Art is 80

Our new president believes firmly in the Constitution. That must be why he has issued an Executive Order banning birthright citizenship, a right explicitly granted in the Constitution.

Our new president believes in following the law. That must be why he has issued an Executive Order giving Tik-Tok 75 days of life, ignoring a law that explicitly required the app to shut down on January 19.

Our new president believes in national security. That must be why, on his own, he determined that American intelligence is wrong in saying that Tik-Tok is a security risk and suggests a 50-50 joint venture between China and the United States.

Our new president believes strongly in legal immigration. That must be why he has suspended the State Department refugee resettlement program, and why he has canceled pre-entry appointments for asylum seekers waiting in Mexico.

Our new president believes in the rule of law. That must be why he has pardoned 1600 criminals already convicted of January 6 crimes.

Our new president believes in an independent justice department. That must be why he has instructed the Department to halt all remsining actions against those indicted for January 6 crimes.

Our new president believes in avoiding foreign entanglements. That must be why he plans to take control of the Panama Canal and Greenland.

Our new president believes in no politicalization in the Department of Justice. That must be why he has nominated Kash Patel and his enemies list to head the FBI.

Our new president wants to bring about an era of peace in the Middle East. That must be why he ended all sanctions against radical Israeli West Bank settlers.

Our president wants, most of all, to be a unifier. That must be why he constantly hurls 6th grade insults at everyone who disagrees with him.

Our president wants our country to be a land of meritocracy. That must be why he is canceling so many programs which help level the playing field.

I could go on and on. But, really, what is the point? We have entered America’s Golden Age. Enjoy it while you can.

This may be the weirdest of all. Tik-Tok (hereafter TT. It’s easier to type).

TT is owned by a Chinese company controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (hereafter CP for no good reason).

Apparently, the TT and, therefore, the CP can learn a lot about you when you use TT. I don’t understand this, and I am not sure what they can learn. My age, height, IQ, SSN, bank accounts, shoe size, medical records, the fact that I don’t have a mistress in Topeka? I am not sure, but American intelligence knows and has briefed everyone in government with a need to know, and with remarkable bipartisanship, Congress votes to ban TT and the soon to be ex-president signs the bill. The soon-to-be president agrees.

It’s a matter of national security, they say. And the Supreme Court, 9-0, agrees, saying that in this case, the national security risks are likely so high that any effect on free speech is, as they say, trumped.

Then, both the soon-to-be and soon-not-to-be presidents change their minds. Again, bipartisanship in action.

Now, the law, passed and signed, said that TT could not operate in the US unless it was sold to an American owner. The drop dead date was last Sunday, but the law apparently says that the president could extend it for 90 days under certain circumstances. From what I understand, there had to be an American buyer in place and the parties actively working to close the sale.

This is not the case. The Chinese owner has not agreed to sell, for one thing. Kevin O’Leary (if that is his name)(hereafter KO) and his partner in crime (probably) McSomething say they will buy TT for $20B. But their purchase, as I heard it, will not include the algorithm, which allows TT to decide how it wants me to be brainwashed, so they would perhaps only get Tik, but need to develop their own Tok.

The site went dark in the US (hereafter, the United States) at midnight Sunday morning (I know that isn’t a time, but you know what I mean). But then the president-to-be said he would sign an Executive Order (hereafter EO) giving it 90 days, and the site lit up again. The president-to-be also said he would perhaps solve the problem by having a United States entity buy half the company and the CP retaining the other half.

Some things are obvious. For one, the 90 day EO violates the law, as there is no buyer in place, and should be null and void. Secondly, that the 50-50 compromise would not end the national security risk that started this particular ball (hereafter PB) rolling down the hill. Third, that the constant talk about the security risk has vanished altogether. Fourth, that the American servers who host TT and were afraid to continue hosting past the legislative drop dead date, are now OK with hosting because Trump said he would not prosecute them. And of course, Chairman Xi’s second in command will be at the inauguration today, along with all the tech billionaires (including OK and McSomething) who have a sufficient number of homemade bitcoins to buy TT.

So, the EO violates the law. The 50-50 proposal ignores what had been viewed as a major security risk. Dealing with Xi’s Number 2 ignores Chinese government protestations that they really had nothing to do with TT, which operated independently. And telling the Justice Department not to prosecute the server hosts ignores Attorney General-to-be-Bondi’s claim that the White House won’t tell her what to do even before she takes office.

I am sure there is more to this story, by the way.

And I am also interested in the promised ICE raid in Chicago, which as been postponed because of media leaks. An ICE raid takes a lot of planning, doesn’t it? How could the planning be done before the president-to-be became president? Was it all a fake announcement from the start? Or is there a real Deep State operating in the mysterious world of MAGA?

About 4 hours to the indoor inauguration. I do not want to watch. But if I change my mind, I think I will conduct my own protest and take my computer outdoors and watch it sitting down in the snow.

I didn’t want to think about tomorrow today, and I needed diversion. I grabbed a pile of ephemera from a shelf in one of my office closets, just to have something to concentrate on, and thought I might share some of what I pulled out. Sort of like a shoe box, without the box, or the shoes.

Am I right to call it “ephemera”? Not sure. Dictionary.com defines “ephemera” as “a class of collectible items, not originally intended to last for more than a short time….” You decide.

The 1977 constitution was the 4th Soviet Constitution. We are still on our first. It provides that it can be amended by a 2/3 vote of the Supreme Soviet.  In 1977, the Supreme Soviet had about 1500 members, all of whom always voted as instructed. What if our constitution could be changed so easily?

This, by way, was the official English language version, priced at 15 kopecks.  Today that would be about 1 1/2 cents.

According to Derek Kartun in this English publication of the People’s Press Printing Society,  Eisenhower was a venial, incompetent war mongerer,  like all US presidents. Kartun, says Wikipedia, was a Communist journalist, a titan of industry, and a prolific mystery writer. To me,he just seems woke, or perhaps pre-woke.

You think there has been any new written about the Washington Monument since this was written in 1900? The answer is “yes”.

But there are some interesting tidbits you can use to impress visitors. Like the height of the monument is “597 feet 3 inches above the mean level of the Atlantic at Sandy Hook, N.Y”. Or “the Monument stands close to the intersection of the Jeffersonian Meridian Line of 1802, passing through the center of the Executive Mansion,  north and south, with a line running east and west through the center of the Capitol.”

Two more important facts, and then I will quit.

First, “There is enough room in the interior of the Monument to house an army of 12,000 men. The landings will accommodate 7,675, the stairs, 3845, the upper and lower platforms 450, and the elevators, 30.”

And, an African marble Roman stone given by the Pope was thrown into the Potomac by the Know-Nothings in 1854, and – as of 1900 – has not been found.

The American Education Monthly could be yours for an annual subscription of $1 “payable in advance”. In the August 1854 issue, I commend to your attention an article simply entitled “Corporal Punishment”, from which I take the following: “The sterotyped jest that ‘you can not drive knowledge into a pupil’s head by means of an application at the other end’ is as unsound in fact as it is absurd in expression.”

William Henry Harrison, the 9th president of the United States, died in April 1841, 32 days after his inauguration. May 14 was declared a National Fast Day. Pastor John M. Duncan of Baltimore’s Associate Reformed Congregation gave this sermon. I tried to read through it, but fell asleep at about the 30th mention of Jehovah on page 2.

I pulled out more ephemera, to be sure, but how much can one aborb in one day. I think I’ll watch some football. Maybe.

The “Boom!” refers to the more than one hundred Executive Orders that Donald Trump plans to issue after his inauguration on Monday. We have heard of his plans, but we really haven’t absorbed what that might mean. I read an article this morning by AP reporter Calvin Woodward, where he tried to look at what these Executive Orders might try to do and it’s only when you see his list and his explanations that you realize how serious the situation might (or, better, probably will) be.

1. Orders proclaiming a “National Emergency” and follow up orders leading to the arrest and deportation of undocumented aliens, and the use of domestic police forces, the National Guard and perhaps even the American military to round up people and put them into detention camps prior to deportation. In this regard, from another site this morning, I heard that a massive raid is being planned in Chicago; previously, we have heard of massive raids being planned for the Washington DC area. (As to the use of the military, Trump has very recently said that there is no reason why the American military cannot be used to fight on an “invasion”.
2. Orders “closing the border”. While Woodward is not sure what Trump means by this and says that he is certain that Trump does not mean this literally with regard to people who are entitled to move across the border, he believes that Trump will implement a policy saying that, under no circumstances, will someone be able to cross the border who is not authorized to do so, whether they are crossing at border crossings (and then proclaiming themselves eligible for amnesty) or swimming across the Rio Grande. (Violence may be the result of this, of course, and family separation is not far behind.)
3. Birthright citizenship. While the Constitution provides for birthright citizenship (the automatic citizenship of anyone born in the United States), Trump has said that he is going to stop it. He probably can not do this legally through an Executive Order, but he can try (he really doesn’t seem to care what the Constitution says about birthright citizenship), and let the courts settle it out over time. This may be a general strategy he uses: issue an Executive Order, implement it, and wait (possibly for years) for the courts to settle it out.
4. Electric vehicles. Trump has vowed to eliminate the incentives that the Biden administration has put into place to encourage the purchase of electric, rather than gas powered, vehicles, whether that involves ending tax incentives, or ending mandates or goals to begin to phase out fossil fuel vehicles, or tighter emission standards, etc. (This of course, sets up an interesting dynamic with President Musk, whose Tesla operation, which makes automobiles not only in the United States, but in China, Germany, Holland, Canada, and – soon – Mexico. We shall see how this plays out.)
5. Tariffs. This is, perhaps, the biggest mystery, as Trump has continually used tariffs as a stick, but the extent that he is going to implement anything immediate is not particularly clear. Perhaps, he feels that he must do something to meet his Day 1 promises.
6. Pardoning Jan 6 rioters. He might issue these pardons on Day 1, and they might free everyone convicted of a crime in connection with the riots now over four years ago, or he may exclude those who were convicted of particular crimes of violence. But these pardons will probably come on Monday.
7. Transgender rights and critical race theory. The question here is how broadly he will go. Will he limit his executive orders to the ability of transgender females to participate in women’s sports and declare that schools that allow such participation can kiss all federal funding assistance goodbye? Or will he go further and state that any school (from kindergartens to universities) will find their funding at risk, if they teach anything that smacks of critical race theory, or any other DEI or woke teaching. (Of course, none of those things are, or can be, tightly defined).
8. Energy. “Drill, baby, drill” means that some of the Biden era restrictions on drilling or mining will be reversed, and some of this can clearly happen on Monday, although it’s immediate effect is unclear at this point.
9. Firing federal officials. In his never ending battle against the Deep State, Trump may issue an assortment of orders, some of which might fire high level officials, or might direct incoming cabinet members to create programs to root out any officials who do not evidence support of the programs of the new President.

These are the issues brought up by Calvin Woodward in this very interesting article. He may be right. He may be wrong. He clearly might have left out some other topics that Trump could address through Executive Orders. But this list, like others which could be developed, should give us more than pause. It should scare us.

As a wrap up to today, post, I would like to recommend a program that I listened to this week. Go to the Cato Institute website (cato.org), and then to “events” and then to “Executive Orders that the Trump Administration Should Revoke or Amend” and listen to the 90 minutes discussion. The title to this program makes it look like a pro-MAGA waste of time, but the program itself did not really fit its title. The program, which involved several Cato employees, covers two subjects (at least): (1) what is an Executive Order, what is the history of Executive Orders, what is their legal authority, etc., and (2) a discussion of some of Biden’s executive orders, and what Trump could/should do about them. The reason that (1) is interesting is obvious, I think. The reason that (2) was interesting is both that there are some differences among the Cato panelists as to what they believe to be the best policies and that there are certainly differences between many of the Cato policy suggestions and what Trump’s MAGA folks would probably support. I just thought it was an interesting and honest conversation – and honesty is so hard to find today.

