Art is 80

What did I read on my vacation? I actually finished one book, read another, and started (and stopped) a third.

The book that I completed was Robert Finnegan’s The Bandaged Nude, a 1950s mystery that I wrote about just before I left on the trip. The only thing I didn’t know then was who done it, and now that I know, I am not impressed. As one pondered all the possibilities, a new-ish character came in from left field and it turned out he was the one. That’s cheating.

The one I couldn’t finish, and I do thank friend T_____ A_____ for sending it to me was Michael Shaara’s Killer Angels, his 1975 book that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction that year. This is a book that everyone loves. But me. It’s the story of the Battle of Gettysburg, fictionalized not as to who won and who lost, but as to the emotions and conversations of the major participants. It’s just not a topic I care about (I care about what caused the Civil War, but not about how individual battles were won or lost), and I just didn’t have any interest the conversations during the run up to the war, especially as they were all made up. So, I went through a little more than 100 pages and decided that was more than enough. If you have read this book, I am sure you loved it. Everyone that I know did.

Having need, then, of something to occupy my time during our days hanging around friend N______ B_______ home in Kennebunkport (actually Goose Rocks Beach), I went to the local library’s basement book store (I had been there before) and bought a copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, much more my style.

You probably know Nabokov as the author of Lolita, and maybe more. You may know he was born in Russia (tsarist Russia), lived much of his life in the U.S., where he taught, wrote and chased butterflies. He is a clever writer, but not necessarily someone you want to have a drink with. Why is that? Not because he isn’t interesting, but because his world was so different from yours that I am not sure you’d have much to talk about.

His memoir (perhaps written for his wife? Unclear to me. And unimportant) came out when he was already a senior citizen, and it is comprised to a great extent of pieces he had written much earlier. Most of these pieces were written in Russian, translated (by him) into English, translated again from the English to the Russian (with emendations), and then translated back from the Russian to the English. He did all of this himself, which tells you (I am sure) something (but I don’t know what).

The book is only somewhat chronological. He divides it by subject matter, and some of the subject matter follows from earlier to later, but some does not. But there are chapters on his early years in Russia, his friends, his family, his schooling, winter, summer, butterflies, chess, exile, France, Berlin, Russian intelligentsia, more butterflies and more butterflies (and more chess – by the way the chess chapter is well beyond me).

Oh, and as to having a beer with him, you also learn that he doesn’t want to have a beer with you. After meeting Russian Nobelist Ivan Bunin for dinner in Paris, he writes: “I happen to have a morbid dislike for restaurants and cafes, especially Parisian ones – I detest crowds, harried waiters, Bohemians, vermouth concoctions, coffee, zakuski, floor shows and so forth. I like to eat and drink in a recumbent position (preferably on a couch) and in silence.” (I imagined him a couch potato, eating a couch potato.)

His life was clearly interesting. He was born in 1899 in Russia into a very, very, very, very rich and very, very, very important family of very, very noble people. Not only did his family have a large summer country estate (not to speak of a mansion in St. Petersburg), but each of his aunts and uncles had their own very large summer estates. At the Nabokov estate, they had approximately 50 servants, including cooks, cleaners, chauffeurs, gardeners, nursemaids, personal maids, valets and so forth.

He was an odd child, preferring his own company and the company of his butterfly net to anything else, so he was a loner much of the time, disappearing early in the mornings, and returning home in time for a midday meal. He got into trouble enough, and his intellectual ability might not have been apparent until later.

When the revolution came (his father, a leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party, had already been jailed by the tsar at one point), the Nabokovs left Russia. He father was killed by an assassin in 1922 in Switzerland where his mother remained, and Vladimir roamed around Europe for years until he came to America. Speak, Memory stops when he got to the United States, so we don’t hear about his years and accomplishments here.

Of course, when they left Russia, the uber-wealthy Nabokovs became the very poor Nabokovs, and Vladimir lived in Paris and Berlin, floating around intellectual emigre circles in various states of poverty, earning a little here and there from his writing.

And, oh yes, he did get to England where he studied at and took a degree from Cambridge. Another quote: “Not once in my three years of Cambridge – repeat not once – did I visit the University Library, or even bother to locate it. (I know its new place now.)”

In addition to being interested in most everything he writes about in the book, I am intrigued by the vocabulary he uses. He has an enormous vocabulary, and uses words you have never heard of in a casual way, as if they are the most common words in the world. And when he doesn’t have a word, what does he do? He just makes one up.

It’s 9:13 a.m. and I have a 10:00 a.m. meeting to go to in Rockville and I want to publish this post. Later today, I think I will put out a supplement that does nothing but show you some of the words he uses. I may even proof-read this one….something I have no time for right now.

Thanks to S_____ of White Plains and E_____ of my house,  who corrected this morning’s post. Of course, Crooks was a registered Republican. Can’t even blame my error on autocorrect.

Let’s again start with the assassination attempt. While there is much we don’t know, we do know that Matthew Crooks was a registered Republican, that he was White, and that he acted alone. That puts him in the same category, I believe, as most American assassins and would-be assassins. He is not a crazy leftist, a socialist, a Communist, a transgender individual, etc. He was not part of a conspiracy, he does not represent a political cult or movement, he was just a kid whose mind went somewhat out of whack. Again, like most who do as he did.

So, to me, there is no need to express alarm at what happened, except for two elements of the crime. First, that he was able to obtain an AK-15 (but we have already talked about that). Second, that he shot from a roof that the Secret Service had already identified as a possible site for a shooter. I am sure we will hear more about that at some point, but – as an aside – this is not too different from the failure of Israeli security to be able to prevent the Hamas attack from Gaza. The failures of security happen – in ways that are unexpected, and more often than you wish.

So let’s worry about guns and security, and not try to blame the attack on either Joe Biden. But this is exactly what so many Republicans are doing. Republicans including one J.D. Vance, who said that Biden’s portrait of Trump as an “authoritarian Fascist who much be stopped at all costs…..led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

This from the man the Republican presidential candidate, who says he wants to unify the country after Saturday’s tragedy,⁸ has picked as his 39 year old vice presidential running mate.

Of course, there have others who have said similar things: Congressman Mike Collins (“Joe Biden sent the orders.”), Matt Gaetz (“……Now, they have tried to assassinate him.”), Mike Kelly (this is “an attack from the left”).

Vance has been criticized for his comment, but hasn’t taken it back. In fact, his thinking on the subject (if indeed this is his actual thinking) is probably one of the reasons Trump has selected him.

But Vance has said other things: “My God, what an idiot” (speaking about Trump), “I’m a Never Trump Guy”, “But I also don’t like Trump myself”, Trump could be “America’s Hitler” or “a cynical asshole like Nixon”, “Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.” And more.

But all that was before Vance decided he needed Trump’s support when he started his run for the Senate. In other words, we have someone whose thinking changes rapidly and completely when it needs to change to give him a political advantage, and who cannot be taken as a serious individual.

So what about his current policy positions? Apparently, Vance’s positions include being totally against aid to Ukraine (and Israel?), totally anti-abortion with no exceptions for incest or rape, disagreement with Mike Pence when Pence refused to following Trump’s requests to refuse to certify the 2020 election, and high protectionism and tariffs.

