Art is 80

We will start with a brief digression. We picked up our eight year old granddaughter from her camp bus yesterday afternoon. My wife asked her, as we drove her to her house, whether she had made any new friends at camp this year. She thought a minute and told us she had made six new friends. That seemed like success. She went on to tell us that her best new friend wasn’t a girl or a boy. Her best new friend was non-binary.

We didn’t ask a lot of details, but we were told that her non-binary friend goes by her middle name, which is non gender-based, and that her friend is a they, not a he or a she, and that our granddaughter has trouble remembering to use they, but she is trying and getting better at it.

I have no real comment beyond what I have said, but I want to remind you that these are 8 year olds at summer day camp.

End of digression. Or maybe not. I am pretty ignorant about all of this. What does it mean for an 8 year old to be non-binary? Is there more than one answer to that question?

Now, I take it that a non-binary person (as opposed to a gay person for example) is someone whose gender is neither male or female, but some sort of combination. And one is born non-binary. Is that right? And because non-binary has a combination of male and female characteristics, two non-binary people will not necessarily have the same characteristics?

If you are born non-binary, what happens on your birth certificate? Does it have to see male or female? And as you progress through your childhood, how are you classified? What teams can you play on? What locker rooms and bathrooms do you use? And what about sexual preferences? Etc.

Do you see how little I know about all of this?

I also assume that non-binary is not the same as trans. Am I right there, too? I guess I don’t even know what trans means. Could I – a cis male, as they say – decide I want to be a woman today and get surgical treatment or hormone treatment or whatever it is tomorrow that would make me into a woman? Would there be some things that women who are born women could do that I couldn’t?

Or, do you have to have something of the female in you (even if it’s a psychological something) in order to become trans? And if I am a male who thinks I am a female and I get surgery to convert to being a female, but I only get surgery, say, on my upper half, not my lower half, what am I then? Am I non-binary? Am I classified with this 8 year old who is self-defined as non-binary?

Now trans and non-binary are radical (I don’t know why I use that word – I am sure there are better ones) conditions, in a sense. But then there are people who are cis, who are gay, who are bi-sexual, who are lesbian. Are those totally different categories from categories like trans and non-binary? Or is there a connection?

And what does it mean to be queer? Are all gays and lesbians queer, or to be queer do you have to have any additional characteristics, physical or psychological? Does everyone who is gay think of themselves as queer? Does it make any difference what they think of themselves?

I know this is not a very intelligent post, and that I sort of rushed through it without the help of Dr. Google, but it does show how little I know about these things in spite of all I see or read. (Okay, I just did turn Dr. Google on and he told me I forgot intersex, asexual, two spirit and questioning.)

What more can I say? Even if I don’t know anything, I am glad right wing Republicans know everything? They sure seem to.

One thing I have discovered about being 80 is that I really do have more time to read a book. Maybe this is also because the COVID pandemic kept us inside so much that my habits changed, and now that we can get out and about more, we are out of the habit. It’s hard to know. But…..

Now that 2023 is already half over (how can that be?, you ask), I thought I would list the books that I have read this year and to which I have given the grade of A. (I do rank my books, A through C: if it is lower than C, I won’t finish it.) Because my reading habits have been so strange, with my emphasis on older Penguins, you may not have even heard of some of these books, but if you run across them, don’t run away.

Let’s start with the Penguins:

(1) “Foreigners” by Leo Walmsley. This is an autobiography/coming of age book. Walmsley had a rough and tumble upbringing in the north of England on the Yorkshire coast. Luckily, he writes well, has a good sense of self and humor, and carries the reader right along.

(2) “Brown on Resolution” by C.S. Forester. Here, at least, you might have heard of Forester, even you have never read any of his Horatio Hornblower books. This is not one of those, but is the story of a young woman, who meets a Naval officer several classes above her, gets pregnant, has a son out of wedlock when that was just not the thing to do, and raises him to emulate his missing father, who has totally disappeared from her life. You can guess what may happen next. You really feel for his characters.

(3) “The Trespasser” by D.H. Lawrence. One of his shorter books, it’s the story of an unhappily married violinist who meets the love of his life, and then things really fall apart. So well written, like most of Lawrence.

(3) “Clochmerle” by Gabriel Chevallier. A comic French novel, yet published as a Penguin. You think we are polarized today? Just think about the differences between the conservative church going Frenchmen who live in a small village, where the progressive mayor wants to both upgrade his town and take a stand against the more Catholic of his constituents by taking municipal funds to build the town’s first public toilet. Right across the street from the church.

(4) “England in the 19th Century” by David Thomson. Perhaps a strange choice (there are many good English history books amongst the Penguins), but it is very, very readable, and shows you both the economic changes that redid the entire face of the British Isles in the 19th century, plus the enormous influence of Queen Victoria and how she changed the monarchy.

(5) “Three Plays” by Euripides. These are short comic plays that I had not read before. Especially recommend “Iphigenia in Taurus”, how Iphigenia rescues herself and her brother Orestes (of course at first they don’t recognize each other) from captivity in Tauris. A story that you probably don’t know, but it’s quite an adventure by two very clever siblings.

(6) “A History of the English Church and People” by the venerable Bede. Another surprising entry, huh? Certainly surprising for me. Written in the 8th century, but Bede was an archivist and he looked at even earlier church archives all throughout the British Isles. Fascinating picture of Britain when Christianity was expanding – all the groups you would expect to find are here. Except for the Vikings – they haven’t arrived yet. Interesting battles between different Christian groups, too – And so easy and pleasant to read. Who knew?

(7) “Agricola” and “Germanica” by Tacitus. OK, another one you wouldn’t expect on this list. “Agricola” is a biographical essay about Tacitus’ father-in-law, who was a very successful Roman governor of England, and “Germanica” is Tacitus’ description of the tribes of what is now northern Germany, which live very differently from the Romans.

(8) “Edmond Campion” by Evelyn Waugh. You may know some of Waugh’s fiction, but this is a fascinating biographical piece set during the time of Elizabeth I, when the monarchy was firmly Church of England and determined for once and for all to root out all Catholics from the country. Campion (and this is a true story) was an Oxford educated priest, someone who intellectually and personally was clearly one of the best, but whose views became closer and closer to Catholicism, and who left France to teach at a seminary for English Catholics which had been established in what is now Belgium (who knew, again?) and then moved to Rome where he got a position in the Vatican. At some point, he was sent back to Britain under cover to see and report back to the Pope how the remaining Catholics in Britain were faring. Things did not work out well.

(9) “Life in Shakespeare’s England”. This is an anthology of contemporary writings from the turn of the 17th century. What was rural life like, urban life, travel, theater, literature, industry….you name it. I found it very interesting.

(10) “Two Satyr Plays” by Euripides and Sophocles. Short plays meant to balance out the heaviness of the tragedies. Euripides rewrites Odysseus’ experience with the Centaurs with the help of the Satyrs, and Sophocles (in one of the funniest plays I have ever read) has the Satyrs help Apollo find his missing cows.

(11) “Britain BC” by S.E. Winbolt and “The Beginnings of English Society” by Dorothy Whitelock. These two books complement each other. The first talks about the people that came to Britain (before and after the land bridge to the continent disappeared) – no one was native; they came from France, from Germany, from all over. The second book follows up with how they all related to each other – before the Romans came, and before even England was anything but an always changing patchwork of mini-kingdoms.

I also read a few non-Penguin A rated books, such as Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”, which I expected to be dry and outdated, but found out it was neither, and “Spencer Fullerton Baird” by William Healey Dall, the biography of the fascinating Baird who was, among other things, the first curator and second Secretary of the Smithsonian Museums, and the donor of much of the museum’s large bird (stuffed) collection.

If anyone reads any of these books, I’d like to know what they think. Was my judgement accurate?

On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress voted for the Declaration of Independence UNANIMOUSLY. The vote was 56 to 0. How things have changed in a mere 247 years.

Of course, the Declaration of Independence wasn’t a perfect document. It pronounced all men equal and endowed with certain “inalienable rights”, but it didn’t mention women, it ignored slaves and called Indians “savages”.

[This last reference surprised us, so we looked it up. Apparently, in 1763 King George III issued some sort of edict promising the Indian tribes that their lands would no longer be seized by the Europeans, but rather would be regulated by treaty. Thousands of Indians gathered in Niagara, New York to celebrate this and to proclaim their loyalty to the British crown. It is this edict and the loyalty of the Indians that the colonists were complaining about. (Who knew?)]

We all know (I hope) that this country has done a lot of bad things – slavery and the treatment of Indians were the worst, perhaps, but there were more. Wars in Vietnam and in Iraq, for example. Turning away Jews as immigrants while the Holocaust was continuing in Europe. The Jim Crow laws. Etc. Etc.

As we celebrate our independence, it is difficult not to think of some of these national sins. And maybe we shouldn’t let the mistakes of the past (and the mistakes of the present, either) mar our celebration.

But do we need another Federal holiday (I’d trade it for Juneteenth myself) to remind us of our national sins? I am thinking of a secular, American Yom Kippur. A day (maybe even a fasting day) when all work stops, all establishments close (except for those providing essential services) and everything is devoted to atonement (individual and societal) for our sins:

For the sin which we sinned when we enslaved our brethren,

For the sin which we sinned when we chased Native Americans from their homelands,

For the sin which we sinned, when we segregated our armed forces,

For the sin which we sinned when we segregated our schools……

And so forth.

At the end of this new Federal holiday, there would be a short, inspirational service where all would promise to do better in the year to come.

Now, obviously I have not thought through all of the ramifications of the proposed new National Day of Atonement, such as whether you could create a core of Al Cheyts that would satisfy the vast majority of citizens in a polarized country. But there is time to work out the details.. After all, it took me 247 years even to come up with the concept. Another year or two of project development won’t hurt the cause.

It is 2:15 p.m. The temperature outside is 88 degrees, “feels like 90”. This is close to today’s expected high. It is alternately very sunny and quite overcast. It is very humid.

We have tickets for the 6 p.m Nats-Reds game. Our normal way of going would be to leave the house between 4:30 and 4:45, drive to the Tenley Metro Station, and take the train to the ballpark. We would get there between 5:30 and 5:45 and in the stadium by the time the game started.

Weatherbug (my phone’s weather app) tells me that there is a constant 30% chance of rain and thunderstorms between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. It then has the chance tapering off between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.

Weather.com says that the temperature now is 92 degrees, “feels like 98”. It has 40% chance of showers and thunderstorms between 3 and 6, 20% between 6 and 8, and again 40% starting at 9.

For those of you who don’t keep track of baseball and weather, here are some general rules (I am not looking at a rule book): (1) if it is raining gently and is expected to stop fairly soon, keep playing. Fans in stands get wet, or go inside where they can’t see the game; (2) if it raining harder and looks like it won’t stop immediately, postpone the game and put the tarp on the field. Once the tarp gets on the field, even if it stops raining almost immediately, you can anticipate a delay of at least 45 minutes or so – they need to decide the rain is really over, to remove the tarp, to rake out the infield and so forth; (3) if there are thunderstorms or a threat of thunderstorms, the stadium is cleared (i.e., all most go into the food courts) and the game is postponed immediately until all is clear on the radar.

If the teams are playing their last game of a series, or second to last, the umpires will postpone the game as long as it takes to be able to play it. A 6 p.m. game may start at 10 p.m., for example, unless it is clear that it will rain all night. Because the Nats and Reds are playing the first of a four game series tonight, it is more likely that rain would cause a cancellation, and the game would be played in the afternoon on Wednesday (so that there would be a day/night doubleheader that day).

