Art is 80

I spent last evening looking at screens. I saw two baseball games – the Dodgers beating the Brewers and leading 3-0 in the best of seven series to advance to the World Series (I’d rather the Brewers win, but that has always been unlikely) and the Blue Jays tying their series at 2 with the Mariners behind the pitching of ex-Nat and ex-a lot of things, 41 year old St. Louis native Max Scherzer. I am still torn on that one. My heart is with Toronto, but since the Mariners are the only Major League team not to ever have been in the World Series, I think they probably deserve it.

But in addition to the two games, I watched two debates from start to finish. First, the one hour debate between the candidates for Attorney General of Virginia, Democrat Jay Jones, and Republican (and incumbent) Jason Miyares. The debate was shown live on C-Span, and was sponsored by the Virginia Bar Association. I hadn’t paid much attention to this contest. My assumption was that Democrat Abigail Spanberger was going to be the next governor and that the Democratic candidates for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General, whoever they might be, would also win. After all, purple Virginia has been hit so hard by the attacks on federal employees by the Trump administration that I did not (and do not) think that the Republican candidate for governor stands a chance.

But then last week, one of those things that can happen in politics happened. It turned out that Democrat Jones had, only two or three years ago, sent out some private text messages saying that he would like to see several bullets hit the head of the Republican Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, and see his children killed. Now, I don’t think he was actually expecting anyone to follow up on his suggestion, but the language was so offensive that the context became unimportant. All of a sudden, his qualifications for the job become up for question, but it was too late to replace him or remove him from the ballot. Spanberger has not stuck by him with much vigor, and his opponent, Miyares, has come out with a very clever ad, targeted to people who were going to vote for Spanberger, basically saying “you may want to vote for Spanberger, but you can’t really vote for Jay Jones, can you”?

I don’t know anything about Miyares present term performance as Attorney General under a Republican governor in a state where both legislative houses are controlled by Democrats. I assume that I would disagree with him on many points. But I must say that he is a smooth talker, quite impressive on the debate stage, and that he didn’t say anything that I found outlandish or offensive. That’s unusual for a Republican these days. On the other hand, while I didn’t find anything Jay said offensive, and while he is a good speaker as well, I didn’t find him particularly inspiring. He wanted to talk more about Trump than about Virginia, and to mark his opponent as someone afraid to stand up to Trump. That all may be true, but he really didn’t sound like an Attorney General, and Miyares did.

Now, I am not a Virginia voter, so I don’t have to make a real choice. But my reaction was that Miyares would probably be a more effective, more professional AG, but of course, I would vote for Jones (in spite of his horrible texts and less than professional mien) because it is so crucial to keep Republicans out of any office possible.

The debate had one moderator, who seemed as fair as fair can be, the candidates had plenty of time to answer the questions, and they were respectful of the rules of the debate, kept within the time limits and, without diminishing their words, seemed quite respectful of each other.

The New York mayoral debate, between Democrat Zohran Mamdani, Independent (ha, ha, ha) Andrew Cuomo, and Republican Curtis Sliwa began just as the Virginia debate ended. It was not broadcast live on national TV, but I found I could watch it on the website of Channel 4 in New York, WNBC. It was a 2 hour debate, sponsored by a number of organizations, and had four moderators asking questions. Compared to the Virginia debate, the New York debate was absolute chaos. Why? First, because the three candidates were New Yorkers, not Virginians, and were used to interrupting people, rather than politely listening to them. In addition, four moderators were too many, it was unclear who was in charge, and they stumbled over each other from time to time. Finally, the timing made no sense (“I have the following question for you; you will have 30 seconds to answer.”), and the questions often seemed irrelevant: “Do you ever take public transportation?” “If you were in a bodega, what would you order for breakfast?”

One more thing fascinated me. The questions, about rent levels, and free buses, and noise levels, and trash collection, and more were all questions that only rise to this level in New York City, such a unique place. Someone listening to this debate, living elsewhere in the country, and never having visited New York City, would have thought that these people were running for mayor of a city at least on another planet, and maybe in another universe. None of the questions given to the New York candidates would have received anything but blank stares if asked of candidates in Virginia.

My overall response to the New York debate was: I pity New York City. None of these three seem capable of the job. Cuomo I have disliked since he was HUD Secretary, and he made several mistakes as New York’s governor. This is undoubtedly why he lost the primary to Mamdani. He looked old and haggard tonight, I thought, and not particularly impressive. He also never called Mamdani by name; he referred to him over and over as “the Assemblyman”. This is undoubtedly because he was afraid he was going to mispronounce Mamdani.

Sliwa, who was been notorious and controversial since his early days as the leader of the Guardian Angels decades ago, comes across as a serious man, and a fighter. I enjoy watching him, and he is clearly a Republican who would not be afraid to speak against something that Donald Trump might come up with. If he were a Democrat, I might vote for him, although he and I would disagree on a large number of things. We would also agree on much, it appeared. This surprised me. He could certainly hold his own in the debate.

And that leaves Mamdani. Zohran Mamdani (by the way, Sliwa kept leaving out the “r”, calling him Zohan) is just 33 years old. Can you name any big city mayor who was elected in any big city at 33 within the last, say, 100 years? The answer is, whether or not you think you can, you can’t (well, okay, Mayor Pete). He is just too young, his thinking still too immature, for this kind of a job. I expect he will win the election. He is way ahead in the polling, and certainly neither of his opponents did anything last night that looked to close the gap. But some of his proposals are visionary and not practical, his position on Israel is a bit frightening, his relationship with the Democratic Socialists is problematic, and he would face problems, I am afraid, well above his pay grade. And who knows what Trump’s reaction will be? Poor New York.

In the meantime, here in DC, Mayor Bowser is contemplating running for a fourth term, and several members of the City Council are considering a primary run against her (this is for 2026). As of today, I would vote for Bowser for the fourth term – I think she has done very well as our leader. On the other hand, if Eleanor Holmes Norton runs for reelection as our non-member of Congress at age 88, I won’t vote for her, Yale Law graduate or not. She has been too old and ineffective for too many years already; I have not voted for her in the last several elections, even though she has been the only candidate. Time, overtime, for someone new.

After watching Columbia Law Professor Jamal Green talk about how the post-Civil War constitutional provisions written to protect minorities have been turned on their head to protect the majority at the expense of the minorities, Ivdecidedctocwrite a letter of warning to future generations. It is so stark and somber that I decided not to publish it yet, to work with it a bit more (something I never do). Instead, relax and hopefully like some cartoons that I recently decided were worth saving.

There are 8 billion people in the world, and the only one who matters is Donald Trump. His influence in this country, in Europe, in the Middle East, and now in Latin America, is profound. How will history describe him? That is one question. Another is: how can 8 billion people let him get away with it? A third is: if he fell off the earth today, would everything come together or fall apart?

The world after Donald Trump is one which those of us in our 80s (that does sound old, doesn’t it?) will never really know. And that is what’s so sad about it all. We, each in our own way, have worked to build a better world. Sure, we may have failed more than we succeeded, but we could always hope that those coming after us could build on our accomplishments, and improve things where we have stumbled. Now, we see that the world we were building was fragile and that a slight jolt could set it in a different path. Many of our accomplishments would become irrelevant to this future world.

Of course, I think of Back to the Future, where Doc’s Delorean could time travel at will. But not only could it travel back in time (where, for example, Marty McFly could see his parents at their fateful high school prom), but it could travel forward to alternative futures, each apparently co-existing in alternative dimensions.

The future (or, better, the present) that Marty lived in was pretty much the present we know. But there were visits to an alternative, dystopian future, where might makes right, and everything is mired in chaos. There is a Donald Trump in that future (yes, not yet elected president), Biff Tannen. Biff was Marty’s father’s rival for the hand of Marty’s mother, and a rival whose tactics were, let’s call them, trumping. And in this alternative future, where Biff shined through the decay around him, he remained the model upon which today’s Donald Trump could have built his personal sense of morality.

Not only are we old folks condemned not to see the future, we are not really able to influence much the present. And, after all, the next 75 years or so will belong to our children and grandchildren, so shouldn’t they be in charge? Yes, but they are busy, building their careers, teaching their children, and yes, tending to us. They are inner focused as they should be. Only we elders have the time to worry.

And worry we do. I wish I had Doc’s Delorean. Sometimes, I think any Delorean will do. For months, there was a somewhat battered Delorean sitting at the Shell station at Connecticut and Fessenden. I wondered where it had traveled, what secrets of our future it held. And then there was my almost cousin, Marsha Katz z”l, Professor of Nuclear Physics at the University of Tennessee, who won a Delorean in a raffle. She kept it garaged in Knoxville, uncertain what to do with it. After her untimely death in an automobile accident 20 or so years ago, I don’t know what happened to the Delorean.

(Oh, you ask what an almost cousin is. Marsha was a first cousin to my first cousin. She and I were the same age, so I always knew her, even though we never spent much time together until she spent a year or so in DC on sabbatical working for a TN Senator. I think we both considered ourselves cousins….almost.)

In the meantime, I will try to keep track of the campaign against the “enemy within”, watch the inhumane treatment of anyone with a Spanish accent, follow the attempted regrowth of Hamas in Gaza, wonder how many Venezuelans we will kill in the Caribbean before we turn our military attacks on cartel members in Mexico, and look forward to the debate about putting Charlie Kirk’s portrait on the one dollar bill.

How will this all work out? As the inscrutable Chinese historian said in answer to the question: What was the effect of Napoleon on Western Europe? “It is much too soon to tell.”

This Gallop poll is rather shocking, isn’t it? The majority of people who live in countries under Communism say, 30 years later, that life under Communism was better. This is in spite of the obvious restraints on personal freedoms, the limits on wealth accumulation (unless you were part of the governing elite), the lack of a fair judicial system. Gives you something to think about.

I remember being in Berlin about 20 years ago, near Alexanderplatz in what had been East Berlin, in an upscale shop that sold artisansal soaps, talking to the young clerk. She was doing fine, but she told me that her parents, successful in Communist East Germany, were at a loss trying to find their place in the now free united Germany.

I also re-reading a memoir of an American, who became a Communist after graduating from Harvard, and who defected to East Germany when he was in the U.S. Army stationed in Austria. He built a life in East Germany, became a translator and editor, and raised a family. Quite comfortable. Then, he was given permission to return to the U.S. and came for his 50th reunion. His wife had died and he decided to stay here. He thought life was much more difficult here, when he had to deal with the American health care system and figure out his income taxes every year.

And we have a friend from Lithuania, whose parents had left her with an aunt and uncle when she was a baby and they escaped west, winding up in Chicago. She says she had a fine life in Vilnius, but when she was at the university, she was able to join her parents in Chicago, and she did. Much to her surprise, life in the Lithuanian neighborhoods of Chicago was much harder, in every way, than life had been for her in Vilnius. Today, by the way, her son lives in Lithuania.