It seems to me that all of this is great fodder for the Democrats. In addition, what does Vance bring to the campaign (as opposed to being a yes-man for Trump)? He comes from Ohio, a safe Republican state, he is not a woman nor a minority, and all he can do is cement the MAGA base. I think this gives the Democrats a big opportunity…..if only they can come up with the right candidates.

We did see one yard sign on our trip which said “Any rational individual”, and I saw a picture of a pick-up with “Re-elect Nobody” painted on its back.

This is how most of America feels. Remember “A choice, not an echo”? We have twooooo echooooos. We need a choice.

It is supposed to be 99 today and 101 tomorrow. After cool lower 90’s in southern Maine, this seems like too much. By the way, these temperatures are presumably being orchestrated by the same God who saved Donald Trump’s life after the same God allowed young Mr. Crooks to shoot him. Not being flippant here, but seriously, folks. And why is it that all Democrats seem to be coming out with a “stop the violence” mantra (as usual), while many Republicans are saying “Biden did it – if not directly, he did it indirectly”? Is it time for Biden to add to his popularity by standing before the camera, holding up each hand, fingers outlining the letter V, and saying once and for all: “I am not a Crooks”? (Sorry about that; I hear the audience groaning.)

But seriously, isn’t it surprising not that someone tried to kill Trump, but that this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often? There are 400 million guns in the United States now, and of those between 80 and 100 million are semi-automatic guns. Today, and for some time now, about 50% of guns sold each year in this country are semi-automatic. (These figures are the product of Google’s AI.)

Whom do I blame? Of course, I blame the people who buy these guns. Every single one of them, whether they have shot at a president or former president, or not. I also blame everyone in the business of manufacturing, distributing, promoting and selling the guns, every one of them, whether or not they sold a gun to Matthew Crooks’ father (or whomever it is determined purchased the gun used to shoot Trump). But perhaps most of all, once again I blame our Supreme Court, which in 2008, decided the case, District of Columbia v. Heller, which expanded the reach of the Second Amendment of the U.S. constitution well beyond its previous reach, and decided – basically – that no level of government could ban or heavily regulate firearms. 2008 may seem like a long time ago (16 years by my calculation), but three of the five members who found for Mr. Heller (Roberts, Alito and Thomas) are still on the Court. The other two positive votes were Scalia and Kennedy (Kennedy being the Court’s then swing man, who clearly swung the wrong way on this one).

And since then, other Second Amendment decisions have not only affirmed Heller, but expanded its reach, covering weapons beyond the handguns that were the primary subject of Heller.

Someone once said that Republicans focus on the Supreme Court, while Democrats ignore it. This has manifest itself in two ways – first, in electoral politics, where Republicans have been focusing on the importance of having a conservative Court to deal with not only the Second Amendment, but a myriad of other topics, and second, in Congressional politics, where Mitch McConnell shamefully kept one nomination from the Senate floor, and rushed another one through under the precise same circumstances. He should not be forgiven for this dereliction of duty.

2024 is another election year and the Democrats should push the need for a Democratic president to choose the next Supreme Court justices. But I haven’t seen this as a major push yet, even though the Court has now set itself up as the strongest leg by far of the three legged stool that forms our government.

Although I was not concentrating on the news on the drive home yesterday, I sense that there is a feeling that the shooting is going to help the Republicans. I don’t understand why this should be, why it should favor any group that believes in the Gospel of the pure Second Amendment. I don’t understand why anyone who didn’t like Trump before he was shot would like him now enough to vote for him. Unless of course they believe people like that clearly pigeon-brained Congressman from Georgia who said it was Biden who directed Mr. Crooks to fire the shot.

Heaven help us.

Oh, how was the drive home yesterday? It was fine. Thanks for asking.

I have no idea who Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia is, but did he really say that whoever shot former President Trump was put up to the job by Joe Biden? This tells you all you need to know about America,  doesn’t it?

I must admit I am curious as to who did it. I hope it isn’t an undocumented individual who the Biden administration gave a court date three years from now. (I see it was a 20 year old registered Republican with an AK-15.)

While all this was going on, we were having dinner (a good dinner) with friends at the Himalaya Restaurant in Scarsdale NY. I had fried noodles with chicken, beef and egg, which was excellent. The only problem was that this was Saturday night and that meant MUSIC!!. Two Nepali guitar players and at least one (the one who sang) couldn’t sing at all. And they were LOUD!!

We are staying with those friends (who often stay with us in DC ), but before coming to their house, we had a nice visit with a college friend of Edie’s, who she had not seen in years. The important thing about these two friends is that they both read this blog daily and they “like” it every day. (That is a hint.)

Today, we come home, making a stop in Manhattan to see another friend recovering from surgery. Of course, the difficulty there will be finding a parking space.

Part of yesterday was spent at the Book Barn in Niantic CT, a remarkable establishment with three locations in one small town. This was not our first visit.

Anyway, we are anxious to get home and look forward to our time on the Jersey Turnpike and our stop at the Delaware rest stop.

New Bedford is an interesting city of about 100,000 located south of Boston on Buzzards Bay, which leads directly to the Atlantic Ocean. It is by and large a working city and, aside from a small part of its downtown filled with some buildings 200 years of age, and its port with its many fishing boats, holds little of interest for the normal tourist.

Ita main interest is in its history. It was founded by Quakers, it was the whaling capital of the United States during the first part of the 19th century (and this country’s richest city), it was an active way station for the underground railway before the Civil War, it was a textile center during the early 20th century. Even today it is a major fishing port, where most of its boats leave port for 10  to 14 days at a time and return with thousands of scallops. A hard life, fishing is, and certainly not very lucrative.

The city’s biggest attraction is not the port, but the New Bedford Whaling Museum, which l expected to  like but wound up liking even more.

From the museum:

The pictures do not do it justice. At the museum, you learn about whales, about the study of whales, about whale hunting worldwide and out of New Bedford, about boats and oars and tools and clothing, about art, about the demise of the industry and the rise of the textile industry in New Bedford in its place. There are full size boats, more scrimshaw than you thought existed, maps and books, weapons, everything. We spent over 2 hours looking around.

We also went to the city’s small art museum,where we saw a nice glass exhibit, which included two by Chiluly. Here is one (which, to fool you, might be upside down):

We ate tonight at a remarkable restaurant, The Black Whale, located at the pier near the fishing boats. The food was good, the prices were fairly high, but the remarkable thing about it is its size and how crowded it apparently is at all times every day. This is quite a business, especially in a relatively poor city, but where most customers (from the license plates on the free parking lot) are local.

One of the reasons may be that there seem to be few restaurants and few hotels. So if you have a lot of room, a central location, good food and free parking….

Just a few more pictures from New Bedford. We leave in the morning.

The last? An extra large rooster, made up of discarded scrap material by 11 and 12 graders, copying something similar in Lisbon.

Today, we move west.

We cross into Portsmouth NH and there is a sign that says “Old Books”. The car automatically stops and turns into a parking lot for an old building that looks like it has seen better times. There is a car, two pickups and an old bus on the parking lot. They all are filled (I mean that literally, to the gills) with books. An “Open” sign is on the door, but it looks like no one is there. I try the door and it opens. We walk into space that is about 90% books and 10% air. An old man, short, bald and heavy appears and asks us what we are looking for. It takes me aback and I say “biography” for want of something better. He is not in the mood for small talk and says simply “Aisle 14”.