If a game goes 5 innings before it is called, the game is official and over. If not, it would be continued at a later date (here again, probably Wed afternoon).

Our tickets would be good for a postponed game, but if the game is played fully, or at least through five innings tonight, and we didn’t attend, that would be it for our tickets. No rain checks if the game was played.

Under these circumstances, what does an 80 year old do? And is that different from what a 70, 60, 50, 40, 30 or 20 year old would do?

80 year olds generally don’t like to get wet. They don’t like to cower in closed sections of a stadium for hours and hours while they wait to see if there will be a game. They don’t like to attend a game that was scheduled to start at 6 p.m. if it isn’t going to be over until midnight. They don’t want to be in the stadium if the game is going to go past the Metro closing hour.

On the other hand, 80 year olds do like baseball games. They don’t like to think that they are a wuss. They don’t like making decisions when all the facts aren’t known. They don’t like to think that they are 80 years old. But they wonder if age is more than just a number.

Last night, we turned on the third episode of the sixth season of Black Mirror, the eerie science fiction show on Netflix. We haven’t watched the first five seasons, but were intrigued with the first episode of Season Six. I wrote about it (“Joan is Awful”) a few weeks ago. We thought that the second episode of the season (each episode is independent – there is no story line) was weak, and we turned off the third episode last night about 15 minutes into it when the arm of the hero who was really a machine got chopped off with an axe by one of the four hippie intruders (it is clear that nothing good was going to happen in Episode Three).

Not only did we turn it off, but we needed an antidote. So we turned on TMC, and watched “The Reluctant Debutante” (1958) with Rex Harrison, Kay Kendall, Angela Lansbury and Sandra Dee. It turned out to be the perfect antidote.

Kay Kendall (the real Mrs. Rex Harrison) and Angela Lansbury are second cousins, twice removed (Rex Harrison wishes they were more removed) and rivals. Sandra Dee is Harrison’s American daughter from his first marriage. She is 17 and coming to England to live with her father and step-mother. Dee and Lansbury’s daughter are both making their debuts to ritzy English society; their mothers hope they each snag a man (in fact, their mothers are after the same man), but Sandra Dee falls in love with someone else – the drummer in the band of the first ball she attends. SPOILER ALERT: the drummer’s 95 year old great-uncle in Italy dies, and the drummer, towards the end of the film, becomes the new Duke of Positano. So all will be well. And Lansbury’s daughter is then paired up with the original target (a young man who can only speak of how to avoid traffic and get the best parking space – Harrison says that talking to him is like “talking to a sign post”).

Parts of the film are just awful – these can basically be defined with great precision by saying that the parts of the film that include Sandra Dee. Not that it is entirely the fault of Sandra Dee (whose acting can hardly be called that); it is also the fault of the screenwriter. The romance scenes are just god-awful. But the scenes involving Harrison, Kendall and Lansbury are terrific. They are fast paced with snippily clever dialogue; all three actors are at the top of their game; and the French farce-like direction adds to the charm. I highly recommend the film. Just remember that the entrance of Sandra Dee means you can put your attention elsewhere.

Speaking of Sandra Dee (and I was), all I remembered about her was her blond hair. So I googled her. Ugh. She died fairly early (I think she was 61), and her entire life was filled with anorexia, drugs, mental illness, sexual abuse by her stepfather, and physical illness. She basically stopped acting when she was in her early 30s, and became a recluse. She was married to Bobby Darin when she was 19, and that too was a disaster – she was expected to devote her life to Darin’s career and to suppress her own, and – to top it off – she had six miscarriages and only one successful pregnancy before they divorced. (Of course, Darin – who died at 37 after heart surgery – fared no better)

Whew! Well, on to other things. The Nationals have now won three straight series – against the Padres, the Mariners and the Phillies (each 2 games to 1) – they are still in last place in their division, but they are playing decent baseball and are interesting to watch. They are of course still mired in this major rebuild – what will happen next, we don’t know. But outfielder Lane Thomas is having such a good year that there is speculation that he will be traded to the Yankees this month; Thomas is getting old at 27, I guess, and the thought is that the Yankees will give up some promising 22 year olds for him. I can’t say that I understand this management philosophy, and trading Thomas will clearly alienate some more of the fan base.

Meanwhile, we do have tickets to tonight’s 6 p.m. game against the Reds, who are having a surprising year. We missed our last ticketed game against the Cardinals because it was 55 degrees with off and on again rain – and the umpires let the game go on throughout the bad weather before a crowd of about 1,000 (obviously, not including us). Today, the weather is projected to hit feel-like 100, but then to collapse in strong storms and thunderstorms this evening and tonight. So once again, it looks like we will stay home and miss another paid-for game, which will probably be played, even if delayed into the wee, wee hours. If they postpone the game, my guess is that they will make Wednesday a day-night double header day; whether we can go to that is also unclear.

What else? I took a break from my Penguin reading after finish Iris Murdoch’s “The Flight From the Enchanter”, and read Bill Browder’s “Freeze Zone”, about the perils and pitfalls of trying to get the Magnitsky legislation passed in the United States and throughout the European Union. For anyone interested in Putin’s Russia and how it really works (or perhaps better to say Russia’s Putin and how he really works – money, retribution, disinformation, etc.), I think you should read Browder’s two books: “Red Notice” (2016) and “Freezing Order” (2022). Definitely. I do. (In case you don’t remember, Sergie Magnitsky was a Russian dissident lawyer, representing Browder’s Russia based hedge fund, when he was murdered in a Russian prison; he was investigating the nefarious activities of Putin and his cronies after they stole the stock of the hedge fund, and robbed the Russian treasury of hundreds of millions of rubles through the filing of fraudulent tax refund applications. The Magnitsky legislation puts sanctions on the Russians involved in that corruption.)

Now, back to the Penguins and John Allegro’s “The Dead Sea Scrolls”.

For right wing Conservatives, nothing is as complicated as it appears. Everything is black/white, right/wrong/, good/bad – everything is simple. For people like me, the opposite. Nothing is simple, everything is gray. Right and wrong? Good and bad? Yes, they really are (to a very great extent) relative terms.

I am thinking about this week’s Supreme Court case about wedding websites. I haven’t read the decision, and I am not burdened by precise knowledge of the facts (in fact, they now seem to be a bit murky at best). So we can speculate a bit.

Here is what I understand, factual or not. There is a web designer who says that designing a website for a same sex couple would violate her religious beliefs. Something like that. So, she won’t do it.

The District Court and Appellate Court disagreed with her, but the Supreme Court said that the creation of a website involves speech, that the First Amendment protects not only speech but the freedom not to say things that you don’t want to say, and that this right, at least in this case, trumps the prohibition against discrimination based on sexual preference. Or at least that’s what I think they did when they overturned the Court of Appeals decision.

Okay, that part seems clear. But there is another point that has been touched on, but not really discussed. American jurisprudence is based on a principle of “case or controversy”, that a court won’t rule on a case in the abstract, that there has to be an active case or controversy that needs to be addressed.

This may or may not be a good principle. “Case or controversy” is not a principle of jurisprudence in many countries, but it is here. And the question is: was there an active case or controversy here?

It appears there are two different facets of “case or controversy” in this particular matter. First, the designer assumed that refusing to design a website for same sex marriages would violate Colorado law, and she wanted to enjoin the State from enforcing that law against her. But that does not create a “case or controversy”, does it? And then there were apparently references in the filings (but not in any of the Supreme Court decisions?) about one particular individual having contacted her to have a wedding website designed for his same sex marriage. This would come a bit closer to a case or controversy, I would think.

But now it appears that no such request was ever made (or at least no request as it was described). Here, it gets complicated and I get confused. The individual cited in the filings as have inquired about a same sex wedding website now says the following: (1) he never asked about a same sex wedding website, (2) he is heterosexual and already married, (3) he himself is a web designer and wouldn’t need to hire a web designer, and (4) throughout this entire case, which apparently has been going on for six years, no one has ever contacted him, and he didn’t even known he was named in the filings until after the Supreme Court decided the case and someone from, I think the “New Republic”, contacted him.

So the question is: is there really a “case or controversy” here to be adjudicated?

Let’s move on. Now, the law in this country is obviously what the Supreme Court says it is, so let’s not argue about that here.

And what about the substance of the “case”?

If the Court had ruled the other way and said that the web designer could not discriminate against the same sex couple, irrespective of her personal beliefs, many would have celebrated. Not only members of the LGBT+ community, but civil rights advocates and liberals generally. But think about this a little more. If you were a web designer, and you I got a call from the American Nazi Party and said “No, I don’t want to design your website”, would the ACLU come after you? Or maybe it’s not the Nazis, but it’s a football team, and I think that football is a dangerous sport that should be banned? Or, to do something closer, let’s say you are a religious Jewish web designer and are asked to design the website for an Evangelical group that wanted to convert the Jews.

Yes, this is religion and not gender…..but is there a difference?

It is complicated, you see. Unless you are a right wing Conservative.

An ant is seen on the carpet in the room. No, two ants. Three. More.

How they got into the room is not clear. But there they are. They are clearly confused. They go first this way, then that way. They run in straight lines. They run in circles. They reverse course, move left, move right. They don’t know where they are. They are, I am sure, searching for something. Perhaps they are searching for the meaning of life.

I imagine them as scouts, sent to find out about this previously unexplored country. Is it comfortable? Is it safe? Is there food? Should more of their extended family come? They are thinking about the proper response. Like the scouts in the Bible sent to report back on the Promised Land, they decide they will say “The land is fine, flowing with milk and honey, but there are giants who live there. We should stay away.”

What brought this to mind were not really ants on a carpet, but me in White Oak, Maryland. Let me tell you the story:

Yesterday, I had a simple task to accomplish in connection with my duties as President of the Jewish Funeral Practices Committee of Greater Washington. I had to deliver something to Hines Rinaldi Funeral Home, on New Hampshire Avenue in White Oak, 8 or 9 miles from our house.

I drove out Connecticut Avenue four miles to the Beltway and headed east. Traffic was heavier than usual. I take one of two routes. Either I stay on the Beltway, get off at the New Hampshire Avenue and drive north a mile or two to Hines Rinaldi, or I get off a few exits sooner on Colesville Road (Route 29 to Columbia MD and Baltimore) and diagonal my way to New Hampshire Avenue. The Colesville/New Hampshire intersection is just south of Hines Rinaldi, and this route is probably five or ten nanoseconds quicker.

The Beltway traffic got heavier (I blamed it on the July 4 getaway), so I decided to get off at Colesville. For a mile or so, all was fine, but then I stopped. I was on sort of a hill, and I could see that there was a barely moving line of cars stretching into the distance. Slowly, slowly I crept forward. I then discovered the problem. Colesville Road, a very main artery, was closed (there had been an accident which had toppled a utility pole, but I did not know that at the time). There was no explanation given (just a “Road Closed” sign), there were no detour signs directing cars around the trouble. There was nothing.

Where the road was closed off, you had a choice. Go left or go right (or, I guess, go back). On either side of Colesville, there are single family, middle class residential areas, set out on narrow streets that are as curvy as possible. My goal was to get to New Hampshire Avenue – I knew I was very close. But the roads curved, some dead ended, some split. The sky was overcast (actually affected by the Canadian wild fires), so you couldn’t navigate by the sun.

You also couldn’t navigate by your phone – your phone just brought you back to Colesville Road. I couldn’t blame the phone. Nothing else was sensible.

