Art is 80

So, I wanted to see how two year old Izzy was coming along with learning nursery rhymes. First – Little Jack Horner sat in the corner, eating his…….”popcorn”. Then – Little Boy Blue, come blow your……”nose”. I think he is coming along fine.

Then, I talked to seven year old Joan about the turtle recovery center that Edie and I had visited in Florida. Joan had all sorts of questions and thoughts about the turtles, but really has no idea about Florida, except that it’s warm. She doesn’t know the geography – I guess they don’t teach that in second grade. And of course no one has maps any more. This will be my next task.

I should say that, after we talked about Florida and sea turtles, we talked about Hawaii and volcanoes. I think she knows more about that than I do. She told me she learned much of it watching a video on volcanoes in Hawaii.

Next subject: When an 80 year old looks at his horoscope. I looked at the horoscope in the Sunday Post (why, I don’t know) today and saw that it suggested that a conversation with an older family member would be helpful. OK, I thought, I should do that. But then I was stumped. My aunts, uncles and older first cousins are all gone. But then I realized that my mother has four living first cousins, all older than me (although one just by five years) – one in Florida, one in California, one in Tennessee and one in Texas. Three in their 90s, one in her 80s. On my father’s side? I really don’t know, since I know so few of his family personally.

Last subject: We watched “Everything, Everywhere, Everyone” or whatever its exact name is this evening. First, I have to say that Edie liked the film – if she had a blog, she’d tell you why. I thought it was one of the worst films I have ever seen, and the thought that it won the Oscar for best picture puts it in the same category as when Bob Dylan won a Nobel for Literature. I thought the acting was quite good – I could see why they were all in the running (I am not sure that each of them should have won, but maybe). But James Hong – my golly. He is 94 years old, and looks younger than me. And, they say, he has made over 600 films over the last 70 years. I saw him in the Oscars audience. He looked good there, too.

But, again, as to the film – and I am not going to give much away. You probably know it involves people who were able to travel between various verses, like the universe, and the alphaverse, and the bagelverse. No, “able to travel” is not correct. Who were, often unwillingly tranported between verses would be better.

That’s it from AlphaArthur. Time to push my green button.

I really didn’t go anywhere yesterday, except to take a short walk to get an espresso at the Italian Bar (I didn’t know if my goal was the walk or the espresso). I hadn’t looked at a clock and I thought that it was probably about 3 p.m., but it was really after 5 p.m., and I think the double espresso kept me up last night. I didn’t fall asleep until about 2 a.m. That’s the second time I had a double espresso in the late afternoon or early evening and couldn’t fall asleep. Having a cup of coffee after dinner doesn’t bother my sleep pattern, and I have read that there is less caffeine in espresso, so how do you explain it? If there is something explain. But it has recently happened twice, so…….

Well, all is well that ends well. We did watch the second half of RRR, and it ended with the British out of India, our two heroes reconciled, the beautiful Seetha and Jenny joining the men in the dancing finale, and they all presumably lived happily ever after, no longer the slaves of an evil international empire. What could possibly go wrong?

It turns out (reading a bit after the end of the film) that the two main characters shared the names of two real life anti-British Indian revolutionaries, who never in real life met each other or Seetha or Jenny, and certainly never had the adventures these folks had on screen. And the film also depicted them as two Hindu gods who shared their names. This explains the flaming arrows that accompanied the final battle with the Brits, among other things.

How many died in this film? Hundreds, at least. But it’s all in fun, right?

On to other things:

I have now the watched three episodes of Criminal: France while on my stationary bicycle. As expensive a film as RRR was to make, that’s how inexpensive Criminal: France must have been. It all takes place in a police station interrogation room in Paris, and in the hallway outside the room. Each episode shows the interrogation of a suspect of a crime: a young woman who allegedly collected a victim payment after a terrorist attack on a venue where she had not been present, a woman construction executive who was having an affair with a younger construction worker who fell to his death, and a hidden gay man who witnessed a murder at a gay bar and whose wife and children knew nothing about his hidden life. I think that’s it for Paris, and the show now goes to three more countries Whether the other versions will be done in the same way, I don’t know yet. I liked the three episodes I saw – all conversation, no action, like reading a who-done-it.

In my work as president of the Jewish Funeral Practices Committee of Greater Washington and the work I have done as part of the Adas Israel Bereavement Committee, I have worked closely with Hines Rinaldi Funeral Home of Silver Spring, and with one of their top Funeral Directors, Gary Gise. Sadly, Gary passed away last night after a two year long battle with esophageal cancer at the very young age of 60. A very friendly and competent fellow, he put up a tremendous fight, and held his head up throughout his battle. May his memory be a blessing.