Okay, that’s it for doom. Come back tomorrow for a little gloom.

Watching the Washington Capitals this year has been a lot of fun. The reasons are simple. The Caps now have a better record than the other 31 teams in the NHL (actually tied with Winnipeg). And Alex Ovechkin is on his way to becoming the highest goal scorer in NHL history, now only about 20 goals behind Wayne Gretzky.

Digression: I saw that, with his overtime winning goal last night, Ovechkin now has become the leader in another category. He has scored goals against more different goalies than anyone else in NHL history. This led me to think about statistics. Whoever thought to keep this particular statistic? Does it mean that, from the day the NHL came into existence in 1917, this record has been kept? Every goal scorer, and every goalie scored against? That is pretty extraordinary. Of course, computers have been statistics easier to record. And imagine what AI will do.

Back to the subject. Professional hockey has another facet that, to my knowledge, no other professional (much less college) sport has – the allowance of fighting between players. Now, it is true that fighting in professional hockey rarely leads to serious injury (it is more likely that someone will be hurt when slammed into a wall, when a puck happens to meet a player’s face, or there is some other type of accident in the game itself). But still, it seems to me that it is absurd, just as it is absurd that not only the player who starts the fight gets time in the penalty box, but the attacked player does as well. It makes a hockey fight more like what you see in a WWE smack down than a real source of uncontrollable emotion.

But that’s not my point. My point is that so many hockey fans pray for a fight. They would rather see a fight than a clean game. This of course says something about humanity in general.

And it is not only hockey. It is one of the reasons why Donald Trump was elected president. While he is not involved in fake physical fights, he is continually involved in fake verbal fights, with his constant insults to and attacks on foes and friends. This is how he revs up his base, just like a fight seems to rev up the fans of a hockey team.

From time to time, I do watch Congressional hearings on C-Span. And if you do the same, you have seen how members of Congress have become so efficient in badmouthing their opposition, and attacking witnesses who are connected to the other party. There is no subtlety, for the most part, in Congressional questioning. Yet, this type of questioning does not lead to more information. All it does is give members the opportunity to show themselves to be bullies. And many people seem to like bullies, as long as they are bullying others and not themselves.

I have felt this to be a problem for a long time. I would much rather see debates on policy, and not ad hominem attacks. But I am afraid that many people must feel otherwise.

With the next four years being the years of Trump Two, we will have a president whose bullying will set the tone of the country, and unfortunately Congress will simply mirror his ways. Probably nothing that can be done about that, unfortunately.

I have been listening to many of the hearings on the Trump nominations to cabinet and sub-cabinet positions. While I have found some of what I have heard to be respectful, much has not been. This is by and large not because the Democrats on the various committees have been attacking the witnesses, but because many of the Republicans have spent their time not asking the nominees about their particular ideas or plans, but to attack the Biden administration, even though the Biden administration has nothing to do with these hearings.

Government is not trusted by the general public, whether it be the administration, the Congress or the courts. Why is this? Of course, part of it is due to performance. But much of it is due to the type of bullying I have described above, and to what people hear or see through various types of media, whether it be talk radio, right wing news services (I do believe this is a right wing, not a center or left of center problem), or perhaps even C-Span, which makes it so easy for politicians to get on their high horse and to have their intemperate words spread widely.

I don’t think much can be done about this over the next four years. But I also don’t see many voices campaigning against this unfortunate situation. I wish that would change.

For some time now, we have been hearing that the death toll in Gaza has been about 45,000. A terrible number, particularly since so many of them were children. But today (or maybe it was yesterday), we see that Lancet, in Britain, has put out a study, apparently well researched and well reviewed, that the number of closer to 65,000. That is almost 3% of the Gaza population. If 3% of Americans were killed in a war, we would lose over 10,000,000 fellow citizens.

So, with this in mind, anything that stops further deaths in Gaza is more than welcome. And if 33 hostages are released, that’s to the good, of course. But: (1) there will still be more than 60 hostages held in Gaza, (2) Hamas is still, at least for now, in charge in Gaza, planning to stay and planning to attack Israel again in the future, (3) there is still no clear plan on how to rebuild Gaza or how to govern Gaza in the future. And, as we know, this deal, which is being done in phases, could self-destruct at any time. The current phase only lasts 60 days and even it must be approved by the Israeli cabinet. So we will have to see.

And as we watch how everything plays out, we also have to keep this in mind. Hamas’ leadership continues to maintain that their platform is “from the river to the sea”, and does not want to have a peaceful ever after agreement with Israel, and my guess is that, although there are many Gazans who are still numb from shock and exhausted, there are many others who agree fully with Hamas’ leadership on this point. And the far right in Israel, an absolutely central and necessary part of the Netanyahu coalition, also seems to have a “from the river to the sea” policy, and beyond that, places no trust in Gaza to know its place and stay there.

So we have a long way to go. I am far from comfortable.

There is also a lot of rebuilding that will have to be done, in both Gaza and Los Angeles. Think about how hard it will be to rebuild the part of Los Angeles that is now in ruins. Infrastructure must be repaired or reconstructed, all of the ruined material must be carted away, houses, commercial buildings and public buildings have to be rebuilt, and so forth. And while this is going on (and it will take years, as we know), the people directly affected (I am not sure how many that is – but I would guess it to be at least 50,000) must have a place to live, a place to go to school, a way to collect whatever insurance they might be entitled to, and the possibility of returning to their old neighborhood at some time, or if not returning, at least not suffering from below market forced sales. This is all very complicated and – oh yes, it’s very expensive. And the actions that will be undertaken with respect to each house, each building, each school, each everything, will require coordination and agreements with many interested stakeholders. Think how hard that will be.

Now, think about Gaza, where the number of people affected is not 50,000, but closer to 2,000,000. Gaza, where the debris that must be carted away are not only destroyed buildings, but military equipment, some of which may still be in danger of exploding, and where there just happens to be no obvious place to put any of it. Gaza, where the idea of property insurance probably does not exist, and most of the residents are not even middle class and have no jobs, and no assets. Gaza, where Israel will continue to make sure that no material that can be converted to military use will be allowed into the territory. Gaza, where all food must be imported as well as all building materials. Gaza, where the population can’t go somewhere else to wait out the rebuilding period, but has to stay in place because there is nowhere else they are allowed to go. Gaza, where there are no fellow citizens who can help because all citizens are equally affected. Gaza, where the government is more interested in destroying Israel than in helping the land under their control rebuild.

And yes, I know, there are more places that need to be rebuilt than Los Angeles and Gaza. There is Lebanon, Syria, northern Israel, and even Yemen. There is Ukraine and a small part of Russia. There are parts of Ethiopia and Sudan, and I am not sure Turkey, China and Japan have fully recovered from earthquake damage. And there are the mountains of western North Carolina.

But today, it is Gaza that’s on my mind…….

ADDENDUM:

I wrote all of that last night. Now, it is about 9 hours later, and already, the ground is shifting. The report this morning is that Israel is delaying the cabinet vote because Hamas is reneging on parts of the deal. Hamas says it is not reneging and is fully committed. We don’t yet know what this is about, whether it’s just typical bickering and face planting (is that a term, or did I just make it up?), or something material.

In the meantime, in Israel, there are some protests saying the deal is a surrender, not a victory, and one of the Israeli coalition parties has said it is against the deal unless it is limited to 60 days to do the swap, and that fighting can start again then.

I saw on the CNN online report that a number of governments have issued statements praising the deal, and expressing their support for the rights of the Palestinian people to have their own state, with some proclamations throwing in what, to me, is a new word to describe a Palestinian state: contiguous.

So here we are. Hamas says the fight will continue in due time. Some Israelis say the same thing, and say the due time is: now. Each side wants to control land from the river to the sea. Part of the international community wants publicly a contigous Palestinian state. Biden leaves office in 5 days. Trump says “all hell will break loose”, and just last night, after the ceasefire was announced, but before its Sunday start date, an Israeli strike killed another 45 people.

Happy Thursday.

I have been watching the Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing on the nomination of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. So far, and I am starting to write this just after noon on Tuesday, I am surprised about two things:

First, I am surprised at the purposely partisan testimony being given by Hegseth. Rather than trying to say things that have a chance to help win over some of the Democrats, he has chosen to say things that deepen the political divide.

Secondly, I am surprised at the weakness of so many of the questions of the Democrats. Senator Warren is now questioning Hegseth. She is the fourth Democratic female Senator to question Mr. Hegseth, and she is the fourth Democratic Senator to question him virtually only about his views on women in combat. I find this excessive when there are so many other topics to get on the record.

[Having said that, I did hear Warren ask him about the “revolving door”, the movement from a government job to the industry regulated during the time of government service. Would you, asked Warren, agree to keep from taking a job in the defense industry for ten years after your tour as Secretary of the Defense ends? He said that he would ask President Trump what the policy was and would abide by it. She responded by telling him (something I know nothing about) that generals are not allowed to move from the military to the defense industry. His answer to his? “I am not a general.” The audience (not me) laughed.]

At the start of the hearing, Ranking Member Jack Reed made it clear that the Democrats had coordinated their questioning (as the Republicans had coordinated theirs). Does this mean that the Democrats decided that at least four of their members should ask repetitive questions on the nominee’s views on women in combat?

And I didn’t think the Democrats got very far on their critiques of Hegseth’s leadership of two veteran related non-profits that he ran. They didn’t focus on their accomplishments,  but on their spending more than they brought in. Hegseth said that his leadership was financially responsible, that they were mission oriented, and that their mission succeeded. I can understand that. A non-profit’s mission can be more important than its financial ability to keep itself going. You can spend all of your assets to reach your goal, and then collapse the organization feeling satisfied. There may have been problems with the organizations, but the questions did not reach them.

And if the Democrats coordinated their questions (which I assume they did), does that mean that coordinated topics or that they coordinated specific questions? If they only coordinated topics, did Tim Kaine draw the short straw, being told that his topic was to deal with Hegseth’s reported sex and alcohol problems? If so, Kaine certainly did not develop any successful  questions. Hegseth had a child, when married to a different woman, seven years ago, and Kaine berated him for being unfaithful and violating his marriage vows. That child, who does bear the last name of Hegseth, really didn’t need to be brought into this discussion. I thought quite unthinking. (On the other hand, watching a bit of MSNBC after the hearing was adjourned,  I saw that their pundits thought Kaine’s questioning was some of the best of the morning. Go figure.)

On the other hand, I was surprised (I guess I didn’t pay attention to this in the news) that, in the run up to this hearing, Hegseth met with all of the Republicans on this committee, but refused to meet with any of the Democrats. On this basis alone, I do not think that any Democrat should be voting for him.

I also understand that the FBI investigative report was not given to the committee members. Another reason to withhold your vote.

Other things about the hearing?

(1) The Republicans asked a lot of questions about ship building for the Navy, and Hegseth said that it was a priority both for him and for President to be again Trump, but no one followed up with questions about cost. In fact, the defense budget was never discussed. No

(2) The Republicans talked a lot about DEI and “woke” policies, with Missouri Senator Schmitt saying that at the Air Force Academy, no one was allowed to call their parents “Mom and Dad”. What was that about? Does anyone know? And while neither DEI nor “woke” were really defined, DEI seemed to be a more politically correct way to described any forms of affirmative action, and woke seemed to have to do largely with paying for gender identification surgery for persons in uniform. [After Hegseth said that there were only two genders, the Senator from Montana said: “I agree with that, and I know, because I’m a Sheehy”. Tee hee, She he. Get it?]

(3) The folks on MSNBC thought that little was learned at the hearing (I agree with that) and that Hegseth did a very good job. I don’t think he did a very good job. He avoided answering questions, and he gave five minute answers to questions that should have been answered in one short sentence.

(4) I would have asked about Elon Musk and Space X. But the hearing was adjourned before I had a chance.

(5) And Jesus, there sure was a lot of Jesus.