There were many cars, of which I was just one. We were just like the ants. We would go in one direction, then the street would end in a T, and half of us would go one way, and half the others. As you went up a street, people were coming down the same street. Cars were making U-turns. They were pulling to the side, so drivers could try one more time to navigate by GPS. Pun intended, it was amazing. There seemed no way out.

Until there was. Up ahead I saw traffic lights and a major street. Whew, I thought, New Hampshire Avenue at last! But it was not to be. It was not New Hampshire Avenue at all, but University Boulevard. I had gone in the opposite direction, and now needed to go back to the Beltway and once again fight the slow Beltway traffic, this time all the way to New Hampshire. My normally 30 minute trip took almost 90 minutes.

In the cool light of day, I looked at the street map of the area one more time. Even though New Hampshire was probably less than a half mile from where Colesville was closed, there was no way to get there from the residential areas either to the left or the right of Colesville. The reason is a branch of Rock Creek which Colesville crosses before it gets to New Hampshire, but which none of the residential streets crossed. I hadn’t missed a turn that would have led me where I wanted to go. There simply were no such turns.

But clearly, none of us ants knew that.

First, you gotta give it to the French! They really know how to riot. Over 400 people arrested across the country, because a policeman shot and killed a 17 year old boy, whose single mother was from Algeria. Okay, this does not make him “noir”, and the title of this post should start with “Driving While Algerienne”. I did bad. So shoot me. (No, no, that’s the problem).

In our country, it isn’t driving while Algerian, it’s driving while Black, say Captain Obvious. (But let me digress a bit – what is Algerian to the French? Until deGaulle decided that La France did not have to keep its hold on Algerie and fight a horrible war to do so, Algeria had not been a French colonie, it had been a part of France, and Algerians were as French as Parisiennes. So someone of Algerian ancestry in France is different from, say, someone with French Moroccan or Tunisian ancestry. Now, is that relevant to this discussion? I think the answer is a resounding “no”, but it’s interesting. Maybe the most interesting you’ll be confronted with all day.)

Now back to our subject matter. The French and their riots. Just look at what we have seen in the past five years or so. Yellow vested Frenchmen rioting about higher gasoline prices. All sorts of vested Frenchmen rioting about a proposal to raise the retirement age to…….what was it again? 35? And now these riots just because some gendarme shot un jeune homme, 17 years old, Algerian ancestry, no crime record, no weapons, no drugs.

Yes, the French riot much better than we do. Our riots, whether Jan 6 at the Capitol, or protests earlier in Portland, tend to be sordid affairs, while the French riots turn one’s mind back to the barricades in Les Miserables.

Les Miserables, and poor Jean Valjean, a man deprived and not really depraved. He needed a helping hand, and got the opposite. Compare poor Jean Valjean to a poor jeune homme in the United States, who happens to be noir/Black. What does he deserve?

According to some, he needs a helping hand (translated into English: affirmative action). According to others, he needs to learn to stand on his own two feet. Perhaps, both are correct.

Yesterday, the 6-3 Supreme Court ruled that colleges and universities cannot use race as a factor in undergraduate (I think) admissions. But they can look at a candidate and say “this guy, because of his background, needs a helping hand”, or they can say, “this guy, in spite of his background, seems to be able to stand on his own two feet”.

All of which is to say that I don’t know what kind of effect this ruling will really have, except that it will turn university admissions committees into the same kind of targets that local school boards have become. You take an “elite” school like Harvard that gets 35 applicants for every acceptance. You apply (you are White) and you are rejected. Someone else applies (Black) and is accepted. What is your reaction? Your reaction is that you are as smart as that other guy, but he was accepted, not because he is Black, but because he fought to overcome the obstacles set before him because he is Black? No, your reaction is that he was admitted and you were not because he is Black. Are you right? Do you know what was in the mind of the admission officer who made the final decision? No, but you can guess and – if you pursue your feelings far enough – maybe the Supreme Court will agree with you.

In other words, will this decision change anything on the ground? Maybe or maybe not. But it will undoubtedly change things in the court room. Everyone will clamor for equal protection. But how do you define equal protection when there are thirty five (OK, maybe twenty five) applicants for each space that are qualified academically? Even if it is only 25 qualified applicants for each slot, 24 for can say they were denied equal protection, now that that is the standard we are using.

And that leads me to Historic Black Colleges and University (HBCUs). People are saying that they will benefit from this ruling because more qualified Blacks will apply to them. Maybe so, but to the extent that more qualified Blacks apply to them, less qualified Blacks (who now can gain admission) will not be admitted. Does this help the situation?

And let’s say that HBCUs rise to the challenge, increase admissions, take in more highly and moderately qualified Black students, while other universities see their Black enrollments drop. And let’s say further that both of these groups of schools do just fine in educating their student bodies. Where are we then? We might wind up with a wonderful higher education system – and one that is basically racially segregated.

Where do I stand on this overall question? I am not really sure. And I think that if you are REALLY sure ….. there is probably something incomplete in your thinking, and you need to delve into it more deeply. You need to decide first, what is the goal? Then, what will achieve that goal? Finally, does the constitution allow it? (Hint: on this particular issue, the answer to the last question is “yes”, provided you can get 5 of 9 individuals to say so.)

And, by the way, what does this do to the possibility of reparations laws?

Last week for the third time in recent weeks, we were served with a notice from DC Water that our water was going to be turned off for pipe repairs. The first two times were for short periods during the night, but it didn’t appear that the water was ever stopped. The most recent one was more serious – it said that the water would be off for eight hours beginning at 8 a.m. on June 28. We prepared the night before, saving enough water for use yesterday. But – of course – the water was never turned off at all.

Last night, we went out for dinner. We planned to do that because we weren’t going to have any water in the house, and when it was clear that we would still have water, we decided not to change our plans. A simple dinner at an even simpler Mexican restaurant about a mile or so from the house. After supper, I decided to walk home – the temperature was reasonable and the humidity was manageable. There was no sun in the sky. I had forgotten about the Code Orange air and the haze from the Canadian forest fires.

At any rate, as I got to our block, there were two DC Water trucks. I asked one of the drivers about the water. It was about 7:30 p.m. and he said “the water is being turned off as we speak” and would be off four to six hours. I didn’t want to get into an argument about proper notice, so I just said OK and went home. The water was still running when I checked at 9:30.

If I had been writing about this on my blog at that time, I’d call the post “The Water Company that Cried Wolf”.

But, believe it or not, when I checked back about 10:30, the water was off. You would think that would end my thinking about this, and that I would be off for a good night’s sleep. But it was not to be. I had a hard time sleeping all night, and I spent a fair amount of time thinking about our water.

Yes, I was a bit anxious once again. Why did they cut off our water? What types of repairs were they making? What if they were not successful and we either were never to have running water in our house again, or what if whatever they were doing was going to poison us? I felt like DC Water’s operation on our pipes was, in effect, a medical procedure being done on my own internal pipes, but being done remotely, by doctors I had not met, for reasons that had not been explained to me. AI at its worst. Is this the way the future will be?

And then, of course, I began thinking about places that may actually run out of water. Phoenix, Las Vegas, parts of Southern California. And places where there was too much water (and still not necessarily enough to drink). Bangladesh, parts of Pakistan. And then the desertification of so much of the world, creating famine and the need to move on. And melting ice and icebergs, and what will happen to Miami and Venice and even Venice Beach?

That got me to recent reports about the earth’s tilt being altered by the draining of aquifers and the like by humans. What is more scary than the alteration of the earth’s tilt? Will we in Washington wind up down under like the Australians now find themselves? Hard to fathom, but very scary, I am sure.

I tell people to read Seth Siegel’s fascinating book, “Let There Be Water”, the story of how Israel has solved its water problems basically by nationalizing water. All water resources in the country – whether from lakes or rivers, underground aquifers, off shore sources, or even rainwater in a bucket become assets of the state, subject to rigorous regulatory actions. The opposite of what happens here in America and, as so often is the case when other countries do just what we don’t do, successful while we dither. But now I realize that solving Israel’s water problems won’t help the rest of the world, unless the rest of the world takes bold steps like the Israelis have done. And what chance is there that that will ever happen?

Well, the good news is that our water is back on, our kitchen and bathrooms spigots have been flushed, and all those places that I worry about are far from here. We have more water than we need. What more can one ask?

Usually, when I sit down to put together a blog post, I have some idea of what I am going to say. I don’t typically have the entire post in my mind, but I know where I am starting. Today, my mind is pretty much a blank. So, let’s see where this goes.

Okay, let’s start with a joke. Last night, we arrived at the shiva for Edie’s aunt a little early. There were a few family members there, plus the retired rabbi from their synagogue, someone I have met ten times or more but – perhaps because I don’t pay dues – he never remembers me. Or maybe he does remember me, and thinks I never remember him. Okay, that was my first digression.

As the conversation proceeded yesterday, someone said something that reminded me of a joke. I knew the rabbi must have heard the joke a hundred times, but I decided to tell it anyway:

An old, very religious man in Jerusalem went every day to pray at the Western Wall. There could be no doubt of his devotion and sincerity as you watched him over and over again. He was so fixated on his prayers that he didn’t even talk to others around him. But one day, someone was curious about him, introduced himself to him, complemented him on his devotion and asked him a single question. “How does it feel to be so in touch with God, to feel so close to him and to converse with him like you do every day?” The old man smiled, looked at his questioner and responded: “To tell you the truth, it’s like talking to a wall.”

The rabbi laughed and told me he had never heard that one before, and that he was going to file it away and use it some time. I felt like I had performed a mitzvah. And to think that the writers’ strike is still on.

And here we go. That joke reminds me of walls (not sure why), and walls reminds me of our southern border and the State of Montana. The joke also reminds me of Israel (not sure why), and Israel reminds me of the State of Montana.

Here is what I read yesterday (but don’t remember where) – a new entry into the Senatorial primary on the GOP side in Montana believes it is important to “complete” (I say that because I don’t know if anyone knows what that would mean) the building of the Trump wall. In fact, he thinks this would be so important that, although he is a supporter of Israel (apparently), he believes that Congress should cut off all funding to Israel until the wall is built. What that old saying that starts “With friends like that….”?

Robert Frost it was who said “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”. I myself am not Robert Frost. I am indifferent about walls. Frost also said that “good fences make good neighbors”. I am indifferent about fences, as well.

Republicans seem to love the border wall, and many Democrats seem to hate it. Republicans seem to believe that the wall works to keep people out; many Democrats believe either that any wall doesn’t work, or the wall we have doesn’t work . I don’t know why politics, or romantic emotions, should enter into a discussion about a border wall.

Instead, we should be trying to answer two questions, one political and one technical: first, who do we want to let into our country and who do we want to keep out, and why, and second, once we decide that, what is the best way to implement that policy.

Neither question is easy: we have had immigration policies that favor certain countries, family ties, refugee status, economic status, educational skills and so forth. What do we want now? I don’t hear anyone talking about this in a serious way. As to the technical question (which depends on the answer to the political question), it should then be left to technical experts as to how the border should be protected to best implement that practice. If it is to “complete the wall”, so be it. If it is not change the type of wall, so be it. If it is to use no wall, so be it. The question is how to operate on our border to implement our policies. It is not a question of loving or hating walls.

Of course, as they say, we are a nation of laws. But, in the case of immigration, we are a nation of outmoded laws, which are still in force, which we often ignore, and which we seem to be incapable of updating. This brings up one more wall. The wall between Republicans and Democrats.

Something there is that doesn’t like that wall.

