Art is 80

By chance, I turned on former President Trump’s speech to Turning Point America last night on Newsmax, as I was scrolling for something to watch during the rain delay of the Cardinals-Nats game. I didn’t stay on too long, but what I heard started my stomach churning all over again. And this morning, I looked at several very recent polls reported on Real Clear Politics which show a Trump-Biden race a toss-up, which show Trump well ahead of any other Republican contenders (like 20 to 40 points ahead), and which show Biden’s popularity still hovering around 40%. You just have to be worried.

The text of the speech (as well as a video) is on the C-Span website, and here is what Trump said to start off his speech: “You are the grassroots leaders who are going to dislarge (sic) the socialists and communists and they are indeed communists, and marxists, and globalists, and where the hell do these people come from, and send the radical left back into political oblivion where they belong.”

Then he went into all of the things that Biden has done wrong, and all of the ways that the United States is once again failing. Climate change is a myth and all the left wants is the Green New Deal, which will destroy us. The Russians would never have gone into Ukraine if Trump had remained president, and we would never have left Afghanistan the way we did, if at all. We would be on great terms with China and North Korea and Russia (he got along with their leaders very well). There would have been no inflation, we would not be importing any oil from places like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. When he left office, the reputation of the United States was at its strongest, and now no one respects us at all. He left the strongest border ever and would have completed the wall, and the border now is so porous, and other countries are emptying their jails and sending the prisoners to us and there will be more murders and rapes. The left wants to defund the police and leave us with no defenses. The left is trying hard to make sure that they are able to cheat in the next election, just like they cheated in the last election, which Trump clearly won. And boy are they behind Critical Race Theory to make us hate each other, and boy do they want to mix up all genders so we won’t know who we are or what to think. And he will clear out the universities from their communist leadership.

Every time he names Biden or any other Democrat, he puts a pejorative adjective in front of the name. He extols future great Republican leaders, such as Boebert, and Greene and Goetz. Nothing he says has more than a shade of truth, and most of it contains absolutely no truth. But people believe this, and there is no sign that they have stopped believing this.

It may be that no, or very few, Democrats have gone over to the dark side, and hopefully, there are independents that would vote Democratic who last election did not, but the fact is that the polls don’t show that (even if some of the mid-terms do). And if the independents are swayed by the possibility of a No-Label candidate, while some on the left are convinced to show their support for Cornell West on the Green Party, we may find ourselves living again with Trump as president and, this time, with the GOP controlling both houses of Congress.

As Biden’s popularity continues to stagnate at the 40% level, and as Kamala Harris’ popularity is even lower, the Democrats (and that includes Biden and Harris themselves) should be considering fresh faces in 2024. And time is drawing near.

It should not be seen as a rebuke to the incumbents, but as a way to ensure a Democratic victory. Biden has been doing a fine job, but he has not caught the imagination of the country’s voters, and without voter support, you are not going to win. And his being 82 at the time of his second inauguration is crucial, because the likelihood is that his vice president is going to spend some time as president, or at least as an acting president. And Americans seem clearly to think that Kamala Harris is not the person for this job. Whether she is or not is beyond the point.

Fresh faces would encourage voters not to stay home, they would encourage supporters of a No Label candidate to stop their efforts, they might even slow down Cornell West. The right choices could build on the Biden presidency, but look toward the future.

I see no sign that the Democrats are planning to do this. And all of us, not only in this country but elsewhere, are likely to suffer if they do not.

We who operate with a modicum of common sense and reason cannot imagine that anybody can believe anything that Trump is saying. But of course, that is just what those with common sense and reason said about Hitler and Mussolini before they solidified their power.

I know, still deja vu all over again.

If you saw my post yesterday, you may remember it was about the evils of the current Republican Party and the dangers to the country if the 2024 election goes the wrong way. The title of the post referred to deja vu all over again because we have been talking about this for the five or ten years, again and again. It has gotten so that it is tiresome to read about things written about this subject, and it is equally tiresome to write about it. That is a fact, I am afraid. Doesn’t make the subject less important, but it is a fact.

But after I posted yesterday’s blog entry, I was driving in my car for about an hour and I spent that hour listening to live coverage from the National Governors Association convention. Presiding was the chair of that group, Governor Spencer Cox of Utah. He may have been newly elected to the chair, and he was giving what was in effect both a “state of the governors” speech and an inaugural “what I am going to do while I am here” speech. He is very well spoken, and very reasonable sounding. He is a Republican.

His topic was about process, not substance. He complimented his fellow governors for being something like “maybe the last adults in the political world” and looked to them to provide necessary leadership to tone down the political rhetoric, and to get people to disagree agreeably, rather than simply to call each other out as evil. A panel of experts in conflict resolution followed with much the same message, although I did not hear the entirety of their conversation.