I am not advocating for Communism, but pointing out that, while the challenges we face in Trump’s corrupt America are formidable, America has never been a the paradise, the goldene medina, that it is sometimes cracked upto be.

I just finished reading Stacy Schiff’s biography, Samuel Adams, Revolutionary. I found the writing a bit dense, but putting that aside, the book is the result of a lot of research and worth reading.

The book concentrated on the colony of Massachusetts in approximately the thirty years prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Adams was a rabblerouser, an activist, and maybe the first to call for complete independence from Britain. He was not looking for personal wealth, and was often living on the financial edge. He was not looking for notoriety and wrote under a large number of pseudonyms. He had burned most of his papers and is a difficult biographical target, and that does show in the book. And he was a thorn in the aide of the British, who never quite could figure out the best way to deal with him.

Massachusetts, and especially Boston, was in more ferment than I had realized during this period, trying to maintain as much liberty as it could without bringing down the wrath of King George. Sometimes, they went too far, and British troops were brought into the city. The reaction of the Bostonian’s? Read today the reaction of Chicago to the National Guard. The reaction was the same.

And the troops? They were never sure what their role was, and there was always the fear that something bad might occur. And it did. The Boston Massacre that so frightened everyone that the troops were withdrawn.

And then of course there was the Boston Tea Party, where a large number of colonists, dressed as Indians and yelling fake war chants, threw hundreds of crates of tea overboard. Even today, we can’t identify most of the participants.

I didn’t know much about the origins of the Tea Party. I guess I never thought about it. Because of British duties, Massachusetts was boycotting British goods. Nothing was coming into the port, other than what was being smuggled. The British thought they could break the boycott by bringing in tea that could be sold at a large discount. The tea was available because the warehouses of the British East India Company were bursting at the seams, and there was a need to dispose of the excess.

My point here is that life in Boston between 1740 and 1776 was far from calm, the future far from certain. When the British decided that they had enough and they would chase down Adams and John Hancock and James Otis, who were hiding in Concord, and the shots there and in Lexington were heard ’round the world, uncertainty grew. The colonists banded together, first through what were known as Committees of Correspondence, and then through the Constitutional Conventions, to which Adams was a delegate. Things went downhill from there, and the full war with England was the result.

Going back to the map that started this long post, it makes you wonder. If someone had polled Americans, say in 1812, and asked them if they were better off when they lived in a British colony, what would the results have shown?

Obviously everyone is thinking about the return of the hostages today and the release of the prisoners, but it is also a federal holiday (yes, a holiday during a shutdown is a weird concept), one which has long recognized the now controversial Christopher Columbus. I wrote about my Gaza feelings yesterday, so today I will divert you with an unedited repost of my 2024 Columbus Day writing. It is especially relevant as our president has proposed that any of Columbus’ shortcomings be forgiven and forgotten.  Here goes. Hope you find it enlightening.

Today, Monday, October 13, is Columbus Day Observed or, if you prefer, Indigenous Peoples Day. Columbus Day itself, of course, is October 12, this year otherwise known as Yom Kippur.

And that is not irrelevant. Because, as you probably know, although Columbus was born in Genoa, and Columbus Day itself was originated by an Italian organization on the 300th anniversary of his “discovery” of America in 1492 (it became a federally recognized holiday exactly 100 years later, in 1892), there have always been rumors that Columbus was not really Italian.

Of course, in the 16th century, there was no nation called Italy, and Genoa was in what might be better referred to as the independent Republic of Genoa, and the language of Genoa was not today’s Italian, but a separate Romance language known as Ligurian, one of several languages spoken on the Italian peninsula. So the fact that it was reported that Columbus was not fluent in Italian is sort of a red herring as to his origins.

But there have been consistent rumors that maybe Columbus’ family was Jewish in origin, migrating from Spain to Genoa. I have read several impressively researched books on this topic, and became kinda convinced that these books were right.

Now, after a DNA study of more than twenty years, conducted by Spanish scientists, it has been declared, based on Y chromosome studies of Columbus’ two sons and what had been presumed to be (and now appears to be confirmed to be) the DNA of Columbus himself, that Columbus was Jewish, or at least of Jewish family origin. The news was released the day before Columbus Day (October 11) in a Spanish language documentary that I don’t believe is available here quite yet, but will be soon, I am sure.

Okay, where is this going? I belong to a Thursday breakfast group where, each week, some member makes a presentation on a subject of his choice. Last December, I gave a presentation on Columbus. I had a hard time figuring out how to present it without it being too fact loaded and dry, and came up with a concept of a “deathbed letter”, written by Columbus (obviously actually written by me), penned the night before he died at the young age of 55.

I know it is somewhat long for a blog post, but if you read it, I think you will enjoy it, and I know you will learn a lot. Here it is:

“Deathbed letter of Christopher Columbus

Dec 2023

It’s the 19^th of May 1506.  I am lying in my bed in Valladolid, Spain, hoping to see the dawn.  But I am sick. Very sick. This is not something new.  I have been sick off and on for almost fifteen years.  I am only 54 years old, but I feel much, much older.  I have seen so much.

After I die, my will will be read, I am sure.  It will be noted that I am leaving one half mark in silver to “the Jew at the entrance to the ghetto in Lisbon”.  That is going to raise a question that will be discussed over the centuries.  Was I Jewish.

I want to clear up this question right now.  My answer is:  I just don’t know.  After all, what is a Jew anyway?

So why am I leaving this poor man in Lisbon a token bequest? Good question. I really don’t know that, either.  In fact, I don’t know his name, and I don’t know if he is still there. How could he be?  All the Jews left in Portugal have been baptized, whether they wanted to be or not.  No one in Portugal identifies as a Jew today. But after all, what is a Jew anyway?

Let’s go back to my childhood. I was born in Genoa. At least that is what I tell everyone.  But some think I was born on Majorca. Really?  Do I speak like was born on Majorca?

Genoa was a fascinating place to grow up.  The sea in my front yard. A large city. A prosperous city.  The capital of the Repubblica di Genova. The year was 1451.  The date?  I’m not sure of that – August, September, October?  Is that very important?

Were there Jews then in Genoa? Again, that’s hard to say.  In 1451, there were lots of Jews in Spain.  And in Portugal. 

But in Genoa, there certainly wasn’t a Jewish community.  No synagogue or anything like that. But let me tell you a secret.  There were Jews everywhere. Perhaps especially in commercial ports like Genoa.  Not religious Jews, perhaps.  All Jews weren’t religious.  Some were just ordinary folk.

My father? Domenico Colombo. He was born in Genoa, too.  In 1418.  Passed away just seven years ago.  My grandfather’s name was Giovanni.  I actually don’t know if he was born in Genoa or not.  Could have been – I didn’t get a chance to know him very well. But he, like my father, was a weaver.  You know, Genoa in those days was famous for its woven wool.  Fabrics were exported everywhere, and my father was an artist in his field.  He wanted me to be a weaver, too.  I think he expected it. I gave it my best for a few years.  But – to tell you the truth – it just wasn’t for me. There was also a lot of weaving in Spain.  Most of the weavers were Jewish there.  Not sure why, but that’s a fact.

You are going to find out, I am sure, that no one ever heard me speak Italian.  That’s probably true – I rarely did, and when I did, it certainly wasn’t as a first language.  In Genoa, we spoke Ligurian.  Another Romance language – pretty limited geographically.  Might not pass the test of time. And you didn’t generally speak Ligurian when you were out of Genoa – no one would know what you were saying.  To be from Genoa, and to have contact with the outside world, you needed another language.  One, at least.

I spoke Castilian.  In fact, in my house growing up, we often spoke Castilian.  Why? I don’t know.  I never questioned it.  But it helped when I went to Spain.  I could talk to people. Although I must say that my Spanish was a bit different from the Castilian spoken in Spain.  Weird, you say.  True, and I could never understand why. But then one day, I ran into someone who said to me:  You’re Castilian is so old-fashioned.  Like you learned it one hundred years ago!  Then I realized that it must be true.  Maybe my family came to Genoa from Spain, and brought the Castilian that we still spoke with them.

Oh, I forgot to mention my mother.  Susanna Fontanarossa.  Or maybe she was Susanna from Fontanarossa.  Names are funny things. She was from Genoa, too, but from a neighborhood on the outskirts.  She was quite wealthy. My grandfather owned a lot of land. In fact, a village.  The village was called Fontanarossa (that’s the Italian name) – but was the village named after him, or he after the village?  I don’t know.  His first name was Jacob – okay, Giacomo.  Where did he come from originally?  Once more, I am really not sure. But he spoke Castilian too.

There are those who say that my family, or maybe part of my family, were at one time Jewish.  That has always intrigued me and I was interested in why they suggested that. You know, there are no Jews in Spain today, and haven’t been for about 15 years now.  In 1492 (a famous year, to be sure), my queen and my king exiled all of the Jews, or at least those Jews who did not fully convert to Christianity. But the problems for the Jews in Spain started about 100 years before that.  There were major riots (following an extensive church inspired campaign) in and around 1391.  It is said that more than half of the country’s Jews became Christian back then, leaving about 250,000.  And, at that time, some Jews who had the resources to leave Spain, left and went to various places around the world – Genoa was one, for sure.  Is this what happened to my father’s family – weavers leaving Spain to head to a commercial center like Genoa? Is this what happened to my mother’s wealthy family – with my grandfather’s family being wealthy enough to buy so much land on the outskirts of Genoa?  Did this joint background bring my parents together?

We were Catholics – at least that’s what we said we were and that’s what I think I am – but we only did what was expected of families like ours.  Were we performing any Jewish habits inside the house?  I don’t think so, but maybe I just didn’t pay enough attention.  Everyone in Genoa was Catholic. I don’t know if I ever heard the word Jewish until I left home.

I was only 14 when I first left home and took a job as a cabin boy on a ship.  For the next few years, I divided my time between land and sea, helping my father when I was home, and learning everything I could about navigation when I was at sea.

In 1473, when I was 20, I was hired by three wealthy families in Genoa to act as an agent for their commercial businesses.  I traveled all through the Mediterranean and even went to Britain and Ireland. In 1477, I went to Lisbon and found my older brother Bartholomew. He began to work for one of the families with me, one of the families that had engaged me four years earlier.  I met Felipa during this time – on a trip to Madeira – her father held an important position there; he was governor.  We married and had a son, Diego. Because of the connections Felipa’s family had, and the people I had met representing the Genoese families, I was pretty well connected. But  then I spent three or four years working on ships trading along the west African coast, but went back to Portugal in 1784, when I heard that my wife had passed away.  It was a real loss for me.

Shortly after that I met Beatriz – she was only 20 and we never married, but we had another son, Fernando.  I still see Beatriz, and I hope that my brother Bartholomew takes care of her financially from the resources he will inherit. I trust him to do this.