This morning we go to Edie’s aunt’s funeral, graveside at noon. After the funeral, we will come home. We had a different agenda 19 years ago, when Edie’s uncle died. He passed away just before we were scheduled to start a long road trip. We left on the trip directly from the cemetery. We were in a rented car. Our ultimate destination was Boise, Idaho, where we were catching a plane back to DC.

We had taken a few long road trips in the US before this – we had driven the entire west coast when Michelle and Hannah were very young, and we had driven to Memphis in 1999 for my great aunt Rose’s 100th birthday. And I am sure there were more. But it was our 2004 trip that created a vacation pattern that we have followed many time since.

Most recently, we drove to and back from Florida, just about three months ago. We once did an extensive loop around the Great Lakes, in the United States and Canada. We did another west coast trip, this time from San Francisco to the Canadian border. Of course, to and from St. Louis. And many others, especially to the northeast, many times to various parts of New England and upstate New York, Ontario and Quebec and once (with the help of a friendly ferry) to Nova Scotia. And these don’t include our many fly-drive trips, like our one earlier this month to St. Louis and then on to Kansas City and back.

But the 2004 trip was perhaps the most extensive and most interesting. I think of some of the highlights of that trip:

(1) We stopped in Shanksville PA, the site of the infamous plane hijacking crash in 2001. The permanent memorial had not yet been constructed, but there was a temporary one set up with flags and flowers. It was surprisingly evocative and mood-altering.

(2) We spent the first night in a very nice historic hotel (actually an old, oversized mansion that had been converted into an inn) in Somerset, PA (very near Shanksville). It had a nice restaurant as well, and gave our trip a rather elegant start, and when I went to check the name of the hotel this morning (The Georgian Inn), I was sad (if not surprised) to see that it had ceased operating in 2017. No hotel, no restaurant. Don’t know what, if anything, the house is used for now, but it is too bad.

(3) I remember taking a few detours along the lakefront in northern Ohio, on our way to Chicago, but I can’t say I remember much, except that we saw some surprisingly nice resorts. And, maybe because we have been to Chicago several times, I can’t even tell you what we did there this time, except to say that I am sure we saw a number of friends.

(4) We drove north to Milwaukee, and loved the architecture of the Art Museum, designed by Calatrava. And then we went across the beautiful state of Wisconsin (I bet I never told you about my time at Camp McCoy) to La Crosse, where we visited our cousins, who were living there then. La Crosse, a really nice mid-sized Mississippi River town, was another place we have been to several times.

(5) From La Crosse, I remember driving across the river to Minnesota, and then up the river (even after the interstate veered west). The La Crosse to almost Twin Cities portion of the Mississippi is probably the most scenic portion of the river. Then we stayed in St. Paul at the famous St. Paul Hotel for two nights. I am happy to say that the hotel is still there. We had a wonderful Friday night dinner at the St. Paul, explored the Twin Cities (which we do not know very well), and then went to an open rehearsal of Prairie Home Companion which was pure delight.

(6) From St. Paul, we entered unknown territory. We drove a bit south through Rochester, catching a glimpse of the Mayo Clinic, to Northfield to see Carleton College, which seemed a bit cold and stark as I recall, then across the state, stopping in New Ulm, to see the Glockenspiel and the statue of Herman the German. My advice to you? Unless something has changed, go out of your way to go out of the way to avoid New Ulm. The sites are barely sites, and the food and accommodations barely food and accommodations.

(7) Across the state and into South Dakota (first time ever for either of us), with a stop to see South Dakota State University and the botanical gardens, which I remember as surprisingly nice (surprising because it was such a contrast to New Ulm perhaps), and then across the state, where on our journey we were surrounded by bearded and overweight cyclists heading to the annual meet-up in Sturgis.

(8) A lot to do in South Dakota. We went to see the graves of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickcok in Deadwood, and spent the night in Rapid City, where I remember almost every street corner had a statue of a cow (I think it was a cow) – some kind of year long display. Then we went to Mt. Rushmore, which I was sure would be tacky, but which – very surprisingly – I really liked. We also saw the Crazy Horse memorial, although I can’t exactly remember where that was. (There were tornado warnings while we were in South Dakota – or at least severe storm warnings – and the radio gave precise information on where not to go – but since we didn’t even know where we were, that information went in one ear and out the other.)

(9) We drove through the Black Hills and then north into North Dakota, where we stayed in the Badlands. The topography is stunning, and we stayed at some sort of a ranch (?) in a rustic cabin, which turned out to be right next to a train track, which carried trains, with their sirens, by us throughout the night.

(10) Then came Montana, night at a B and B in a small town in the eastern part of the state. On our drive west the next morning, we realized two things. First, that Montana is as large as it looks on a map. Second, that it really is Big Sky Country.

(11) Eventually, we go to Livingston and to the nearby Chico Hot Springs Resort. This was actually our designation, because it was here that we met five of my high school classmates and their spouses or sort-of spouses, and spent several days both at the resort (with its hot and cold swimming pools, and its lack – at least then – of TV, radio, or wi-fi connections). That was a treat.

(12) From Chico, we went to Yellowstone Park and, after leaving our friends, continued west into Idaho, spending a night in Idaho Falls, but visiting Craters of the Moon National Monument and EBR-1, the fascinating Nuclear Energy Museum near Idaho Falls.

(13) We did get to Boise, but didn’t do much touring. Got there in time for dinner and sleep. Early morning plane the next day, with a stop in Salt Lake City, and then home.

Thanks for coming along with us.

Edie’s aunt, Hazel Fischer, passed away over the weekend at the age of 102. If she had started a blog like this at the age of 80, she would have been at it for 22 years and would have had at least 8,030 separate posts. Thank God, such a silly idea never entered her head.

Hazel’s life was both long and interesting. She was born near Brisbane, Australia, in 1921. How many Jewish families could have been in Brisbane at the time? Edie’s mother’s brother, her Uncle Izzy, was in the United States Navy during World War II, stationed in Australia. He and Hazel met at a dance held, I think in Brisbane, for unmarried Jewish-American servicemen, and young unmarried Jewish-Australian ladies. I don’t know if there were 2000 people at this dance, or just 20, but that’s where they met.

They got married in Australia and in 1944, while Izzy was still in Australia, Hazel at 23 got on an American ship, traveled the troubled Pacific to California and hopped on a train to Washington DC. Izzy joined her a year or so later. She lived in the DC suburbs the rest of her life, never returning to her home country, but always keeping up with goings on in Australia, collecting stuffed Australian animals (not stuffed through taxidermy), and even keeping her eye on the royal family in Britain. She was able to remain in her house (which she shared with one of her sons) until the end of her life.

This was the last of Edie’s aunts and uncles. Not that many years ago, my last surviving aunt (my father’s youngest sister) also died at 102. She had lived most of her married life in Dallas, but moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, after her husband passed away, living in a retirement community that provided her with friends and amusement and sometimes frustration.

Although both aunts outlived their husbands, in both cases their husbands lived until their 90s, making for very long, successful marriages. Neither of my parents, nor either of Edie’s, made it even to 80.

Of course, today you get all sorts of advice on how to stretch out your lifespan. Just this morning, on my Yahoo news feed, I got an article about a 53 year old man who has found the magic way to have his body age decrease as his chronological age increased. He is now 53 by the calendar, but inside he says he is only 43. He is happy to share his secrets. No breakfast (maybe a spoon or two of yogurt), no lunch (maybe a small salad a couple of times a week). Dinner, but not before 7 p.m. – generally plant based, but not religiously so. No dairy ever, and no alcohol. Various vitamins and supplements. Working out with weights maybe 3 days a week. Trying to run or walk most days. At least six hours of sleep (working on increasing that to seven). I guess we (or some of us) will see if it works.

As to Edie’s aunt, and my aunt, and my grandmother, who died just before her 100th birthday (I always round her age up a bit), they didn’t do any of those things. Every evening, my grandmother had a drink – a combination of Southern Comfort and cranberry juice. I never saw her walk, except to or from the car or the bathroom. I think she ate whatever was before her, as long as it wasn’t a pork chop (bacon and ham were okay). My guess is that Edie’s aunt was much the same – minus the nightly drink. And my aunt? She I know did what she wanted – she wasn’t one to take advice from others.

Although I don’t know either aunt’s medical history, they obviously avoided fatal diseases until the very end, and my grandmother had been remarkably healthy (I only remember a serious case of shingles when she was in her 80s), avoiding disease altogether, I believe. And weight? Edie’s aunt was small and got smaller, my aunt was (I would say) of average weight throughout her life, and my grandmother was not obese, but certainly did not maintain an ideal BMI.

So what do we learn from all of this? And from all the advice we get from the experts, and the results of all the medical studies we see? I am not sure. I know that some things might really lessen the chance of a long life – things like entering a submersible to view the Titanic or piloting a small plane through the Himalayas. I am pretty sure that vaccines will help ward off serious disease, and masks will help you if you are stuck in a crowd of feverish people. But that’s about it. Does exercise help? I don’t know – the studies show that people who exercise are healthier. But what’s the cause and effect? Maybe they exercise BECAUSE they are healthier to begin with. And so on.

But it does seem that there is a mind-body connection. So if exercise helps you think you will live longer, maybe it will. Or maybe it will just make you feel healthier during the time you have left (whatever the amount of that time may be). This is important, too.

Well…..the day is already getting away from me. I did not start off with a healthy breakfast, and I probably won’t have the healthiest of lunches (eating at a restaurant not known for such things). And it will be 90 degrees, so I probably won’t go for a run (ha, the last time I went for a run was about 40 years ago, I would guess).

Will I make 102 (or the proverbial 120)? Maybe. But don’t bet the house on it.

I have been watching the pundits talk about what’s been going on in Russia the last few days. They have a lot to say, to be sure. Or at least they have a lot of ways to say it. Digging down into their broad experience and breadth of knowledge, they are basically saying “I have no idea”. This puts me on an equal footing, and I want to take advantage of it.

First, for those of my friends who look at every new twist in the world with the question: “So what does it mean for the Jews?”, I give the following unequivocal answer: “Nothing”.

Now, we can move on.

I am in the rare position of having deep contacts in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, and therefore privileged to have information not available to the general public. Please do not share this sensitive information with anyone if you have any question about either their sanity or their loyalty.

You may know that Belarus is a place which has very tight immigration restrictions. We all know that millions of those displaced by world events would love to be able to rebuild their lives in the garden city of Minsk. And, if not in Minsk, perhaps in the resort town of Pinsk. The Belarus borders are teaming with the world’s downtrodden climbing over imaginary fences, swimming across rivers that don’t even exist, trudging through the bordering jungles, all to be able to bask in the generosity of the friendly Lukashenko government.

My good friend, Yevgeny (Gene) Prigozhin, was one of those who wanted to move to Belarus (a life long ambition), but he wanted to do it legally (he is a stickler for following the law) and did not want to become just another illegal alien. He did not have the patience to continue waiting in line for a White Russian Green Card, so he came up with a way to be admitted early, a way to jump the line. Taking a hint from Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”, he decided to provoke those around him so that they would allow him to into Minsk as a way of stopping his annoying antics. Prigozhin has been annoying people for a long time. And starting a coup against the Russian government with his own army is the best example possible of a Big Annoy.

At least this is what I think happened. I sent Gene a note to see if he would deny this. He didn’t. He simply responded “You gotta be kidding”. See? That proves I am correct.

