Sardinia and Sicily. In fact, Garibaldi became the head of the Kingdom (no longer a kingdom) of Sicily and voluntarily gave up his leadership to Sardinia for the purpose of united the peninsula in 1861.

Garibaldi was now a genuine hero. According to the podcast, he was then invited to come back to the United States by President Lincoln (or on behalf of the president) and create an army of Italian immigrants in the Union (there were many) to join the war against the Confederacy. This did not work out (it would be interesting to look into this further), and I think Garibaldi stayed in Italy until…….

Until Bismark attacked France in 1870 or so, when Garibaldi went back to his birthland (if not his homeland), and helped the French repel the Prussians. Yes, first fighting against Bonaparte France, and then fighting for France against Prussia. And, believe it or not, he stayed in southern France and even became a member of the French Parliament.

But he was restless, and Italy called once again. He spent the rest of his life there, dying in 1882.

During his last years, he remained active, not militarily but politically. He was an influential member, this time of the Italian parliament. He was a progressive’s progressive. OK, for this I did go back to Wikipedia – this was not part of the podcast. Quoting Wikipedia:

Garibaldi suggested a grand alliance among various parties of the left. “Why don’t we pull together in one organized group Freemasonry, the democratic societies, workers clubs, Rationalists, Mutual Aid, etc., which have the same tendency towards good?”

He suggested a Congress of Unity, and had an illegal, but well publicized meeting, which endorsed such policies as “universal suffrage, progressive taxation, compulsory education, administrative reform and abolition of the death penalty.”

I again quote Garibaldi: “Shouldn’t a society (I mean a human society) in which the majority struggle for subsistence and the minority want to take the larger part of the product from the former through deception and violence but without hard work, arouse discontent and thoughts of revenge from those who suffer?”

Before he died, Garibaldi became involved in one more crusade, albeit from afar. This was the independence of the Balkan countries from the Ottoman Empire. In fact, he wanted the Turks to return to the Asian side of the Bosporus, so that even Constantinople would free itself from the Ottomans.

Again to quote him: “On this side of the Bosporus, the fierce Ottoman will always be under the stimulant of eternal war, and you will never obtain the sacred rights of man.”

One last quote, this not by Garibaldi but by English historian A.J.P. Taylor, who called Garibaldi “the only wholly admirable figure in modern history”.

Who knew? Not I.

Frustration is a normal human emotion, I am sure. But I realized this morning how rarely I am frustrated. In fact, I can’t really remember the last time I really felt frustrated for more than a minute or two. I guess this is what members of the faith community call being “blessed”.

So why did today I even think about the concept of being frustrated? You guessed it. I am frustrated. In fact, I am doubly frustrated. And I don’t like it one bit.

(1) Washington National Insurance Company. 30 or so years ago, I put some of our money into two funds – one was an IRA, and the other wasn’t. I don’t even remember who administered these funds  at that time, but they have changed hands several times, and now seem to be under the control of Washington National Insurance Company. In case you don’t know WNIC,  they are one of the few major companies to get a 1 our of 5 rating on a major rating site.

Usually, the servicer, whoever it is at the time, sends me one document every year for each of the two funds, telling me the status. I look at those to make sure the money is still there, that’s it. This is not money that we need day to day, so it really just sits. For the IRA fund, on the other hand, there is a minimum distribution requirement, and I get another letter telling me, for that one fund, what the RMD will be for the year. Later in the year, I get a check in that amount, which counts as part of my income (for income tax purposes) and goes into our joint checking account. Simple.

This year, I got neither status letter, and I got two letters telling me my minimum IRA distributions for 2024, one of the IRA account and one for the non-IRA account. Huh? In addition, the RMD for the IRA account was listed at just over 10% of what I know it should be. And, although the amount held in the IRA account seemed correct, the amount in the non-IRA account was not. The non-IRA account was listed at about $2,500,000, a nice amount to be sure, but well in excess of what it really is.

So, I called and got a nice lady who eventually understood what I was saying, could pull up on her computer the letters I received as well as the amounts currently in the accounts, and realized I was correct. She didn’t know how this happened, but she would contact the appropriate people, and I should have corrective letters within a week. Great, I thought. But of course, the letters never came. So after a month, not a week, I called again.