I admit I am a fairly smart fellow.  And if you are smart and apply yourself, you can learn a lot while you are at sea. I already had, as you know, learned to speak Ligurian, Italian, Castilian, and Portuguese.  At sea, I also taught myself Latin.  And I did a very large amount of reading.  There is so much dead time at sea that you can do all of this.  I read history, travel and geography books.  I read about astronomy and navigation. And I read the bible.  I became especially interested in the Old Testament.  And the Jews.

People are surprised that I knew so much, because I really never went to school.  But take it from me, you can learn more by yourself on a ship than in a musty classroom with a half educated teacher.

I also paid attention to what was going on in Portugal, now my home.  Portugal was trying hard to find a sea route to the east, to the Indies, so they could bring back spices and other eastern delicacies, and compete with the Muslims. For decades, they had been exploring the coast of Africa, hoping to find a sea route around the bottom of that continent.

But I had a different idea. You may think that we in the late 15^th century were pretty stupid and thought the world was flat.  No one – at least no one of any intelligence – thought that.  The world was round, a sphere.  And, having read so much, it seemed to me that it would really be feasible by sailing west across the Atlantic and winding up east, in the Indies.  Easier than going all the way around Africa.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t convince the royal family of Portugal to fund such a trip. They thought the future was to send ships around the Cape of Good Hope.  And they thought that the trip I suggested would greatly exceed my budget.  I couldn’t convince them otherwise even though I was close to most of the Portuguese cartographers (and most of them Jewish, as you may know).  Some I met through my wife; some I just met on my own.

So I approached the Spanish monarchy as well, and they thought we had underestimated the distance to the Indies. I couldn’t convince them otherwise.  They thought I had not planned correctly for the voyage. Now, I know they were right.

And we approached the English.  They had no interest at all.

Then back to Spain. In Spain, I had a lot of supporters.  I had supporters who were close to the king and queen, and I had very wealthy supporters who were willing to financially support my trip.  Guess what?  They were all Jewish.

Spain was a very Jewish country, and I enjoyed that.  Some of the Jews had converted to Christianity, but – to me and to everyone else, including themselves – they were all still Jewish. And many of them were very wealthy.

So when I went to try to convince the king and queen, all of my supporters were Jewish, or formerly Jewish, and they were my supporters and my friends.  And I was very comfortable with them.

You know there were many reasons for this trip.  There were many reasons to reach the Indies and commerce was a very important one – but not the only one. The others included acquiring new lands in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella. And then there was the question of spreading Christianity to areas which had never seen a Bible.  Or maybe it was finding people who had seen the Bible, who were already Christians (or Jews) and who were simply isolated from our part of the world. The lost tribes. Or maybe we would find some relics.

But the end was clear – we were free to go, at the expense of the queen and king, and even more at the expense of the Jewish Sanangelo family, and if I was successful, Queen Isabella promised that I would be named Admiral of the Ocean Sea, and viceroy and government of all captured lands, and I would get 10% of all profits from these lands, in perpetuity.

I got together my crew.  I made sure I had Jewish crew members.  First, if we ran into the lost tribes, we wanted to be able to speak with them, so I had a Jewish translator, but there were others as well. I can’t even list them all.

 So on August 3, 1492, we left Spain, and on October 12, 1492, we landed in what we assumed were part of the Indies.  That was a big day.  Remember it – October 12.  My crew joked.  One day, they said, they are going to call this day “Columbus Day”.  Who knows if that will ever happen?

We had left Spain with three ships.  The biggest, under my command, was the Santa Maria, and the others, smaller caravels, were the Pinta and the Nina. Actually, the name of the second wasn’t the Pinta – but we called it that because it was painted very nicely; I don’t even remember the real name.

We thought we could sail straight through, but shortly after we left Spain, the Pinta had a problem and we stopped in the Canary Islands for repairs.  We had to stay several weeks in Las Palmas.  We were lucky that they were able to help us.  After all, it had been less than 10 years since the Canaries were given to Spain.  Before that, they had belonged to Portugal. Portugal was not likely to help a Spanish ship.

Everyone had a different idea about how long the trip should take us – different ideas about the size of the Earth, and about how far away the Orient would be.  And we also didn’t know precisely which direction we should take to find land earliest.  But about four weeks out, about a week before we landed, we saw birds – large birds.  So we decided it would be best to follow them, so we changed course a bit and proceeded. And on October 11, a sailor on the Pinta spotted land.

Of course, we did not know exactly where we were.  I named the land San Salvador – made sense to me, right? Ferdinand and Isabella would approve.

We knew we were on an island, not the mainland, and we spent the next few months exploring this island and others close by.  We saw that the islands were inhabited. The natives were very welcoming.

It was similar on most of the islands.  Until we got to the last one – this island was populated by very aggressive people, who didn’t want us there at all.  And we were told about still another island, where the natives were even worse.  They were said to be cannibals, and we were warned to stay away.  They were called Caribs.

We left the Indies to return to Spain in the middle of January, 1493.  We only took the Nina and the Pinta; I sailed on the Nina.  The trip back was not as pleasant as the trip forward.  We went into a big storm, and we were separated.  I didn’t know if the Pinto survived or not.

The Nina took refuge on the Azores, which were Portuguese, not Spanish.  I was afraid of trouble.  The Portuguese leader in the Azores thought the Nina was manned by Spanish Pirates and didn’t believe the story I told him.  It took some time, before the Nina and its crew were freed, and permitted to go back to Spain.  I don’t know if we could say we were prisoners while in the Azores, but we certainly weren’t at liberty.

After we left the Azores, fate intervened with more with more bad weather, and we were forced to land in Lisbon, my home of so many years but an enemy of Spain.  At first, we thought there would be trouble, because the King of Portugal, who was generous enough to meet with me, told me that we should not have undertaken the trip, that it was a violation of a treaty between Portugal and Spain, which had given the Canary Islands to Spain, but had determined that Portugal had the right to all Atlantic travel.

But he did let us return to Spain, and soon after landing we were able to meet with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in Barcelona. I had brought back four natives from the islands to Spain with me.  We also brought back some gold, and some pearls, and a few things that we never had in Spain – I am not sure what the natives called them – I just don’t remember – but maybe one was called “pineapple”, one was called “tobacco” and one was called a “turkey”.  Something like that. I told them about the beauty and the wealth of the land.

It was too bad that we couldn’t go further and had to return.  If we had been able to proceed west from these islands, I am sure we would have reached the known part of the Indies and China in short order, which would have been so important for our trade. But we didn’t.

I made three other trips to these new lands.  They were not as pleasant as the first, and I am not going to write about them here in detail.  We went with a much larger group of sailors.  We had over 15 ships.  And our hope was to continue our friendly relations with the native population and bring them to Christianity, and to set up trading posts, which could be used for future trading with China.  And of course to explore more. But things got out of hand.  This time, we ran up against all sorts of unfriendly natives – people who had very uncivilized habits.  Eating male captives. Raping and enslaving female captives.  That sort of thing.  And our men also caught natives stealing from us.  I had to allow my crew to treat the natives in their own way – to punish them harshly when appropriate, but also to teach them to be Christians at the same time.  But they never got to that stage.  And I know all of this is very controversial, but I think we only did what we had to do under the circumstances.

But that was also when I began to be sick.  For a long time on this voyage, I was bedridden. I couldn’t lead my men and they did what they did, and I must admit some did things that I did not support. Like taking natives as their own slaves, and buying and selling them.  That sort of thing.

We had discovered and explored many new islands on that trip, some of them quite large, but we hadn’t got to China or anywhere on the mainland.  That was the point of the third voyage, which followed the second in short order.

This trip was even more of a disaster.  We explored more islands, and found what we thought was the mainland, the eastern continent, with China and all that.  But it wasn’t China; we don’t know what it was. 

It was on this third trip that we brought with us a few hundred men to remain in the islands, to establish permanent settlements.

At the same time, I got very sick again, and could do little.  That’s when many of my men began to disregard me, just ignore me, to turn against me. They claimed that I had brought them to this place, and promised them they would find riches beyond their imagination, but they found none of that – only hard work.  They also accused me of ignoring the goal of religious conversion and of engaging in the slave trade myself.  Can you believe that? Some of my men were so much in rebellion that I had to have them hanged.  I didn’t realize how badly that would go over with the rest of the Spaniards who had made this third trip.

You know that’s when the Queen and King had me arrested, ordered me back to Spain and I was enchained the whole voyage.  They took away all my rights as governor of the newfound colonies, and completely violated the contract they had made with me after the first voyage.  But my health was bad, making it difficult for me to even respond.

So here I was, no longer in charge of anything, in continual pain and bad health.  We are only talking about five or six years ago.  That’s when I was faced with so many accusations:  that I wouldn’t allow slaves to be baptized because I wanted them to remain slaves, that I was trafficking in slaves, that I punished and sometimes killed both Spaniards and natives by having them starved, or beaten, or chained together, that I cut off hands and noses and ears, and more that I can’t even begin to write about.  There was a trial.  What could I do?  I confessed to some of these things, and awaited my punishment.

It could have been worse. I was jailed for six weeks.  My possessions were all removed from me.  Then the King showed some mercy and let me go.  For all that I had done for Spain, you would have thought they would have rewarded me and not made me suffer like this.  But one thing:  they said I could return to sail across the Atlantic once more.  And I did.  Just three years ago.

I had a new goal.  I wanted to sail all around the world. No one had ever done that.  But once again, the weather did us in.  We sailed the Atlantic quickly and smoothly, but then hit what I can only call a hurricane.  We were stopped for a long time, and then made our way to part of the mainland called Panama and we were told there was another ocean across the land.  We hoped to be able to sail around to it.  After all Vasco di Gama had just sailed around the southern tip of Africa for the Portuguese and had already reached the Indies that way – we have lost so much time here.

But the storms and the unfriendly natives kept at us, and we were forced to the island of Jamaica where we remained, if you can believe it, over a year, with no way out.  We had lost about 1/3 of the men who had sailed with us already and on Jamaica there was more mutiny and fighting.  Finally, the King sent some ships to rescue us.  While some of the men decided to stay longer or permanently in Jamaica, the rest of us went home to Spain.  My son and I had to pay our own way.

And that was just a little over a year ago.  And here I am.  I am at the end of my days.  That last journey, after all of the terrible times of the trial and its aftermath – no one could be expected to survive.

So, here I am.  I am sure I am on my deathbed. I need to pray to God.  I know how the Catholics do this.  I know how the Jews do this, too.  Please help me!  I have no idea what I am.  I have no idea what to do.  It has come to this.”

I have a question for you. Who owns Gaza? Not whether Gaza is controlled by Hamas, or by Donald Trump, but who owns individual parcels of land in Gaza, and who owns the (now mostly ruined) buildings, or condominium units in buildings, on the land of Gaza? These seem like basic questions, don’t they? But you don’t hear them being asked.