Now, you may wonder what The Big Prig is going to be doing in Minsk (or in Pinsk). He is no longer going to be a warlord, that’s for sure. His doctors have told him that it is not good for his blood pressure; that he had to find a more relaxing occupation. So for now, he is going back to his previous life work, starting as a short order cook at a local Belorussian KFC (you recall he was Putin’s chef, after he stopped selling hot dogs on the streets of Moscow). We will share the KFC address, hours and menu when everything is firmed up. By the way, a quick Google of KFC in Minsk shows me 26 locations (who knew?) and 3 in Pinsk (a much smaller town, of course). We will have to wait.

As far as Putin is concerned, as you might imagine, he knows nothing about this. He has been at his Black Sea dacha for the last several years, in semi-complete isolation, and – for the last two days – has been locked into his bathroom, which is guarded by so many Russian soldiers that there weren’t enough to prosecute the war against Ukraine, with you-know-what results. At any rate, it is expected that Putin will be notified within the next few weeks, so that his bathroom can at least be cleaned.

Meanwhile, my contacts in Ukraine say that they are cautiously optimistic that Prigozhin will enjoy his new life, that Putin will decide that his bathroom existence is the best he can hope for, and that the Russian army, now leaderless, will flee back across the border to Mother Russia, so that the Ukrainians can claim that their counter offensive was successful.

In the meantime, I am sure that the pundits on CNN and MSNBC will keep punditting (one t or two?) as if they know what is going on, and although I (who really has the skinny) wish I could keep you informed of what is really happening on a regular basis, in fact I cannot promise you that I will ever again return to this topic. Ever.

You have seen that my experience with Blacks in St. Louis was quite limited. And that the St. Louis I grew up in was highly segregated, designed to keep Whites and Blacks very separate. I should expand on this a bit, before I wind up in Cambridge.

The city of St. Louis was, in my opinion, unconsciously designed for failure. What do I mean by that? You have to think about the geography of the city. Built on the Mississippi, St. Louis started out as a river port and quickly became an industrial center. The downtown, once the population began to grow seriously, was surrounded by industrial establishments and dense residential buildings. The 1904 World’s Fair provided for the creation of Forest Park, in the west of the city, and a campus for Washington University, and pushed the higher end residential neighborhoods further and further from the city center, mainly to the west, but also to the south of the city. This left the inner city residential areas to become largely the home of the city’s burgeoning Black population. Unlike those cities which have been able to maintain growth in their downtown areas, where there is a clear connection between the downtown and some of the wealthier areas, downtown St. Louis found it self totally isolated from the more prosperous citizens of the region.

I remember well the drive from our house to my father’s office downtown in the 1940s and 1950s. We would drive through the suburb of Clayton (the county seat of St. Louis County, which is politically separate from the City – another unfortunate anomaly), we pass Washington University’s beautiful campus and through or next to the incomparable Forest Park (home of the city’s Art Museum, Zoo, Historical Museum, Municipal Opera, and much more) and then through the very small West End of the city, past Barnes and Jewish Hospitals, the Chase and Park Plaza Hotels, and some high end apartments. Quickly, we’d get a mixed area of small factories and businesses, and then we’d get to Grand Avenue, where there was, in effect, a second downtown, with several large movie theaters. East of Grand we would drive through what was known as Mill Creek, an extensive area of 19th century brick row houses, some dating back until just after the Civil War, many without any indoor plumbing, seemingly very crowded and very, very poor (this is where I remember my father making sure the car doors were locked). Finally, we would reach downtown.

I think the city leaders realized that the lack of a clear corridor from downtown to the western suburbs was problematic for the future of the city. Their conclusion was that Mill Creek must be demolished and a better corridor created through rebuilding the area which was to be leveled. The demolition began in 1959, the year before I left for college. The Mill Creek Urban Renewal Project had many results. Two of the most important were (1) the destruction of the homes of about 20,000 Black St. Louisans, and their businesses and churches, requiring them to relocate, many to public housing (see below, re Pruitt Igoe), and (2) the powers that be not recognizing that there was no market for the land that had been cleared, so that other than new highway construction and the eventual expansion of the Grand Avenue St. Louis University campus, the uses to which the land was put was exactly wrong for the center of a city – warehouses and small industrial buildings, etc., the kind of development you would see in not very desirable suburbs, and even this took years to build. So, driving downtown, you no longer drove through slums that frightened so many, but you drove through a no-man’s land continued to isolate downtown from the rest of the city.

I should add that St. Louis had a very active public housing program, starting in the 1940s, with projects located both south and north of downtown. There was no public housing built to the west. I should also add that, not surprisingly, all St. Louis Public Housing was segregated. There were White projects; there were Black projects. I don’t think any were integrated.

This included the infamous Pruitt Igoe project built in the early 1950s, just north of downtown. Pruitt Igoe consisted of 33 separate 11 story buildings, consisting of almost 3,000 residential units. Pruitt was to be the Black side of the Pruitt Igoe; Igoe was for Whites. Shortly after it was built, court decisions required it to be integrated and it soon became almost fully Black. Although for a time, Pruitt Igoe seemed to be quite successful, when it became a prime relocation resource for Mill Creek residents, it fell apart, becoming a development of crime and poverty. It was demolished in the early 1970s, after years of lowered occupancy. But Pruitt Igoe played another role, as it also isolated downtown, as it was located as a major part of downtown’s northern border.

Another result of the Mill Creek demolition was to push Black residents to the next neighborhoods to the west and to the north. These neighborhoods had been occupied by White, often Jewish, families, who ran from the neighborhoods to the western suburbs like University City and Olivette. Because the very conservative Missouri legislature kept the welfare and other payments to poverty-ridden families so low (much lower than virtually other states), many (most?) of these families could not pay the rent required to keep up their new homes. This meant that some properties were allowed to fall into disrepair and others were abandoned altogether by their owners, simply moving the problematic neighborhoods outward from downtown, but still circling it.

For those living in the White suburbs, none of this really mattered, except for what you saw out your car windows as you drove downtown. Or at least you didn’t think it did.

St. Louis is doing quite a bit today, much of it very successful, to reverse the problems of the past. But this is a gargantuan task and will not end soon.

In Race #2, I talked about my views of Blacks during my elementary school years. What about during high school?

I don’t think there was a great lag in integrating St. Louis area schools after the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board in 1954. I remember a gray morning in an eighth grade class when, without any advance notice, much less preparation, an administrator came into the class with two nervous and shy Black girls, and announced “These are Ella and Charles and they are joining your class.” I don’t remember anything that was said after that. I remember the teacher showing them seats. I don’t remember anyone saying anything to them one way or another. I remember looking at the girls and wondering which one was Charles, and why.

I never learned which one was Charles and which was Ella. I never talked to them. I don’t know if anyone else did. I also don’t remember them in the class the next day, or at any time after that.

Were they only at school one day? Where they in school on subsequent days and I just don’t remember? Did they stay in school but switch to a different class? I remember it was all sort of a mystery, and I remember being curious, but not curious enough to ask anyone, and certainly I wasn’t looking at moral implications then. If I ever spoke about this to anyone, such as my parents, I don’t remember.

Ella and Charles were two of the three African Americans brought into the 8th grade that day. The other, a boy, did stay with us, was fairly popular throughout high school, even at one point becoming a class officer if I remember. He was friendly, and an athlete. I don’t really know what happened to him. He is not in our yearbook. I don’t know if he graduated with us. I have no idea where he is now. (I have tried to Google him to no avail, but someone with his name plus “Sr.”, who was born in 1917, died in 1985 and is buried at Jefferson Barracks Military Cemetery near St. Louis – that could be his father.)

Ella and Charles clearly did not last at the school. And I am sure it wasn’t their fault.

There were no other Blacks in my high school class. In looking at my high school yearbook, I see only three Blacks pictured in the classes of 1961 and 1962. They are all male. I assume that all of the Blacks at Ladue lived within a small area at the very north end of the school district called Elmwood Park, which was an historic Black community. Nowhere else. Remember what I said: St. Louis was completely segregated.

I realize that I have no idea where the Elmwood Park kids went to school before integration. Because there was no “colored school” in the Ladue district, I assume that the Black school districts were drawn somewhat differently.

There was a Black elementary school, the Attucks School, in Clayton, the county seat suburb to the east of Ladue. I remember that there was a Black neighborhood in Clayton when I was young, sort of around Carondelet and Bonhomme and Hanley. But those small frame houses were sold and demolished as the Clayton business area expanded. They are long forgotten.

The Attucks school was sold by the county and became a Polynesian restaurant (I think it has been torn down). Not that I can tell you what they served at a Polynesian restaurant, but I know they served Mai Tais in the bar. I remember, during college years, being with a friend from my high school class. We were in Clayton and hungry, and I suggested that Polynesian restaurant as a place we could go. “No”, he said, “I would never eat there.” “Why?”, I asked. “Because it used to be a colored school”, he replied. “What does that have to do with anything?”, I next asked. His response? “I’m not prejudiced, but I would just never eat in a building that used to be a colored school”. That’s the story of America in a nutshell, isn’t it?

But there were worst things afoot in Clayton. Here is where my memory fails me as to exact dates. Was I in junior high or high school? Clayton has a very well used park, Shaw Park, and a highlight of that park was the Shaw Park swimming pool, where I first learned to swim. The pool had always been a whites-only pool (of course), and it was announced (perhaps it was the result of a law suit; I don’t remember) that the net year when the pool opened, it would be open to all, regardless of race.

Well, that was too much for the good citizens of Clayton, whom you would expect to be an open, liberal lot. So a big to-do ensued, and to satisfy both the residents of the city and the law, the City Council made its decision. The pool would close. As I recall, it was closed for two summers, devoid of any water, much to the dismay and the amazement of many.

Anything else I remember about contacts with Blacks during those years? Not really. Maybe one more incident that I can’t date precisely. There was a showy (pink Cadillac convertible with pink interior) and popular Black disc jockey in St. Louis (whose audience I think was primarily Black as well, although I am not sure of that), named Spider Burks, on radio station KXLW. The KXLW studio was in Clayton (thinking about that now, it surprises me), in the basement of a retail strip on Forsyth just south of Maryland. One day, I was walking through Clayton with some high school classmates (don’t remember at all who any of them were) and we decided to go and see if we could watch Spider Burks in action. To our surprise, not only could we do that, but he invited us in the studio, introduced us and asked us some questions. Unfortunately, we didn’t take any of this very seriously and we (I think I include myself in that) began to give silly answers and start giggling. After he introduced the next record, he politely (not) asked us to leave. I was very embarrassed about that – but did nothing. I certainly don’t remember sending him an apology.

But that was it. No social contact with Blacks. No contact at all that I can remember.

(An aside: Some time ago, you could call someone African-American or black. Then we learned that African-American was not sufficiently politically correct, and that “black” should be spelled with a capital B (“Black”). All media began to use Black, and some media also began. to use White. I used Black in this post, but – truth be told – I don’t understand why it should just be black. If we are trying to build a society where racial differences matter less than they do today, capitalizing the names of Whites and Blacks sends the absolutely wrong message. IMHO)

(1) Let’s first talk about the weather. Yes, people say that everyone talks about it and no one does anything about it. But that is an overstatement. Think about this: the Washington area has been in somewhat of a drought. That drought ended yesterday with the first of what promises to be several days of moderate to strong rain. Why did the drought end yesterday? Because Edie and I took action.

What did we do? We got tickets for the 4 pm Nationals/Cardinals game. You don’t need to thank us. It was just our way of helping out the world.