All well, all good, I thought. But wait a minute. Even if it were possible to tone down the rhetoric and to disagree agreeably, isn’t there another step needed? That step would be the willingness to compromise on the issues that today are so divisive. Without that, toning down the rhetoric may help lower the decibel level, but it wouldn’t accomplish anything more. During the hour I had the radio on at the NGA, I heard nothing about compromise.

So, this morning, I want to briefly address both topics. And as I do this, remember that I have spent a few weeks thinking about Saul Alinsky’s tactics set forth in his Rules for Radicals, which I believe have become the play book of the leadership of, and the right wing of, today’s Republican Party.

Alinsky’s “radicals” were “have-nots”, who are fighting against the “haves” to upset the status quo. He did not say “fight hard, but fight fair”. He said (my words) = you are in a war, you need to win that war, and if the only way to win that war is to put morals and ethics aside, then put morals and ethics aside. And then he gave a number of ways to fight that war, including things like (a) targeting your opponents and keep attacking them personally, (b) ridiculing your opponents, (c) keeping your opponents off guard, and (d) trying to make your opponents argue within themselves. Just the opposite of the disagreeing without being disagreeable that Governor Cox was hoping to encourage.

Of course, I don’t know if Cox would agree with me that this is a present-day Republican problem, a problem brought about by the master of Alinsky’s tactics, one Donald Trump. But – again – I think that is a fact. I don’t think we can consider the average Republican and the average Democrat today as being equally at fault. And I think that, until Republican leadership recognizes this, we will continue to flail, and our form of government and world leadership will continue to be in peril.

Okay, now let’s leave behind the question of disagreeing agreeably and move to the necessary next step – compromise. Again, on the Republican side, I find two faults that must be addressed.

First, we can’t continue to govern by threat. If there is an important piece of legislation that clearly needs to be passed (an appropriations bill, for example, or a bill to increase the debt limit), we need to stop holding the bill hostage to irrelevant matters – such as holding a defense bill hostage to agreeing that the military needs to change its approach to women’s health care or gender transition services. These social policies are something that the legislature should deal with if they wish, to be sure, but they should be dealt with on a stand alone basis, not used as a gun to the head of others in Congress. What the Republicans are doing now…..is using Alinsky tactics. And those tactics do not belong within the government if they threaten to disrupt crucial (not just important, but crucial) government services.

Second, we have to be willing to reach a compromise on divisive issues. To some extent, if we can stop trying to badmouth each other at every opportunity, we can accomplish this. But on some issues – particularly abortion and trans matters – we have a serious problem. That is because people on the anti-abortion and anti-trans sides of these issues do not seem willing to compromise. This is both because they have been told not to compromise, and for many this is as much a religious issue as anything else. A way has to be found to compromise on these issues to accommodate people on both sides as much as possible and (this next clause is for Governor Cox) the Republican governors have been part of the problem here.

There is a third stumbling block – one where both Democrats and Republicans are at fault. And that is trying as hard as possible to turn the others into the “others”. The rise of media (and I don’t just mean social media), including TV news, talk radio, and even C-Span which televises every session of both houses of Congress from start to finish, has pushed this problem to the fore, as every member of Congress now has the chance to have their speeches and presentments preserved to be viewed again and again and again and again. Somehow, the grandstanding must be stopped, and we must get to a point where politicians who can work with the other side and accomplish things are the politicians who are praised, not the ones to hog the floor and insult every member of the opposing party.

It’s hard for me to decide what to write about today.

Should I write about the evils of the Republican Party and how I think that the 2024 election really may be the most crucial in the history of the country? I know that someone says this every four years, and until now I have always taken it with a grain of salt, but I think we may have finally reached the point where even I can add my voice. And maybe 2028 and 2032 will be the same, since things now change so fast, and every change has universal effect.

Say what you want about Joe Biden’s age, it is difficult to deny the progress that has been made in two years unraveling the problems create by the Trump administration. Even the southern border has calmed down.

We have seen inflation fall much more quickly than virtually anywhere else on the planet. We have seen job numbers rise and unemployment levels fall. We have seen local manufacturing increase. We have seen supply chain distortions ease.

But we have seen the horrendous problems created by a Republican House of Representatives, which seem to build and build. The latest, of course, are the proposed amendments passed by the House to the annual defense appropriation bill, which would – among other things – require the Pentagon to adopt conservative, right wing religious limitations on women’s health care.

And we have even seen problems with a small Democratic majority in the Senate, where a senator like Joe Manchin, a Democrat in a very red state who is worried about his survival and a man whose personal business interests obviously compromise his voting stances, can derail important initiatives dealing with climate change issues, among other things.

And there is our foreign policy. It has been quite a while since the Republican Party changed the tried and true American principle that politics stopped at the border, and that the President (who ever he is, whatever party he belongs to) is to be supported publicly overseas. Now, American foreign policy, too, is held captive to partisan ranting and bickering.