Finally, from the start of the hearings, it was as partisan as can be. Particularly on the part of Hegseth, who threw Trump and America First into every answer he could, and on the part of the Republicans, who unsurprisingly badmouthed the Biden administration at every opportunity, even though in theory the Biden administration had nothing to do with this hearing. That, of course, is expected, but is a bad sign.

Hegseth will be confirmed. Trump will be his own Secretary of Defense.

(1) Burkina Faso

I don’t know much about the African country, Burkina Faso. I don’t even know how it got its name, Burkina Faso. I remember in my younger stamp collecting days, it was called Upper Volta. I didn’t know much about then, either.

I do know that it is quite poor, and that it lacks a coast line. And I know its capital is Ouagadougou. I do not know how Ouagadougou got its name, and until today, I wasn’t sure how to spell it.

Yesterday’s Washington Post had a major article about Russian influence in Burkina Faso. It accompanied the article with a photo of the city.

Looks pretty bad, huh?

So I went online to see just how depressing Ouagadougou really is. This is what I found:

Even though these pictures of Ouagadougou don’t make it look like Barcelona or Milan, they make it look much more comfortable than the photo in the Post. I understand that the Post photo included a Russian flag, but still…..why does the Post want Burkina Faso to look so bad, that they pick a photo that makes it look worse than it must really be?

(2) KFC

KFC has 25,000 locations world-wide. But it is not the biggest seller of fast food in the U.S. That would be Chick-fil-A. KFC and Popeyes are sort of tied for second place.

I haven’t tasted Chick-fil-A, so I can’t comment. But I find Popeyes too greasy, so avoid it. For the most part, my vote goes to KFC, and when I need fast food fried chicken, that is where I go.

Like yesterday, when I had chicken and cole slaw at KFC in Manassas.

But there is more to KFC than the taste. There is the educational art work.

We saw two films this weekend, both at the Avalon. The first was Pedro Almovodar’s first English language film, The Room Next Door, and the second, the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown. Both films are getting by and large strong reviews from critics, and the Dylan film in particular is getting good audience reviews. I did read most of the critic reviews for both films on Rotten Tomatoes, and discovered that critics who like a film seem to like it for the same reasons, while dissenting critics each have a distinct set of reasons not to be so positive.

Let’s start with my conclusions. I didn’t think either film was a great film. And if I had to see only one of them again, I’d chose A Complete Unknown.

Now, a confession. I have never liked Bob Dylan. From the day I first heard him (not that I remember that day), I found his grating voice just grated on me, and his lyrics (which eventually somehow won him a Nobel Prize) never touched me in the least. As to the four other stars with major roles in the film, I love them all – Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, and Johnny Cash.

So, never being a Bob Dylan fan, I never paid much attention to his artistic arc. Some of his songs, I am naturally familiar with, although I certainly haven’t memorized any lyrics, and there are many of his songs, including some sung in the film, that I don’t know if I have ever heard before. I knew, from reading some pieces about the film in a cursory manner, that the culmination of the film would be Dylan playing an electronic instrument at the 1965 Newport Jazz Festival (I knew nothing about that, other than through the film), and I knew that Dylan and Baez had some sort of a relationship, although I am not sure I knew at the time.

The film shows Bob Dylan coming to New York in 1961 with a guitar and no money, of his learning that his idol Woody Guthrie was dying in a hospital in suburban New Jersey and his taking a taxi (which he did not have enough money to pay) there, going to Guthrie’s room and running into Pete Seeger, playing a song for Guthrie, and then going with Seeger to Pete Seeger’s house to spend a night or two. None of this is historic. This evening, I read an article from Rolling Stone, which generally liked the movie, but pointed out that it was not an historical film, discussing 27 places where the film and the truth went separate ways, including these.

The film shows Dylan, a “complete unknown”, coming to town and within hours becoming known by Guthrie and Seeger and within a few days being known by Baez, and on and on. It didn’t quite happen this way, but it makes a good story, and while I usually want films to be historically accurate, I must say that, with regard to Bob Dylan……what’s the difference?

As to the acting, critics are swooning over the various performances – all of them. I guess they were good enough. The only one that I really liked was Monica Barbaro, who played Joan Baez. As to Timothee Chalamet, I really don’t have an opinion. Because I don’t like watching or listening to Bob Dylan, I can’t hold the fact that I didn’t like watching or listening to Chalamet against him. The singing (and there was a lot of it) was not done through recordings, but by the actors. And they all did great. Chalamet sounded as bad as Dylan does, Edward Norton sounded just like Johnny Cash, and Barbaro sounded almost as good as Joan Baez (no one can sound just as good as she does).

Now, time for The Room Next Door. There are only two main characters, two old friends who had been out of touch played by Tilda Swinton (a former war reporter) and Julianne Moore (a writer of fiction). Swinton is under treatment for a cancer, and her treatment has ceased to be effective; an imminent death seems certain. Moore feels guilty she has not kept in touch, and vows to do better.

Swinton plans on suicide, using some sort of an illegal pill. Having failed to convince three other friends to help her, she does convince Moore, and rents a vacation home, somewhere (perhaps) in the Catskills, and the two of them go for a vacation to end in Swinton’s death. Moore will know that her friend has ended her life when she sees her bedroom door closed.

It tugs at the heartstrings, sure, but it is a very unlikely plot. And there are a few subordinate stories that are even less likely – a male personal trainer who wishes he was allowed to hug Moore, and Moore’s old boy friend, who is on a lecture tour not only talking about how climate change is destroying the world, but yelling and screaming about it in the most unpleasant of ways.

I did think that Swinton did a fine job wasting away and dying, and thought less of Moore’s performance. But…what do I know?

In between all of this, I read a short book by scholar Cecil Roth, Dona Gracia of the House of Nasi. I say that it’s a short book, because it is only 185 pages long. But, because the writing is so convoluted, it seems much longer. I mention the book here because this story would make a great movie.

The Jews of Portugal, at the end of the 15th century, can stay only if they become Christian. And the New Christians are soon in potential trouble because of the entrance of the Inquisition into Portugal, looking for backsliding New Christians. The Mendes family, one of the many prosperous Portuguese New Christian families, eventually all relocate to Antwerp, where they must remain New Christian, but there is no Inquisition.

This family becomes one of Europe’s wealthiest, perhaps the most wealthy, financing monarchies the way the Rothschild family did centuries later. After the death of her husband, the leader of the family businesses, Dona Gracia took over and ran them with great success. They were monopolizing the entire Dutch spice trade, among other things. When things got hot, they relocated to Italy, to Farrara (this was not easy to do, as they had to sneak not only themselves, but their assets out of Antwerp), and then to Constantinople, where they were able to revert to Judaism.

Dona Gracia became a financial leader in the Ottoman Empire, and a major philanthropist for Jews Europe-wide. The family’s trading business was now mainly carried on in Constantinople and on Italy’s Adriatic coast. Trouble came when a new Pope decided to go after the Portuguese New Christians on the Italian coast, and the Jewish world was torn as to how to respond.

This entire story, including the question as to how to respond to the Pope after twenty five New Christians were burnt to death in Arcona, and how this problem was solved, would make one great (yes, and expensive) film.

Any takers?

I don’t know why I ask that question. There is no such thing as a lucky number. We may think that a number is lucky, but, at the same time, we know that it isn’t.

But if “eleven” isn’t lucky, what is it? I know. Eleven is the number of days that have passed since the beginning of the year 2025 and, so far, for so many people, it hasn’t proven itself to be a lucky number.

But for me, so far, the eleven days of January have not been bad. I don’t live in Israel or Gaza or Sudan or Syria or Lebanon or Yemen or Ukraine or Kursk or California, or any of those places where conditions have been subprime. And while I have followed the tragedies that have hit in those places, they haven’t hit me directly.

So what have I, or in most cases, we, been doing this year so far?

1. We have finished our first TV serial of the year. Okay, maybe we could have chosen better, but we watched “The Twelve”, a ten part Netflix series in Flemish, set in Ghent. A woman is accused of two murders and is on trial. The jury hears the case and must reach a verdict, but individual jurors have their own issues. The series focuses on both, weaving between them successfully. Most interesting were the differences between American and Belgian criminal trials. In Belgium, you apparently only need 8 of 12 guilty votes to convict and if you have 7 votes, the judge (the “court”) gets a vote, to see if it can come up to the required 8. This is one of many differences.
2. I have watched several YouTube videos (each about 45 minutes long) about life in northern Russia (not Siberia, but in European Russia), including videos about the cities of Murmansk and Archangelsk, as well as small, remote villages (whose residents at this point are all quite old). Created by a Moscow activist named Ilya Varlamov, I found them eye opening as to the current conditions in those places. Be glad you don’t live there. I have also watched videos about Krasnodar and Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad doesn’t seem that bad. At least when compared to the others.
3. I’ve listened to a few podcasts on the Russo-Ukraine War and, like most of the podcasts on the war I have heard, they make it sounds like Ukraine is the odds-on favorite, and that Russia is falling apart at the seams. But that is what I have been hearing for over two years now. I have also listened, as previously reported, to Aaron David Miller talking about the state of the world. He believes it to be pretty awful and – guess what – he doesn’t really know how to go about fixing. it.
4. We watched three PBS specials. One a documentary on Jimmy Carter’s relationship to music, another a concert featuring the Blind Boys of Alabama, and the third a biopic about Josephine Baker. All three shows get A’s from me. You can probably find them on PBS Passport.
5. We took our day trip to Centerville and Chestertown MD, and had a superb lunch at Watershed Alley in Chestertown, and I had almost equally good lunches at &Shwarma in Rockville and Grigorios in Potomac. A good restaurant start to 2025. But then the snow came.
6. We saw “Jack and the Beanstalk”, the British Players annual panto, co-produced by daughter Michelle and enjoyed our grandchildren’s responses to the ritual corny characters and scenes.
7. I watched Oliver Stone’s 2016 film Snowden, which I thought excellent, although I can’t talk to its accuracy, and I actually read two books: Stuart Hampshire’s book about the philosophy of Spinoza, and an absolutely delightful biography of a salmon, called Salar the Salmon, by a British naturalist, Henry Williamson.
8. I heard a terrific presentation by a professor at USC about various Jewish languages, beyond Yiddish and Ladino (you can watch it on the Haberman website, http://www.habermaninstitute.org), participated in a discussion about how people with different political philosophies can find common ground, and attended a breakfast discussion with a 25 year veteran of the DC Metropolitan Police Force.
9. I followed the nightmare in California, the frightening antics of our next president, and the funeral of President Carter, I accompanied Edie to an eye doctor appointment, and we went to the Avalon and saw the new Pedro Almodovar film, The Room Next Door (neither of us liked it very much)
10. That, along with seeing our grandchildren, watching two hockey games, and shoveling some snow, pretty much filled my activity book (along with talking to some friends and email or texting with others, reading newspapers and on-line news, a little grocery shopping, and carrying the laundry from the basement to the second floor) about does it.
11. Oh, yeah. 11 blog posts. But you know that.

We have been thinking for some time about the effect on climate change on social movement. We know that there has been increasing desertification in various parts of the world, especially in parts of Africa, which have led to hunger, deprivation, migration and war. We have seen the flooding that has taken place in countries such as Bangladesh, where displacement on account of rising sea levels affects a significant percentage of the population. We have seen hurricane after hurricane hit Florida, and even more so hit various of the islands of the Caribbean. We have read about some of the inhabited islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, whose future as a place of human habitation is in doubt. We have tracked wild fires in the American west now in recent years, just as we have tracked drought and falling water levels. We have been accustomed to instability and most of us have ignored it.

Now it’s hitting even closer to home. Three thousand miles to the west of Washington DC, we see large parts of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County ravaged by wild fires. We have, over the past five days or so, seen thousands of homes destroyed. We have seen more damage to Los Angeles in less than a week than three years of war have brought to Kiev. And, we have seen much of the damage being felt not by the residents of trailer camps, whose homes seem to attract deadly tornadoes on a regular basis, but by middle class, upper middle class, upper class and upper upper class families.