By the way, they played the entire game in the rain and the Nats won 3-0. Normally, this game would have been canceled, but the schedule this year has each of the 30 teams play each of the other 29 teams, meaning that if a game is canceled because of weather, coming up with a replay date is difficult if not impossible. So expect more of this. I did turn on part of the game. How many people were actually sitting in the 40,000+ stadium? Not 40,000.

(2) One of the recent Penguin books I read is “The Cinema 1950”, a book that no one but I have read since approximately 1950. But the book, an anthology, has several interesting articles, such as one by Robert Flaherty on the 18 months he spent in the Arctic filming Nanook of the North and the 24 months he spent in French Samoa making Moana, two early and well received documentaries (I saw Nanook at the National Gallery of Art several years ago).

Another of the articles ask six English critics what they thought the best films of the previous year were. One critic said, without a doubt, it was “Cry of the City” with Victor Mature and Shelly Winters, among others, “an American gangster film”. We saw that it was available on YouTube and….why not?

Well, I should have read further in the article itself: “Indeed, it has been a surprise to me that Richard Murphy’s script, Robert Siodmak’s direction and the finely balanced playing of Richard Conte as the killer and Victor Mature as the detective have not been more enthusiastically received by the critics as well as the public.”

And then I looked up Victor Mature on Wikipedia, and found the following comments by David Thomson under “Critical Appraisal”: “Simple, crude and heady – like ketchup or treacle – he is a diet scorned by the knowing, but obsessive if succumbed to in error. It is too easy to dismiss Mature, for he surpasses badness. He is….a barely concealed sexual advertisement for soiled goods.”

The other favorite movies of the 1950 critics were, by the way, “Bicycle Thieves”, “Whisky Galore”, “Jour de Fete”, “The Third Man” and “Louisiana Story”.

(3) My Thursday morning breakfast group presentation and discussion this morning was on the topic of Artificial Intelligence (I think I gave my views on this in an earlier blog post). But to reiterate, one day, a 400 pound man (to quote Donald Trump) living in his parents’ basement in Bangladesh (I know, there are probably very few, if any, basements in Bangladesh that haven’t long ago been flooded) is going to figure out how to use AI to detonate a series of nuclear weapons and wipe out humanity and several million other species in the blink of an eye. And with this, all the great benefits that AI will have otherwise brought to society will obviously come to naught.

In the meantime, we can use AI to create a haiku:

A man in Dhaka

In the house of his parents

Sets the world on fire.

Or a limerick:

There once lived a man out in Dhaka

Who wanted to give us a shock-a

He created a mesh

In old Bangladesh

Bombing Brazil and Morocc-a.

(4) As my readers today are all saying to be in unison “Enough already”.

OK, I had more to say, but it can wait. Happy Chocolate Eclair Day.

Like most people, I like to think of myself as not having a racist bone in my body. But is that really true? Probably not. Who was it who said “You have to be taught to hate to hate and fear”? Was it Oscar Hammerstein or Emile De Becque? So hard to keep those guys straight.

I think it is time to do a bit of racial self analysis.

What did I learn about race growing up in the 1940s and 1950s in St. Louis? Were there any Blacks in my family? No. Did my parents or my grandparents have any Black friends? No. Were there any Blacks in my school, teachers or students? No. Did any Blacks live in my neighborhood? Not at all. None.

So you get the idea. It would not be accurate to say that I never say anyone who was Black. I did see one all the time. I saw Alice Tennyson. Until I was in the third grade, we lived with my grandparents. And a woman named Alice lived there, too. She was my grandparents’ maid. She was a small woman, her hair graying and tied back, she wore rimless glasses and I don’t think she spoke much. I have no photographs of her. I am not sure what her responsibilities were. I think that my grandparents did not think she was very good at what she did, but she was – in a strange sense, I guess – part of the family.

I remember she was always on duty, except for Thursday nights, which was her night off. And on Thursday nights, she went to stay with her brother. I don’t know who he was or where he lived, and I don’t know if my grandparents knew, either. I also don’t know when she came to work for my grandparents and when she started to live in their basement. I vaguely remember a story about how she simply showed up on their front door on a cold, rainy night, and how my grandparents invited her in, and she just stayed and stayed. Sounds like a tall tale, I know. But who am I to say?

I said Alice lived in the basement. She did. But it wasn’t a fancy finished basement, it was just a basement. And she had a room that, from my memory of the very few times I was down there, was barely habitable. I can blame that on my grandparents or my parents, but it was clear to me that Alice probably bore some responsibility as well. She could have fixed it up, decorated it a bit. There was also a bathroom down there. I am sure Alice was not permitted to use any other bathrooms in the house.

For a short time, there was another Black woman who came to the house once a week, or maybe once every other week. Her name was Susie and she did laundry. I don’t know how many years she came. I don’t remember ever talking to her at all. She was a large woman, much larger than Alice, and she seemed more worldly. She probably was.

Alice and, sometimes, Susie. That was basically my Black world for the first eight years or so of my life. The only other Blacks I saw were also maids; they worked for other relatives, or for friends. I think that was it.

There were a lot of Blacks in St. Louis, to be sure. Did I see some of them, just here and there? I am not sure, but I imagine I did, although I didn’t go to neighborhoods where Blacks lived, so I am really not sure.

When I was quite young, 7 or 8 I think, I was allowed to take the bus by myself or with a friend – to a movie on Grand Avenue, or to my grandfather’s office, or my father’s downtown. I remember being on a bus, and there was a Black woman sitting across the aisle from me. I think she got on the bus before I did. Then, a Black man got on the bus. He walked right by her and sat further in the back. I was astounded that he didn’t say hello to her, or at least smile and nod. At that instant, I realized something. I realized that all Blacks didn’t know each other, and that they didn’t acknowledge each other as members of the same group. How stupid of me to think otherwise, I thought even then, but I think it was the first time that I realized there were things in society that I really didn’t understand at all.

St. Louis was a segregated city. It was a city with a white population divided between northern liberals and Confederate sympathizers. Missouri had been a slave holding border state, as you know. A lot of that carried over. Even today.

St. Louis was not a deep South city. It didn’t have white and colored entrances and waiting rooms, it didn’t have white and colored drinking fountains, and Blacks didn’t have to sit in the back of the bus. But other than that……..

Schools were segregated. Parks were segregated. Blacks were not welcomed in restaurants or in most stores, in hotels or in theaters, and in sport venues, they were restricted to certain areas. For example, at Sportsman’s Park (home of both the Cardinals and the Browns), Blacks had to sit in the left field pavilion. They couldn’t catch a home run ball, because the pavilion was screened, and they sat on wooden benches, not seats. And when Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby and others came to play major league baseball in St. Louis, they could not stay in the same hotels, or eat in the same restaurants, as their teammates. St. Louis was the only major league city where this was true.

In St. Louis, no Blacks lived in white neighborhood, and no whites lived in Black neighborhoods. Period. At some point, after urban renewal took hold in the 1950s, Blacks began to move into some nearby neighborhoods, chasing the whites out to the suburbs. But in the 1940s, I don’t think even that had started yet. There was no city with more residential segregation than St. Louis. Rich or poor, you lived apart.

This segregation forced the Black population of St. Louis to fend for itself – it had its own groceries, theaters, shops, funeral homes, newspaper, and so forth. We whites knew nothing about that. At least I didn’t.

I have a book to recommend. I am sure you haven’t read it, and it may not be easy to find. It’s a short novel called “Mrs. Palmer’s Honey”, and it was written by Fannie Cook, a Jewish woman who was a friend of my grandparents. It is set in St. Louis in the 1940s. Honey is Mrs. Palmer’s maid. Honey knows everything about Mrs. Palmer. Mrs. Palmer knows absolutely nothing about Honey. (Their worlds clash at the University of Missouri when Mrs. Palmer’s son, a student and frat boy, meets Honey’s son, a waiter at the fraternity house – but that’s another story.) What is important is that the reader of the book, as opposed to Mrs. Palmer, learns a lot about Honey, and Honey’s family, and the neighborhood where they all live. Mrs. Palmer had no clue.

If you were white in St. Louis at this time, you would be like Mrs. Palmer. You would come into contact with the Blacks that worked in your house (and if you worked outside of your house, maybe you would see some Black factory workers or custodial workers), but you would know nothing about them. You would not be curious. You would not think that there are things about them you didn’t know. You just wouldn’t think about it at all. Just like you wouldn’t wonder why no Blacks ate in the restaurants you ate in, or sat next to you at the movies, or swam with you at the pubic park pool. It would never occur to you to wonder about that.

For those who are growing up today (and perhaps for all those under, say, 50 today), this may be impossible to really comprehend.

But this is how I grew up.

(To be continued)

Race is so central to this country’s past and present, and on this Juneteenth Plus One, I want to explore some aspects of it, and explain some of my continual confusion about it.

Let’s start with the Emancipation Proclamation. I understand that I am looking at it with the eyes of someone in 2023, and not 1863, but……..isn’t it a bit overblown? Starting in 1860, eleven states seceded from the United States. So my first question is: during the Civil War, were these states part of the United States, or not? Was their secession successful only to be ended by a war and readmission, or were the Confederate troops fighting against the Union rebels against their own government for the duration of the war (i.e., was the secession itself invalid)? Is that a simple question that everyone but me can answer?

From what I have read, I believe the better answer is that the seceding states did successfully secede and had to be brought back into the Union. That, during the Civil War period, the eleven Southern states were not part of the United States.

Assuming this to be the case, the Emancipation Proclamation was a declaration with no legal effect whatsoever. It only “emancipated” enslaved persons in states which were no longer part of the United States, and therefore emancipated no one.

There were at this time, of course, also slaves in four states that did not join the South. They were the four “border states”, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. When Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862, to be effective on January 1, 1863, he did nothing to outlaw slavery in the border states. Okay, maybe this was a tactical necessity. Perhaps an Emancipation Proclamation that purported to end slavery in the entire country would have led one or more of the border states to secede and join the Confederacy. That’s possible. I understand that.

But, and this is what is key: After the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1862, slavery remained untouched in the eleven Southern states where it purported to have effect, but actually had no effect at all, and slavery remained untouched in the four Union border states because the Emancipation Proclamation did not even pretend to abolish slavery there. In fact, Maryland retained slavery until some time in 1864, Missouri until January 1865, and Delaware and Kentucky kept slavery as the law of the land until the 13th Constitutional Amendment was fully ratified on December 6, 1865.

So on June 19, 1865, two months after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, when the Black population of Galveston Texas learned of the Emancipation Proclamation and realized they were free (perhaps not by law yet), slavery continued to exist unabated in Delaware and Kentucky.

Not only that, but the end of the Civil War did not mean that the eleven states of the Confederacy were all of a sudden readmitted to the United States slave-free. There were conditions of readmission, one of which was the state’s ratification of the 13th Amendment, which wasn’t part of our Constitution until December 1865, seven months following Appomattox. And, the ratification of this amendment by the Confederate states could not occur in December 1865, but had to wait until certain preconditions involving the establishment of new state governments were met.

The first southern state to be readmitted back into the Union was Tennessee which was admitted in 1866, and most were readmitted in 1868. But Georgia was not fully readmitted until 1870. To be sure, during that interim period, slavery was not continuing as as it had been in the southern states. But this is because these states were occupied by Union armies. I don’t think that the Emancipation Proclamation itself controlled these still-formerly states of the Union and, until they were readmitted to the Union, we cannot say that slavery was fully, legally abolished there.

So it seems to me that June 19, 1865, the Juneteenth day that is now celebrated as a federal holiday, is an artificial day, and that slavery continued de facto in the United States until the 13th Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865, and until the last seceding state was readmitted to the Union in 1870.