I looked up Gaza Land Law on my phone and saw Google AI’s description of it as being “a complex and multilayered system, consisting of a mix of legislation from successive governing powers and international law.” It is described as a “patchwork” of the Ottoman Land Code of 1858, British Mandate ordinances (1918-1947), Egyptian military orders (1947-1967), Israeli military orders (1967-1995), and Palestinian Authority regulations from 1995 onward. Much of Israel’s action, which included confiscating land for military corridors, etc., has been viewed by the United Nations and the International Court of Justice as illegal, and obviously the destruction of property and the displacement caused by the war that started two years ago has exacerbated that problem. All of this is further complicated by the loss of land records during the recent war, and before, as well as competing claims that pre-exist the war.

You can see that this will make for a lot of work for not only the lawyers (if only anyone can compensate them) and for those who will put together the new government for Gaza.

Lest you think that the new government will be easily created by Jared Kushner and Tony Blair over lunch, I have read that there is already disturbing unrest in Gaza that may lead to problems that, again, no one had considered. As the Israeli army moves away from large segments of the land, as the almost 2 million displaced residents of Gaza begin to wander back to the areas of their former homes, and as food and other supplies remain in short supply and subject to chaotic forms of distribution, unrest is sure to occur.

Already, Hamas appears to be stepping up to take control. This is, of course, the opposite as to what is “supposed to happen”. Hamas still feels itself in control (and legally, isn’t it?), and has taken on the responsibility to keep as much order in Gaza as possible. Rather than cede power and give up its weaponry, what I have seen is that Hamas (somewhat, I guess, like Donald Trump) is activating 7,000 reservists, presumably giving them some sort of weaponry, and sending them out to keep a intra-Gaza civil war from breaking out. As far as we know, Hamas still has the loyalty of the majority of the population, but certainly not the loyalty of the entire population and, in a situation as volatile as that which the Gaza residents are in, opposition is certain to arise, and attempts to silence the opposition will be the result. Of course, if unrest occurs that Hamas cannot control, or if Hamas is successfully removed from power, then what? Will the Israeli army move back in? Will the Gazans simply be permitted to kill each other? Will one or more Arab armies take control? There is a plan for an International Stabilization Force to take control, but there is no assurance that such a Force will be allowed to move into Gaza without opposition.

Several days ago, Hamas, along with Islamic Jihad and other groups, made it clear that they do not want to trade one occupational force for another, that they want any future government of Gaza to be controlled by Palestinians. We don’t know what this means in practice, but we can imagine.

In the meantime, Trump and team in their 20 point plan, has imagined the creation of an independent body of Palestinian technical experts, with no political affiliation, to function as the country’s internal governmental control body, under the supervision or direction of an international entity which will be led by none other than Donald Trump, with significant assistance from Tony Blair. It will remain in charge until a sufficient number of Palestinian successors can be located and trained, and until the Palestinian Authority can be remade so that it no longer looks like the Palestinian Authority and is viewed as competent to take over governance.

One of the main jobs of the temporary Trump government will be to solicit and accept proposals for the rebuilding of the country and for development proposals which will provide jobs and economic stabilization for the strip. Everything, of course, is to be done in coordination with Gaza’s neighbor, Israel. While it has been estimated that over $50 billion will be required for basic rebuilding of the strip (World Bank in Feb 2025), nothing has been said about the sources of those funds (presumably Saudi and UAE sources, for the most part, or Trump’s friends?), and certainly nothing has been said about compensating individual Gaza residents for their property losses, or other losses, or compensating individual Gaza enterprises for their losses. And of course no one involved in the 20 point plan is suggesting that Israel should have any responsibility for the damages that it has brought upon Gaza’s population.

Well, you have to start somewhere, and I guess the hostage/prisoner swap, scheduled to take place today or tomorrow, is as good a place as any. It is well beyond time for the Israeli hostages to be returned, and beyond sad that so many have perished, but remember that Israel is turning over 2000 prisoners, including many hard core prisoners convicted of murder and other such crimes, although all of them will apparently not be returning to Gaza, but are being sent elsewhere. I would imagine (hard to imagine otherwise) that these 2000 newly freed, and presumably bitter, Palestinians will not be, by and large, strong advocates for peace, and that some will immediately fall into the ranks of the opposition to the Trump proposals.

We shall see.

Usually, by the time I sit down to write a post, I have some idea of what I am going to write about. Today, I don’t, so we will just have to see what happens.

Baseball: First, let me say that I am happy with the way the Major League playoffs are turning out, although I have not been paying close attention. I am fairly neutral as to the winner of tonight’s game between the Cubs and the Brewers, although I’d probably root for the Brewers quietly. Not sure why. The winner of that game will play the Dodgers for the National League pennant. I don’t like the Dodgers or the Phillies (the Dodgers won their series), but I would have rather watched the Phillies (since they have three Nats – Harper, Turner and Schwarber). I would root for either the Cubs or the Brewers over the Dodgers.

As to the American League, what could be better than a playoff series between Seattle (the only team never to have been in a World Series) and Toronto (the only team representing the remaining English speaking (okay, and French speaking) democracy in North America. I am not sure I have a favorite in that series; I want them both to win.

Nobel Prizes: I find it interesting that the prize for literature went once again to someone I have never heard of – Lazlo Krasznahorkai. As a side note, I have learned that he is the first Krasznahorkai ever to win a Nobel Prize. This shouldn’t be surprising because the name was apparently made up by his father, who was looking for a Hungarian sounding name to replace is Jewish sounding name, so that the family could live with fake identification during the Holocaust. It worked, and the family decided to keep the name. If you Google the name, you will find zero references to anyone else.

More often than not, the Nobel literature prize is won by someone I have never heard of. Last year, it was Han Kang, and before that the prize went to people like Abdulrazak Gurnah, Olga Tokarczuk, Patrick Modiano, Svetlana Alexievich, Jon Fosse, Annie Ernaus, Peter Handke, Mo Yan, Tomas Transtromer and more. Most of the winners (and this is obviously okay) have not written in English, and surprisingly many have not been translated into English, even after they win the prize. Of course, there have been English language winners in recent years, as well. One was Alice Munro, now under much criticism for (if I have this right) closing her eyes to some sexual irregularities going on in her house. Another was Bob Dylan, which was an abomination in my opinion. And a third was poet Louise Gluck, who I would have met in the late 1960s, if I had followed the advice of a young woman I met at a part in New York City, who invited me to leave the party with her and come meet her sister. Had I said yes, who knows what might have happened? Louise Gluck might never have written another poem.

Gaza:  So, who governs Gaza today? Is it still Hamas? Is it Israel? Is it Trump? Is it nobody? That is one basic question for which it seems there is no answer. I have some other questions. Assuming the hostage/prisoner swap goes off over the next couple of days, as seems to be anticipated, there will be approximately 2,000 Palestinians currently in Israeli prisons being released. The majority of these are people who have been arrested over the past two years during the current fighting, but some have been held longer than that, and some have been held for what have been called life sentences for various crimes involving terrorism and murder. They will all be turned over to [fill in the blank] in Gaza. And then what? Where will they stay, since 90% of Gaza homes have been destroyed? Will they live in tunnels, or in tents, or where? Will they be given priority over normal Gazans, who don’t know where they will be staying either? And will they be forced to stay in Gaza (where they will undoubtedly form the next generation of Hamas or Hamas-like leaders), or will they be allowed to leave Gaza? And if so, where will they be allowed to go, and will they be able to leave their next place and go anywhere they want?

And as to Gaza generally, I assume that food supplies and medical supplies will increase, but it takes a long time to rebuild destroyed cities, and the people of Gaza will suffer for a long time under the best of circumstances. And under whose control will this rebuilding be started? Israel does not want to give up control for security reasons, Trump favors an international consortium led by Trump, Palestinian groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad say that only Palestinians will rule Gaza, and so forth.

Yes, I have many questions about Gaza.

Qatar: I don’t think that Qatar is going to have an air force base in Idaho, but they will apparently use a base to train pilots in our most advanced aircraft, and will certainly become privy to much about the American military that they currently are not privy to. Qatar is a strange place. It has acted as a “neutral” (?) in negotiations to try to end the Gaza war, it has been the home of Hamas leadership, it has also been home to a major United States Air Force base, it has been (legitimately) accused of putting billions of dollars into American universities to support Arab Studies programs that have been at the heart of the pro-Palestinian movements and demonstrations on campuses across the country. Qatar, largely through its sovereign wealth fund, has invested a lot of money into American real estate and business projects, and is a major partner in Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners investment fund. It has pledged to increase its investments in the United States by a very large amount. But Qatar also has close ties with Iran, and with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Clearly, Trump is allying himself very closely with Qatar. Will this be good, or disastrous? I, for one, have no idea. Qatar is clearly a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

This marks the end of this post. I still have no idea what I am going to write about today.

A few years ago, I read a book about the Kushner family. I think it was called Kushner, Inc., but don’t hold me to that. My overall conclusion was that the Trumps and the Kushners, despite several obvious differences, were peas in a pod. One based in New York and one in New Jersey, both were headed by ruthless, amoral men who were intent on building enormous family wealth through real estate investments. Today, one of those men, still ruthless, amoral, and ambitious, finds himself President of the United States, while the other, Charles Kushner, is our Ambassador to France.

We all know about Donald Trump. But we probably know less about Charles Kushner. For example, do you know that Kushner spent two years in federal prison after being convicted  of making illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering. Do you know that, as a matter of personal retribution, not political retribution, Kushner hired a prostitute to seduce his sister’s husband (who was involved in Kushner’s conviction). His plan was to tape the encounter and send the tape to his sister. His plan did not work.

In 2020, Trump pardoned Kushner, praising him for his exemplary post-prison life. Yes, he did, and this is probably not very surprising because Kushner and his wife are (as they in Yiddish) Trump’s machatunim. Kushner’s son Jared and Trump’s daughter Ivanka are married, so Kushner and Trump are, in effect, family.

Jared Kushner, the story goes, was an average high school student, without apparent credentials to enable him to enroll at Harvard. But he did enroll at Harvard because it turned out that he did have one important credential.- a father able and willing to make a $2.5 million gift to the university.

When his father went to jail, Jared took control of the Kushner business empire, and then purchased The New York Observer, an weekly newspaper, with money he raised while in college when he bought and sold commercial properties in suburban Boston. Throughout all of this time, Kushner identified as a Democrat.

Throughout Trump’s first term, Jared and Ivanka served as presidential advisors, with West Wing offices. Jared, who had been an active supporter of Chabad and a relatively observant Jew, was involved in Middle East matters, including implementation of the Abraham Accords. After Trump’s term ended, the Kushners retired from politics and moved to Miami. Jared went back into the money-making business, which primarily involved setting up a multi-billion dollar investment fund primarily with Saudi and UAE money. Of course, he was criticized for capitalizing on connections he made during his White House years, but it does not appear that he let the criticism get to him.