Take Ukraine and NATO, for example. When Donald Trump was president, he threatened to pull out of NATO (like he threatened to, and did, pull out of the Paris climate agreement, the Pacific trade agreement, and so much more), and openly stated that he trusted the truth of what Putin told him over American intelligence information. If he comes back to the presidency, who knows where we will find ourselves. A substantial number of Congressional Republicans do think we should simply let Ukraine fend for itself, and that we should separate ourselves from Europe.

I am afraid, of course, that the Democrats will not be able to make their case. Why? Because the Republican Party is an amoral party, given praise and credit for their dirty tricks and outrageous positions, while the Democratic Party is a self-described party of principle, purporting to represent all groups – minority and majority – in an ethical manner. Such a party can’t operate as the Republicans operate without stepping outside its own self-definition. In other words, in the Republican-Democratic rivalry, the Democrats have one hand tied behind their back, while the Republicans are ready to use both hands with attached brass knuckles. Not a fair fight for the American people.

But is this what I should write about today? It is so deja vu. But it is so important.

Every morning, by email, I get something from quizdaily.com, a multiple choice quiz with 15-30 questions on a variety of topics. I don’t do the quiz every day, and when I do, I often feel out of touch with society because I am unable to answer questions that most people have no trouble with. I know this because, after you submit your answers, you can see not only whether you answered correctly, but the percentage of participants who guessed each of the four possible answers.

Today’s topic was “famous movie lines” and there were twenty questions. I got a 75% – respectable, perhaps, but below average on this particular quiz. The main reason that I didn’t do better is that I hadn’t seen so many of the films that most others have seen at least once, and maybe more than once.

Here is the rundown of films mentioned, and whether or not I have seen them.

1. Forrest Gump – no
2. Wizard of Oz – yes
3. Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day – no, neither
4. Any RoboCop film – no
5. Any Predator film – no
6. Any Alien film – no
7. The French Connection – yes
8. Deliverance – yes
9. Jaws – no
10. Chinatown – yes
11. Bull Durham – no
12. Field of Dreams – no
13. Rocky – yes
14. Miracle on Ice – yes
15. Casablanca – yes
16. Cinderella – yes
17. Snow White – yes
18. Sleeping Beauty – yes
19. Aladdin – no
20. Titanic – no
21. Love Story – yes
22. You’ve Got Mail – no
23. Notting Hill – no
24. Romeo and Juliet – no
25. Funny Girl – yes
26. When Harry Met Sally – yes
27. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – yes
28. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – no
29. Escape from Alcatraz – no
30. Unforgiven – no
31. In the Line of Fire – no
32. Sudden Impact – no
33. Taxi Driver – yes
34. Mutiny on the Bounty – yes
35. The Chase – no
36. On the Waterfront – yes
37. The Score – no
38. Jerry Maguire – no
39. It’s a Wonderful Life – yes
40. Star Wars Episode V: the Empire Strikes Back – no
41. Citizen Kane – yes
42. The Sixth Sense – no
43. The Invisible Man – no
44. Alice in Wonderland – yes
45. The Ghoul – no
46. King Kong – yes

So I have seen fewer than half of these films. I bet – whoever you are – that you have seen more than I have.

And you need to take this with a grain of salt. I may have forgotten that I have seen some films. I may have misremembered seeing some films. And, just because I think that I have seen a film (or just because I know that I have seen a film), that doesn’t necessarily mean that I remember anything about it.

Tomorrow I am giving a presentation on Saul Alinsky at my morning breakfast group meeting. I’m not going to preview it now, but I am going to focus on two important questions.

I assume you all know who Alinsky was. Chicago born sociologist, who created the concept of community organizing. Author of the community organizing bible, Rules for Radicals, and creator of an ongoing legacy both as an angel and a devil. The subject of Hillary Clinton’s Wellesley senior thesis, and inspiration for Barack Obama’s first jobs out of law school. Target of today’s right wing politicians, and at the same time – believe it or not – designer of today’s right politicians’ tactics.

Now to the two questions .

(1) What would Alinsky think about delivering cluster bombs to Ukraine?

(2). What would Alinsky think about Israel’s attacks on Jenin?

An analysis of how Alinsky might look at these two questions require us to look at his writings on a third, and age-old, question: Do the ends justify the means?

Alinsky would start by analyzing the “ends”. “Ends” which are very important would permit the application of a greater array of “means” that “ends” which are less important. Regarding Ukraine, the “ends” would be the defeat of the Russian invasion and the preservation or recapture of all sovereign Ukrainian territory. That would seem pretty important.

He would then analyze the available “means”. A “means” would be an action that is likely to lead to, or to help lead to, the “end”. We are told that there is a temporary ammunition shortage (the world’s suppliers of ammunition to Ukraine need time to up their manufacture of sufficient ammunition), so that continuing to take the actions that have been so far taken will (at least for the time being) not bring Ukraine closer to their desired “end”. So something new must be tried to keep Ukraine from falling behind in their battle.