I go to Aisle 14 and it is pitch black. I see no light switch. I call back and ask him if he can turn on the lights. He does. This is what I see

The books on the shelf are perfectly alphabetical and there are many 19th century books, some of which must be quite rare, along with more contemporary ones. But the space between the shelves and the enormous stacks of books in back of you is maybe 16 inches. Standing and taking a book out requires dexterity, and the fear that the ten foot stacks of books behind you might fall if you make one false move is overwhelming. Each book, by the way, is priced individually and too high.

Because of the difficulty in navigating the space, we decide to leave. I thank him as we get to the door. His response? “I thought you came to buy books…..I even turned the light on for you….Why do you come if you aren’t buying anything?….You are just wasting my time…Get out! You are tresspassing.”

We left, of course, amazed. How does he sell any books at all? What will happen to the books if he drops dead? The books are virtually impossible to get now, but there are many that should be protected and not trashed.

Here is our goodbye image. Google Antiquarian Books Portsmouth NH and look at the various customer reviews if you want entertainment. But so sad.

Meanwhile, food. First, our lunches. Then, my dinner.

These come from Loretta’s in Newburyport MA.

This comes from Riccardis in New Bedford MA.

Today? The Whaling Museum. Did you know, because of whaling in the early 19th century,  New Bedford was the wealthiest city in the country?

I am thinking of a few other things.

Robert Hur, special counsel, reports that Joe Biden comes across as an elderly man with memory problems, and everyone gets so upset. How can he say such a thing? Why would he say such a thing? Why did he throw it in his report?

Now, we realize that he was probably correct. And he probably thought that his impression was important to convey.

But his job was to gather facts. Was it also to give his opinion?

George Stephanopoulos interviews Biden for ABC-TV. I didn’t see the interview, but George S. gets  good reviews as a fair interviewer. The reaction to Biden’s condition after the interview is mixed, or so it appears.

George S. goes to the gym. He is walking home and a stranger recognizes him, approaches him and asks him the question, basically saying “You are the one who should know. Is he fit?” George S says “no”.

George is embarrassed. He realizes that itcwas a mistake for him to have responded. He is a jounalist. Reporting the facts. Not giving his opinion.

But was it a mistake? Biden’s capacity is crucially important, is it not? And because it is so important,  perhaps it is equally appropriate that a journalist and a lawyer violate standard norms to tell us what we need to know.

Let’s move to another topic. Did you see where a Black man, I think in Michigan, applied for a job at a hotel using his given name and was not even granted an interview.  He then turned around and submitted the same information to the same hotel in a second application,  this time using a fake Polish-y name, and was asked to come in for an interview.

Surprised? Of course not. This is why so many Jews changed their names in the first half of the twentieth century.  And now that universities cannot use racial preferences and so many companies feel it safer (or better) to drop diversity programs, maybe Blacks will have to start doing the same. All of those Afrocentric first names, those names starting with a sonorous but unnecessary “De…”, and all those Biblical names that sound all right, but Whites don’t use? Maybe they will begin to vanish.

Oh, and Maine? Here goes:

We leave this morning. Tonight? Hopefully, New Bedford, Mass.

Of course, the most delightful thing about being in Kennebunkport is being able to look at some of the older houses. These, I believe,  are all from 1790 to 1810:

Then, there are the city views:

And there are Kennedy supporters:

And finally, the tourists:

Yesterday was quiet, as vacation days should be. Our Rhode Island friends are here and we are now 5.

Because I have given up on Killer Angels much to the surprise of many, I needed a substitute. Not immediately, because I brought a Penguin mystery with me, but soon. So we went to the book store at the Kennebunkport library and i bought a copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, which is more my speed.

The mystery? It’s called The Bandaged Nude and I am sure you haven’t read it. I am halfway through. The “bandaged nude” is a painting of a beautiful woman, unclothed, but with a bandage on one toe. Don’t ask, because I don’t know. The painter was murdered and placed in a case of spaghetti which had been spoiled by a seawater leak. Now do you see why I am reading it?

It’s set in San Francisco in the late 1940s.  The author is Paul Ryan, but it’s written under the name of Robert Finnegan. Ryan was a longshoreman and a Communist (as a Communist he wrote under Mike Quin), but you wouldn’t know it from the book. His writing was limited because he died of cancer quite young. I have no idea who the murderer will turn out to be.

Enough of that.

What else? I saw this Ferrari parked a block away from us. It wasn’t for sale, but I thought about making an offer. It seems that $350,000 might be reasonable as a start to negotiate from. But then I realized how limited the trunk space was, so I decided against it.

Meanwhile,  I have not paid much attention to the news. Is Biden still president? I don’t know if it makes much difference to the folks on Goose Rocks Beach. Except for this guy.

Today and tomorrow should be just lazy days. I hope. Weather today started off better than the last two because the humidity is down.  The July 4 crowd seems to have gone as well. It’s far from deserted, but you can find a parking space. For your Ferrari.

If you want a nice photo of the lower Maine coast,  how about this one?

This was taken from the garden of the Ogunquit Art Museum. It’s a small museum, with an interesting history, located in the magnatourist town of Ogunquit south of Kennebunkport. It features a selection of American art by a group of artists, many of whom gave connections with this area. Here are a couple that I thought worth showing.

And from the sculpture garden.

Dinner tonight at Chez Rosa in Kennebunkport. There are hundreds of restaurants nearby and the debate as to which deserved our business went on and on. I chose Chez Rosa arbitrarily and said this is where we will go. I expected pushback. There was none. Hake baked in a pastry shell, ratatouille,  and more. Another 5  stars.

The rest of the day – just hanging out. NYT crossword. Reading Michael Shaara’s classic Killer Angels, which I am trying hard to enjoy (but think I will give up because details of the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg are of no interest to me). Taking a morning walk in humidity I was surprised to find in Maine.

Watching the hopeful results in the second part of the French voting. Hoping we can learn from that here. Same thing with Iran. All you need is turnout.

Tomorrow,  our Rhode Island friends join us. In the meantime,  we learn one of our Massachusetts friends, whom we are to see on Thursday eve has COVID.

So our visit to their house in South Dartmouth MA may be limited to a drive-by waive.

Another 300+miles, and here we are. And here we will be for the next four days, being generously housed by our friend N_______. We will soon be joined by friends E______ and R______, driving up from Rhode Island.

(You wonder how our friends got those names. It’s from reading classic Russian novels, such as those by D_________ and T______.)

So I will make this short. Breakfast in Oneonta is to be avoided in my experience.  Our hotel oatmeal was so dense that it reminded me more of the mortar we used to make the pyramids than a healthy breakfast food. So we went to a coffee shop we spotted the night before to find it closed. So i went to Oneonta Bagel Store, ordered a bagel and a cup of French Roast, along with a milder Breakfast Blend for Edie. The bagel was not edible (really) and the two coffees tasted identical.

We were redeemed at lunch in an old diner (been there since 1948) in Bennington VT. The Blue Benn Diner. I had a vegetable scramble with the vegetables I like best along with home fries and whole wheat toast. And, because it’s a popular diner and the booths were full,we ate at the counter. I gave my lunch 5 stars.

Other highlights? Troy, New York. Been there? It’s the home of RPI.