At the same time, while working closely with his Arab business partners, he kept his ties to Israel. He had also met most high level Israeli politicians during the first Trump term, but these were not his only connections. For example, the Netanyahu family and the Kushner family had been very close (sometimes staying at each other’s houses) since Jared’s childhood

For all of these reasons, Jared’s unofficial involvement in attempting to end the Gaza war is not surprising. As perhaps the only person on intimate terms with Trump, Netanyahu, and the most powerful Arab leaders, how could it be otherwise.

Both Israel and Hamas are understandably exhausted by the horrific conflict that erupted into warfare two years ago. They needed a catalyst and Kushner, working with Britain’s Tony Blair (another former government officials with multiple contacts), provided the necessary push to potentially end the current violence

We will see how all of this progresses. In the meantime, in spite of the contempt with which I hold Trump and Netanyahu and most of their minions, I gave never had strongly negative opinions about Jared and Ivanka.

It seems to me that Jared is a pretty talented guy. I don’t really know how he views the future, but he is only 44 years old and may stay in the public eye for decades to come.

Some time during the 1990s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development decided to debar a client of mine and the property management company that he owned. My client, whom I will refer to as Ben (because that was his name), if debarred, would be prohibited from engaging in any business activities with any branch of the federal government for a period of three years.

Ben was then in his late fifties, lived in suburban DC, and served as the general partner of six or seven limited partnerships, each of which owned a multifamily housing property, all but one or two receiving HUD subsidies under the Section 8 program so that they could house lower income families. The majority of the properties were in Virginia, several in cities located just off I-81. All of the properties were fully tenanted, kept in excellent condition, scoring high on all HUD inspections.

But Ben did have a problem. You know what a hale fellow, well met is? Well, Ben was not one of those. He was stubborn, rarely respectful, and often belligerent. He was just the type of guy whose income should not depend on interactions with the federal government. There was no way that he was going to obey a HUD bureaucrat just because their job was to regulate his activities. If you asked representatives of HUD’s Richmond VA area office, or the HUD Philadelphia Regional Office (which had oversight over Richmond) what they thought of Ben, they would probably tell you that he was one of the most difficult and unpleasant owner or manager of HUD-assisted properties that they had to deal with, and that they did not like him at all, in spite of the fact that he ran such good properties.

I think that several HUD officials were out to get Ben. They were just looking for a way to do it. One day, in reviewing the annual financial reports of his properties, they thought that they might have found it. Each of the properties was owned by a separate limited partnership, with Ben the sole general partner of each. The limited partners were individual investors, who provided the majority of the equity required for the development of the property. In return, they received general tax write-offs under various provisions of the Internal Revenue Code designed to encourage necessary investment in properties, whose values were kept low by virtue of the restrictions placed on the properties by the government. These tax benefits were so lucrative, that the investors really didn’t mind foregoing significant cash distributions and, in fact, under HUD regulations, annual distributions were very limited.

Most general partners did, however, distribute these limited funds to their investor limited partners, but Ben (sometimes to the consternation of the limited partners) never did. He kept the amount of otherwise distributable cash in a special account which he termed a “rainy day account”, an emergency amount of funds ready to be expended if necessary, but only if necessary. Over a period of time (the buildings were probably then at least 20 years old), these accounts grew to large amounts.

The existence of these accounts on the projects’ financial reports confused and therefore worried HUD. Something must be wrong for this amount of money to be held by the properties. As was often the case with HUD staff, they refused to listen to the obvious explanation, especially since the general partner was Ben, a man they believed to be inherently evil.

They were simply blinded by their dislike and their determination to find something that Ben did wrong that they needed to press further. Although obviously I was not involved in their internal discussions, I believe that their inability to find for themselves the source of these rainy day funds led them to believe that, in a debarment proceeding, the illegal sources would be found. And they would be able to get Ben out of their hair.

As you might imagine, Ben was the wrong person for HUD to pick on. He was determined to to fight tooth and nail. And, he had a special advantage. In his partnership agreements, there was a provision that said he could use partnership funds to defend himself for any costs that he incurred as a result of his partnership activities.

Do you get where I am going? Ben had the rainy day funds, a very large amount of money when you added them together and, because they were made up of cash eligible under HUD rules for distribution, they were beyond HUD’s power to regulate. He was therefore able to mount a total defense without spending a penny of his own money.

He hired me and one other attorney (someone who had worked for him for years and years) as his two man defense team and gave us carte blanche. I bet no HUD debarment case ever had so much pre-hearing discovery. We had document discovery and we had deposition after deposition, some held in DC, some in Richmond, some in Philadelphia. Throughout all of this, it was clear not only that HUD had no case, but that some of the HUD personnel were so blinded by their loathing of Ben, that they did not even realize that they had no case.

But we were dealing with a HUD administrative judge, and debarment cases can be notoriously hard to defend against. So we could not let our guard down.

If I remember correctly, we had about two weeks of hearings, with sworn witnesses testifying. Only more lax rules of evidence made it any different from a judicial trial. At the end of the hearing, we waited for our decision. And waited, and waited.

Finally, and I don’t remember how many weeks later, the decision came. Ben was not debarred, and the administrative judge and his staff took the trouble to write a 90+ page opinion, raking HUD over the coals, criticizing them for every aspect of their treatment of Ben. The judge, who was HUD’s chief administrative law judge, even suggested that a charge of prosecutorial misconduct by HUD officials would be far from a frivolous one.

This case went on for more than a year, and it was by far the most time consuming of anything I was doing. Ben and I got along and he was a great client (by that I mean he always paid his bills on time), although when the rainy day funds were running out, he was clear to advise me that payment of my bills might not be so forthcoming. That didn’t surprise me. Ben was Ben, after all. But it was this case, more than anything else, that put my daughters through college.

Of course, the limited partners felt that Ben was being debarred by HUD only because he was such a continual jerk and that they shouldn’t have to pay his defense fees out of the rainy day funds which would otherwise one day belong to them. As soon as we were finished with the HUD litigation, we were served with more papers, this time for arbitration hearings. The limited partners were looking for a determination that Ben would have to pay back to them an amount equal to the rainy day funds that he had used for legal fees. This didn’t really worry me that much, because the limited partners, who had never complained that they hadn’t gotten any cash year to years, and who were operating under very clear partnership agreement terms, didn’t really have a case. I frankly (and yes this does surprise me) don’t remember exactly how these proceedings ended, although I know we prevailed over the limited partners. And I know I got paid for handling this case as well, which must mean that there were still sufficient rainy day funds held by the partnerships to pay me.

Ben and I stayed in contact only for a while after all of this excitement abated. He sold his management company, his wife died a difficult death, and he moved to Florida. He passed away some years ago. As far as I know, he had not maintained regular contact with anyone from his life in Washington.

But the HUD officials who were involved in this, many of whom I know? They remember it all.

The moral of the story? If you have the law and facts on your side, and unlimited money, you will do okay.

If Pam Bondi can refuse to answer questions she is asked, I can answer questions that I am not asked. Fair is fair. One question nobody asks me is: what are some highlights of your legal career? The times when I felt the best. Today, I will tell you one. Tomorrow, another. Then we will see.

My 40+ year legal career centered, as you may know, on affordable housing. Transactional work, development work, partnership and corporate work, securities work, administrative work, trade association work, and litigation. While litigation was never the majority of what I did, it certainly provided highlights.

One highlight involved a case brought against the United States government in the Court of Federal Claims, the court where you must bring monetary claims against the government. My client was a Pennsylvania based construction company that bought an apartment development in suburban Houston from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  HUD had previously foreclosed on the property and now owned it. It was still occupied. They offered it for sale at a form of auction to the highest bidder.

HUD sold properties on the basis of a short, but dense, prospectus. Among other things, this prospectus contained a carrot and a stick. The carrot was that the buyer would be given Section 8 subsidies to enable low income tenants to afford to live at the property. The stick was that the property would have to be renovated in accordance with HUD-approved plans.

After the sale was consummated, HUD told my client that there was one thing they should know that was not spelled out in the prospectus. The Section 8 subsidies would not be available until after the renovations were completed. This made the purchase completely unaffordable. We sued in the Court of Federal Claims.

This happened in 1989 or 1990, the period after my first firm, Lane and Edson, had disbanded, and before Hessel and Aluise was founded. I was a partner in the DC office of a large multi-city firm, Kelley Drye and Warren, and most of the lawyers in my office were new to me.

I had never brought a case in the Court of Federal Claims and had little experience as a lead litigator, but there was a senior (about to be partner) associate in the firm who was apparently quite experienced and very well thought of. Today, I can’t even remember his name, so let’s call him…..Max.

I did all the written work, and Max was to argue the case. We rehearsed carefully, and I went into the courtroom feeling upbeat. I felt both the law and the equities were on our side.

Our judge, whom I had got to know from several pre-trial conferences, was – to put it mildly – somewhat quirky and unpredictable. Max got up, addressed the court, and started to present our case. No more than two sentences into his carefully planned presentation, the judge interrupted him with something like “Counsellor, before you proceed, I have two questions to ask you, so that I am sure I have everything in context…..”. He then asked his questions, which Max answered satisfactorily. It was no big deal, I thought.

But then something happened. Max seemed to be suddenly totally at sea. His rehearsed presentation was nowhere to be found. He spent the next 15 or 20 minutes babbling. Sentences that didn’t make any sense, and were at times not even related to each other. Max then thanked the court, and sat down.

I was devastated. We were going to lose this case. And my clients did not deserve to lose.

Then, the judge’s quirkiness too over. He looked at me and said, “Mr. Hessel, you look unhappy, and I don’t want anyone in my court to leave feeling that they wished they had the opportunity to talk. So, if there is anything you would like to say, step up to the podium and say it.”

Wow! I thanked the court, and I presented the case the way I had thought Max should have.

Weeks later, the judge issued his decision. We won the case, as we should have. His published opinion, available for all to read, contains language that I have never seen before. After discussing the pros and cons of each side, he stated that he had decided to rule for the government until (and this is not the precise language) “Mr. Hessel stepped up to the podium and changed my mind.”

I was astounded at the reference to me. As to the case, the government did not appeal. As to Max, he never became a partner. As to the success of the project as the years passed, I have no idea.

I have had the Senate oversight heating on for almost four hours. Pam Bondi is “testifying”. I put the word in quotes because she is not testifying. She will not talk about any aspect of pending investigations or litigation at all, she wants talk about any matters concerning DOJ personnel, she won’t talk about any communication with White House or other government agency, she won’t talk about her FBI, she won’t talk about any DOJ legal opinions, she won’t give her own opinion on any matter involving her job.