What means are available? One “means” might be a massive air strike on Russian military bases within Russian territory. But that particular action might not lead to the “end” desired because it would provoke a serious counterstrike, so Alinsky would reject it.

Another “means” would be the proposed use of cluster bombs instead of whatever ammunition is now in short supply. Let us assume that those who are proposing cluster bombings strongly believe that they would provide an effective way to help defeat the Russians. If Alinsky thought they were incorrect, and that the cluster bombs would not work, he would at this point of course conclude that cluster bombs should not be provided.

But assume he agrees with, or will rely on, those who believe cluster bombs will be effective. He knows, as do they, that cluster bombs have some negative qualities, namely that they increase the chance of the death or injury of civilians. This is a result you would want to avoid to the extent possible, but – in the Alinsky point of view – if your “ends” are important, and if there not any “less offensive” or “more ethical” ways to achieve those ends, it would be appropriate to choose actions that otherwise you would not want to choose. He says, in fact, that in a war time situation, almost anything goes because the “ends” are that important. (He also says not to worry about what you opponents, or even what outsiders, may think about your choice of “means” – they will criticize you, he suggests, no matter what you do, if they don’t value your ends as much as you value them.)

So with regard to Ukraine, Alinsky would probably support providing the cluster bombs.

Now, let’s move to Israel and Jenin. In this situation, the “ends” are the security of the State of Israel. Alinsky would certainly agree that this an important end. But what would he think of the raid on Jenin?

I think his conclusion might be different here than it would be in Ukraine. While cluster bombs have the possibility of causing more civilian death and injury, the raid on Jenin has the certainty of causing more civilian death and injury, as well as causing destruction of homes, businesses and infrastructure.

In addition, while cluster bombs would be a new addition to the arsenal of the Ukrainians, and any conclusions as to their effectiveness would depend on modeling and analysis, the Jenin situation might appear to be very different. The Israelis have conducted Jenin-type raids in Jenin and elsewhere numerous times over the past 50 years and the security of Israel (at least security from cross border terrorist raids) arguably hasn’t become any stronger as a result of the military raids (it’s a different story, perhaps, with the security wall, which has I believe cut back terrorist activity significantly). Alinsky might question whether raids such as this should be conducted at all. If he believed raids of this sort were not effective in helping achieve the ends being pursued, he might say “no” to the entire concept of raiding Jenin.

But because security of Israel is very important, he would then need to look for alternatives to stop terrorists raids. One of Alinsky’s premises with regard to the successful leadership of community protests against another group of people is to keep “the enemy” off their guard – surprise them, counter them with something totally outside the box. Continuing military raids, which have proven ultimately not successful over and over again, do not fit the Alinsky program.

My guess is that Saul Alinsky would oppose the Israeli raid on Jenin. And that, if he was in charge of defending Israel against the Palestinians, you would see a very different set of actions being undertaken to guarantee Israeli security.

I am not saying that Alinsky would be right or wrong in his choices. And Alinsky’s own career as an organizer was filled with both successes and failures, as he himself admitted. But he certainly would not approve of repeating the same mistake over and over, especially when the direct and indirect consequences of that mistake may move you further away from your goal, rather than closer.

So, to answer as best I can, the two questions I have posed, I would suggest that Saul Alinsky would give two very different responses to them.

Yesterday, I heard a representative of the Federal Reserve Board talk about inflation. Yes, he said, inflation is down, but it isn’t down to where it should be, so we are going to keep fighting it. It may be down below 5%, rather than 9% or whatever it was a year ago, but that isn’t sufficient. We want it down to 2%.

Well, sure. Of course we do. But is this even possible, given the world today?

Fifteen years ago, when my blood pressure started creeping up, my cardiologist told me that his goal was to bring the top number down below 120. Without medicine, my pressure was more like 150 – 160. With the medicine my general practitioner had prescribed, it varied, moving in the 130s and 140s, depending on situations impossible to fully understand (time of day, when I had last eaten, exercise, who knows what). But the cardiologist told me I should bring it below 120, and he could help me do it.

First, I was to lose weight (although by no standard was I overweight). Second, I was to read books on meditation and practice, practice, practice. Third, I was to take more or different kinds of blood pressure medication, and we were to explore these possibilities until I was consistently below 120.

The fact that this medication made me dizzy, tired, spacey, or generally unwell was unimportant. Unfortunate, yes. But unimportant. We were on a mission.

Eventually, I gave up. I put my blood pressure back in the hands of my general practitioner, and was satisfied with keeping it in the 130-140 range. I avoided worrying about my blood pressure (which was labile for sure) by not checking it at home. And for the last 15 years, all seems to have been OK.