In addition, Troy has an unbelievable weekly farmers’ market, which we chanced upon. I took several photos. But……if you find them, let me know. They have vanished.

Finally, in case  you wonder,  Vermont and New Hampshire are still very appealing.

We are about 350 miles from home and it took us all day to get here. Why? Because, in our usual way we said: “Let’s stay off the Interstates” and we did that for most of our trip.

We pulled into Oneonta NY about 6 pm, checked into our hotel and went to dinner. We had made reservations at Toscana, an Italian restaurant hyped on Yelp  just down the street from the local Chabad House. It gets 5 stars from us. Delicious fresh bread served with a mild garlic infused olive oil and home created truffle butter, fresh green salad with an excellent red pepper Italian dressing, barramundi for me and eggplant Parmigiano for Edie and chocolate mousse for the two of us.

Oneonta is a college town with many shops and restaurants, but it isn’t photogenic, so no pictures here.

Pottsville PA, where we stopped for lunch rates high for picture ops. We stopped there by chance. Look the the photos and captions and you will see a few reasons it was so intriguing.

We also found a great place for a quick lunch. A combination book store and coffee shop, with sandwiches available as well. I had an everything bagel with turkey and sharp cheddar cheese.

And their book collection (not large, but excellent quality) was arranged BY COLOR!!!

Other than that, a beautiful drive through the heart of Pennsylvania’s historic anthracite district, the tourist town of Jim Thorpe (worth its own trip), and the Poconos. Only a few spoilers.

And a little humor.

More tomorrow.

I started this blog on November 15, 2022. By my calculations, that means that this is my 600th consecutive post. Of course, you should feel free to correct me, because even though I got all A’s in math in middle school and high school, I always felt those grades were undeserved, and my calculations (or my phone’s calculations, to be perfectly truthful) may be off. And when I got to college, I decided that I would not take any math classes, which I didn’t.

How that affected me, I don’t know. My senior year of high school class was trigonometry. That means a number of things. First, it means that, although I got an A in trigonometry, today I can’t tell you what trigonometry was about. I remember the words sine and cosine and tangent and cotangent, but that’s all I remember. And I remember those words because they are words – and you don’t have to know trigonometry to be able to remember four words. It also means that I never took any calculus. I think most college graduates my age (at least most of those who I know) did take some calculus (or maybe at least pre-calculus). Do they remember anything? Has it helped them in their lives? Do they know something I don’t know?

And, if I wanted to be a scientist, or a computer programmer, or any of those things, would I have to know calculus? What is calculus anyway? Does anyone really know? Or is it like string theory or economics or the language spoken in ancient times on Easster Island (before it was ever called Easter Island)? I have no idea.

Oh, you say, “Arthur, you are just being your usual modest self. You were probably a mathematical genius.” Well, you must not know about my sold geometry class in 10th, or maybe 11th, grade. I understood nothing. Absolutely nothing. On each of my quizzes, I got C’s or maybe C+’s. This was very unusual for me in high school, so I was concerned. I went to see my teacher and told him my plight and that I thought I needed some extra help. His response was a simple “Don’t worry about it.” That of course did not satisfy me at all, but what could I do? I took the final exam. I knew I did poorly, just like I had on the quizzes. I don’t remember my grade on the final, if I ever knew it, but my grade for the class was an “A”. I saw my teacher in the hall and he said, “See, I told you not to worry.” (That last sentence is fake history.)

Okay, that’s it for “600!!” What about “And We’re Off”?

“We’re off” means that we are getting in our car this morning and heading northeast. We will make a 9 a.m. stop at the post office to mail a couple of books (one to Glasgow and one to New Delhi), and then head up Connecticut Avenue, and across the Beltway to I-270. Our first stop tomorrow will be Oneonta NY, and then we head to visit with friends in Kennebunkport ME, then down to New Bedford MA (actually South Dartmouth, but no knows where that is), the to White Plains NY, then the city of which White Plains is more or less a suburb, then maybe a stop or two in New Jersey and home. Unless we get totally diverted, we’ll be home in about 10 days.

But meantime, blog posts 601-610 will be posted and you can follow our adventures (I use that term advisedly) on the road. And what do you think? What will happen over the next ten days? Will we all be rooting for Kamala Harris to be our next President? Things might move more quickly than you think.

Seems obvious, but it could have been different. When Congress adopted the Monday holiday act, the Fourth of July could have been moved to the first Monday in July. This year that would have been Monday, July 1, which is Canada Day, and both countries could have celebrated together – the US celebrating their break from Great Britain, Canada celebrating the creation of the Dominion of Canada within the British Empire. In other words, they would have jointly celebrated totally opposing ideas and realities. Yet, both countries (obviously with significant differences, many if not most, I am afraid, favoring Canada) came out of their opposite experiences pretty much the same and quite friendly with each other.

I know there has been a lot of alternative history written over the years. Generally in that regard, you think of “If the South Had Won the Civil War” kind of topics. I can’t say that I have ever seen any books titled “If the Colonists Had Just Stuck with Britain”, but it is something that I have thought of now and then. What if there had been no Lexington or Concord, no Tea Party, no Revolutionary War? What would North America be like today?

Obviously, there is no reliable answer to this question. If the British colonies in North America had remained British colonies, things might have been quite different. Would France still control the Mississippi River and the Louisiana Purchase never been a purchase? Would Mexico have to this day extended to the Oregon border. Would Spanish Florida remained outside of English speaking North America? Would slavery have ended more quickly than it did, and without a war with 600,000 dead? On the other hand, would wars between the various North American nations have pock marked our history? Would Prince Harry have had to go into exile somewhere else?

So many questions.

But here we are, the most powerful country on Earth, and perhaps today one of the most emotionally unsettled. By winning that war against the Brits in the late 18th century, we got pretty full of ourselves, I would say. By having so much land, and being separated by so much water from potential military rivals, we got to think of ourselves as a bit more clever than we were, perhaps. And of course that has carried over until today. American exceptionalism, in spite of the fact that there is little exceptional about us and, in fact, to the extent that our politics make us exceptional, they may make us exceptional in ways that should not make us proud. I saw a report today that, because of the economic doldrums in which Britain finds itself today, many young Brits would consider moving outside their country. There was a list of 28 countries that I saw, giving potential British emigrants the pros and cons of each. Add them all together and the United States ranked 28th out of the 28.

C-Span was interesting this morning, as their callers were asked about “patriotism”. Most did not define patriotism as waving a flag or grilling a hot dog, but rather as serving one another, treating one another humanely, looked out to each other as a collective to which each of us belongs. This of course is not our current ethos. Spurred on by ex-president You Know Who, we are each out for ourselves, divided we stand.

Those who was the debate witnessed not only Joe Biden’s sleepy performance and Donald Trump’s collection of falsehoods, but the realization that, with 330,000,000 exceptional citizens, this is the best we could do in 2024. Yet, with the Judiciary and particularly the Supreme Court taking over all policy direction for our government, our President may become less important overall. And, as Trump spins out lie after lie, as Biden apparently deceives all of us regarding his physical and mental condition, and the Supreme Court fools us by claiming to be originalists in the way they interpret our constitutional rights while they simply seem to sugar coat whatever they would like to see the country be as if it were historic necessity.