This Saturday morning, January 11, 2025, we do not know when these fires will end. Or how much more of Los Angeles will be destroyed. And when these fires are stopped, or when they burn themselves out, we will wonder when the next one will occur. Will it be as bad? Will it be worse?

We Americans keep saying how lucky we are. We live in a free country. We are protected by two oceans. We have seen peace and most of us have seen at least a modicum of prosperity. This has been the true definition of American exceptionalism. We as Americans are not exceptional. We are just the benefits of the luck of the geographical draw. But climate change appears to be unstoppable. We will no longer be able to pretend that we are exceptional. We are now America the Vulnerable.

There are other ways we are vulnerable as well, of course. We have seen that we are politically vulnerable. We have seen our adversaries grow their weaponry, and this means not only their explosives, but their ability to move missiles and bombs and the like around the world with tremendous speed and accuracy. We have seen that we are vulnerable to disease, and that a fast spreading disease can quickly lead to a world wide pandemic, disrupting society in so many ways. And we have seen that we are more and more at risk as Artificial Intelligence is growing, and we know that one day AI may control us more than we control it.

But now I am thinking about Los Angeles. How do you rebuild such a large part of a city. It’s not as simple as a homeowner calling College Hunks Haul Junk to clear the site, and then asking your brother-in-law, a contractor, to build you a new house. It will be unbelievably complicated. It will take years and years before areas this large can be rebuilt and, during those years and years, families aren’t going to be waiting around in shelters or in friends’ houses; they will be trying to get on with their lives in other parts of Los Angeles or elsewhere.

We can look elsewhere for lessons. World War II obviously devastated most of Europe and Japan. Cities were totally bombed out, infrastructure destroyed. Yet when I went to Europe for the first time in 1962, only 17 years after the end of World War II, everything (almost everything) looked pretty good. I have never been to Japan – where Tokyo was firebombed, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuked – but the rebuilding proceeded much the same way. These were miracles, in a way, helped along by the U.S. becoming the financial sponsor of so much rebuilding. But the destruction of Europe and Japan were the results of war and, for the past 80 years, we have been able to keep extensive or long lasting wars at bay in those parts of the world.

Climate change is different.

It is much easier to keep the peace (hard as that may be) than to avoid drought, rising seas, hurricanes, tornadoes, and forest fires. If the world is going to be more and more threatened by natural phenomena, the idea of rebuilding in areas which have been destroyed becomes more uncertain. Does it make sense to rebuild in areas which have become increasingly hurricane prone, or on coasts which are more likely to be flooded on a regular basis, and so forth? Does it make sense rebuild in an area where you are going to be more and more prone to uncontrollable fires? Decisions must be made.

Of course, the complete loss of one’s home is traumatic, hard to really comprehend. It’s traumatic in Los Angeles, and in Gaza, and in places which are destroyed by, say, earthquakes. And when you have areas as large as the ones destroyed in Los Angeles, the loss of one’s home is only the start. Yes, everything you have collected over the years, from art work, to clothes, to jewelry, to family portraits and heirlooms, and more are all gone. But your future is also disfigured. Jobs are gone, for example. Each of these California communities had businesses that accounted for thousands of jobs that can no longer be fulfilled. And when jobs are gone, so are salaries. Infrastructure, for another, is destroyed – water, electricity, gas lines, schools, fire houses, everything is gone. How will it be replaced? And when?

Nineveh is no more. The great Mayan cities are no more. And so on. For now, Los Angeles exists. But for now long?

Okay, you say: “What a mess this is?”

I agree with you. Los Angeles is a mess. And, because I wrote this post quickly on a Saturday morning, I guess it’s a mess, as well.

As many of you know, I have been involved with Jewish funerals for many years, both helping families of Adas Israel members arrange their funerals, and as a member of, and for the past seven years, president of the Jewish Funeral Practices Committee of Greater Washington, Inc. The Committee has been around for more than 40 years, working out arrangements with local funeral homes (currently, one in Silver Spring MD and one in Alexandria VA) to provide traditional Jewish funerals at very affordable rates, well below the costs of standard funerals.

One of the elements of Jewish funeral tradition (and of Muslim funeral tradition) is for burial to be as soon as possible after death, usually within 24-48 hours; there are reasons for this, including reasons relating to concern for the survivors, as long waits for burials can bring additional psychological stress. Another belief is that all are equal in death. So, for example, traditional Jewish practice would have everyone, from the very rich to the destitute, buried in a plain, unadorned, wooden casket.

In other words, many features of Jewish practice are the opposite of what took place regarding the funeral of Jimmy Carter. This is not peculiar to Carter. It has been (and will undoubtedly continue to be) the case with other American presidents, as well.

Carter died under hospice care in Plains, GA. His body was transported to Atlanta, where it sat in state at the Georgia state capitol building and there was a ceremony, and then it was flown to DC where it was placed for a few days in the Capitol rotunda, where the public could pay their respects, and then it was driven to the National Cathedral in Northwest Washington, where there was a lavish funeral ceremony, and then driven from the cathedral to Joint Base Andrews in Prince George’s County, where it was loaded onto a plane to Fort Moore, Georgia, where it was placed in a hearse and driven to the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, where there a final funeral ceremony and burial. Whew!

This is the norm for burials of presidents. I know there were similar ceremonies held for Gerald Ford, who died in California, lay in state at the Capitol, had a funeral at the National Cathedral, and then had another ceremony in Grand Rapids, Michigan where he was buried. George H.W. Bush died in Houston, was brought to Washington, lay in state at the Capitol, had a funeral at the National Cathedral, was flown to Houston for another funeral service and then taken to College Station TX for a final service and burial. And so forth.

Is all of this movement of the body of a deceased president really necessary? My own suggestion would be to have a burial service soon after the death of the president, and then have memorial services at appropriate locations afterward. There is no real reason why the coffin and body need to be at the Cathedral or church services, why the body needs to be transported around and about, or even why an empty casket can’t be set up in the Capitol rotunda for people to pay their respects.

A third tenet of Jewish practices prior to burial are designed to pay respect to the body of the deceased (including body washing and watching); unnecessary transporting just does not seem either respectful or necessary to me. I know – you may have a very different opinion, but the differences from at least the  Jewish norm may be instructive.

Having said all of this, I did turn on my television yesterday to watch some of the proceedings. I saw the casket being loaded into the hearse at the Capitol, and I followed the hearse both as it was driven to the Cathedral and the, after the funeral, as it was driven from the Cathedral to Joint Base Andrews. They had a pace car leading the procession in front of the hearse, with a rear mounted camera, and you could follow the complete route of the hearse. I do like road trips, as you may know, and a road trip where I could just sit at my desk and watch the city roll by was a pleasure, as I knew every place on the way.

As to the funeral itself, I was watching it off and on. I tended to turn off the sound when there was preaching or when a soloist or the large choir was singing, and turn on the sound when there was a speaker I wanted to hear. That means that I heard Stu Eizenstat, Jason Carter and Andrew Young and others. I thought that all three spoke eloquently – Eizenstat giving a full and laudatory report on President Carter’s public service years, Jason talking about his grandfather the family man, and Young talking about Carter and civil rights. I also listened to President Biden, but did not think his words were particularly memorable (or maybe I am just tired of listening to President Biden now). I also enjoyed watching the former presidents, vice presidents and their spouses interacting as they sat the first two rows – Presidents Obama and Trump sitting next to each other and conversing proved to me that Obama could talk to anyone. Trump did not really speak to anyone else. Melania sat on the end of a row and looked all alone, as if she were out of place.

All in all, I think the services were very well done. It’s just that there was no thought given to quick burial, equality in death, and respect for the body.

I don’t expect things to change. I don’t think the majority of Americans would agree at all with my feelings. But I thought I should at least put my thoughts out for consideration.

A few decades ago, we knew a woman living in Israel, who was deathly afraid of Arabs. She had been born in Poland. I am not sure about her precise history, but she was clearly a victim of the Holocaust (she had probably been born around 1930) and knew what could happen if a group of people who hated you suddenly attacked or wound up in charge. She was convinced that one day, the Arabs would come for her. She passed away, at a fairly young age, in a hospital in a town in northern Israel, after an infection set in following a routine surgery to remove her gall bladder.

I am reminded of this as I watched the tragedy unfold in so many parts of Los Angeles, as the fires are destroying homes and lives and landscapes. As I write this Wednesday evening, 100,000 people have been displaced, well over 2,000 buildings have been destroyed, five people have died and many more have been injured. Yes, California has had its share of wild fires, and some knew that the dryness of this year’s “rainy season” had increased the potential for fires throughout Southern California, no one was thinking that there could be a situation like the one that actually has come about. Not that the residents of these portions of Los Angeles thought that they were immune from natural disasters. For their entire lives, they have been deathly afraid of……..earthquakes, and certain that, one day, their lives would be affected by the movement of the earth’s tectonic plates.

All their lives, the fear of earthquakes. And they were taken down by a fire.

Yes, disaster can strike from unexpected places. We all know that, even if we don’t act as if we do most of the time.

As one of my first books of 2025, I read Stuart Hampshire’s book titled simply Spinoza. It’s not a biography (Spinoza’s life story is told in an appendix of about six or eight pages), but an attempt to understand his philosophy and manner of thinking. Hampshire, who taught for years at Oxford, was a very dense writer; paragraphs in this book could run four or five pages. Yet, even Hampshire described Spinoza’s writing as terribly dense – too dense for normal reading. And he mentioned at least two times that scholars have not been able to fully understand certain aspects of Spinoza’s thinking.

Yet some things were clear, the most important being that Spinoza concluded (not felt, but concluded), on the basic of logic that was to a large extent beyond my thinking, that God does not exist except to the extent that everything in the universe is an element of God (a philosophy known as pantheism). So, to Spinoza, normal religion was irrelevant. There was no God to pray to, because we are each God, or a part of God, as is every planet, tree and insect. He also concluded, as I understand it, that mankind does not really have free will, in spite of what we may think (this, like many other things, shows 17th century Spinoza agreeing with most 21st century scientists and thinkers). Everything we do (in fact, everything that happens) is the inevitable result of what has preceded it, and happens either as a result of something in our internal makeup or of something that affects us externally. We think we are making a choice; we aren’t. We think things happen by chance; they don’t.

Under this theory, the fires were inevitable. From the time of creation (I use that term loosely, because I don’t think that Spinoza would say that God “created” anything, since we are all part of God and not separate from God, and it is illogical to say God created itself), it was inevitable that on Sunday night the fires would start spreading in Los Angeles County.

Now, when the fires burn themselves out, people will assess their losses, grieve, and rebuild, but we don’t know what will happen, even though whatever happens is inevitable.

Yes, this is a kind of predestination, but it isn’t John Calvin’s version, who believed that God had a conscious plan for each of us. It’s predestination because we are all part of God, and God works in accordance with the system of God, and we are part of that system. We are not externally instructed to do more, or to do less, or to turn right, or to turn left, but Spinoza’s logic, he says, explains why we do what we do.

But it does mean that, if we were smart enough, we could put all the pieces together and see the future. We are far from being able to do that, even with the gains being made by Artificial Intelligence, but who knows? Maybe one day Artificial Intelligence, if it can be programmed to (or can program itself to) utilize perfect logic and see into the workings of God (i.e., the workings of everything). to see into the workings of the universe, past, present, and future. But not in our lifetimes.

And that brings me to our inevitable president-elect, Donald Trump. Years ago, Donald Trump castigated the government of California for not managing its forests. Remember when he said that the forests of California should be raked? And just today, he has said that the fires are the fault of Governor Newsom, whom he calls Newscum.

Digression:  That reminds me of when Chubb Peabody was governor of Massachusetts and some opponent or critic said that he was the only governor of Massachusetts ever to have two cities named after him – Peabody and Marblehead. End of digression.