There is no question, said my general practitioner, that following the cardiologists exploratory suggestions would have lowered my pressure further. Whether it ever would have gone under 120, we don’t know. Perhaps. Perhaps not. But as my doctor told me, trying to bring it lower will bring you some discomfort no doubt. He told me it was my choice, but clearly he and the cardiologist were of two different minds.

This is what I think of when I think of inflation. Throughout the post-COVID period, inflation has plagued the world. Pent up demand. Supply chain distortions. War in Ukraine. Increasing climate change. All have played (and continue to play) a part. Throughout this period, and particularly now, inflation in the United States has been below virtually all other industrialized countries (and has been halved from its high of a year or two ago). If most other industrialized countries are now showing inflation rates of 6% to 8%, and we are now below 5%, it seems to me we are doing pretty well.

Could we do better? Yes, of course. We could do better by further increasing interest rates. The Fed has already increased interest rates by about 5%, making it harder to buy or sell a house, get or pay back a loan, and so forth. They could (and might) raise the borrowing rates even more, making things more tough.

Even with all the pressure from the Fed, the U.S. economy is doing very well. High employment, low unemployment, consumer confidence and so on. But further tampering with the interest rates could certainly change that picture, both quickly and drastically. It is just like with my blood pressure – we can get it to 120 or below, but you will be very uncomfortable while we do so.

Further, if we remain part of a world economy (which we will), and if we remain dependent on commodity and transport prices in other countries which are not as successful in fighting inflation, it is possible that, notwithstanding how strongly the Fed fights inflation, it won’t succeed. Then where are we?

In addition, because we are who we are, you cannot ignore the politics. The Republicans want to be able to slam the Biden administration by not doing enough to soften the inflation. If inflation goes down and unemployment goes up, they will slam the Biden administration for doing a poor job on the economy. While there is nothing to say that the Republicans would do anything better or different (the Republicans don’t like to say what they will do on most subjects), this certainly resonates with Americans who are not now realizing the American dream. All this is a fact of life.

But if the Fed, an independent agency, clamps down on inflation to the extent that it weakens the general economy in all other ways, they will be playing into the hands of the GOP. Certainly, they must realize this. But do they take this into account? I don’t know.

We are a strange nation in so many ways. Our elected (sort of) president is slowed down by our Congress. Our elected Congress is paralyzed in so many ways by partisan differences. But two branches of our government are unaffected by this, and are able to march along to their own tunes. They are the unelected Supreme Court and the unelected Federal Reserve. They, I think, are the real powers behind the legislative and executive branches. Is this the way to run a country?

I must admit to some confusion. Did you see the article on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times about Clarence Thomas and his membership in the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc.? Did it confuse you, too?

In the first place, I recognize that I am not on anybody’s list of “Distinguished Americans”. But I didn’t know that I was so far below the people on that list that no one ever even bothered to tell me that there was such a classification, and that there was such a grouping, or even that there was a Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc.

But that’s not the source of my confusion. My confusion is much deeper.

It appears that the members of this society are by and large very financially successful and philanthropic Americans who have provided (generally, without fanfare, it seems) a significant amount of scholarships to support young Americans who come from deprived backgrounds (mainly minority) and who have shown the ability to overcome their backgrounds and pursue university education. I can’t (and don’t want to) find fault in that.

But what is Clarence Thomas doing there? Clarence Thomas had not been financially successful and, to my knowledge, hasn’t shown himself to be of a particular philanthropic bent. Clarence Thomas was a government lawyer and bureaucrat who had spent a little over a year as a federal Court of Appeals judge and was nominated to be, and barely confirmed as, a Supreme Court Justice. And, oh yes, Clarence Thomas was Black.

That brings us to “affirmative action”. Thomas graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester MA, and was admitted to the Yale Law School. He claims that his admission to Yale showed that he was the victim and beneficiary of affirmative action. Putting aside the question as to whether the affirmative action can be both a curse and a blessing, from what I can see, there was nothing mysterious about Thomas’ admission as one of the 12 Black students at Yale Law that year. According to something I read (and reading is believing, right?), Thomas graduated 9th in his class from Holy Cross.

How Thomas did at Yale is harder to scope out because Yale (a few years after I graduated) dropped letter grades and primarily went on a pass/fail system. But he says (and no one seems to disagree) that he was not one of the academic stars of his class. I can identify with that as well.

I entered Yale Law about 5 years before Thomas. I think there were fewer than 10 Black students in my class of 175, and about the same number of women (boy has that changed). I honestly don’t know if the Black men felt as estranged as Thomas says that he felt at Yale. From my non-Black perspective, my Black classmates were welcomed as part of the class and certainly not looked at as affirmative action babies. They seemed to participate in all aspects of school life and, after graduation, they seem to have been as successful as the Whites – they became law firm partners, law school professors, judges.

On the other hand, the 6 or 7 women (one was Black), I know felt less than second class citizens. One was made fun of by a professor early in the year, they all shied away from some activities, and with one exception (and she was a second year transfer student), they have not attended our every five year reunions (the Black students have). Their professional lives were not as successful on average as most of their classmates.