Maybe my title today is not the right one.

The headline in yesterday’s Washington Post says: “The FBI’s new headquarters should be in Springfield”. It does not tell you that the article was written by Virginia’s two senators and its governor. For those who only read headlines, this is misleading.

Same with the headline of this post above. It may surprise you to know that I wrote the headline, not one of my millions of anonymous readers. But I probably fooled you, right?

Enough with just the headlines. Let’s go to text: I rarely read about March Madness, because I care absolutely nothing about college basketball. At all. But I happened to read the top first page article on today’s Washington Post sports page, about sixteenth seeded Fairleigh Dickinson beating first seeded Purdue, something that hadn’t happened since the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, beat Virginia sometime in the 16th century.

Here are some quotes from the article: “Alongside Virginia in all future references and winces will mope Purdue”, Purdue had an “emphatic Big Ten regular season”, this is a rare event “since this seeding construct in this delirious annual event began”, Purdue “croaked in disarray”, and Purdue underwent “a gathering disintegration as the Lilliputian opponent kept gathering mustard”. I did not follow the article onto page D5 for its continuation. Well, OK, I did go to the very last paragraph where I saw that “doom looked nigh for Purdue”.

The article was written by Chuck Culpepper. You think this is really what he wrote? Or do you think someone on the editing staff was playing a prank on him? Or are all college basketball columns written like this?

A couple of other things.

First, my reading is really suffering. Having read about 70 Penguin paperbacks last year, and getting off to a good start this year (remember, I have about 700 to read), I got stuck. My next book, one I never read before, was Dostoevsky’s “The Possessed” or “The Devils” (depending on the edition). The books has about 650 pages; the print is very small, as are the margins. When we went on our Florida/SC trip, I took it along, figuring over 12 days I had a chance to get through it. Of course, I never picked it up. We have now been home about 2 weeks, and I am only half way through it. Sure, other things have come up, and it’s true that I don’t much care what happens to any of the characters, but it isn’t a bad book (I realize this every time I open it). Maybe this weekend – where we have relatively little scheduled – I will get through it and go back to my regular reading habits.

Finally, we do want to see some of the movies who won Oscars, or were nominated. This year, we had only seen The Fablemans, Tar, and The Quiet Girl. So we have a ways to go. We started last night with RRR, the Indian film whose frenetic dance song won it an Oscar. We started rather late, and didn’t realize that the film is over 3 hours long, so we decided to watch half last night and will finish it this evening. It’s been a while since we watched any Indian film (I know there are thousands of them – maybe thousands produced every year), and this one is a kick and a half.

All I will tell you today is that it takes place in India during the Raj, and the castes of society seem to be the Beyond Awful British (except for one very pretty young lady), and the Indigenous People of the Indian Subcontinent. A Beyond Awful British Lady decides to kidnap a cute young Indigenous girl, who is an expert henna artist, taking her away from (and perhaps killing) her mother, and bringing her to a heavily secured palace in Delhi. Now we have a super-human Indigenous guy from the village who travels to Delhi to save her, and another super-human Indigenous guy (who has sold out to the Beyond Awful British) who is hell bent on making sure that the girl is not saved. Halfway through the film, and we don’t know which of the two Indigenous guys will prevail.

In addition to Beyond Awful British and Indigenous major actors, there are thousands of residents of Delhi who appear in various scenes. Are they real people, or are they computer constructs? That I don’t know, although the wild animals (and there are many, each with their roles to play) are created through AI (so says the information statement at the beginning of the film, where we are assured that no real animals are suffering).

It’s on Netflix. See if you like it.

So how many of us know Louisiana Republican Congressman Clay Higgins? All I know (from a two second Wikipedia scan) is that he has been a police officer or its equivalent with four Louisiana police departments, that he has been married four times, and that he hob nobs with the nobility of the crazy far right.

But this morning, I learned something else. I was listening to a House committee hearing regarding the control of the southern border. I heard little of it, because it was only during a short drive to the bakery that I was listening. The two witnesses were DHS officials. I don’t even know who the chair was – obviously a Republican who only wanted to know whether Secretary Mayorkas, when he said the border was under control, was lying or stupid. Which one? It’s an easy question.