I got a different nice lady this time, she saw what I was saying, she couldn’t understand why it hadn’t been corrected, she would follow up and I would for sure get two corrective letters. I should give it two weeks.

About ten days later, I did get one corrective letter – the one for the non-IRA account. The account no longer held $2.5 million; it held what I assume to be the right amount. But it still told me what my Required Minimum Distribution for the year would be – even though there is no RMD. So, now I am worried they are going to liquidate part of the account to send me the funds that I neither want nor need. As to the IRA account, I have yet to receive a corrective letter at all.

When I talked to pleasant lady number two, I asked her what I should do if the letters she promised didn’t come within the two weeks. She told me I should call back and ask for a supervisor.

When I looked up Washington National on line, I saw how poorly it was rated, and read the customer reviews, I realized that this company is totally incompetent and that I probably will never be able to talk to a supervisor. “You want a supervisor; they are all busy; you want to hang on forever?” You want a supervisor? Leave me your name and number and they will never ca you back.” Those seemed to be the two most likely probabilities.

I need to figure out what I should do. Thoughts?

(2) My second frustration? It will wait until tomorrow. Hint….it involves a package sent to the UK.

1. Hunter Biden. His gun trial starts today, I think. He bought a gun without giving accurate information as to drug use on his application. I am waiting for Donald T to come out with a defense of Hunter. I am waiting for him to say that this is a political trial, instituted by a corrupt Department of Justice, etc. Or have I missed it and he’s already said that?
2. Fast Food Restaurants. Yesterday, after I walked about 3 miles down to Dupont Circle, I thought I should get something to eat and, more importantly, something to drink. I went into a coffee house, Roasting Plant Coffee, on Connecticut Avenue which promised coffee and more. They had three sandwiches listed on their menu board – cheese, ham and turkey. I ordered a turkey and an iced coffee. Sorry, they said at noon, we are out of everything but ham. So I walked around the corner and just stopped into a Subway and got a 6″ sweet teriyaki chicken and a coke. The ice machine was out of ice and the coke was at room temperature. After I finished the sandwich, I decided to go to the men’s room before I hit the road. There were two bathrooms. The man behind the counter (probably the franchisee on a slow Sunday morning downtown) asked me if I wanted to wash my hands. Weird, I thought, and said “not really”. Then, he said, “Don’t go in there; it’s blocked up.” “OK, I’ll use the other one.” “No, they are both blocked up.” “OK”, I said, very sorry that I had eaten the sandwich and given him a tip. My tip should have been “Call a plumber.”
3. Tattoos. I should do a broader study of tattoos, but I never know how one should react to them. Do people with tattoos want you to look at their tattoos (and hopefully admire them), or do they tattoo their bodies in the hope that you will ignore their tattoos completely? (“What? I have a tattoo?”) A question well above my pay grade. Maybe you only can look at a tattoo once you get to know the person well. (“Excuse me, but is that skeleton on your shoulder a tattoo?”) I began thinking about tattoos (as I occasionally do) this weekend because of three that I saw. (1) I normally think of tattoos on the bodies of people much younger than I, but yesterday I saw a tall woman, who looked about my age, wearing a sleeveless dress, with a large and colorful tattoo on her exposed shoulder. I thought she looked perfectly silly. Why did she do this? (2) At a Mexican restaurant where we had lunch on Saturday, there were a number of Hispanic men eating lunch – they were dressed for work, their work being a landscaper or a construction worker or something. One of them at a nearby table had a large tattoo on the inside of his forearm that read, in big black letters, ROBERT GARCIA JR. Now, maybe that is his dead best friend, or even his young son, but, gee, for the rest of his life, he is going to see that name staring him down whenever he looks at his arm. (3) I was walking behind an ordinary looking youngish (40s?) woman yesterday, who also had a tattoo on the backside of her forearm (so easy for me to see behind her). I walked closer in the hope that I could read the script and it said “Well, that is mighty White of you”. She, by the way, was White (by appearance). What could make you put that on your arm as a permanent reminder of…..what?
4. The Film. We saw that well-touted French Film, “Au revoir, M. Haffmann”, at the Avalon last night. A little disappointing as a film (what else is new?), but an interesting story about a talented Jewish jeweler in Paris in 1941, who sends his family to the unoccupied south, and sells his store to his apprentice, planning on meeting up with his family shortly. His timing is bad, there are roundups, his smuggler has quit smuggling, and poor Mr. Haffmann cannot get out of Paris. Where should he hide? Back to his former shop’s basement. And that’s when things get confusing. Not a must see, but certainly not a must stay away from. A depressing film, to be sure, but not without its interesting facets (that a jewelry pun).
5. The Book. More about this later, but I am reading Arkady Ostrovsky’s The Invention of Russia, which tells the story of the evolution (probably not the best word, if evolution connotes progress) of Russia from Stalin to Putin. I am in the section that deals with Gorbachev and his fall, Yeltsin and his fall, and pretty soon we will have Putin. Throughout this period of Russian chaos, when oligarchs were trying to outsmart each other, and good government types were in short supply, it was unclear where the country would wind up. Sadly, and in spite of the obvious factual and situational differences, there is a lot in this particular period of Russia’s story that reminds of me of the USA today. But we will talk about that at another time….