Thomas complains that, after graduation, he was unable to get a job with major law firm, and says that is because he was Black, and because law firms seemed to assume he only got into Yale because of his race. He also seems to accuse Yale of giving him false expectations as to his job prospects.

I don’t find it surprising that a Black Yale Law graduate in the early 1970s had a hard time getting a job in a major law firm. (By the way, I don’t know what my Black classmates’ first jobs were.) But I will tell you this: in the early 1970s, women were not being hired by major law firms. And, to a significant extent, neither were Jews or, where they were, there were certain formal or informal quotas in place. And, in my class, there were no Asians, Hispanics, or Native Americans at all.

So, sure, Blacks had a very difficult time breaking into the legal profession at certain levels. And, they were not alone.

But Thomas did OK in his career as we know. And he did it within the legal profession (although he never “practiced law” per se). And he did it as a Black…….and as a conservative. Say, what? There have never been many Black conservatives, as we know. And, at least over the past 40 years or so, they have really been in demand as the Republican Party has struggled to show that they were more than a party of White America. So, whether or not it was part of an official policy, can we doubt that Thomas’ rise to the Supreme Court was fueled by thoughts of affirmative action?

In being so adamant about ending affirmative action, as Thomas has been over at least the last 30 years, isn’t he denying to other young Blacks the route that was so successful for himself? [Why would he do that? It reminds me of the oft-used term, which I don’t understand, of self-hating Jew. Could you conclude that Clarence Thomas is a self-hating Black?]

Well, this post is already long enough, so let’s cut to the chase. (An apt phrase; I wonder if Thomas would enjoy hunting the fox.) The chase is the Horatio Alger Society.

From Thomas’ point of view, joining this group is the fulfillment of a decades long ambition. It is the equivalent to have been hired by Sullivan and Cromwell out of law school. He could now associate as an equal with Distinguished Americans.

And, from the perspective of the Horatio Alger Association, it was affirmative action at its best. They brought into their ranks not only a Black man (I think they had other Blacks as well – I don’t think Thomas was a first in that regard), but a Black man who was unable to contribute to the scholarship funds that form the lifeline of the Association. But here is a Black man who could lend prestige to the Association – just his presence, his position as a Justice, his willingness to act as a spokesman and to enable the Distinguished Americans to have an in at the Supreme Court. Yes, affirmative action at its best.

In fact, beyond this, everything that the Horatio Alger Association seems to do is the equivalent of affirmative action. They look at young students, mainly minorities, from impoverished backgrounds and they provide them with scholarship money. They are a private affirmative action organization.

Want to know more? Want to check my facts? Go to the website of the Association – http://www.horatioalger.org. You will see exactly what they do. OH, WAIT!!!!!! Can’t do that? You say the website is down? It wasn’t down yesterday before the Times published their piece. Now, I assume the website is being rewritten to change the way the Distinguished American talk about themselves. I am sure it will be back up soon – keep your eyes on the NYT to see the next article: how the Horatio Alger Association is rewriting their own history.

I don’t know anything about cocaine. To me, it’s something that happens on television. Maybe all you are regular users, but keep it hidden when I’m around. Or maybe you don’t invite me over in order to protect me. Either way, it’s fine.

But now, cocaine has made the White House. And the question is how did it get there. Do cocaine users often leave their cocaine behind? Isn’t that something you learn not to do in Cocaine I?

Of course, Donald has already decided it must belong to Joe and Hunter. Perhaps because they never took Cocaine I? Could be, I guess. I can imagine how it happened. Hunter walks into his dad’s office and says: “Dad, remember that cocaine you gave me last year? Well, look, I still have it. I am clean.” Joe responds in ASL: “Shh! Be quiet. Everything here is being recorded. Drop it!!!” And Hunter did. Right where he was standing.

We don’t need an investigation. Problem solved.

But let’s stick with the cocaine. Anyone ever been to the oceanside community of Rabo de Peixe? Probably not. It’s a fishing village of about 10,000 on the non-touristy side of the largest island in the Azores. And it was the home of what may have been the largest cocaine spill in the history of the world.

About 40 years ago, a small Italian cargo ship was on a cocaine delivery (I’m not sure where it was going. Do you know, President Reagan?) When it ran into an unexpected major squall (Maybe I should keep track of when I use interesting words for the first time) threatened the ship. To save the boat and crew, the Italians came up with a plan. Put the cocaine bricks into nets and throw them overboard. Later when things are calm, they can be retrieved.

But things didn’t work out that way. The survivors couldn’t put back to sea and before they developed Plan B, the cocaine began to wash up into the shore. Many people were upset. The crew, of course. The Big Italians who owned and shipped the drug. The would be recipients. The Azorian and Portuguese police. To name a few.