I recently read a biography of James Madison, the fourth US president, and the primary author of so many of the founding documents which the originalists have converted to Gospel. So much of what happened in those days, in the various constitutional conventions and everything that led up to them, was accidental, compromise, reached in frustration. Why these documents should become holy and untouchable, and why they should override the benefit of the people, is beyond me.

As usual, when I sit down to write this blog, I have no idea what will come out. What’s worse, I have no idea when I should stop and say “fini”. Now?

Fini.

Who would have thought that on July 3, 2024, the biggest question in the American mind, a question being discussed on Newsmax and MSNBC, is what it’s like to be 81. Well, I have been 81 for over seven months, so I guess I am qualified to answer this question.

(1) The biggest thing on the mind of an 81 year old is the question: Will I live to be 82. (This, by the way, is a question that vanishes when the 81 year old in question reaches their next birthday.)

(2) People wonder if an 81 year old can take a series of flights between both the east and west coasts of the United States and Europe and have it take almost two weeks for him to recover. All I can say is that the last international trip I took was to Portugal about 10 months ago. I have not recovered yet.

(3) People wonder if an 81 year old remembers the name of his 6th grade teacher. He was Mr. Koger. People also wonder if an 81 year old can remember what he had for dinner last night. He can’t. (But it was really good, Edie.)

(4) People wonder if an 81 year old can think as quickly as, say, a 51 year old. (Let me think about that, and I will get back to it later. If I forget to, send me a reminder by IM. Don’task me what IM is.)

(5) People wonder about the decision making ability of an 81 year old. Let me assure you that it is fine. On second thought……..yeah, it’s fine. (I am pretty sure that is correct.)

(6) People wonder if an 81 year old is stiffer than when he was younger. Yes, and that is an advantage. (I assume the question is about maintaining a stiff upper lip)

(7) People wonder what the typical 81 year old thinks is the best invention of all times. That’s an easy one – the banister.

(8) People wonder if 81 year olds have any trouble remembering names. The answer is no. Let me give you some examples: William, Robert, George, Hermione, Elvis, Naomi, Clara, Donald and Joe. Those are all names. (But some 81 year olds do have trouble pulling up the names of their best friends or of people they have known a life time. But we have tricks. If I see someone I know and can’t remember their name right away, I just run through names alphabetically until I find one that matches. I start with Aardvark….)

(9) People wonder if 81 year olds are better from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. than at other times of the day. The answer is yes (on good days), but you should also remember that, during those six hours, they take two or three naps.

(10) People wonder if it is normal for an 81 year old to be in a televised debate that he has prepped for for over a week, and which his entire future and the future of the entire world depends upon, and “almost fall asleep”. The answer to this is, based on recent statistics, clearly “yes”. (And that’s a good thing because the typical 81 year old does not sleep at night very often. In fact, let me go back to point (9) because an 81 year old often finds that he does his best thinking between 3 and 5 a.m. It is during that time that an 81 year old will most intensely wonder if he will ever reach 82 – point (1) -, whether tomorrow is Tuesday or Sunday, what the name of that god-darned leader of Russia is, what the three parts of our nuclear triad are, and what’s the name of that guy I am to debate tomorrow – I think it may be Aardvark.)

(11) People often wonder what typical 81 year olds likes to talk about, and whether they too often repeat themselves. They like to talk about their past, but often they don’t talk about it enough. For example, take 81 year old President Biden – wouldn’t you like to hear about his youth in Scranton PA, and what his father talked about around the kitchen table after learning he was losing his job?

(12) Finally, what about health in general? What is a typical health goal for an 81 year old? Well, on this I cannot speak for everyone. But, for me? I just hope I can beat Medicare. I mean really beat it.

I hope this is helpful. Tomorrow, perhaps we will talk about the mental acuity of a typical, orange, overweight 77 year old.

Another possible scenario: Trump gets reelected in November, and has vowed retribution against his political opponents. He convinces the Justice Department to indict Joe Biden. But……..”not so fast”, says the Supreme Court.

On one level, there seems to be so much wrong with the Supreme Court case about presidential immunity. On the other hand, unless we have a crooked president (I understand, we might have one again soon), which hopefully will be rare, what’s the big deal?

But having said that, and having run through some, but not all, of the opinion of Chief Justice Roberts, I find it – as usual – filled with intellectual hypocrisy. One major thrust of the argument is that you can’t have a president worried that any action he (or she – duh!) might take would land him in the slammer. Well, gee, Mr. Roberts, we have had 46 presidents, and I don’t know that any of them let that control any of their actions, so why focus on that as a major reason for the decision?

Another reason given is that there are separation of powers in our government, set by our constitution, and having the president subject to the whims of the judiciary would violate that separation. Okay, maybe I read that part wrongly, or somewhat wrongly. Clearly, while the president has been given a lot of power in the constitution, being above the law is not one of them. And the president’s job is to carry out laws that come from the legislature, and the job of the judiciary is to make sure that the president does so and does so with objectivity.

The decision itself is not too different from what I predicted yesterday morning. But it’s worse. I figured that the Court would conclude that there were presidential actions (official actions) and there were actions that were not official. I did not foresee a difference between “core” official acts, and those official acts that are on the outskirts of the perimeter of presidential authority, and there are acts on the outside of those outskirts which, presumably, are not official acts.

Now, you have heard by now that the Court did not define those categories, but it did give hints although I am not sure it even determined whether those hints were now law, or just hints, like dicta in a case. And presumably, they left it to the lower courts to make those distinctions. And this will, in the Trump obstruction case, require some time consuming rethinking on all sides. (And most lower court decisions themselves will wind up reviewed by higher courts.)

But it gets more complicated. Is, for example, the decision one of facts or law? If it is law, the judge will say: When President Trump did XXX, that was a core action and beyond the jurisdiction of the court. Or, he might say, that it was near the outside periphery, but didn’t cross into unofficial action. Without further guidance (or maybe even with it), this would be a political decision, would it not? Depends on who the judge is to a great extent.

But maybe whether an action falls into these categories is not a matter of law at all. Maybe a judge can tell a jury: I will give you definitions of core actions, etc, but it is up to you, as a factual matter, to decide whether President Trump’s action lies within that category, or within another. And if it is a jury’s factual determination, what is the extent of a judge’s review of that jury’s decision?

Now, we are talking about criminal liability, not civil actions here. Because the Court was so concerned about people looking over the president’s shoulder, the decision does make some definite statements. For example, any communication between a president and presumably anybody else in the executive branch (at least) cannot be used as evidence in a criminal matter. At least, that is what I understand it says. And this seems to be the case whether or not we are talking about official or unofficial actions. A president says to the attorney general (or presumably anyone in the DOJ), “Hey, let’s rob a bank. You do it, and I’ll keep the money.” Let’s say that conversation is on tape, and the bank is robbed, and the DOJ employee is caught with a bag of loot. What happens?

The DOJ employee will be arrested, tried and presumably convicted. On the basis of his actions, not on the basis of his conversation with the president which presumably cannot be introduced as evidence. As to the president’s involvement, things are different. Not only can the tape not be introduced into evidence, but a statement by the DOJ bank robber that he did this upon an agreement with, based on a conversation with, or because of an order from, the president cannot be introduced as testimony in the case. But, the Court didn’t, I don’t believe, say anything about discovery during the case, did it? Would the tape have to be turned over to the prosecution, even thought it was inadmissible as evidence?