Today, he said the fires were Newsom’s fault not only because of forest mismanagement but also because of water mismanagement. And, although I don’t think that he addressed it today, back when he was talking about raking the leaves out of the forests, he also said that the United States government was not going to provide any funds to California to repair forest fire damage.

This may be both Trump’s first big test and the Congressional Republicans’ first big test. Will Trump stick to his “no relief money for California” position? If he does, will Congress let him get away with it?

We can’t answer that question with any degree of certainty. But the answer is inevitable.

(My apologies to Spinoza for what I am sure is a total misinterpretation of everything he ever thought, wrote or said.)

It is certainly tempting to write about the next four years of the United States of America, with its 51 states, and 2 new territories, but enough people will be doing that today, so I will avoid the temptation and write about something equally timely – the 20 or so books I read in 2024 to which I gave an A rating. I think 20 A rated books is quite a lot – I read 65 books altogether, and 20/65 = about 30%.

So here goes:

(1) The Threat by Andrew McCabe. Andrew McCabe, one of Donald Trump’s enemies, who was for two years acting Director of the FBI, and a career long FBI agent, gives an account of how the agency operates, of his background, training and early assignments, and then working on various Trump related investigations. McCabe comes across serious and well intentioned and successful in his career. Trump not so much. [Goodreads: 4.17]

(2) Our Unfinished March by Eric Holder. This is a relatively short book about voting rights in the United States. About their history, and about today’s shortcomings, along with suggestions for the future. Very well done, I thought. [Goodreads: 4.30]

(3) Britain and the Jews of Europe by Bernard Wasserstein. We hear a lot about how the U.S. refused to open its borders to Jews during the Hitler years, and this book – by a British born University of Chicago professor emeritus – gives the companion story of what happened in the United Kingdom. I found it very interesting. [Goodreads: 3.50]

(4) The Sign and the Seal by Graham Hancock. I have read this book several times over the past twenty years because I find it so fascinating, and I recommend it so often. Graham Hancock, after viewing the sculptures on the exterior walls of the Cathedral in Chartres, became interested in what happened to the Ark of the Covenant, which had disappeared from the Bible without explanation sometime before the sacking of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. In tracing the possible journey of the Ark, Hancock gives you history lessons that will change the way you look at much of the world. [Goodreads: 3.94]

(5) Winter Journal by Paul Auster. Auster died on April 30, 2024, shortly after I finished reading this 2012 book. What I remember about it is not so much the details of what ran through his mind as he wrote about his life, past and present, but just how good the writing is. Period. [Goodreads: 3.90]

(6) Disloyal by Michael Cohen. Say what you like about former Trump lawyer, Michael Cohen, but it is hard to despise him after reading this book. His rather unusual background growing up, his underhanded ways to make a living as a lawyer and investor in New York taxi medallions, his relationship with Donald Trump, his time in prison, and his conversion to upstanding citizen. Well written, and very informative. [Goodreads: 4.09]

(7) News is Where You Find It by Frederick Wile. I wrote about this in a blog post. Indiana born, Jewish newspaper correspondent who spent time as a reporter in Germany during the Weimar and early Hitler years, and had to be sneaked out of Germany, perhaps just in time. Written in the 1930s, and not reprinted, it is very difficult to find. Goodreads knows nothing about it. Unfortunately.

(8) Jamaica Inn by Daphne DuMaurier. This is another re-read, and it was as good this time as the first time. A young orphaned girl goes to live with her aunt on the moors of Devon and finds things not at all to her liking. [Goodreads: 3.90]

(9) The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. This is a British mystery, but a very odd one. The main sleuth stays in bed with a bad back, and the question is whether or not Richard III murdered his way to the English throne. If this one sentence description discourages you, ignore the description and read the book anyway. [Goodreads: 3.90]

(10) The Invention of Russia by Arkady Ostrovsky. The story of Russia from Gorbachev to Putin, this book has won many awards. Published in 2015, it will give you a good background that you might want to really understand that strange country. [Goodreads: 4.03]

(11) American Emperor by David Stewart. All of Stewart’s American history books are good and this one, about Aaron Burr, is no exception. [Goodreads: 3.92]

(12) The 1619 Project. Depends what side of the issues you are on? I hope not; it shouldn’t. This book, as you probably know, contains a serious of serious essays by prominent thinkers on a number of topics related to Black America and its history. You may argue with a little of (I did), but the vast amount is history and factual description, not opinion. You will be glad you took the time to read through it. Everyone should. [Goodreads: 4.62]

(13) Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present by Ruth Ben-Ghiat. Like Madeleine Albright’s book Fascism, which I read last year, this book does a very good job talking about the commonalities and appeal of “strongmen” and their differences. [Goodreads: 4.24]

(14) Oath and Honor by Liz Cheney. I wrote a blog post about this one as well. A detailed story of the investigation into Donald Trump. Should be read, even though…… [Goodreads: 4.58]

(15) The Quest for Corvo by A.J. A. Symonds. This is a third re-read, a 1934 quest/biography about author Frederick Rolfe, the mysterious Baron Corvo. It is both a biography, and the story of how Symonds went about obtaining information about the mysterious, and already dead, author. [Goodreads: 3.96]

(16) Verdict of Twelve by Raymond Postgate. Another unusual British mystery that talks not only about the crime and the trial, but digs into the lives of the twelve jurors and follows their thoughts until the verdict is reached. Published in 1940. [Goodreads 3.78]

(17) The Nixon Memo by Marvin Kalb. A fascinating book putting yet another spin on Richard Nixon. This book shows how, in a concentrated and purposeful manner, Richard Nixon, post-presidency, re-created himself as an important and closely listened presidential foreign policy advisor. [Goodreads: 4.00]

(18) Germany Puts the Clock Back by Edgar Mowrer. Mowrer published this book in 1938, tracing Germany from the end of World War I, through the ill fated days of the Weimar Republic, through the Nazi ascendancy and the first five years of the Hitler regime. Kristallnacht had not yet occurred. Read this and you will learn a lot about how and why Hitler was able to come to power. [Goodreads: 4.14]

(19) Moses Hess on Religion, Judaism and the Bible by Svante Lundgren. Finally, still another that was the subject of a recent blog post. Hess was a 19th century German Jewish thinker who was decades ahead of his time. Friend of Marx, Engels, Herzl and everyone else. Read my post so I don’t have to repeat it here. This book is listed on Goodreads as published in 1992 (I think it was probably his doctoral dissertation), but there are no reviews listed, and no rating.

That is it for A’s. Without description, here are my B+ ratings, with Goodreads ratings, as well: The Island of Crimea by Vasiily Aksyonov [3.81], The Generations of Winter by Aksynov [4.17], The Wife of Ronald Sheldon [3.60], In America: Tales from Trump Country by Catriona Perry [3.79], America in Retreat by Bret Stephens [3.87], Silver Seas and Golden Cities by Frances Parkinson Keyes [no Goodreads rating], The Nude Spins (The Lady Vanishes) by Ethel Lina White [3.74], Six Curtains for Stroganova by Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon [3.68], and Through the Russian Revolution by Albert Rhys Williams [4.04].

But first:

One of the things that I want to do this year is to see as many of the various museum exhibits in Washington that I can. To help me do this, I decided to keep a calendar of closing dates, so I would have a one stop easy reference place.

Here it is January 7, and I am already giving myself a failing grade. Last Sunday, January 5, the first exhibit that I have not seen closed. It was at the Renwick Gallery and had been viewable since last May. Titled “Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women”, I think it was clearly worth seeing. Because we had something else to do at 2 p.m., I would have had to go in the morning, but because of the snow, I decided that last minute grocery shopping was more important.

Interestingly, the Renwick has a lot about this exhibit on its website under “past” exhibitions. I suggest you look at it.

These are three that I liked. There are many more.

Now, next Sunday, a number of other exhibits are closing. There is another fabric exhibit, this one at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, there is the Gordon Parks photography exhibit at the National Gallery, and an exhibit on the Mongols at the Sackler Museum of Asian Art. The concern of course is that the snow and the cold will keep me away. We will see.

The reason I couldn’t go the Renwick Sunday afternoon is that we went, with Hannah and our grandchildren to see Jack and the Beanstalk, a British panto put on by the British Players. Our other daughter, Michelle, has been involved with the British Players for years, and has performed in a number of pantos, and both directed and produced others. She was the co-producer of this one.

It was well done, and the kids loved it, even though our four year old grandson couldn’t keep from adding to the script. Like, when the Princess appeared and some character said that “royalty” has come, he yelled out “Where’s the king?”. And when the dairy farmer complained that she had recently been left a widow, he said “Why doesn’t she get another husband?”

Here is Arthur Rackham’s version.

Finally, I titled this post “Snow Day and Edward Snowden” because, while I spent yesterday doing a number of chores, over the course of the day I watched (yes, I watched the certification of the Electoral College, but….who cares about that?) Oliver Stone’s 2016 film Snowden for the first time. I thought it a terrific film. I enjoyed every minute of it. I have no idea how accurate it was. My assumption is that it was basically accurate as to what Snowden learned and did, but that the scenes and dialogue itself were all fictionalized and, in the hands of Oliver Stone, fictionalized nicely. Of course (well, maybe not “of course”), the film was 100% a hagiography. It made Snowden out to be not only the world’s most patriotic fellow, but one of extreme moral and intellectual strength, loyal to his country (if not to every thing his government was doing) and to his girl friend (now his wife), and – to boot – just filled with charm. Yes, there is more than one side to every story, and this film praises one side of it and ignores the arguments for any other. But I forgive Oliver Stone for this (typically I wouldn’t) because I thought the film so good.

Yesterday was a major snow day. We were shoveled out, but there is an inch or so of new snow, so more needs to be done. Our clearers yesterday were three adult men who shoveled the walkway, the front and side sidewalks, the cars, and the driveway. Did a great job. The cost? “We don’t have a set price. Whatever you think it’s worth.” Go figure.

We had been so lucky. The first five days of 2025 had gone by, and there had been no snow. But now it’s caught up with us. You can see from the picture below that we have about five inches or so on the ground, it is 9 a.m., and the snow is supposed to continue until about midnight.

You ask why is all of this snow falling? I do not assume that it is coincidental that today is the day that the day that Congress is to certify Donald Trump’s victory, and that it is crucial to beef up security around Washington to keep all of those MALA (Make America Little Again) Harris supporters from rioting to keep the Congress from doing what some people (i.e., the MAGAs) believe they should do. We shall see what happens, but I understand that millions of Democrats are massing in the DC metropolitan area, and were it not for the snow, were preparing to accost the Capitol to disrupt the proceedings. After all, isn’t that what Americans do?

Okay, let’s turn the page on that. What does a lot of snow remind me of? First, let it be said that I remember no snow storms when I was young. That includes the major Thanksgiving snow storm that was apparently raging the night I was born. The first snow storms I actually remember took place when I was in high school, and I remember hiking from my high school home in what must have been almost a foot of snow, a distance (thanks, GPS) of 3.9 miles, with no sidewalks. Then, I remember the snow storms during college and law school, which I remember we basically just ignored.

Except for one. That was freshman year at Harvard 65 years ago, when my still friend Larry Gillis invited a bunch of us to go to his family’s summer cabin in Derry, New Hampshire for the weekend. It sounded like a great idea, and we plowed through the snow looking forward to a beautiful New England winter weekend. What we did not know was that the cabin had not been winterized, and that there was no heat, and no electricity, and no running water.

And then there was that Veteran’s Day in the late 1970s, when I don’t think there was a forecast for a lot of snow (after all, it was early November), and I had a meeting with a client somewhere off I-66 in Fairfax County. It started to snow, I did not worry, and I had no idea that when I drove down the ramp to get onto the interstate, that I would be on that highway for about three hours, with no opportunity to get off. Did I say three hours? Maybe it was four. Or five.