But others were ecstatic. Namely, the impoverished residents of Rabo de Peixe, who ran to the beach and scarfed (another first word) as much up as they could.

Apparently a lot followed, and the peaceful town of Rabo de Peixe was peaceful no more.

I don’t know what really happened,and the only reason I know anything about this is the new 7 episode Netflix series, “To Turn the Tide”, which I recommend with the following caveats: first, it’s ficti, so don’t think otherwise. Second, parts of it are very raw and violent, so be prepared for that. And third, it’s one of the few series that gets better as time goes on. After episodes 1 and 2, I wasn’t sure I should keep going. But the general plot and the character development is worth it. Trust me.

By the way, as we are planning to go to Portugal in a few weeks, I was interested in seeing how much Portuguese I would understand. Turns out that I don’t even need to think about this. Do you realize that whenever anyone speaks Portuguese, there are subtitles?

Well,there you have it. Me and cocaine. That’s all, folks.

My mind this morning goes to two of my favorite writers: Immanuel Velikovsky and Graham Hancock. The question is: why are these two favorites of mine? (And, as usual, I apologize for writing this largely from the top of my head, and not doing the digging required to make this post better than it is.)

Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979) was born in Belarus, raised in Palestine, and spent many of his adult years in the United States. Like Marc Chagall, he was born in Vitebsk, and like Albert Einstein, he died in Princeton. He graduated from the University of Moscow’s medical school in 1921, moved to Berlin, edited and translated a number of books in Hebrew (including some written by the aforementioned Einstein) and was involved in the formation of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was a practicing psychiatrist in Palestine for 15 years and, in 1939, came to the United States with his family to escape the looming war. He didn’t expect to stay too long, but he did.

He had started writing when in Palestine and continued as a full time writer in the United States. Some of his books, such as “Worlds in Collision” became big time best sellers.

He believed in catastrophe. By that, I mean that he believed that big movements in history were often the results of enormous, unexpected catastrophes. He believed in historic errors. By that, I mean that he believed that most historians did not search deep enough, did not go sufficiently outside the box, to see true history and, as a result, the history that we read has enormous gaps which, if known, would change our views of history. In trying to compensate for these large historical errors, he developed what came to be known as alternative histories. In proposing these alternative histories, Velikovsky did not simply write the equivalent of fantasy or even science fiction. His books were extraordinarily researched, and footnoted.

The above description is my description, not that of professional critics, most of whom pooh-pooh Velikovsky and everything he wrote. They are probably correct. But I don’t care.

Let me quote from Wikipedia on “Worlds in Collision”: “The book proposes that around the 15th century BCE, Venus was ejected from Jupiter as a comet or a comet-like object and subsequently passed near Earth…….In doing so, it changed Earth’s orbit and axial inclination, causing innumerable catastrophes which were identified in early mythologies and religious traditions from human civilizations around the world. Fifty two years later, it again made a close approach, stopping the Earth’s rotation for a while and causing more catastrophes…….The course of the planets stabilized over the centuries and Venus became a “normal” planet.”

In his other most well known book, “Ages in Chaos”, he rewrote history’s chronology – bringing together certain events (like the Exodus and the destruction of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom and others), which he said answered open questions about biblical history and about history as recorded by Herodotus.

He may have been wrong in everything he said. But his books are filled with references and proofs and so much more. Velikovsky was a brilliant man. And his books, right or wrong, open the mind of the reader to all sorts of possibilities, they spark interests in all sorts of arcane subject matter, they teach you that thinking outside the box can be illuminating. Take one of the two books I have mentioned (there are many others) and just give it a try, and I think you will see what I mean.

Now, let’s move on to Graham Hancock, still living, born in 1951.

Graham Hancock (and I say this without fear that I am overstating the case) wrote the best (for me) book that I have ever read: “The Sign and the Seal”. More than any other, I would ask you to read this book, published in 1992. It is absolutely brilliant, although – again – it may be totally incorrect.

Velikovsky and Hancock, I assume, personally have little in common. Velikovsky has a much broader education, knew more languages, was expert in Jewish tradition and history, knew the world’s mythologies and religions, had medical training and a scientific background. And he wasn’t afraid to show you how smart he was. Hancock has a much different approach, and I would expect him to have much more repressed personality. His books are not written in the “let me tell you all I know” fashion, but instead his books are books of discovery and you are accompanying him as he goes from one discovery to the next.

But his books are far from modest. “The Sign and the Seal” is the story of the Ark of the Covenant, the container that held the Ten Commandments, that was carried into battle by the ancient Israelites, and then housed in the Temple in Jerusalem. Until it disappeared.

When the Babylonians ransacked and destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE, the Jews kept a list of what was stolen, and the Babylonians kept a list of what they took. The two lists were virtually the same – no disagreement here. But what was missing from the two lists was the Ark of the Covenant. It appears that it was not taken to Babylon, and it wasn’t kept in Jerusalem, because – as you may know from the Bible – it was never heard from or seen again. What happened to it?