You see the problem we are having here? Even if the president is engaged in unofficial criminal activity, a prosecutor cannot use normal techniques to gather evidence to bring to a court. Yes, it is possible that a President Trump could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not only not lose any votes, but also not be subject to any liability.

The Court also said that, in a criminal proceeding against a former president for actions taken in office, you cannot look at a the president’s motives. What? Every crime depends upon a motive. If you “rob a bank” without trying to rob a bank (say, by picking up the wrong brief case or having money deposited in your account by accident that you don’t even know about), you are not guilty of bank robbery (unless you decide to keep the money). But if a former president robs a bank, and you can’t look into his motive, how can you show he committed a crime?

As to overturning the election and obstructing justice and inciting a riot, etc., things get even more confusing, I think. The Court said that the speech he gave telling his supporters that he will join them in marching to the Capitol was clearly an official act (I am unclear why – in part because I would think that one act could combine official and non-official activities), but that the other things he did that day might not have been. But, again, you can’t look at his motives and you can’t use as evidence his conversations or communications with others in the executive branch of the government.

The Court did say (again, I think) that the president could be held criminally liable for actions he undertook either has a private individual or as a candidate for office. So look once more at his January 6 activities, where he tried to make sure that the vice president didn’t certify electors who would place Biden into the presidency – was that an action as the president, or was that an action as a office seeker? If you use, for example, the Hatch Act distinction which defines political action, I would think that you would conclude he was acting as a candidate. But you would think that regarding the speech he gave that day as well. So that does not help us. And remember, even if it was clearly as a candidate that he acted, a case against him still apparently can’t look to motive or use internal documents or the testimony of government officials in the case.

One thing is clear. The Supreme Court once again has determined that the Supreme Court is indeed supreme, that it is the most powerful entity in the government of the country, composed of unelected, lifetime appointees, without a code of ethics, without being able to be checked by the other branches of our government. Where, oh originalists, does it say that in the Constitution?

Does the world seem upside down today? I am sitting in Farragut Square. It is 9:45 a.m. It’s the tourist season and I was able to explain to a new friend why Admiral Farragut was important. Here is my friend.

We are waiting for the Supreme Court to decide on Donald Trump’s immunity. You might already know when you read this, but here is my prediction:

Ambiguity reigns. Trump can not be liable for acts he takes as President.  Were his actions on Jan 6 taken as President? Send it back to the Court to decide. Can any actions at all be taken or continued if he is reelected for four more years while he is serving? That question is for a later date.

How did I do?

On another subject, I have been saying for months that Biden shouldn’t run for another term. Now, I am pretty sure that he won’t. Will he back out today or a month from today, I don’t know. But he will back out.

When do I want him to announce his withdrawal? I am not sure as a strategic matter. But when and how he does it will be important.

And here’s an idea. What if he not only backs out but resigns? This would cement a part of his legacy and give us our first female president

If this happens  Harris can also announce that she is not running, giving the party the opportunity to pick from their strong bench a centrist Democrat without connection Biden’s failures on the border.

Okay, this post is shorter than most. But weightier.

Does the world still seem so upside down?

Do you remember when I posted something about the Voyager spacecraft, a rocket now 15 billion miles from Earth and going further, and how it’s ability to transmit data to NASA was compromised by a faulty computer chip? And how NASA engineers were able to identify the chip, create a work around, and enable Voyager to start transmitting information back to Earth again? Extraordinary, I think we all agreed.

That post was based on an article in the Washington Post. Today, I am writing about what I think is equally fascinating – this time from the July-August edition of Harvard Magazine. The article was written by Jonathan Shaw, the magazine’s managing editor. It’s titled “The Language of Whales”. Let’s see if I can do it justice.

First, the basics. We are talking about sperm whales. When you think of a whale, chances are you think of a sperm whale. Sperm whales, in spite of being hunted by humans for ages, are not an endangered species. They are found all over the world. They grow to be very large – the average adult sperm whale is about 50 feet or more in length. They live almost as long as humans – usually between 60 and 70 years (in fact, as whales only sleep about an hour or two per 24 hours, maybe you could say they live longer than humans). They spend most time under water and can dive thousands of feet down, and they really eat a lot of squid, which they have to locate. They also have, by far, the heaviest, largest brains in the animal kingdom.

The question is language. It has long been known that whales can make clicking sounds, very very loud rhythmic clicking sounds. As to loud? They are the loudest sounds made by any species.

But what do these sounds signify? Are they just sounds? Are they warnings? Or could they be sophisticated, linguistic communications? As for this last question – until recently it would probably never be asked.

The article talks about Project CETI (the Cetacean Translation Initiative), which is looking to determine if humans will be able to understand and translate the meaning of the whales’ clicking and, for the next step, whether humans and whales will ever beg able to talk to each other. This effort started only seven years ago, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, when two scientists, David Gruber of the City University of New York and Shafi Goldwasser of MIT, had a chance encounter, then joined by Michael Bronstein, who now teaches at Oxford. The three were, I believe, all fellows at the Radcliffe Institute when they began thinking about deciphering the clicks of sperm whales. Two years later, they organized another Radcliffe conference on this topic, decided the project was worthwhile, and received enough money from the TED Audacious Project to continue the project for the next five years. (Don’t know TED Audacious Project – Google it – it’s basically a source of funding for “audacious projects”.)

The project is audacious, to be sure. For example, there is a Harvard scientist, who has recorded about 10,000 instances of sperm whale clicking. That sounds like a lot, but to do what they want to do, those working on Project CETI think they will need billions of recordings. In addition, they want to be able to identify the individual whales making the sounds, so they have to tag the whales. Did you ever try to tag a whale? In the first place, these tags aren’t just post-its. According to the article, they record “sound, location, light, depth, temperature” and sometimes even have video. They are obviously very complex and, considering you are dealing with an animal whose skin is very slippery and whose skin continually sloughs off, and an animal who operates at such differing depths and pressures, coming up with a type of tag which would not fall off the whale’s body is beyond tricky. The amount of science in the development of these instruments (a better word, perhaps than tags) is itself remarkable.

Sperm whales do a lot of migrating. And this world is quite big. So tagging a sperm whale will do little good if you can’t keep track of the whale. It turns out that the only place in the world where the whale population is stable year round is near the island of Dominica, in the Caribbean, so that is where the scientists have set up shop.

As to what they are hearing, let me quote from the article:

“…they have detected previously unknown complexities in the sounds generated by the whales.

“In the past, sperm whale codas [that is the term used to refer to the rhythms] have been analyzed principally in terms of the number of clicks and the intervals between them. A representative discovery, for example, deemed in shorthand by the researchers as the discovery of a ‘whale phonetic alphabet’ , as reported last September by a team at MIT, detailed detection of ‘fine-grained modulation of inter-click intervals relative to preceding codas’, as well as the addition of an extra click to existing codas, that change depending on the context in which the whales were vocalizing. The researchers also documented independent changes in rhythm and tempo. When combined, these elements suggested complexity of the click communications of a magnitude greater than previously suspected.”

And then add a linguist, Gaspar Begus of the University of California at Berkeley, who says that his study of the clicks reveals “the presence of acoustic properties in codas that are analogous to the vowels and diphthongs in human speech, and that they seem “not to be artifacts, but rather are under the whales’ control”.