That does not mean she won’t talk. She will respond to any question by a Democrat by giving long, repetitive, prepared speeches, generally unrelated to the question, and she won’t stop talking to allowcfurther questioning. Some of her speeches include insulting, accusatory remarks about the questioner’s background, or about terrible Biden actions, and often include questions for the questioners. So no questions by Democrats get answered at all.

But the Republicans really ask no questions at all. They just talk about bad things that happened under Biden, even though that obviously has no relevance to this hearing.

How embarrassing she is.

As I thought about the 25 or so presentations I have made on Thursday mornings over the past 15 years, two unique and related talks came to my mind. They were each based on a book – House of Exile by Nora Waln and Two-Gun Cohen by David Levy.

Here is the briefest of summaries from my memory.

Waln was born around 125 years ago to a Pennsylvania family which had been involved in the China trade for centuries, largely working with the Lin family in China. A Lin family member traveled to the US when Waln was a teenager, inviting her to visit China, which she did in 1920, after her college graduation.

If you have been to China, or if you have followed modern China in the news, her description of China in the 1920s will shock you. It was indeed a totally different, and now lost, world. Waln visited the Lin family in their large, rural, walled compound where the family had lived for centuries and where she was the first non-Chinese visitor ever.

Her plan was to spend a summer in China. But she stayed over 12 years, first being treated almost as a Lin family member, and then as the wife of a British official stationed in Canton, which held a large number of foreign commercial establishments located on a condoned island on which Chinese citizens were, with very few exceptions, not allowed. Another fascinating place.

During her time in Canton, she met many Chinese officials, including President Sun Yat-sen. After his death, she reported seeing Mrs. Sun on a boat from Canton to Shanghai, Mrs. Sun traveling with a man she referred to as Two Gun Cohen.

Who? I could not ignore that simple reference.

Morris Cohen was born in Poland, but his family moved to England, where he grew up. A tough kid, hard to handle, he wound up in a new residential reform school. At some point, he agreed to go to Canada to get a fresh start, working on a farm near Edmonton.  He eventually migrated to Winnipeg. Winnipeg had a large Jewish population. It also had a large Chinese immigrant population, consisting mainly of descendants of the builders of the Canadian Pacific railroad. Yes, the Chinese community owned restaurants and laundries, but there was also a Chinese underworld. Cohen became involved with this part of the Winnipeg Chinese community, so involved that he learned to speak Chinese (I think it was Cantonese).

An opportunity came for Cohen to take a job with a Canadian company as its representative in China. Once in China, Cohen, clearly a man of considerable charm, met many influential people, including Sun Yat-sen. He charmed Sun Yat-sen, who quickly hired Cohen as a family aide and bodyguard. After Sun died, Cohen remained with his widow for a number of years, until the Japanese invasion in thev1930s. Cohen left China, came back to Canada, and then went back to England, where he lived a quiet life for the last decade or so of his life.

Why was he called Two Gun Cohen? It had to do with a stunt – maybe it happened, maybe not. A coin was thrown into the air. Cohen was able to hit the coin twice before it hits the ground, one from each of his two guns. True or false, I don’t know.

You may want to look at these two books. Both absolutely fascinating.

Yesterday, my Thursday morning breakfast group, which we have self-named The Mavens, had its 20th anniversary brunch at Woodmont Country Club. It was a rare occasion, because for perhaps the first time, we invited spouses and the like to attend. There were about 70 of us there, missing at least two of us who sent a message from a bar in Paris, only one who said he was coming but did not show, and a number who had conflicts, or who were indisposed and unable to come. But one of our members who now lives in Florida did show up. After all, we are a group of old Jewish men and, for some of us, old means old. Our oldest member, who recently turned 101, was able to come with his daughter, but he is exceptional. But I would guess that the average age of attendees is about 80 and most looked pretty good.

The group was formed by three friends (no longer with us) and has obviously expanded over the years. When I first joined (maybe 15 years ago), we met twice a month at Congregation Beth El in Bethesda. When the pandemic struck, we moved to Zoom, and became a weekly, rather than a bi-weekly group; after all, when we were all at first confined to home, we were looking for activities and connections. When the pandemic ebbed, we stuck with our weekly schedule, but moved one week a month back live to Beth El. We did not go back to our twice at month live schedule, because a couple of active Mavens had moved to Florida and we wanted them to be able to participate as much as possible. That said, we have never added an out of town Maven to our list. Our normal meeting on Zoom has between 30 and 35 attendees, and our live sessions about 25, and we have just under 50 (I think) on our rolls, some of whom are now quite elderly and unable to log on. And of course, our list of departed members grows.

Each meeting is centered on a presentation given by one of the Mavens, followed by a discussion. The topics are chosen by the presenter. Some are related to the presenter’s career; most are really not. Some have a Jewish theme, maybe about half. But the best word to describe the presentations would be “eclectic”. Most presentations are accompanied by Power Point slides, and the slides and of the presentation text, is distributed after the meeting.

The commitment is to do 2 presentations a year, but with about 50 sessions a year and close to 50 members, it doesn’t work out that way. Some members are unable to present for various reasons, as you might imagine, but I think I do about 3 over each 2 year span.

My presentations have been on a wide number of topics, as you might guess. I thought about partial list might be interesting. Here are some of my favorites in no particular order.

1. Germany During the Weimar Republic and the Origin of the Third Reich.
2. Garibaldi and the Unification of Italy (as well as Defense of Uruguay, his year on Staten Island, and his time in the French Parliament)
3. Two-Gun Cohen, Sun Yat Sen’s aide and body guard in early 20th century China.
4. Saul Alinsky, his influence on Barack Obama and, yes, Newton Gingrich.
5. The Lost Ark of the Covenant (Is it really in a church in Ethiopia?)
6. Who Was Jabotinsky Really, and What Would He Think of Israel Today?
7. Columbus – Was He or Was He Not?
8. Jamaica’s Jewish History
9. Israel and Water
10. The Development of the Atom Bomb

This will give you an idea of what I have been up to the past 15 years. 25 presentations altogether. 

More to come.

Pardon me if I don’t understand what is going on in Gaza and Israel. Of course, anything that stops the war and acts to prevent further incursions is to be welcomed, and maybe the 20 point plan does this, but I sure have a lot of questions. Here are some.

1. The return of live and dead hostages.  It is not clear to me that the bodies of all dead hostages can be retrieved. What then?
2. As a corollary to the first question, it was repeated many times during the early stages of the crisis, at least, that some of the hostages were being held by Islamic Jihad, not by Hamas. How does Islamic Jihad fit into the current situation. Does it still exist? Have hostages? Have arms?
3. What does it mean to disarm Hamas? Does anyone really know who is Hamas and who isn’t? Does this mean destruction of only some sort of war weaponry, or also small hand guns and all? How will that be accomplished?
4. As to Hamas, it also exists outside of Gaza. It is powerful in the West Bank. Will it be allowed to continue to operate there? Will it be allowed to participate in (and probably win) and election there? The West Bank is not covered by the deal.
5. And as to the future, is there to be a Palestinean state, or not? And if there is, why isn’t the West Bank part of the current conversation? How could it not be?
6. Of course, Netanyahu will have a hard time selling a Palestinean state, which most of the world has already recognized. And this plan calls for a state, at least temporarily, headed by a commission headed by, of all people, Donald Trump, with Palestinian technical personnel. Excuse me, but that brings to mind two words: occupation and colonialism. What am I missing?
7. And once this new arrangement is in place, Israel will still control the borders? Since war materiel can be brought in under the guise of construction material, how will the rebuilding really take place? And if Israel is policing the borders and has a dispute with the Trump commission, how will that work?

I know I am seeing the glass half empty, but truth be told, I think it is more empty than that. But we will see. It will be interesting.

Busy day.  Will explain tomorrow.

I don’t know anyone who has been arrested by ICE, carried off by ICE, or deported by ICE. I don’t know their spouses, children, friends, or other relatives. I know that many were here legally, many were waiting for asylum appeals to be heard, and many had work permits or active student visas. I know most are honest and hardworking, and many have others dependent on them. I also know that none of them are being treated appropriately or humanely, and some are being treated brutally by my government. And I know that for each person captured by ICE, there are tens of others living in constant, daily fear of being abducted.

Truthfully, I didn’t expect any better from Donald Trump and his henchmen. I also didn’t expect anything better from the bunch of hollow politicians elected to Congress as Republicans.

But I have to admit I expected something better of the Supreme Court, the only governmental body whicch has no other body on top of it which can say, “Whoa.”

I understand that there are six judges who are described as conservative, and only three described as liberal. Putting aside the skullduggery that led to this imbalance, and taking into account that so-called conservative and liberal judges have different philosophies of constitutional interpretation, I didn’t expect that the Supreme Court would rule as it has. I did not expect that the Court would so heavily prioritize narrow, ideological judicial thinking over a set of human values that, up until now, had been widely described as and assumed to be central to the Judeo-Christian or American value system.

But here we are. The six conservative justices seem to be as strongly Trump’s henchmen as are the members of the Republican Party in Congress.

Venezuela is today a failed country. I know no one in the United States that thinks otherwise. After all, the United States is currently using the strongest military in the world to bomb defenseless small Venezuelan boats, and murdering everyone invthem, presumably (but without publicly shown proof) carrying drugs bound for the United States.

During the last administration, this country gave Venezuelans the right to remain in the United States temporarily until October 2026 on the theory that their home country was too dangerous to require them to return.

Their country has presumably only become more dangerous, but the Trump administration abruptly terminated the right of those Venezuelans, all legally admitted into the country, to stay here, even until next October. Not one retains the right to remain, irrespective of their individual circumstances.

Just yesterday, the Supreme Court overturned the decision of the US Court of Appeals, which had granted a stay of that order pending further judicial process.

On what basis did the Supreme Court take this position which will affect up to 600,000 Venezuelans and their family members? The answer is: We don’t know.

We don’t know because this decision was taken by the Court on its Emergency Docket and issued with no opinion.

What makes this an “emergency?” The answer is: We don’t know. There are apparently no standards for this, and no one to tell the Court it is wrong.

The Court has done this in many cases, not only this one and, in some of these cases, it has issued final orders in pending cases under the guise of calling them temporary orders. Orders allowing deportations. Orders allowing firings. It is as if a death sentence case was under appeal, and the Court issued an emergency, unsigned, empty, but decisive order permitting the execution to proceed while the case was still pending.

Yes, we have made some grave mistakes in voting for Trump as president and his Republican toadies in Congress. But mistakes are often made, and when they are, we thought we had in the Supreme Court an institution that would keep us from falling into an abyss. We were wrong.

Where do we go from here?

It has been over a week since the beginning of the year 5786, and it’s already time for another.

I am not going to critique yesterday’s Yom Kippur services, except to say that I left the Kol Nidrei evening service and the morning Yom Kippur services with very different feelings.