You may or may not know that the Ethiopian Christians have an answer to the question. They will tell you that it is hidden in the Church of St. Mary in the old Ethiopian capital of Axum, that it is guarded by high priests, and that you cannot see it. Period. This is a major tenet of the Ethiopian church.

Hancock assumed that this was simply a traditional belief, not supported by any facts, until one day, sitting in a cafe in Chartres, waiting for his wife to finish looking inside the cathedral, he began looking at the very detailed exterior carvings, and began a quest that convinced him that the Ark was in fact taken to Ethiopia – taken by the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, a young man named Menilek, through Egypt and today’s Sudan, hidden in a monastery on Lake Tana for 800 years before being moved further south. His story details the growth and history of the Ethiopian empire, its isolation amongst Muslim neighbors, its reconnection with other Christians during the Crusader years, and its re-isolation after the Christians were expelled. You learn about the Templars, about the connection between Ethiopian Christians and Portuguese navigators. You even learn about Scottish Freemasons and their involvement with the story of Ethiopia and the Ark.

Is any of this true? Many traditional religious figures and historians have expressed the strongest doubts about all of this, but – from what I have read – no one has yet proved Hancock wrong on any significant point.

But again – right or wrong – I don’t really care. It opens your eyes. As you probably know, there is an Ethiopian church in Jerusalem. You ever think how it got there? Did you know that one of Vasco da Gama’s sons was killed fighting with the Ethiopians against Muslims in the 16th century? Did you know that the monks at this island monastery in Lake Tana show where the Ark was hidden for 800 years? And so on, and so forth. (By the way, Hancock does not answer the question as to whether the Ark is now in the Church of St. Mary. He could not get beyond the guardian priests.)

Another of Hancock’s most well known books is “Fingerprints of the Gods”. Here he poses that many of the ancient civilizations of the world arose as outposts of the same even older civilization, that the similarities of customs and crafts was not all by chance. He poses that this old civilization was the victim of climate change – and that is was located in Antarctica and is now under miles of ice.

Far fetched? Perhaps. But again, it raises so many interesting points. And just today on my Google feed, I got an article from thearcheologist.org, entitled “Frozen Civilizations Found Under the Ice in Antarctica”. So don’t jump to conclusions too fast.

I find alternative history books fascinating in general for all the reasons set forth above, but – for alternative history – you just cannot beat Velikovsky and Hancock.

As of July 5, 126 people have died after being shot in the District of Columbia in 2023. That is quite a lot compared with recent years, and DC is far from alone facing this problem.

Often, these shootings have a pattern – grudges or drive-by shootings, all very sad. Often involving teens. But sometimes they are different. Over the past week, a Lyft driver (Afghan native who translated for the US for several, brought her with his wife and four young children). A visiting school teacher shot mid-morning on the Catholic U. campus. Unusual victims, both in safe areas of the city.

As we know, large numbers of people (gun owners for the most part) say the problem is not guns but people with guns. I know that sounds ridiculous to all but to those who believe it, but there we are.

These same people, who worship the founding fathers (except when they don’t), say that we are guaranteed the right to have our guns via the beloved Second Amendment.

But is there a flaw in their argument? Everyone agrees that we have too many killings. And if they are correct that the problem is not the guns, but the people behind the guns, doesn’t that make the Second Amendment, the amendment which matches up guns with people, the problem? (I know I am leaving out another important factor – our originalist Supreme Court, which is originalist only in a hypocritical sense – but that’s for another day.)

Which brings me to drugs. I would posit that if guns don’t kill people, neither do drugs. Put a drug on a table or even in a pocket and nobody dies. Just like a gun on a table. To endanger human life, in both situations, someone needs to pick the object up. It’s the user, stupid.

So why do those gun lovers, who believe any opposition to guns is inspired by the devil, don’t take the same position regarding drugs? Why don’t they say “bring on the drugs” and concentrate on keeping people away from them? After all, there is no Second Amendment for drugs.

The answer is simple. They realize people will attach themselves to drugs and do harm. But they are blind to the same fact about guns.

Two more things.

First, you can argue that guns tend to be more dangerous to the public than drugs. No one will OD me on drugs as I walk down the street. Most guns are used to shoot others. Most drugs are turned on oneself. (I understand there are suicides, and there is Bill Cosby. I am just playing the numbers.)

Second, why can’t the drugs be stopped? In part, it’s because drug dealers have guns. And what’s one of the big reasons that people with guns are dangerous? It’s because they are on,or they want, drugs.

Guns and drugs aren’t two separate problems, they are two sides of the same problem.

But there people across the political spectrum who want to legalize all drugs. They say that will end the market in illegal drugs and end some of the violence associated with illegal drugs.

Do we really want a country where both guns and drugs are protected by the law?

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.