Our local high school is named Jackson-Reed High School. Until 2022, it was Woodrow Wilson High School, but the name was changed because of the tarnished legacy of Wilson who was a segregationist (in addition to being a pretty good president in all other ways). Jackson was the first Black teacher at the school, and Reed the first Black principal. Whether this was a good name change is for another day. There were those who thought they could rename the school for playwright August Wilson and save money on new signage, but that’s for another day.

The student body is very diverse, racially, ethnically, religiously, nationally, in all ways. I read that about 30% of the student body comes from outside of Ward 3, the neighborhood for the school, and 70% from within the Ward.

There was an “International Night” the other night at the school, a tradition of many schools here, where people from various parts of the world cook foods indigenous to their homelands. Apparently, this year there were a number of attendees who were unhappy about the Israeli booth and said so in words that were unpleasant, intolerant, and uncalled for. The Israeli and Jewish students felt very uncomfortable, I am told, and the entire evening became very unpleasant. I have also read that there have been similar instances of anti-Israel, turning into antisemitic, at the school, but I don’t know anything about them.

The Jewish Community Relations Council for Greater Washington put out a statement basically telling the school that it better get its act together to protect the Jewish kids at the school. I read it last night on Facebook. I saw that there were many comments posted regarding the statement, and I decided to look at them. That was my first mistake. The comments outraged me. No, not that there were anti-semites commenting on the JCRC website. That wasn’t the problem. The problem were the commentators (a good portion of them) who blamed the situation not on the school’s failure to protect the students, but on Joe Biden (in particular) and the Democrats (as a group).

You see, it turns out that the reason that all this came to a head at Jackson-Reed was, in the opinion of some, that Joe Biden hadn’t stood up strongly enough for Israel, but gave into those in the Democratic Party who were more interested in a ceasefire than a continuing one-sided war. And there were others who didn’t seem to blame Biden personally, but who blamed “The Squad”, who – in case you did not know – were hand-in-hand allies of Hamas. And they topped their comments by concluding that only the re-entry of Trump into the presidency would clear up all the problems at Jackson-Reed. OK, they didn’t exactly say that, but…..only Trump can fix it. That, they did say.

That’s when I made my second mistake. I violated a cardinal principle of mine. I commented. I said: “Of course, this is Joe Biden’s fault. Why did I have to read all these comments to know that? I must have been blind. And remind me: who was the guy who said there were good people on both sides?”

Well, yes, I have received quite a few “likes”. But I have also spawned my own nasty comments: “The Squad open supports Hamas and Biden is afraid to stand up to them….[someone needs to] take back the DNC from a minority of ultra left-wing radical fascists.” “[Biden does not] have the brain [to do so].” “There were good people on both sides in Charlottesville…….stop spewing the MSM [sic] crap, you’re embarrassing yourself.” “It’s not just Biden’s fault; it’s all the Democrats.” “When has Donald Trump ever said anything antisemitic? You’re ignorance is showing”.

By the way, other posts (not directed back at me) are also interesting:

“DC govt and MPD have been antisemitic since the days of the mayor for life, Marion Barry.” [This one surprised me actually – nothing can be less factual than this comment. Never heard anyone say this before.]

“Democrats and their radical Islamic allies need to be taken out of political positions as they are no better than Nazis.”

“These places are just petri dishes of hate that should be defunded….” [That one got 21 likes, so far]

And many more.

I must get back to my core principles.