Before 1986 when changes were made to the tax laws, you could close a real estate transaction as late as December 31 and take tax benefits for the full calendar year. Sometime in the early 80s, I was in Buffalo for a closing that needed to take place before year end. It was quite a complicated transaction – the purchase of and arrangement of rehabilitation funding for an assortment of residential buildings under a HUD low income rental housing program. There had been all sorts of issues delaying the closing, and we were working through them one by one, facing a deadline of December 31 for the closing. On the 30th, the snow began to fall. But, after all, it was Buffalo. Big deal. Except it turned out that it was. It was a major snow fall, and mid-morning on December 31, both the federal government and the City of Buffalo announced that offices would be closing (I think “in an hour”) and that everybody should leave. Now, we were almost finished with the closing. I think everything had been signed, or would be signed before the HUD office was abandoned, but we had to get a deed (or I think it was multiple deeds) recorded by the end of the day, and the Recorder of Deeds had announced they were closing. You wonder what happened? We did get it done, with the Recorder (I don’t know that was his actual title) agreed to stay behind in his closed office to record the deed. And, while we had been panicking trying to get everything accomplished, what did most of the younger (I was then younger) HUD employees thinking about? Not getting home and hunkering down. They were all excited about the possibility of getting in some unexpected skiing.

And then there was what was meant to be a day trip to meet with a client in Bluefield WV. It was a warm  winter day, and I remember that I did not even bring a heavy winter coat. I had an early evening plane back home, but after lunch, snow began to fall. And fall. And fall. Then, the airport closed, and I made arrangements to spend the night. Luckily, there was a small restaurant across the street that stayed open, although I think I might have been the only customer. The next morning, the very small airport was still closed, but the roads looked okay, so I thought I would rent a car and drive to Roanoke where the airport was functioning. Except that the only place you could rent a car in Bluefield was the airport. I was in the motel for two or three nights, my only company being the Winter Olympics on TV.

Some other snow surprises? One was exploring the Big Island (“Hawaii”) on our 30th anniversary trip to the furthest west and southern state and discovering that there was snow, and a lot of snow, on top of Mauna Kea, while it was 80 degrees below. And, in 1972, I remember a similar shock when I drove up a mountain road near Granada, Spain, in early June and I found myself surrounded by snow which was deeper than I was tall.

When I was a practicing lawyer, I made it a point not to let snow stop me from collecting my hourly rates. And I remember many times trudging to and from the Van Ness Metro station and our house, a distance of about three quarters of a mile, through dirty snow banks. And I certainly remember those few enormous snows that we have had in DC, to which I am sure today’s snow will not compare.

At any rate, no problem. As they say, “This too will melt.” But not soon.

There had been a shop called, for some reason, Catch-Can about a mile up Connecticut Avenue from our house, which Edie used to frequent infrequently. I was never really in the store, but I think it specialized in what I would call women’s dressy casual (emphasis more on the casual than the dressy) clothes. Several years ago, it closed, and the owner left DC and move to Chestertown MD, in the northern portion of what is known as the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and opened another shop called, for some reason (and probably not the same reason), the Bohemian Trading Shop. Edie recently got a notice that the owner was retiring and closing that shop as well, and thought we should go to their going out of business sale and accomplish two things at once: (1) maybe buy something, and (2) see the store before it closed.

Chestertown is about and hour and three quarters from here, and we got a rather late start, leaving the house about 11:30. The drive takes you out Route 50 past Annapolis, and over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

Digression: We had not crossed the Bay Bridge since before the pandemic, and I must admit to have been very confused. There used to be toll booths, where you paid for your passage. Now, of course, you can use EZ-Pass, and I expected to see the toll booths with separate EZ-Pass lanes. But there aren’t any toll booths. You just keep going. And I didn’t see any obvious EZ-Pass cameras that you went under, although I did see some EZ-Pass signs that I paid no attention to. So, how does this work? Did they capture my EZ-Pass, or am I going to get a bill based on my license plate, or what? I admit to confusion.

Any way, you cross the bridge (always fun) and stay on Route 50 across Kent Island, but when you get to the fork in the road, you don’t go to the right like you are going to the beaches, but you turn left and head north. Between that fork and Chestertown (probably about 20 miles), you pass one other half-way sizeable town, Centerville, which I admit I knew nothing about. It’s the county seat of Queen Anne’s County and has been around for well over 200 years. We saw some nice houses, and as we passed the main square and Court House, and we thought (i.e., I thought) about stopping for lunch, because it was lunch time, about 1 p.m.

I looked at Yelp and saw there were a number of restaurants with good ratings, and when we passed the Alibi Gastropub, I pulled over. Here we are in this small town, and the Alibi, with a 4.6 Yelp rating, has quite a menu. We didn’t stop, and went on to Chestertown (15 miles more), but I do want to comment on the Alibi’s menu, which included wild boar meatballs (how have I gone through 82 years without ever having wild boar meatballs?), and a BLT with an added treat of pork belly (another meal I have foregone all my life). Yes, it had other things as well, and the next time I am in Centerville, that’s where I will go, but not yesterday.

OK, on to Chestertown. I must admit that the stop at Bohemian Trading was pretty much a bust, and that Chestertown, a very scenic, old town (population about 5,000) on the Chester River, deserved much more time than we had to give it. It was first settled in the 18th century, has a very nice upscale business section and more old houses than any city in Maryland other than Annapolis. If you Google it and see how many historically recognized homes and commercial buildings are there, you will be surprised. But it was 1:30 before we got there, and 2:30 before we finished our lunch, so we only had time to stop at Bohemian Traders and, of course, the local used bookshop, which is large, well stocked, attractive,  well lighted, friendly, and not cheap. But certainly worthwhile visiting and patronizing.

But what I really want to tell you about is the restaurant we chose for lunch – the Watershed. In an old-looking downtown building, it is sleek and modern inside. It has an exceptionally friendly young staff, and is clearly a place for evening “fine dining”. Edie had an ahi tuna salad, with six or seven slices of perfectly seared fresh tuna over a delicate green salad. And I had perhaps the best “frittata” I have ever had, although it could have been easily called a quiche. A perfect mix of eggs, two cheeses, potatoes, herbs, and a little chorizo. Served with the same salad and a just-right dressing. And, yes, there was no wild boar on the menu. But on the other hand, there was pasta with rabbit. And they have bison on the dinner menu.

The other thing about Chestertown? As you can see, they do not charge you $2.50 an hour to park.

It is Saturday morning, and Washington DC has not had a really serious snow for several years (my sole reference is my memory). But now it looks like we may be in for it. Why we aren’t skipping town while we have a chance, I don’t know.

The forecast is for about 24 hours of snow beginning some time Sunday night, continuing throughout Monday. We are in a band of a predicted four to eight inches. That may be bad enough, but the temperatures are not expected to exceed freezing (either Fahrenheit or Centigrade or even Celsius – I checked all three, as you might expect) for the next ten days, at least. So, the snow looks like it will stick around. I bought a new long handled car scraper (our former garage is now a room), and twenty five pounds of something to put on our front sidewalk and driveway.

But our general informal house rule is not to venture out unless we have to if there is danger of ice or slippage. As to shoveling, although our two children volunteer, we normally either do it ourselves if it is easy and flaky (which this probably will not be) or someone will knock on the door and make as an offer that we probably should, but probably will not refuse, to shovel the walk and driveway and shovel out the cars. I know this is a minor problem, as problems go, but when you get to be a certain age, you can’t be too careful, can you?

At any rate, right now the weather is coldish out (30 F), but sunny and clear, and it should stay that way over the weekend.

Changing the subject: you know who Henry Morgenthau, Sr. was? Not Henry Morgenthau, Jr. who became Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury, but his father, a German Jewish refugee who became a lawyer and real estate entrepreneur in New York City and made a fortune? Born in 1856, he was 10 when his family immigrated to the U.S. and he lived for more than 90 years, dying in 1946. He was Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I, from 1913 to 1916. Interestingly, of the three preceding American Ambassadors to the Ottomans, two were Jewish (Oscar Straus and Solomon Hirsch), the idea being somehow that a Jewish ambassador could best work with the Muslim Turks. As Ambassador during the war years, he was one of the first to call out the mass murdering of Armenians and Greeks by Turkish forces, calling it one of the worst crimes in all of history.

He wrote his memoirs, a book called All in a Lifetime, published by Doubleday in 1922, after his time as an American diplomat. The book is very difficult to find, and I happened upon a copy several years ago. Not only a copy, but one inscribed by Morgenthau, referencing his trip to Palestine when he was Ambassador in Istanbul. The book is inscribed to John D. Whiting, who was an American photographer living in Jerusalem in what was then known as the American Colony. (See the photographs at the end of this post.)

Henry Morganthau, by the way, was the father of Henry, Jr., who became Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury (Morgenthau, Sr. was appointed Ambassador by Woodrow Wilson), and who was active in Jewish affairs during and after World War II. He was a very interesting man, as well, and worth looking into. Other Morganthaus, Henry Sr.’s grandchildren, including long time (35 year) Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and writer and historian, Barbara Tuchman.

Why am I telling you this? Not only because it is all interesting, but because I just sold the book to a prominent London book store, “Peter Harrington”, which you may know. I brought the book to be shipped this morning from our local post office. Because the book was fairly pricey, I wanted to make sure that it was properly insured before it left on its international journey.

Now, I will say that we have been shipping books out for almost 15 years and have shipped over 3,000 here and there. And only once has there been a loss or damage problem, and that was last year, another valuable book, and also a book which we shipped to the U.K. That book was titled The Secret State and it was double signed and inscribed, in Polish and English, by Jan Karski, a Polish-American who had gone back to Poland and, dressed as a Nazi soldier, entered Auschwitz, learning it was death camp before than was widely known, and who reported that back to the American authorities and was basically ignored.

When we shipped the Karski book, I insured it for a few hundred dollars and the book was badly damaged en route. The U.K. authorities said that it was damaged when it was turned over to them by the U.S. Postal Service. I was told that I was going to have a hard time collecting on the policy, but when I presented the material the buyer and I were able to put together, without a delay the Postal Service sent me a check for $200, the proceeds of which I gave to the buyer to cover some of his loss.

Today, when I went to mail Morgenthau to London, I was told that insurance was not available on the parcel. That, if I wanted to send it, it had to go as it was, without insurance. The clerk, with whom I deal with fairly regularly, showed me his computer screen which said that insurance was not available.

What to do……I think in normal times, I would have held onto the book and researched further, but because of the coming snow (aha, you say, here is the connection between Morgenthau and a snow storm), I was afraid I was not going to be able to get to the post office early last week and I didn’t want to delay it. So, out it went.

Hopefully, I will get a nice note (“it got here safe and sound”) from Peter Harrington in a week or so. If not, a big loss (book and money) to start 2025.

By the way, in case you are concerned, the buyer knows the condition. He also knows how to restore it .

For the last several years, when I eat at, or carry out from, restaurants, I try to keep track of them and give them a rating of A through C. C is my version of F.

Last year, I recorded 67 dinner, and 133 lunches. Here are the A+, A, A- and B+ restaurants of 2024 in both categories.

Let me start with two restaurants that I have been to more than once, and that earned consistently high ratings. The first is Cafe of India, on Wisconsin Avenue, just a block south of Fessenden, five minutes from our house. It is where we carry out our Indian food from, and it never (well, hardly ever, disappoints). The other, a Mexican restaurant near daughter Michelle’s house is Villa Maya, located in Rockville in the shopping center at the corner of Norbeck and Bauer. It’s good for food, drink and atmosphere.

I should also say that I keep track of those relatively few times I go out for a real breakfast and that I have been to First Watch in several places around the country. There is no location near our house, but I understand there is one in Gaithersburg and a new one on Colesville Road just east of New Hampshire. I give First Watch an A whenever I have gone – whether it’s Bowie MD, where I have an annual lunch with two of my college roommates, or Virginia Beach, where we ate with a one second cousin, and two second cousins, once removed, or Indianapolis, where we had a different cousin lunch some years ago, or St. Louis.