If you can get a hold of this article, read the entire piece. One more example of “who knew?”

Several weeks ago, the main air conditioning system for our house went out. It was about 20 years old, and had faltered late last summer and needed coolant added, so it really wasn’t a big surprise. But we had to get it replaced, something that was both disruptive and fairly expensive.

About the same time, the toilet in our basement guest bathroom began to run if not flushed precisely. Because it is not a bathroom used everyday, we noted, but ignored, the problem, just being careful when we or guests used it.

Last week, our master bathroom toilet began to run continually, and we needed to call a plumber, and had him look at both bathrooms while he was here. The guest bath now seems fixed, but the upstairs bath has already had a second visit and now looks like it will need a third, as the toilet seems to have a mind of its own.

On the same day, the gasket that surrounds the freezer of our refrigerator/freezer came loose, and we needed to call someone to come out and fix it; that fix seems to have been successful.

On the very next day, our microwave oven stopped heating our food. The light goes on, the plate spins round, the timer works perfectly, the food stays cold. It looks like we need a new microwave.

And we have other problems that need fixing. The shower door in the master bath has become unhinged, we have brick walks that need caulking, and flagstones that need leveling. We have yet to get to these projects.

Why do I tell you all of this? Because as you hear news about what is happening in our country, it seems so familiar. It just seems like our house writ large. In both cases, ignoring the problems are impossible and dangerous, so fix them we must.

For the Democratic Party to continue to support its presumed presidential nominee, Joe Biden, is similar to our ignoring the things in our house that need repairing. For our house, we would have a much harder time living without air conditioning, a freezer, convenient toilets, and a microwave. For our country, it would be difficult to live with a Republican President starting in January, particularly if that president is Donald Trump.

There are many reasons for that, as we now know. One of the most important reasons relates to which president will have the right to nominate our next Supreme Court justices. Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not retire, when suggested, so that Joe Biden could appoint a replacement; she waited until she died during the Trump presidency. It has been suggested that Justices Kagan and Sotomayer (the oldest liberal justices) resign now to give President Biden the right to nominate two younger justices; they find this suggestion ludicrous. If Trump regains office in January, most likely he will have the opportunity to nominate new conservative justices to replace the elderly Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, thus securing the strong conservative majority in the court for years to come.

We are already seeing what an activist conservative Court can do, parading under the false flag of originalism, and this does not need to be repeated here. But a few principles must be noted: (1) this Court has no trouble upending precedent, thus changing the Supreme Court’s practice for well over a hundred years, (2) by ending the Chevron doctrine (that provided that deference be paid to executive agencies’ decision making when ruling on the acceptability of regulations), the conservative Court has given to itself even more authority than it has had to decide whether regulations issued by the Executive Branch will stand, and (3) the Court continues to narrow the rights of individual citizens in all sorts of ways, but perhaps most importantly in health related circumstances, and to be able to live freer or the possibility of gun violence. In other words, the non-elected judges are setting the Judiciary up as the strongest of the supposedly independent branches of government, giving itself the right to judge the conduct of the other two without accountability.

I hope that Joe Biden will not become another Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I hope he has the strength to determine (difficult as it may be) when to fold and go back to Delaware, when to turn the government over to a new and younger and more agile and energetic generation. For if he fails to see this, and to act upon what he sees, he will most likely still turn the government over in January – but not to someone who will celebrate and build on his positive legacy, but who will destroy it and who will most likely destroy or degrade us (330 million Americans, and more worldwide) in the process.

Years ago, when I was a new partner in the DC office of a large New York law firm (which I hated), I had a case in the US Court of Federal Claims. I was in charge of the case, but the argument was to be done by one of the firm’s full time litigators. I said at the counsel table while the litigator (who knew the case well and had rehearsed with me quite a bit) started to fumble and say things that had nothing to do with how we planned to present our argument. I looked very disgruntled, I am sure, because when the litigator finished his presentation, the judge looked at me and said: “Mr. Hessel, you look like you want to say something. I don’t want you to leave here thinking I didn’t give you a chance.” He obviously saw what I saw. I got up, explained the case, and we won a nice victory. (I never worked with that litigator again)

That is exactly how I felt last night watching the debate. “Jake Tapper”, I thought, “let me talk.” In my imagination, Jake and Dana Bash started whispering to each other and then Dana turned to the camera and said “Thank you, President Biden. Now we’d like to hear from Art Hessel.”

That did not happen.

I heard a C-Span caller this morning refer to Biden as a Zombie President. That is how he looked. I read that he had a cold, and of course that happens. But considering it was a cold that his makeup team (I am sure he has a makeup team – just as I am sure he’d like to make up this debate) couldn’t cover, why didn’t he come out at the beginning and tell the world that he had a cold and it was affecting his voice (for example)?

Trump, I must admit, sounded like he was 25. His voice never faltered at all. Of course, almost everything he said was nonsense and counterfactual, but he looked like he was telling it straight if you didn’t know better. And, yes, the media will fact check him to death, but his supporters will believe him and not the fact checkers. We all know that.

So, now there is talk about replacing Biden on the ticket. Some of us have been saying that for months. It doesn’t mean that we support Trump over Biden (duh!), but it means that we think Biden will have a difficult time winning (now a more difficult time), and that a Trump victory spells chaos and more.

And so the talk is going to rev up about finding a new candidate, or having some sort of an open or brokered convention. There is time, since the convention is not until August 19. But how that will work, no one knows. And, as Edie points out, if the Democrats say “we must replace Biden” and then fail to, this would probably cinch a Trump victory, and prove that even the Democratic party does not have faith in the Democratic candidate. And poor Kamala Harris – if there is a replacement, it should not be Harris (based on her popularity, not on objectivity), so – to make everything clean – she would have to drop out as well.

But we were with two other couples watching the debate – all never Trumpists, pretty much never Republicans, and certainly Democrats. All of us were shattered by the President’s performance. And you can imagine the “uh, uh, uh, we beat Medicare” clip and others being rolled out all throughout the campaign.

In addition to the Trump lies and the Biden stumbles, it was an ugly debate, insults (instigated by Trump) flying both ways, followed by a stupid debate about golf handicaps and winning tournaments at clubs you own when asked about age. And Americans were obviously not the only ones watching the debate – what do our worldwide allies and adversaries (political leaders and would-be political leaders, journalists and thinkers) think about these two candidates, one an obvious liar (more obvious to them than to Trump’s supporters here) and the other only vaguely looking like the man who was Joe Biden?

The Trump positions are frightening (NATO, tax cuts, climate change, Putin, women’s rights and so on), and Biden should have been able to counter them, but he wasn’t. And Biden needed a sharp focus on his two biggest vulnerabilities – the border and inflation, and was not able to speak to them coherently either. In fact, Biden simply flailed from topic to topic, with no sense of direction or organization.

Of course, debate success is not related to the ability to govern, or to negotiate to reach consensus. But it is certainly related to the ability to win an election. And you can’t win an election, looking like a Zombie or a deer caught in the headlights, and having every other sentence trail off in undecipherable words (I assume they were words).

You want to know how I felt sitting in the Court of Federal Claims watching my case slip away? I felt exactly the way you felt last night watching the debate.

I am nervous about the debate tonight. We are going to watch it with friends. We are going to bring something to drink. We are going to need it.