As I said yesterday, more power to the Black community of the United States if they want to celebrate Juneteenth as a traditional day of celebration. But I don’t think it should be the basis of a federal holiday. If we want to have a federal holiday celebrating the end of slavery (and I think that is a great idea), it should be December 6, not June 19th.

Just sayin’

I have to admit it. I am not acclimated to Juneteenth. I imagine I will get there, but I view it as a Black holiday (and more power to them), and I don’t feel comfortable taking it from them. I also admit to not fully understanding it. And I don’t like the word, because it isn’t a word. And, as they celebrate related, but different things, I don’t want Juneteenth to take away from the civil rights victories celebrated on Martin Luther King Day.

(My first aside of the day. If you are 80 and want to feel young, just go to the Round House Theater for a Sunday matinee.)

Yesterday, we went to Round House, and saw a production of August Wilson’s last play, Radio Golf. I think Wilson is one of the greatest American playwrights (but what do I know?). No question about it. And I think that Radio Golf has within it several sparks of greatness. But I don’t think it fully succeeds.

As i said, this was his final play. He died at age 60 of a virulent liver cancer that had been diagnosed only a few months earlier. The play had its first performance at Yale after (I think) his diagnosis, but before his death. It’s the only time he could see it on stage.

I have read that Wilson was an active writer, never satisfied until he was, editing and rewriting as he watched early performances. Here, he did not get that chance.

I did not know this when we watched the play. And I was surprised when one of my first thoughts leaving the theater was that “this play needs some editing.”

Radio Golf is the final play of Wilson’s brilliant Pittsburgh Cycle. Each play is set in a different decade of the 20th century. Each is set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, and many of the characters, play to play, are the same or are related to prior characters. They tell the story of interrelated families, of a neighborhood, of a city, of the United States. They mix reality with fantasy. They tell the story of the Black man trying to find his place in what he perceives as a White man’s world. We have seen most of these plays. They are universally brilliant.

Very briefly, Radio Golf, set in 1997, is about Harmon Wilks, a Black real estate entrepreneur, the son of a Black real estate entrepreneur, who is leading a massive redevelopment of the Hill and at the same time running to be the first Black mayor of Pittsburgh. His partner, Roosevelt Hicks, is a Black man, and old school friend, who is out to make as much money as he can. The mayoral candidate already has money. His aim is to make the Hill and Pittsburgh better.

A ground breaking on the first major project is nearing. But an old Black man (“They call me Old Joe”) objects to the developers tearing down his family house. The two men make fun of him, until Wilks discovers that Old Joe was not given the required notice before he, Wilks, bought the house from the city at a tax sale.

No one else knows this secret. What to do? You can imagine that Hicks and Wilks have very different ideas. Their views diverge even more when Wilks realizes that he and Old Joe were distant cousins and that this house had, in a way, been his family house, too.

A terrific plot, I am sure you will agree. And it brings up so many questions. Marginality. Gentrification. Black politicians trying to do good. White businessmen using Black faces to get city contracts. The “successful” Black man with little or no concern for Blacks mired in poverty.

I thought the first act showed Wilson’s usual brilliance. But he lost it in the second act, where the play ended with Hicks being backed by a White businessman with connections buying out Wilks and getting city approval to tear down the house. I believe that Wilson, had he the opportunity, would have made major changes to the second act.

There are only five actors in the cast of Radio Golf. Because I am trying hard not to be overly critical in this blog, I will only say this. Four of the actors were terrific.

Should you see it before it closes? Of course. And tell me what you think.

First, for a change, a digression……I never paid much attention (i.e., I paid no attention) to Trump’s Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. Did anyone? I just saw him interviewed by Jake Tapper. I was quite impressed.

Now, back to the main topic of the day: Father’s Day (see above).

Father’s Day never meant much (anything) to me, and I don’t think that it meant much to my father. At least, I don’t remember anything commemorating Father’s Day when I was younger. Perhaps, some years it passed without notice.

Whether Father’s Day meant anything to my grandfathers, I don’t know. I never knew my father’s father, who died in 1939 and, although I knew his eight children very well until the last one passed away a few years ago, and of course I knew his widow until her death when I was 30, he remains an absolute mystery to me. My grandmother never spoke about him at all. And I mean at all. And I asked her very little. I only remember when I asked her how they met (in Europe), her answer was simply “Oh, you know…..”, which I took to mean “I’m not going to talk about that now or ever.” And when I asked about him to my father or my aunts or uncles, I used to get answers like “Oh, you would have liked him a lot”. Period. Mystery.

On the other hand, I was very close to my mother’s father, with whom we lived the first eight years of my life. Of course, I say that because I have always said that and always heard that. What “close” means, I am not sure. Did the two of us ever go anywhere together? Yes, to the Browns/Yankees games every year. But that’s all I remember. But I know that I loved and respected him. What did he think of Father’s Day? No clue.

My father was a consistent father, and I think that is good. Over the years that I knew him, he remained the same, principled, ethical, constant. We didn’t go on father/son ventures. He was not a Good Time Charley (did I just make up Good Time Charley?). He was very quiet and reserved. I hardly ever remember him raising his voice. My mother, not he, was the disciplinarian…..but he would stand by her discipline, even when a rational person (such as me) would find it outrageous. He was a calming influence on a rather volatile relationship between a mother and her son.

We have a busy day today. Tickets to see August Wilson’s “Radio Golf” at the Round House Theatre this afternoon, and then Hannah’s and Michelle’s families are coming over for a casual dinner. The fathers in attendance will be Andrew, Josh, Josh’s father Vernon, and me. Do any of us care about Father’s Day? I don’t know the answer to that, either.

But the role of a father is important, both for the father and his children. We see that from various studies and statistics and we know it instinctively. But with divorce rates continuing to be very high, and out of marriage births equally high, we know that it isn’t always possible for fathers to be the fathers they wish they could be.

Father’s Day has no theme, other than to say “Happy Father’s Day” to your father. Perhaps it should. Perhaps there should be more concentration on the role of the father (whether or not the father is still married to and living with the mother of his children) and on the encouragement of surrogate fathers for those children who lack a real one.

I’m not sure how this would work…..but it is something to ponder.

Which was pretty amazing.

(But before we discuss that, Let’s digress. In Peru, Lima is pronounced Leema, but in Ohio, it’s pronounced Lie-ma. Why? Same with MiLAN, Italy, but MEI-lan in Ohio. maDRID in Spain, but New MAAdrid, Missouri. Ver-sigh in France, but Ver-sales in Indiana. Athens in Greece, but AYthens in Kentucky. BerLIN in German, BERlin in Connecticut. CAIro in Egypt, but CAYro Illinois. REEga in Latvia, RYE-ga in New York. And on and on. Why?) [Rhetorical question]

My old friend (who shall be nameless – but you can call him Michael) and I took a trip to the Amazon in 1974 or so. We responded to a newspaper or magazine ad sponsored by a group called something like “Amazon Trips”, something very original. It wasn’t a guided tour; it was just that they would give you advice and make arrangements. How exactly we decided on our itinerary, I am not sure.

I was coming from Washington, and he was coming from St. Louis. We were meeting at the airport in Miami to catch a flight to Bogota, in Columbia. The day after that, we were flying on a domestic Columbian flight to the Amazon River town of Leticia, via Cali. My plane landed at Miami-Dade on time, and I went to the gate for the overnight flight south. Where was Michael?

Now remember, 1974 was a long time ago. The concept of a cell phone was not even a concept. So, I just couldn’t call Michael and ask him where he was. It was time to board the plane. I decided to board. But where was Michael? The stewardess announced that the door was about to close so we could take off. At the last minute, Michael appeared, looking a bit disheveled. His St. Louis plane had been very late, and he had had to run from one gate to another barely making the plane. I wondered what would happen if he hadn’t made the plane. We had made no arrangements in Bogota; how would we have ever found each other.

I remember nothing about the flight. I remember some high rise buildings and some visible mountains at Bogata, but I don’t remember what we did, or where we stayed. But the next morning, we flew south. I was surprised at how mountainous the country was, and – although we didn’t leave the airport or probably didn’t leave the plane – how modern Cali (a city I think I had never even heard of at the time) looked.

Leticia is a relatively small city, population even today under 40,000, and it is Colombia’s only port on the river. The Amazon river coast of Columbia, as any map will tell you (just ask one), is very short, squeezed between the enormous Brazilian Amazon to the east and Peruvian Amazon to the west. Leticia was very much a frontier town then, both in look and feel, and very remote. Now, I understand the tourist industry is highly developed. Then, I believe, there only a few places with accommodations. We stayed at a motel like place, with separate white cabins, a dining room, and a swimming pool. It was a place to leave for various river tours, but not one to spend a full day at. It was, as Michael would undoubtedly say, adequate.

I remember we flew into a very small airport. We were greeted by two young Americans, probably younger than we were, a guy whom I don’t really remember and a girl, blond and attractive. I thought then that, if they were indicative of the hotel staff, we might have some people with whom we could converse. But I don’t remember seeing them much after they drove us to our home away from home, just here and there. I remember seeing where they were living (why, I can’t tell you), and being very suspicious as to why they were there and what they were doing.

Now those who know me know that I am very naive. But I recently read this about Leticia: “Leticia – the capital of the State of Amazonas – was once used as a place of business for some of the region’s most infamous traffickers, with a flourishing open air drug market overseen by a powerful local cartel during the so-called “drug trafficking bonanza” of the 1970s and 1980s.” [From Insightcrime.org] We saw no signs of that (did we Michael?), but weren’t really looking.

Was our hotel related to the drug trade? Were the young Americans involved with drugs? My firm guess would be “yes”, but this is not based on anything specific that we saw while we were there.

For the few days we were in Leticia, our time was spent on excursions to small Indian villages (I use the term Indian only because I don’t know what other term I should use), which were accessible only by water. These were primitive villages where the only buildings were probably the local school, these with either wood or metal walls. The houses were elevated, one-room affairs, open to the air, with thatched roofs. The young kids were dressed like young western kids – shorts and t-shirts, but the adults were dressed like natives – most adults, male and female, were topless, and the women were as often as not nursing very young children. Everyone seemed friendly. We were told they were Ticuna Indians. There were no vehicles. I don’t remember commercial establishments.

We visited several such villages, but they were relatively indistinguishable. One of the trips we took was across the Amazon to the Brazilian town of Benjamin Constant. This was a really depressing place, with seemingly nothing to look at or do. We were told stories about the places we visited, all of which I have forgotten. At some point, I ran into someone selling “bark paintings”, made by the natives, generally paintings of animals (from large cat-like creatures to insects) and geometric forms. I bought about 100 of them for $8 American each and brought them home. Later I sold them for $10 or $15 each, and covered the cost of my trip. (By the way, there was no passport control for traveling between Colombia and Brazil deep upriver, which surprised me but made sense.)

From Leticia, we flew via Varig Airlines to Iquitos in Peru. I mentioned this place before – a large inland city, not reachable by land, very colonial in appearance, with a very busy riverfront and, as I remember it, a large number of simple houseboats, and a larger number of vultures hovering about. We spent some time exploring the downtown and riverfront areas, before being picked up by a small boat which was to take us to our lodging.