Okay, let’s dig in:

(1) Java Nation. I like the food at the original location in Kensington, although the larger branch on Rockville Pike is good for something light. This is a lunch, not dinner, spot, and I suggest their Greek omelet.

(2) Sushi Toro. Perhaps I should have included this in the opening paragraph and made it three to start. This is a small restaurant located in what is still called the White Flint shopping center on Nicholson Lane, a short distance off Rockville Pike in North Bethesda. There are only about a half dozen tables (it does a big carry out business), but it is comfortable and the sushi, whether you get the simple, traditional kind, or the Americanized combinations are all very good, and reasonably priced. Oh, yes, closed on Tuesday – something I have forgotten twice.

(3) Ambar. I know there are two of them, one on Barracks Row on Capitol Hill, and one on 7th Street, north of Massachusetts Avenue. We had a very nice dinner one night, wandering in by chance with granddaughter Joan. Have not been back since, and that has been a mistake. Yelp gives it a 4.8. That’s quite high.

(4) Ada’s. Not Adas, the synagogue, but Ada’s on the River in Alexandria. I had lunch there with a former law partner. Pricey for lunch, to be sure. I think I spent over $30. But excellent food, service and view. (And there were a lot of people there paying that price.)

(5) I’m Eddie Cano. I have to qualify this one a bit. This is our neighborhood Italian restaurant, located on Connecticut Avenue, three blocks from our house. And the food (try to eggplant Parmesan and the swordfish) has been very good for some years now. We both eat in and carry out. My qualification is that our last carry-out did not meet expectations or previous experience. I keep it in the list, but it’s also on my watch list.

(6) Gourmet Asian Bistro. You probably haven’t been to this innocent looking restaurant in a small shopping center in what I think is Derwood MD on Muncaster Mill Road. It’s near my accountant’s office and I have eaten lunch there twice when taking things out to her. Both times were excellent and, again, the Yelp rating confirms it.

(7) Izumi. Izumi is a new Japanese restaurant that opened up this year in Adams Morgan on Columbia Road. We have had dinner there twice, and I had lunch there once. Each time, very, very good. Parking? You have to be lucky. We have been.

(8) Maya, Not to be confused with Mexican Villa Maya, Maya is a Nepali restaurant located on Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda, just below Montgomery Avenue. We were there two or three times this year, and have been there before. All good. Try their vegetarian Thali platter. The word “maya” in Nepali means “love”, we were told.

(9) Amparo, on P Street in the Dupont Circle area is a very trendy and expensive Mexican restaurant, opened a year or two ago by the son in law of friends of ours. It has (to my mind) a very unusual menu, and you have to go with the idea that you are going to try something new. And you should, but bring your wallet; this is not Tex-Mex.

(10) Spring Garden is a carry out (with a few tables) restaurant on Wisconsin Avenue across the street from Cafe of India. It is a go-to place for me, and I generally carry out. Have been there many, many times – never a bad meal.

(11) Moko Sushi is another Japanese restaurant and another restaurant in the shopping center that houses Villa Maya. Very comfortable, a little more upscale than Sushi Toro, and just as good.

(12) Jyoti, an Indian restaurant and an old standby, located on 18th Street in Adams Morgan. Had lunch there this year, and found it just as good as it was years ago, when I used to carry out on my way home. A little more expensive, perhaps, than similar Indian restaurants, but….only a little.

(13) Shanghai Lounge. Looking for a small, unpretentious Chinese restaurant on Wisconsin Avenue south of Glover Park and north of Georgetown. This might be what you are looking for. Very friendly. Only about a half dozen tables. A friend and I use this as our regular four or five times a year lunch spot.

(14) Buck’s Camping and Fishing. I did it again. This should have been at the top. We had a number of dinners here this year, and each was excellent. This is our neighborhood almost normal and trendy upscale restaurant, across the street from I’m Eddie Cano.

(15) Mother Earth Cafe. This is an unusual one. It is a very small unmarked place on 9th Street NW, just south of Rhode Island Avenue. I think only open for lunch, and probably breakfast. Owned by a very interesting and friendly man from Ethiopia, who has lived in more parts of the U.S than I have. Very informal. Very. Hardly a restaurant. You would probably never even notice if you walked by. Not even an identifying sign. Very good food.

(16) Ala is a new small plate Turkish restaurant in the building in Bethesda that used to house Portofino. It’s on Fairmount, north of Old Georgetown Road. Pricey. We had dinner here for Michelle’s birthday.

(17) Aventino in Bethesda, or Bethesda Avenue, but not on Bethesda Row. I did it again for the second time. This should have been at the top of this post. We have had two dinners there – about as good as you can get. Again, not cheap. Oh, yes, Italian, or is that obvious?

(18) Burton’s on Rhode Island Avenue in Hyattsville, MD, in the big, new shopping center on the east side of the street. I stopped there for lunch, concerned that it would be too formal and too expensive for just me, and I was pretty much right. But the quality of my food more than made up for it.

(19) Thai Kitchen in Bethesda, one of those many restaurants stretched out on Wisconsin Avenue that you pass, but never even think of going in. Maya, by the way, is the same in that respect. I had lunch here with another ex-law partner (I have many) only because there was a parking place in front and he has trouble walking. Surprisingly good.

(20) Pho Viet, a Vietnamese (duh!) restaurant on U Street NW. Actually, barely a restaurant. In order to get a seat, you almost have to agree to become intimate with anyone sitting in any of the other dozen or so seats in the restaurant. But what good food. I had lunch. Can’t imagine it’s open for dinner, but maybe.

(21) Yu Noodles on Gude Drive in Rockville. Had lunch with my daughter Michelle (a regular place for her). Interesting menu, not the Chinese food I am used to seeing. Highly recommended. We had lunch.

(22) El Golfo on Flower Avenue in Silver Spring. We go there for the food and the music, and are never disappointed with either. It’s just a typical suburban Salvadoran restaurant like hundreds of others in the DC area, except that the food might be a bit better. Big parking lot next door.

(23) Le Chat Noir. In the same building as Cafe of India on Wisconsin Avenue. We hadn’t been there for a long time. Went for my birthday. Excellent dinner. Quite French. Which means really good bread.

What am I leaving out? Most importantly, I am leaving out the many very good restaurants we have eaten at while on vacations. I might do a post with them another day – I didn’t want this one to be too long.

I will end with just one more place, because I think it may have been a quirk. A few weeks ago, I had no time for lunch and wanted to get a sandwich I could eat in the car. I had stopped at Strosniders in Bethesda (that’s a hardware store) to pick something up, and I just stepped into Edith’s Pizza (no relationship to Edith Hessel) and asked for a chicken salad sandwich on whole wheat to go. The sandwich was perfect. Perfect. The only word to describe it. Oh, on Arlington Boulevard on Bethesda – owned by the Edith who owns Breads Unlimited.

Now, it’s 2025 and I have to start all over. Don’t worry about me. Why, just yesterday I had an A level lunch at &Shwarma Crave (yes, that is correct) in the shopping center on Shady Grove Road that houses Wonder Books. I just picked it for no reason, ordered a chicken shwarma basket for $12, with rice and chicken and tahini and tomatoes and onions and red cabbage and corn and a garlic dressing. Wow, I said (to myself). Then I looked at Yelp. 4.7.

And one other question. Why, next door, is there an elephant mural (and a good one) on the outer wall of a 7-11?

WARNING: this post is a downer. Skip it if you wish.

Maybe it is just me, but it seems that the year 2025 has started off with less fanfare than years previously. No one even asked me “Are you two going out New Year’s Eve?” My Facebook friends, who spread out Christmas and Hanukkah greetings, stayed silent for New Year’s Day. No one called. Nothing really seemed to happen. Even the Sugar Bowl has been postponed.

I am not sure why this is the case. I don’t think you can fully blame it on the election of Donald Trump, or on any one cause. It just seems like everyone is tired, just wanting to get on with it without stopping to celebrate or even to reflect.

Of course, the new year already shows the continuation of too many wars, in too many familiar places, and the fact that there were two terror attacks in the United States on News Year’s Day does not help. I know, there has been no official determination that either event was a terror attack, but just like my old friend Potter Stewart (of a few nights ago), I know it when I see it. And I don’t like it.

The attack in New Orleans shows us that the fear of Islamist zealots cannot be dismissed, the attack in Las Vegas shows us the danger of violence surrounding the Trump election cannot be overlooked, and so forth. We may really be in for it, and if the Middle Eastern wars continue, you have to add to that the possibility, or maybe even the probability, of antisemitic attacks, although the incoming government will be, I am certain, on the offensive against a continued rise in antisemitism. At least for now.

Every such incident, and you have to add to it all of the school related violence, leads to tragedies. Death and serious injuries, all of which have repercussions beyond the victims.

Then there are unexpected deaths that involve no violence. I read yesterday a death notice of a 50 year old rabbi, who headed the lower school of a prominent Jewish day school here for the past ten years or so. Today, I see expressions of sorrow from many institutions. It reminded me of the death of my sister’s first grade teacher in the middle of the school year. She was a young woman, who was perfectly healthy and who one day felt sick and who two days later was dead. Some sort of a virus or something that spread to her heart (I certainly don’t remember the details). I was in the 6th grade in the same school, and I remember the shock of this, something we never thought about happening, and how “gee, it could happen to me” spread around. Frightening for the children.

It also occurred around the same time that my grandfather passed away. I don’t remember which was first. His death, of a heart attack days before his 67th birthday, was also unexpected, and created a very unsettling feeling in 10 year old me. And, I remember overhearing someone talking that night, or the next, at the shiva, someone who said to someone else: “This was such a surprise; I thought it was she [i.e., my grandmother] who had been sick.” This remark sent absolute shivers down my back. If my grandmother was the sick one, and my grandfather died, couldn’t I expect my grandmother to go at any time. (In fact, she lived another 16 or 17 years.)

It’s just that these things are so difficult for children to absorb. But, yes, they cope and they get over it, and it probably doesn’t affect them badly as they grow up. And we adults get used to everything, right? But when tragedy comes so often, and when it coincides with a new year which should bring promise and optimism, I think it is that much harder.

Jeez, Arthur, get over it. The sun is shining (sort of) and it’s already Jan 2. Stand up, breathe deeply, and get moving.

Let’s start with Happy New Year. I must admit that, so far, 2025 does not seem that different from 2024, but then again, there are 364 and 2/3 days to go, so I don’t want to judge it prematurely. As for 4050 years ago, Google’s AI (which I neither like nor trust) tells me that “Assur became an independent city-state after the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur.” As Longfellow said about that event: “…..Hardly a man is now alive, who remembers that famous day and year.” Assur, by the way, according to Wikipedia (which I do like and do trust), is located about 60 miles south of that formerly evil town of Nineveh, and was an active city for about 3000 years, with a population that at times was under 10,000 and at times over 100,000.

Getting closer to home, there is big news in Washington DC. No, not that Donald is returning to town (he’s making a list, checking it twice), but that it is now illegal to turn right on red anywhere in Washington except where there is a sign telling you that you can turn right on red. And, as of today, there are no such signs. So, as of now, you can’t turn right on red without breaking the law, even though the city (maybe the police) said that they won’t enforce it now, until more people become aware of it.

This, of course, is a big change and, particularly in a city where there is so much transient traffic, and in a country where virtually everywhere else, I think, right on red is both legal and encouraged by the guy behind you, things are going to feel a bit out of joint. Until midnight last night, right on red was legal unless there was a sign (now worthless, it appears) saying you it was forbidden.

It is also true (at least I think it was true from my own careful experience) that drivers turned right on red, even if there was no sign telling them they could not. My guess is that this universal right on red philosophy will continue, even though the law has turned everything upside down. The police, it seems, have better things to do that look for traffic violations. We will see how all this plays out.