I want to divert my mind today. How about three Jewish jokes? I usually don’t like Jewish jokes. But I like these. Maybe you know them. Maybe you have never heard them before. Maybe you have heard them before and have totally forgotten each of them. Even I might be in that last category.

(1) Jewish Joke Number One:

A very elderly man is lying on his death bed. His wife of more than 60 years sits by his side, holding his hand. There is no need to talk and silence prevails. His wife interrupts the silence. “Is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all.” He smells something. Coming from the kitchen. He whispers to her: “I smell the cookies you are baking. I don’t know if I can eat a whole one, but I really would love to try.”

She looks at him with pity and says: “That’s the one thing I cannot give you now……They’re for the shiva.”

(2) Jewish Joke Number Two:

The young man in his early 30s calls his mother on the phone with good news: “Mother, I have something to tell you. I am getting married”. “How wonderful”, his mother says. “And,” he says, “I want to introduce you to your new daughter in law, and I think I will come by tonight with three or four young women. One is my fiance; the others are our friends. We can sit around and talk for a while, and then later you can tell me which one you think she is.”

“Okay”, says his mother, “that sounds like fun.” Her son brings four young women with him, all obviously in on the plan, and they have a fine evening. The next morning, the son calls his mother and asks: “You know which one I am marrying?” “Yes”, she says, “I think it’s the redhead.”

“Mom, how did you guess? You are right!”

“It was easy”, his mother says, “she’s the only one I didn’t like at all.”

(3) Jewish Joke Number Three:

Elon Musk (or was it Jeff Bezos) decides to send an experimental manned satellite into orbit to go around the earth twenty times, each time taking a little more than an hour. In addition to the pilot and the engineer, he asks three men of faith to travel in his machine – a Catholic priest, a Protestant minister, and an orthodox Rabbi. The three enter the capsule, the rockets blast them off, the flight is successful and they all return safely and in good health.

A reporter asks them: “So, what were your reactions to traveling around the Earth like that?”

The priest says that it was an experience of a lifetime, and all he could think of as he looked at the Earth below was how remarkable God is to create such a universe and to allow him to participate in it in this remarkable way.

The minister talked about the beauty of the Earth, the closeness to God, and the remarkable aspects of the solar system, which he could appreciate even more fully from such a wonderful vantage point.

The reporter then turned to the rabbi, who had been uncharacteristically quiet and asked him what his reaction was. Did he have the same overwhelming feelings the other two had? “No,”, said the rabbi, “Not really. I found it exhausting.”

“Why?”, asked the reporter. The rabbi answered: “I had to put the tefillin on, take the tefillin off, put the tefillin on, take the tefillin off, put the tefillin on, take the tefillin off. I didn’t even have time to look out the window.”

I must explain. Yesterday was very confusing to me, and perhaps I confused you as well. But what would you expect when your day starts off with a dinosaur sighting?

I took my Prius to the dealer yesterday morning for regular servicing. My dealer is located across the street from a large mall, one of those few malls that continue to seem to prosper. My routine when I bring my car in is to drop off my car and then to cross the street and walk across the mall parking lot to a third rate restaurant (I am being harsh. It’s second rate) where I can get very ordinary coffee and a not-so-good blueberry muffin or bowl of oatmeal.

But when I looked towards the parking lot where I normally went across, I saw myself fenced out, and I saw within the fencing an entire herd of dinosaurs, big and small, brown and green, friendly looking and dangerous. Hundreds, maybe, of dinosaurs. (On closer look, I saw that it is an “immersive experience” in preparation, and that it is going to cost about $30 to enter and even more if you want to go on any rides or take advantage of their special treats. I demur). [demur is another new word for the blog]

I had to skirt around the fencing, climb up steps I had never seen before, in order to get my coffee.

My plan for the day was to go from the automobile dealership to a T-Mobile shop for two reasons. One – my smart phone case had begun to disintegrate and I thought a new one was in order. Two – my main home charger had begun to slow down and I thought a new one would be faster.  I certainly didn’t expect to buy a new phone.

But…..I went into the Rockville T-Mobile store and asked for a new phone cover. “Sorry”, said the clerk, “we don’t have anything any more that fits that phone.”

“Uh-oh”, I thought, “I am in trouble here.” He then said “you know this phone is 2 1/2 years old, and you are eligible for an upgrade after 2 years.” “Oh”, I said, what does that mean? “Well, it really doesn’t mean anything. Except that you fully paid off your phone in two years, so if you bought a new phone today, you only have to pay for a new phone, not to finish paying for the old phone.”

Then, I began to think. I had been having some problems with my phone slowing down, being less sensitive than it had been in the past, so I said “So if I were to buy a new phone, what would you suggest?”

“Well”, he said, you have a Samsung A class phone, so why not just buy an updated one of those?” “What other choices to I have, sticking with Samsung?” “Your other choices would be S class phones – they are about twice as expensive.” “What are the differences?” “Mainly the camera, but if you liked you camera before, even the A Class camera is better than what you have now.”

He didn’t have any reason for me to spend an extra $300 to buy a more expensive camera and nothing else. I asked which phone they sold more of. He said, to my surprise, “the S Class, but there’s really no reason to buy it outside of the camera.”

So, it was obvious what I would do, right? Yes, I bought the S Class for an additional $15 per month for two years, for the better camera. The phone also has twice the storage and memory of my old phone – either A or S would give me that.

It only took about 20 minutes to transfer everything from the old phone to the new. I had to reload my Yahoo and Google accounts – luckily I had the passwords. I didn’t really think about anything else, except that I made sure that all my photos transferred. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized that my FaceBook account would also require me to reload it through use of my password.

And I don’t know what the Facebook password is. I have tried to use a password a number of times, and am always told that I am using an old password that has been changed. The problem is that to change a password, you need to have your identification verified and this is done either through your email address or your backup phone. But because I went on Facebook when I was still working, and I no longer have the email or the mobile phone number I had then, Facebook is unable to verify me. Both of them were issued through my office. So, there is no way for me to validate my identity for Facebook.

Sure, I can open a new account, which I did, but I have 0 friends on that account and, as people today don’t want to accept “friend” requests because they fear being hacked or compromised, it seems to me that is going to be difficult. My old account hadn’t disappeared from Facebook – all my friends could continue to see it. But I couldn’t see it (not being a friend of myself) and I couldn’t post anything on it.

Then my daughter Michelle told me that she thought that, through WiFi, I could still access and manipulate my apps on my old phone, even though it is no longer a “phone”, and, lo and behold, she seems to be correct.

So it looks like I can continue to use Facebook on my old phone and everything else on my new phone. This is confusing since it involves two phones and I have to see if I can post a photo taken on one phone (my new phone) onto Facebook from my old phone. My assumption, since all of my photos are uploaded on a Google App which is now on both phones that this won’t be a problem, but we will see.

So, I have spent a lot of money to get a new phone which suffers from a disability and will need, for the foreseeable future, assistance from a second phone. But I do now have double the storage and presumably a better camera (among other things, a Zoom that will expand to 30x, instead of 10x), which I have yet to try.

And yes, I did get a case that fits the new phone, and I got a new, fast charger and new cables.

So….not perfect. But more perfect that what I thought I had before Michelle came up with a fix.

Two steps forward (storage and camera). Two Steps back (Facebook and cost).