I do want to make two important comments about yesterday. First, I appreciated more than before the enormous size of the tent that covers the Adas parking lot during the high holidays. I believe (don’t hold me to it) that almost 2000 people can sit in the tent. Of course, the crowd overflows during part of the services (and there are two other services going on inside the building).

Second, what is a synagogue service without old people? From my earliest memories,  there have always been very old, bent-over men and women at synagogue services, devout, often keeping to themselves, but present. It is still the case. They are still there. But something has definitely changed. These people are now all my contemporaries. Sure, there are some that are a few years older, but not of another generation. I have said this before. Services are now filled with people that I have known for 40 years, who were (say, before the Covid pandemic) still energetic, active human beings, but who now seem to have taken on new roles, the roles of aged men and women.

Of course, I understand that these others must look at me the same way. I know that when my age comes up in a conversation, I expect this response: “What???? 82???? I would have guessed 28! You sure you aren’t dyslexic?”

Instead, I find that people simply start talking to me louder or slower.

I will admit that this might be the proper response, as  sometimes I wonder if my hearing is beginning to fail a bit. This generally happens when I am with a number of people, and someone says something that I don’t quite grasp, but everyone else seems to hear it perfectly. Of course, all the other people seem to be wearing hearing aids. I may be the only person I know who is 82 and hasn’t been fitted for a hearing aid at Costco.

But then there was my old friend/client H_____, who had lost most of his hearing by the time he was in his early 70s. He had to ask you to repeat for him anything that was said, because he couldn’t understand it unless, in fact, someone did speak to him loudly and slowly.

He was, of all things, a psychiatrist, and still practicing. This seemed to me to be impossible, and I commiserated with him, showing that I knew how difficult it must be. “Difficult?”, he said, putting his hand on my shoulder, “It’s a blessing.”

Last night, we had 14 people for Yom Kippur break-fast and a triple birthday celebration for son-in-law Josh, cousin Alison, and (two weeks early, but we couldn’t leave him out) grandson Izzy. The smartest thing we did? Paper and plastic everything. OK, maybe not the smartest.  But definitely the most convenient.

Back to the real world now, I guess. Government shutdown. Escalating inflation, especially with healthcare. All Democratic programs being put on hold. Democratic cities being invaded by federal troops. ICE run wild, terrorizing millions with bodysnatching and long term secret incarceration. Tampering with voting rights. Environmental neglect. Increasing unemployment. Federal layoffs, suspensions, furlough, and firings. All out war against non-military cartels, proposed Trump takeover of the Gaza Strip. Republicans refusing to talk to Democrats. And now FEMA withholding emergency funding.

Welcome to Fiscal Year 2026.

This is the third Yom Kippur for this blog. And only the third day when the post on this blog contains only two sentences.

This appears to be the 13th government shutdown in the 249 years that the United States has been in existence. The first was a 10 day shutdown in 1976, the year of the counbtry’s Bicentennial. Before that, for 200 years, there was never a shutdown of the American government.

But, you ask, what about governmental shutdowns in other countries around the world? At least, that is what I wanted to know. So I asked ChatGPT.

The answer is that government shutdown of the type we have are unique to the United States. Other countries may have governmental crises after no confidence votes, but the underlying bureaucracy has always continued to function.

You might call this an example of “American Exceptionalism”. You might also call it an abject failure of American legislatures, session after session. I have quoted him before and will quote him again. Walt Kelly: We have met the enemy and it is us.

Donald (“Makes Me Vomit”) Trump agrees with Kelly’s Pogo. Trump knows that we are the enemy. That is why he is sending troops into Washington, Portland, Memphis, Chicago, and eventually everywhere but Palm Beach. This is why he is going to use “war ravaged” American cities as training grounds for potential fighting abroad, and thus use American citizens and residents for military target and bayonet practice.

And his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth knows how to spot  enemies. They are “fat admirals and generals” walking around the Pentagon, troops with beards (no more “beardies” as he calls them) or long hair, women whose bodies don’t look like Hulk Hogan’s, or flag officers who don’t follow an exercise routine “every day”. The only acceptable grooming traits are tattoos, especially those of Crusader crosses.

And, excuse me, we are not to call Hegseth Secretary of Defense any more, even though that is what he is. We are to call him Secretary of War. Why? Because we are not to think of him as being here only to defend the country. We are to think of him as Offensive. I do.

Trump has, of course, hinted that he welcomes this shutdown. What authoritarian leader wouldn’t? He now believes he can himself decide what functions are “essential” and which are not. Anything non-essentiial will be shut down. Some, he will try to cripple so thoroughly that they will never recover. Those functions that shut down will include all those functions that show how the economy is doing. Inflation? Dunno. Job market? No idea. Those functions that benefit blue states? History.

What if Congress gets its act together? (A long shot, I know) it won’t matter because by then, Trump will have destroyed the ability to restart many programs, and besides that, he and his OMB puppeteer, Russell Vought, believe that a functioning Congress is irrelevant anyway. They can ignore anything Congress does (so why should Congress do anything?). As Alexander Haig said when Nixon resigned, “I am in charge here.”

A new adventure is beginning. Donald Trump has further extended his dictatorial control of the country by freezing all government functions that don’t serve his deranged agenda. The courts will try to fight him, but sadly not including the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will bow down, in most instances by votes of 6 to 3. They will take cases prematurely, rush out decisions too quickly, and will see no need to issue explanations of their thinking.

You know the old saying, “Buckle your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride”? We can’t do that anymore. They have taken our seat belts away.

And, yes, I do hope someone proves me wrong.

When Thomas Stearns Eliot (T.S. to his friends) said that it ends not with a bang, but a whimper, he might not have been talking about the United States under Donald Trump. And when astronomers talk about the Big Bang, they might not be talking only about the creation of the universe; they just think they are.

The United States government is shutting down tonight. Not for three days or three weeks. For much longer. It is not shutting down because Congress has a few difficult issues to iron out. It is shutting down because one party in Congress refuses to talk with the other. The party that refuses to talk with the other is refusing to do so at the specific direction of the President. The President wants to use the government shutdown to give him the opportunity to totally reshape the United States government. It looks like he may succeed.

When Richard Nixon resigned from office, Gerald Ford said, “Our long national nightmare is over.” If Donald Trump suddenly dies in office, it may be that no one will be able to say that. If Trump and his minions/handlers are able to make the changes they desire during a long Congressional impasse, our current, more serious national nightmare may become impossible to wake up from. Governmental functioning may by then be so out of kilter that the concept of status quo ante may remain only a concept.

Everyone seems surprised that no one is fighting back effectively, that so many are just falling in line with Trump’s stated wishes. Why is everyone surprised? This is what happens when a totalitarian leader takes control. Name me a country where the opposition has been able to turn back a charismatic would-be dictator. For those of us who believe(d) in American exceptionalism, guess what? We were fooling ourselves.

Dictators need many things. One is a compliant legislature. Trump seems to have that. Another is a powerful bureaucracy. The shutdown will give his bureaucracy the opportunity to strengthen itself massively. It needs a responsive military. We now have a military willingly marching into Chicago, Portland, Memphis, and Washington DC, a military willing to attack Venezuelan fishing boats and maybe soon Venezuela itself, and a military whose leaders from across the world who are today convening at Quantico to hear about the Newest World Order. It needs a rubber stamp Supreme Court.  We may now have that, as well.

There is more. Attacking political enemies who have no response. We now have a growing paramilitary organization (Code name: ICE) ready to bash people in the head and disappear or secrete them indefinitely and without charges. Or so it appears. We have a government ready to stamp on free press and free media. And a government that thinks it can dictate to much of the outside word to do its bidding, to play its game, or to find itself without any toys.

In the upcoming 2025 elections, I expect the Democrats to do well. But these are not federal elections, but by the time the 2026 midterms occur, the electoral map and electoral rules may have been so changed that the opposition party may not stand a chance.

Are we close to peace in Ukraine? No. Are we closer to peace in Gaza? Probably not. Is our economy on the upswing? No. Are we entering an era of less due process, and less economic equality? Yes. Is our rickety health system falling apart? Yes. Are people more fearful walking the streets? Yes. Are we moving closer to the world of Biff in Back to the Future? Absolutely.

Am I being overly dramatic? I guess time will tell. “May you live in interesting times.” A Chinese proverb, they say, to be wished on your enemies. Is there a God? Has He granted the Chinese their wish?

A voice calls out of the ether: Hey, Art, you better stop and move on with your day!!

Yesterday, we went to the Phillips for the last day of the Vivian Browne exhibition. Browne was a New York based African-American artist who lived through most of the 20th century. I really admired her work. The top painting is part of her series on New York men. The middle painting is one of her many portraits of women. The third is one of her abstracts made not during, but after, a study trip to West Africa. I had never heard of her and, in case you had not either, now you have.

These four oil paintings comprise an entire exhibit at the National Gallery. Two by Titian, one by Cezanne, and one by Iona Rozeal Brown. They are supposed to show you that artists working in different places at different times can come up with similar ideas. I say: appreciate the paintings and don’t try to read too much into their connection.

Shootings where there are multiple deaths are a daily thing now, it seems. And to think there are those who say the problems are that we don’t have enough guns, and that we aren’t everywhere allowed to carry them in public.

And many of those same folks say that the problem is that we have too many radical leftists. Like the radical leftists who committed yesterday’s crime in Michigan. You know which radical leftist I mean, right? Yep, that one. The one photographed in a Trump shirt and with a Trump sign nailed to his home fence. Boy, the extremes to which some people go to deceive.

And, speaking of shootings, will someone let me know when it will be generally accepted that one can badmouth Charlie Kirk without becoming a target yourself? Ta-Nehisi Coates obviously thinks the time has come. His piece last week in Vanity Fair lays it out and should be spread far and wide. People have to realize you can be young and (somewhat) handsome, love your wife and children, be polite, positive, respectful, and charismatic, and still be a villain, a danger to society.

Two days before the government shuts down. Trump, after canceling a meeting with Shumer and Jeffries last week, says he will meet with the four Congressional leaders today. Unless the Democrats cave (and maybe they will and maybe they should), the government will “shut down” tomorrow night.

It seems clear to me that the Republicans want the shutdown. If not, why did Congress go home last week and why did the House, scheduled to come back today, announce they will not convene until Wednesday?

The Republicans will use the shutdown to determine that only MAGA priorities are “essential” and that many other functions they shut down will be terminated permanently, taking advantage of their belief that they never have to spend Congressionally appropriated funds that that they simply don’t want to spend. They think the Supreme Court will back them, and they may be correct, and anyway, once the barn door is opened, you just won’t get the horse back. And it does not appear that a shutdown would be brief. A long shutdown will play right into Trump’s hands.

Trump will control everything, and the Supreme Court will most likely back him until the 2026 midterms. Hopefully, things will change on January 1, 2027, but the electoral system may be so compromised by then through gerrymandering and voter restrictions that the Dems may not have a chance. This is the biggest worry. And the Democrats need new leadership (and new leadership with a potential broad base) to counter it.