As opposed to our home in Leticia, our lquitos home – at least an hour, maybe more, downriver from Iquitos – was the height of luxury. It was then a fairly new resort built on platforms reaching out over the river. The rooms were open to the river, reachable by raised walkways. There was no electricity; lighting was by gas. The hotel had a restaurant, again quite luxurious, with some of the best fish that I have ever tasted. We did some more river exploration, spent a few nights there, and were transported by boat back to Iquitos for our various flights (see earlier blog posts). I have good memories of our hotel, and particularly of the young native boys (teenagers, young teenagers) who were working at the hotel. They were raised in small river villages, went on hunting expeditions with their fathers when they were young, but were educated at local schools and, in addition to their native languages, seemed to speak every western European language. They were also, every one of them, charming. I thought they’d have a great future.

The river, even almost 2,000 miles from its mouth is extremely wide, and completely beautiful and engrossing. The fish, the foliage, the tributaries, the villages, the family boats, the transport boats, women washing clothes in the river, children swimming. All of great interest.

I was sure that I would go back to this part of the world, perhaps multiple times. It’s not too late, I guess, 50 years later. I really wonder (really wonder) how much it has changed.

Thinking about immigration again.

I have said before that I think that border control is always one of the most difficult problems for any nation, at any time. And especially for a nation that is attractive to people (such as the United States) in times of world stress (such as now). And because so many people (in any country) have a knee-jerk reaction to the prospect of unknown people with unknown habits coming into their country, the problems of immigration provide a very rewarding channel for opposition political parties to state an appealing case. This is certainly the situation we find ourselves in today.

(Okay, let me digress. Last week, I spent some time with a cousin who has long lived in Portland, Oregon. Portland has, like immigration, become a target of political grandstanding by the Republican opposition. It is portrayed as a failing city, ungovernable, filled with leftist rioters and would-be rioters and led by incompetent political leadership. My cousin doesn’t see it that way. He sees it as a very livable city, with problems like all others, that simply has become a right wing talking point, without any basis in reality. A few days ago, I decided to look at what are the “most dangerous” cities in the United States. Surely, anarchic Portland must be high on that list, right? Well, according to PopulationU.com, of the 75 largest cities in the United States, Portland ranks 64th in its crime/danger level.)

I am not today going to list all the arguments, pro and con, for tighter border controls, building a wall, sending troops to the border, or any of that. That’s for another time. I am not going to write about all of the dangers and problems in Central America, Haiti, Venezuela, Ukraine, Syria….none of that. We hear enough about those problems. We know that there are tens of millions of people who have been forced from their homes by war, poverty, climate change or other causes and that all of them need to find a place to live. We know that.

I am also not going to talk about the history of immigration to America – the “we are a nation of immigrants” argument. We have heard enough about that, as well. We know that all of those “real Americans” who vote red and want to make America great again are as much the descendants of immigrants as are the third generation American Jews or the first generation Indian-Americans. In fact, I don’t want to talk about the United States at all.

I want to talk about the British Isles.

Not about today’s Britain, filled with immigrants from the Commonwealth countries (when the Commonwealth was a real thing) and from EU countries (when the UK was an EU member). I want to talk about Britain at the time the Normans came to conquer, in 1066.

As part of my reading of my Penguin paperback collection, I recently read “Britain B.C” by S.E. Winbolt, a British home archeologist who passed away in 1944, and “The Beginnings of English Society” by Dorothy Whitelock. In these books, they explain who the real British people are – not those who immigrated to Britain over the last 1,000 years, but those bedrock Brits who were there well before that.

Well, guess what? There may have been no true native Brits at all, or none or very few who have genetically survived. As early as the Stone Age, Britain was populated by peoples who immigrated to there from what is now France (the Celts, etc.), and then the “English” came (i.e., the Anglo Saxons) who came from today’s northern Germany, and then there were the Vikings and their relatives, who were Danish or Swedish, and then of course the Normans who were French. It was all of these people who made up what are considered today the native Brits (and Irish and Welsh and Scots). Without immigration, the U.K. would be as empty as Antarctica (with no penguins – but with puffins).

Similarly, I watched a video on YouTube yesterday about the earliest Russians. Well, there as well, the earliest people seemed to have migrated from elsewhere and to have at some point come together linguistically and be identified as Slavs. But wait a minute, there is more there, too. The “Russ” were Scandinavians, and the “Russians” became an amalgamation of these two very distinct groups.

My conclusion? Immigration – broad scale immigration – is inevitable over time, and opposition to immigration is just as inevitable. But the opposition never works, and just like you can’t fight city hall, you can’t fight the migration of people who are forced away from where they live, and need to find a new place to build their lives.

Yes, indeed, the “real Americans” will soon be a minority in what they consider to be their own country, and today’s “undesirable” or “questionable” immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, no matter how they enter the country, will comprise the future of the country and will probably do just fine. And you can huff and you can puff, but you really can’t do anything about it, and when you huff and when you puff, it might be your own house that gets blown down.

(I know, you say this is a very simplistic piece. You are right. But as Occam said “simple is best”. And if there is no record that he said that, I wish to remind you that there is no record that he didn’t.)

As you might by now know, every Thursday morning, I have a breakfast meeting (sometimes Zoom, sometimes in person) with several dozen other older and mainly retired men, with each week one member making a presentation of their own choosing. In about a month, I am scheduled to give a presentation on community organizer Saul Alinsky – I am sure you will see more about that here.

Today, our oldest member who is now 99 going on 70, gave a presentation on J.P. Morgan’s original art advisor and assistant, Belle de Costa Greene, a Black woman who passed as White. It’s a mesmerizing story, much of which involved Greene’s success as Morgan’s agent at various rare book and art auctions.

And it reminded me of my best auction experience.

I moved to Washington in 1969, and shortly after that (I don’t remember exactly when) I was wandering through downtown DC, I passed an auction house and the sign told me it was auction day. I went in and saw a about 30 people waiting for the start of the weekly auction and saw that being auctioned were various items consigned by people for sale. A miscellany.

You could wander through and look at the various numbered lots and figure out what you might want to bid on. You had to register to participate and for some reason, I did. It was certainly not a time in my life (living in a small apartment as I was) that I was looking to collect anything, and so I just casually examined things as I passed by. When I got to the books, I saw that they were being sold in groups – one group might include six books, one might include ten books.

None of the books looked very interesting to me until I got to a box of books that included a number of ordinary books and one that looked sort of special. It was an older (published in 1881) coffee table sized (did they have coffee tables in 1881?) book entitled “The History of the St. Louis Bridge”. The bridge is now known as the Eads Bridge, the oldest bridge over the Mississippi River, completed in 1874.

The book had a heavy embossed cover, and is about 18 inches by 12. It has hundreds of pages, which include a lengthy narrative history of the bridge from concept to completion. But wait – there is more. The book contains many photographs taken in the 1860s and 1870s of the bridge under construction. But wait – there is still more. The book contains full pages with all of the engineering and construction specifications of the bridge.

So, clearly this is a special book. But wait – there is even more. The book is inscribed by James Buchanan Eads. Eads, a cousin of the 15th president of the United States, was – believe it or not – a self-educated engineer, a man whose last schooling ended when he was 13, and who became a world known ship and bridge designer, largely through self-instruction. The inscription by Eads clearly made this book more desirable.

But wait – yes, there is more and more. To whom did Eads inscribe this book? The book was inscribed to Supreme Court Justice L. Q. C. Lamar in 1882, when Lamar was a United States Senator from Mississippi. In 1885, Lamar became the Secretary of the Interior and in 1888, was appointed as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. (Before his career as a United States governmental official, Lamar was a Confederate official and army officer, and he remained a racist throughout his life.)

Moving back to 1869, as I said, this book was part of a group of books set to be auctioned the day I was in the auction house. As I was looking at the book, the auction itself started with Item #1. The box in which the book was sitting was something like Item #200. I didn’t want to spend all day at an auction house.

So what did I do? I took the book out of the box, went to one of the auction assistants and asked if this particular book could be auctioned separately. To my surprise, he said he would see. He disappeared and came back saying that the auctioneer agreed to sell it next.

I sat down in the auction room. The auctioneer held up “The St. Louis Bridge” and said “I have a book here called “The St. Louis Blues” – will anyone give me $10?”

I watched to see what would happen. Nothing happened. I had no competition. I was emboldened (one of the few times in my life) and said “I will give you $5”. The auctioneer gave me the evil eye. But no one said anything, and he followed with “Sold for $5”.

And that’s how I got a copy of “The St. Louis Bridge” inscribed by James B. Eads to a future Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

I do have a few other auction stories, but they pale by comparison. Maybe some other time.

We left off when I entered Machu Picchu in 1974, in a weakened condition from my culinary adventure in Pisac. As I said, in 1974, Machu Picchu was quite remote and the only hotel rooms were in a small and relatively primitive lodge on site. I had a reservation.

During the day, I was a normal tourist. I followed the guide around, learned about the Incas, saw the terraced agricultural plots, the famous mountain and parts of the Inca trail. I remember I thought the guide very informative, but of course I have no idea what he said 50 years later. I was not alone with the guide, there was a group of us. And there were other groups with other guides, and some people roaming around by themselves. It was (for 1974) fairly crowded.

At the end of the day (maybe about 5 p.m.), everything changed. An announcement was made that the park was closing and that everyone needed to board their buses (the buses went to the train station) within something like 10 minutes). They did, and the buses pulled away.

Silence reigned. There were only about a dozen of us left (those staying the night) and a few staff members. Suddenly we were joined by a herd (flock? coven?) of goats, who seemed to have been hired to keep the grass short. And we were given free reign over the site ourselves. No restrictions. We could go anywhere. No longer any guides. Just us.

Because Machu Picchu is near the equator, the sun goes down every day about the same time, about 6:30. Even though we were permitted to roam the site in the dark, there seemed to be little reason to, and I think all of us went up to the lodge. Dinner was served (that was part of the deal); I don’t remember what the dinner was, or if it was good or if it was only mediocre. But at dinner, the few guests had an opportunity to talk to each other. I spent my time, as I recall, talking to a small group of Peruvians about my age, from Lima, who had come up as a group. I don’t really remember the details, or anything about them individually. But I don’t think they were “couples”, just a group of friends.

By now, I was used to this, so when I heard that the electricity would go off at 10 p.m., I was not surprised. Besides, we were all planning to get up very early, so we could climb the famous mountain (Inca steps go to the top) before sunrise. We did and watched the sun rise over the surrounding mountains from the top.

I left Machu Picchu the next morning on the same bus that brought the next group of tourists up. I was going back to Lima for a few days, and I had agreed to meet my now Peruvian friends that night (or was it the next?) to go out for pizza. They lived in a part of Lima called Miraflores, and I was given the address of one of the girls’ houses (her parents’ house – I don’t know if she lived there or not) to meet up with them. As grimy and unappealing as most of Lima seemed to be to me, that is how much I was impressed with Miraflores – attractive, well maintained, filled with fancy shops and fancy homes. In fact, the house where I rang the bell was one of the most luxurious I had ever seen anywhere. I had no idea I was traipsing around with the elite.

We went to a pizza house on one of the main commercial streets and I was surprised to see that each pizza was named for a different Italian-American gangster. I ordered a Lucky Luciano. My stomach was feeling almost fully recovered, and I thought nothing about ordering an overloaded and very spicy pizza.

Once again, big mistake. That night, alone in my hotel, my stomach struck back at me again, maybe even worse, although this time I had running water. I remember the next day (or was it two days) being too weak to get dressed, much less leave my room, and my only sustenance was room service coca-cola that I ordered one after another.

But I did survive, although I was not able to see anything else in Lima, and on the day I emerged, I flew out of Lima, changed planes in Panama City (where I bought a mola, which still hangs in our living room) to catch a flight home.

And, as someone said (I think), that was the day that was.