Digression: remember the Woody Allen film where he compared New York City to Los Angeles and concluded that the only advantage to Los Angeles was that you could turn right on red? I think this was when right on red was a new thing, and if I recall started in California.

If you remember, yesterday I talked about the film The Six Triple Eight (you should see it) and how it was to be the last film we watched in 2024. But, as usual, I was wrong. Last night, with our house guest friends, while the fireworks were going off in parts of the world closer to the Greenwich Means Line, we watched Maria, the biopic about opera great Maria Callas. Like The Six Triple Eight, Maria is on Netflix.

I thought that Maria was mesmerizing. Angelina Jolie plays the role to perfection. She did not appear to be Angelina Jolie at all, and especially because she was able to do some singing herself, she appeared to be a somewhat more attractive Maria Callas herself.

It’s an unusual film in a number of ways. First, it adopts a slow, easy going rhythm that is maintained throughout the film. I know you don’t know what I mean, but you will when you watch it. Most films have exciting scenes, followed by a slower scene, followed by a tense scene, etc. But this film sets a certain rhythm which is never altered. It just carries you along.

It is also unusual in that this is a film which is focused on the last week of Callas’ life. She died at 53 in her home in Paris after some years of dealing with a failing voice, loneliness, and too many medications and drugs. By concentrating on the last week, the film is also able to get into Callas’ mind as she flashes back to earlier times in her life. The advantage here is that the writer got to pick and choose what to show. It is not a full chronological biography where you can’t afford to leave anything out. It is simply a flash back to particular events which, presumably, could have been on Callas’ mind as she knew her end was nearing.

But you certainly get the main points. A very unhappy upbringing with a over demanding and morally corrupt mother, a marriage to a much older man who presumably meant little to her, and a long affair with Aristotle Onassis, who refused to marry her, and who dropped her for Jackie Kennedy. In a recent biography titled Cast a Diva by Lyndsy Spence, the focus is on the abuse, physical and emotional, she endured throughout her otherwise starred life. In Maria, the physical abuse plays no role.

In her later years, her companions were her two employees, her housekeeper/cook, and her butler/chauffeur. Although Callas died in 1977 (two years, by the way, after Onassis’ death), both Bruna and Ferruccio are still alive, and at least he (now 91) was able to help the director make sure that the portrayal of the failing Callas was accurate.

One last thing about the film. Not surprisingly, it is filled with music, with music from recordings by Callas of some of the arias which made her so admired. This alone would make the film worth watching. And kudos to Netflix’s captioners (if that is what they are) who, in addition to showing the dialogue between the characters in the film, identify each piece, and show the words (in the original languages) as they are sung.

All in all, a great end to a year that the word “great” cannot be attached to.

It is now 11 a.m. in the East, and we have 15 guests coming for a New Years brunch in about 30 minutes. Edie has been hard at work since we got up. It’s time for me to do something too. Quickly.

(1) And first…..time for resolutions. You may recall that I made a New Years resolution in October, on Rosh Hashanah. My resolution was to read the Arts section of the New York Times every day. My goal was to become a little more up to speed on current culture. So far, I think I only missed one day of reading the section, but I have had to make some compromises. For one, since I have never played a video game and don’t think I ever will, I decided I didn’t have to read reviews of video games. I think that was a good decision, but it does compromise my resolution, to be sure. But, I figured, after all, this was a Rosh Hashanah resolution, and I am not Orthodox. I can compromise.

And it probably was a better choice that getting an M.A. in Contemporary Culture from Bowling Green University.

And here it is, time to make a resolution for 2025. I have thought long and hard about this one, have changed my mind several times, but finally have focused on something that I think is attainable. I resolve: to win a billion dollar lottery in 2025. That’s it. I ask for nothing more.

(2) Last night, we watched The Six Triple Eight on Netflix. I would recommend it, but not for the usual reason you recommend a film. As a film itself, it is good, but not outstanding, in my opinion. As a rendition of a true story that you probably know nothing about, it is a very important film and you should see it.

The “Six Triple Eight” was the name of a Women’s Army Corps battalion in World War II composed of African Americans. It was the only such group of African American women (some 800 strong) to be sent overseas, where it was given the task of clearing a backlog of over 17,000,000 pieces of mail to and from troops in Europe which the military had failed to deliver. The women cleared the backlog in 90 days, half of the time allotted to them for the task.

Remember the following: First, like all wars, World War II was awful for all troops fighting it. Second, the American military was fully segregated. Third, it was in fashion for White Americans to believe that Black Americans were inferior in every way, and that Black women were the most inferior of them all, and it was in fashion for White Americans to express their views publicly, both to each other, and to the Black Americans whose qualities were being questioned. Fourth, many or most White American soldiers lived in segregated parts of America, where bathrooms, lunch rooms and water fountains (not to say theaters and schools) were fully segregated.

This is all to say that the women making up the “Six Triple Eight” had a lot to overcome. And overcome they did.

The two leads, Kerry Washington playing the officer leading the batalion

The two leads, Kerry Washington playing the officer leading the battalion, and Ebony Obsidian, a young actress playing a member of the battalion whose White, Jewish boyfriend had been killed in battle months before, were both outstanding. Oprah Winfrey had a small part in one scene playing Mary McLeod Bethune and did her typical fine job. A casting mistake was made, I believe, when they decided that Eleanor Roosevelt should be played by Susan Sarandon, and another when Sam Waterston was cast as FDR, but the roles were small, and so was the amount of annoyance.

Obsidian’s character was named Lena Derriecott, and the real Lena Derriecott lived long enough to act as an advisor on the film to ensure (so it is said) that everything was accurate, and to give a wonderful coda to the film at the end. Derriecott passed away during 2014, just shy of her 101st birthday. The film also ends showing Michelle Obama giving an award to the battalion, and showing actual black and white footage from the war years.

(3) For my last book of the year, I chose one that (what’s new?) no one else has probably ever read. It is called Moses Hess on Religion, Judaism and the Bible, and was written by a Swedish professor of Jewish Studies, Svante Lundgren, in 1992. Hess was born in and lived in Germany in the 19th century, and while no one ever really heard of him (that would include me), he is worth learning about.

I am not going to try to tell you everything here, but let it be said that Hess was Jewish (and Jewishly educated), a Spinozan pantheist, a sometime Christian, an Atheist and a born-again Jew. He was a socialist, and a communist, and a friend and collaborator of Marx and Engels (he used the term “opiate of the people” and “from each according to his ability and to each according to his need” before Marx did). He was also a Jewish nationalist (adamantly against American Reform Judaism which denied that Judaism was anything more than a religion) and friend of Herzl. He believed that Christianity was better than Judaism to the extent that it was universal, while Judaism tended to push away non-Jews, but thought that Judaism was better than Christianity because it was a communal religion, while Christianity was an individualistic religion. He blamed the concept of Christian individualism as being the cause of capitalism, which he believed to be destructive of ideal human societies. He thought that one day, the Jews would have their own state, that it would be socialistic (which it was at the start), that Hebrew would be the language (no one else thought this at the time), and that indeed it would be a light to the nations. He believed in a Messianic Age, nit in a personal messiah.

That’s my summary. You can see why, as to Moses Hess, attention must be paid.

(4) That’s it for 2024. Onward…..

Leopoldstadt closed yesterday at Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre, and we saw the matinee performance. I went into the theater expecting to love Leopoldstadt or, if that was too great an expectation, I expected to find it an impressive work of art.

I am not an expert on playwright Tom Stoppard (or Sir Tom, if you please), but the two of his plays that I remember having seen, I did love. One was Arcadia, that we saw years ago in a wonderful performance at the Folger. The other, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, I have seen maybe more than once, although I can’t tell you when or where.

Leopoldstadt, I should say at the beginning, won the Olivier award for best play in 2020, based on its London opening, and won a Tony for best play in 2023, after it opened on Broadway. So what’s not to like.

It’s the story of a Jewish family (yes, some members had converted to Christianity, presumably for other than spiritual reasons, and others had intermarried) in Vienna, following them from 1899 through World War II when most of them perished, and featuring the reflections of three who survived the years of the Holocaust. Stoddard has said that the play, which he found difficult to write, was partially autobiographical (his four grandparents were all murdered in the Holocaust), but that he placed the story in Vienna, rather than in what was Czechoslovakia where he was born.

He was born in 1937, and the next year went with his family to Singapore. His father was a physician employed by Bata Shoe Company, whose owner transferred its Jewish employees out of Czechslovakia when the Nazis moved in. His father soon died, and his mother moved the family to India when Japan occupied Singapore. He went to school in Darjeeling and his mother remarried a British officer, a man named Stoppard.

Before I tell you what I didn’t like, I should tell you that I was surprised when we picked up our programs as we were led to our seats. You know the insert where any cast substitutions are listed? Well, the programs had such an insert, showing us that five (that five!) of the primary actors (and about 15 individual roles, since many actors had multiple roles) were being played by understudies. Whether I would have enjoyed the play more with the original cast, I don’t know, just as I don’t know when the understudies first played these roles. Was it just for today’s performances, or have these substitutes been in place for weeks? And, I should add that four of the five had previously been in the cast for Leopoldstadt in Boston at the Huntington Theater.

The main problems I had with the show were with (1) the script, (2) the acting, and (3) the directing. I also was not happy with the set, or the loud recorded intermittent music. Let’s take them briefly, but one at a time.

The script. The script part conversation, and part (probably the greater part) didactic lecturing, like you were in a college class. Yes, it was one character talking to another, but that was incidental. You heard that the Austrian empire had opened itself up to its Jewish citizens and that would never change. You heard about Herzl’s plan for a Jewish country of its own, and how some people just weren’t happy even thinking about moving to a desert. You heard about what was going on in Germany, then about the Anschluss, then about Kristallnacht, each in the form of what were basically monologues. As to the conversations beyond the monologues, I thought the words all sounded like they were scripted; little of the conversations seemed natural.

The acting. As I said, most of the prime actors were stand-ins, and I don’t know if this affected the way the play came across. Or maybe it was because of the stiffness of the script. Whichever it was, each of the actors seemed like they were doing just that – reading a script, acting. There seemed to be a disconnect between the actors and their roles. Even the young children (there were about a half dozen of them) seemed stiff in giving their few lines. It just seemed below par.

The directing. I am on less firm ground speaking of this, but the stage is very large, and everything takes place inside rooms in a home. Except in the few scenes with big family crowds, the actors were often too far from each other, and had to take large strides in rooms that should have been a bit more homelike. Also, because this is such a talkative play, with so much of it seeming like a series of lectures, you would think that talented directors would come up with ways to humanize these segments. But perhaps it’s impossible. The result was that Leopoldstadt, except for one scene where the gentile wife of the then Jewish paterfamilias culminates an affair with an Austrian dragoon, is the least physical show I have seen in a long time.
I want to say one more thing about that seduction (if that is the proper word) scene. Apparently the result of this dalliance (and there was a hint that this was not the only time the two were together) a son was born (it was 1924), who was raised as the son of the husband of his gentile birth mother. When the Anschluss with Germany occurred in 1938, the presumed father turned the family business over to his son. When a Nazi representative told the father that he had to sign papers turning the business over to the State, the father had no problem signing. He later told the family doctor that he had no problem doing this because he had previously turned the company over to his presumed son who was the product of this dalliance and therefore was an Aryan, not a Jew. It just seemed a bit hokey to me. Not possible.

Well, that is my brief and disappointed review. The audience seemed appreciative. But we met friends in the lobby after the show. And guess what? They agreed with me. And I met an old acquaintance and his wife on the Metro platform coming home. They did not agree with me. They liked it, but they said they have spoken to several of their friends who felt like I did.

So was it the play or the production? I will never know because, even if given the opportunity, I do not want to sit through it again.

Oh, I didn’t mention the music. I will just say it was overdramatic and unnecessary.