Of course also this week, our Secretary of War (ugh!) is calling a meeting of all top brass from around the world for one hour (only) in Virginia. They say it’s a pep talk. I think it will be more than that, but am not sure what the agenda is. Maybe it is more limited than I fear. Maybe there will just be a bunch of buses and a simple instruction: “If your name begins with A through J, get on the bus for Chicago. K through R, the Bus to Memphis. S through Z, you are going to Portland.”

And yes, the Ten Commandments will be posted in each bus.

We started watching Just One Look, a 6 episode Polish miniseries based on a Harlan Coben novel, which is loosely about a missing person, and it got me thinking about all those people I used to see when I was younger, but who have disappeared from my life completely.

I remember quite a number of them, even though I can’t remember all of their names.

There are two, however, that I will mention by name…..just in case they happen to be married to your sister. They were both my friends when we lived in Clayton MO, and I was in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades.

Does anyone know where Danny Schwartz or Roger McKnight are? Danny was my best friend in those years. We often walked home from school together and we went to Wiggins Ozark Camp together. His parents had a children’s clothing store in Clayton called Lads and Lassies. Danny’s mother died of leukemia in her 40s, and his father closed the shop and moved with Danny and his sister back to his hometown of San Angelo, TX. That’s the last I heard of Danny. (I remember one remark of Danny, at summer camp, when he told me that the two of us were very lucky because nobody could tell we were so smart).  I don’t think that Roger and I went to school together, but we lived on the same block. For two summers, we operated the very successful (some of the time) unlicensed Hessel-McKnight Detective Agency, dedicated to solving the mysteries of the neighborhood. You may have read about the mystery of the slashed lawn chair; I am sure it was in all the top newspapers.  The McKnights moved, too….to Oregon. The detective Agency did not survive.

My list really doesn’t include high school, college, or law school classmates. There are all sorts of ways to figure out where most of those folks are.

When I think back to those days, those who are missing are mainly female. There are young women I was friendly with, and even dated, whose names I can’t even pull up. What does that say about me in the ’60s?

Who was that cute girl I took out a number of times who went to Boston University? I couldn’t tell you if my life depended on it.

When I was at Yale, there were only 7 females in my 175 member law school class and I know what happened to them. But there were also women in the Yale graduate schools (no undergraduates) with whom I associated, some of whom I knew fairly well. With one exception (if you know who I am referring to, you know), they are all lost to time.

But all of that was a long time ago, I guess. During the two post-law school years I hung around St. Louis, I spent time with all sorts of people. Some, I had already known. Many not. Some were in my army reserve unit. Where is Don, my Polish friend from East St. Louis? He had gone to minority heavy E. St. Louis High School and came out quite prejudiced; wanted to make sure his kids went to an all white school, so they wouldn’t be. Where is that woman I dated over that very hot summer when I saved money by renting a St. Louis apartment with no air conditioning? At least I remember her name.

When I was in Army basic training at Ft. Ord CA, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot. We were on a rifle range when it was announced, and cheers went up. Part of my training company were reservists from Lafayette LA, and they led the cheers. But one guy, my friend, who had graduated high school and was working at a gas station, and was extraordinarily nice, was appalled. What was his name? Where can he be? Or what about the nice young man who could do everything but read? You would never know it if you met him. But our drill sergeant had me work with him intensively, so he could pass a written proficiency test. And speaking of that drill sergeant, where is he? A very genuine man, whose ancestors had, by chance, been slaves on a farm owned by the ancestors of a recruit in the company. I remember (or think I remember) he was from Pine Bluff AR.

When I got to Washington, things got even more confusing. Where is my friend Jeff, who lived with his wife in a Mies van der Rohe building in SW DC, where two of the living room walls were floor to ceiling glass, and other two had multiple doors, so that hanging anything on a wall was not possible? Or my now nameless friend with the very strong Boston accent who bought a new Dodge Dart, but called it a Darge Daht? Where is that nice girl who lived down the street and doubled as my dental hygienist? Where is my secretary at HUD, who was a very nice Prince George’s County country girl, whose father just happened to own several hundred acres of prime future urbanized land? Where is my red-headed friend with the uncontrollable stutter, who could play the guitar and sing with no stutter at all? Where is my friend’s ex-wife who surprised him one day by saying good-bye and running off with the head of the university department where she taught?

For a while , I went out with a GW law student. I know where she is (or was), but what happened to her friend who remained my friend and whose husband’s family (maybe father) had worked in Pennsylvania for the family of one of my law partners?

Edie and I had a lot of friends in the early years of our marriage who have disappeared. Where is the guy who, no matter what the topic, preface each remark with “there is a case about that…” (“Can you pass the salt, please?” “There is a case about that.”) Where is our friend who had no real interest in anything Jewish other than he wanted to study Talmud?

I could go on and on. But I don’t want to overwhelm you. You know any of the people mentioned above? There might be a reward.

Yes, we are certainly a country in distress, part of a world in distress. And sometimes you can’t help but think that things are careening out of control and that nothing can be done right now to change our direction.

But then you realize it could be worse, a comforting thought (or not), and we have Netflix to thank. For example, remember the series Designated Survivor, when, if my memory works, a bomb went off in the Capitol during the State of the Union address, killing all members of Congress, the President and all those Executive and Judicial Branch officials in attendance. That left the designated survivor, a completely inexperienced and recently appointed HUD Secretary in charge of a government that didn’t really exist any more.

And there have been many other shows where the country’s future looks bleak indeed, and films like Back to the Future, which showed the possibility of alternate histories, some of them downright awful.

Well, now Netflix gives us a five part British miniseries titled Hostage, and I hope you don’t waste your time watching it. If you think you will, stop reading here. But if not, read on.

Britain is in an awful, but unexplained, situation where people are dying because the National Health Service has run out of pharmaceuticals. The only answer seems to be for France, apparently awash in pharmaceuticals, to come to the rescue. The future of the UK, and the political future of Prime Minister Abigail Dalton, depend on it.

But French President Vivienne Toussaint has her own problems with an upcoming election. Britain has an open border policy and third-world immigrants/refugees are streaming across France to get to the Channel. Toussaint not only demands a change to British policy, but also wants French troops on British soil guarding the coast, as the price Britain must pay for French pharmaceuticals.  The two arrange a summit at 10 Downing Street. Both seem unwilling to compromise.

But then things happen. Dalton’s husband, a physician with Doctors Without Borders, is on a mission into the depths of French Guiana, when he and several other British doctors are kidnapped (by men dressed as masked ICE agents). They will be freed if Dalton resigns her PM post. Otherwise, they will be killed one by one. This event seems to have nothing to do with the shortage of drugs.

At about the same time, it looks like Toussaint might have to leave politics as well, as she is being blackmailed by someone who found a sex tape of her in bed with (I am not making this up) her 20-something year old step son. Of course, neither woman wants the other to learn of her predicament.

Can’t get any worse, you say? You are wrong. It can. And it does. A rigged laptop, innocently carried into 10 Downing Street, explodes, causing extreme damage, wounding Prime Minister Dalton, but killing President Toussaint. The search for the perpetrators intensifies, it turning out that the two, apparently disconnected, very attractive young women in the cast, one French, one British, are both spies for the villains (and both get their comeuppance) . And it turns out that the leader of this group is the general (think George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove) who leads the UK military (the equivalent, I think of the head of the joint chiefs in this country), who has cone up with this complicated method to stage a coup because he holds a personal and secret grudge against Dalton for something she did a decade earlier. Something she did innocently, by the way.

Well, the bad guys finally lose, and the better (if not good) guys win. And France gives Britain all the pharmaceuticals it needs.

That’s it.

So it could be worse here, it seems, than it is today. And France just may not give us the medicines we need to survive.

I admit to choosing most of the books I read randomly. That will explain how I just finished reading Harry Golden’s biography of Carl Sandburg, called appropriately Carl Sandburg.

When I think of Harry Golden (something I do every twenty years or so), I think of him as the editor of  The Carolina Israelite, a newspaper I have never read, or the author of Only in America, and You’re Entitle, two books I have never read. I think of a curmudgeon, although I have no idea if he was curmudgeonly at all, and a man smoking a cigar, although I had no idea if he smoked anything at all (it turns out he did smore or xhew on cigars). I did know he wrote from the perspective of a Jew living in North Carolina, fairly unusual at the time, but I did not know he was raised in New York City, was a stockbroker indicted for embezzling client funds, and that he served four years in prison after being convicted before being pardoned by President Nixon.

When I look up Golden in Wikipedia, I see he wrote about 30 books on a variety of topics, largely on the promise of America, Jews’ place in America, and the problem of segregation in the south.

What these three topics have in common is that they are all about this country, and about the uniqueness of this country. So maybe it isn’t surprising that Golden wrote a book about Carl Sandberg. What may be more surprising is that Golden and Sandberg were close friends. And that Sandburg wrote the preface to at least one of Golden’s books.

Carl Sandburg is not at all about Harry Golden. It is not at all about Jews in America. It is only about Carl Sandburg, a writer, historian, biographer, poet, and musician whom Golden portrays as being as American as anyone coukd possibly be.

Sandburg grew up in Galesburg IL, had a fairly typical smallish town Midwest childhood, I guess, but left home at a young age and became a hobo (to be distinguished from a vagrant, a tramp, or a bum), riding the rails across the country, stopping here and there for the odd job. He became a socialist, a champion of the “lower” classes, enrolled in college but did not graduate, and started on a peripatetic career, earning keep as a journalist, but writing and occasionally publishing poetry as the years went by. He gained recognition, especially through his Chicago poems, began to be in demand to speak and recite his poetry, and he always brought with him a guitar or banjo, and played and sang American folk music. Then, he capped his career by writing a massive 6 volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, The Prairie Years and The War Years. Interestingly, he collected material about Lincoln throughout his adult life, but when he started writing Lincoln’s biography, he thought he would write a book for children. But gmhe got carried away.

Golden’s book itself is not a standard biography as much as a collection of anecdotes, some short, somewhat long, all interesting, which when woven together present a good picture of Sandburg. It is a very evocative picture and makes for an interesting book to read. It is like you are looking at the many notes of a biographer before he puts them into standard narrative form. And when he describes how Sandburg put together his Lincoln volumes, you see some similarity of process.

I wouldn’t call this book a hagiagraphy, although the book does not concentrate on Sandburg’s shortcomings, whatever they might be. After all, they were good friends, and Sandburg was very much still alive.

But what is most interesting, perhaps, is the picture of a changing America, and the idea that Sandburg was a symbol of it. Perhaps THE symbol of it. And central to American culture of his time. Destined to be in the pantheon of great American writers from then on.

Carl Sandburg died in 1967 at the age of 89. How many of today’s younger generation ever run into his work?

(Gotta run. No time to proof..)