At any rate, what I learned is that Clay Higgins has absorbed the plots of Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad and become convinced that the shows are historically accurate non-fiction. He asked one of the witnesses (I paraphrase with regard to words, but not intent) the following: “I have been led to understand that there have been an increasing number of Chinese being smuggled across the border with the help of the Mexican cartels who control our border, and that many of these Chinese are scientists, who then hook up with cartel members inside the United States and are using their expertise to create hidden fentanyl labs within the United States. Can you comment on that?”

The official responded (again I paraphrase): “Huh? No, that’s not happening.”

Higgins also asked why everything changed at border on (exact date) January 21, 2021. Again, I paraphrase: “Don’t you just think that everybody is trying to get into the country now, because they know that in 2024 the Republicans will take over the country again, shut the border down completely, and if they don’t get in now, they know they never will?”

Oh, you Republicans.

I don’t want to let Joe Biden off the hook, though. I don’t know whether the recent approval of drilling in the Arctic (the “Willow” project) is good or bad. My guess is that it’s both, and that perhaps it was inevitable (that I don’t know). But, on MSNBC this morning, there was a clip played of Biden in 2020, stating categorically and maybe six times, that there will no drilling on federal land anywhere, and maybe another six times, “especially in the Arctic”. Now a direct quote: “No, no, no, no, no.” (I remember that one.)

Oh, you politicians.

Random thoughts:

1. At Breads Unlimited this morning, I was told that they were almost out of green St. Patrick’s Day cookies, because “we had a run of grandfathers come in early this morning”. But I also noted that the green bagels looked untouched. I wondered if I should get one or two – then I looked at them more carefully and realized why they were untouched. Ugh.
2. I also stopped in at Staples. The Bethesda store. Big store. Maybe there was one other customer at 10 a.m. That’s the way it always seems to be there. I assume everyone but me buys on-line from Staples, and no one comes into the stores any more. The clerk gave me my receipt, which was quite lengthy. He said to me: “You can see we are trying to compete with CVS, but don’t have it quite down yet.”

Now, I am looking at my desk. What a mess. I have a program to organize for the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies, a lot of work for both Haberman and the Jewish Funeral Practices Committee to try to find new board members, my presentation on the Israel Supreme Court situation, bank statements and credit card bills to reconcile, new insurance policies to review, etc., etc. I think I’ll take a walk.

Every Thursday morning, I join about 30 of my friends for a breakfast meeting (sometimes live and sometimes on Zoom) where one of us makes a presentation on a topic of our own choice. This morning, my friend Ed Kopf talked about Chicago, where he and his wife, who live here in Washington, also maintain a Lake Shore Drive apartment. The presentations are always good, but sometimes – like this morning – they are better than that.

Today, Ed concentrated on the development of Chicago through the 19th century. He is going to give the second part of his presentation sometime in April. Will there be a third part? Perhaps. Ed, who started his life as a professor of American history, knows just how to organize a talk of this type. It couldn’t have been better.

So, what did he concentrate on today? He started with Frank Sinatra’s My Kind of Town, and then went into Carl Sandberg’s poetry. He told how the population of the city, which was founded in the 1830s, increased by almost 10 fold from the Civil War to the turn of the century, eclipsing Philadelphia, Boston, Cincinnati, Baltimore and St. Louis, which were larger cities at the start of that period. He talked about Chicago’s geographic position, how the Great Lakes and canal development enabled Chicago to transport goods to the east, how the inventions by entrepreneurs headquartered in Chicago enabled the vast increase in agricultural efficiency throughout the mid-west, how the development of the railroads further enabled goods to be delivered east, including meat products which were produced at the city’s slaughterhouses.

What will come next? Architecture? Culture? Baseball? Education? We will wait and see. Ed made it clear that Chicago has its share of problems, but they aren’t going to be addressed in this series of talks. He is clearly going to accentuate the positive, and eliminate the negative. We will see about Mr. In-between.

It’s too bad that last night’s Haberman Institute program on the Jews of North Africa during World War II is one of the few Haberman programs that, for copyright reasons was unable to be recorded. Professor Sarah Abrevaya Stein of UCLA, author of books on the subject, did an excellent job covering a lot of ground. The Italian administration in Libya, the French Vichy administration of Algeria and Morocco, the brief German occupation of Tunisia. Work camps and prison camps all throughout the area (no death camps, but plenty of death) and the overall effect of the war on the 500,000 Jews of the southern Mediterranean countries was discussed in some detail. Egypt, never Fascist occupied, was not part of her lecture.

There has been much more concentration on the Jews of Europe than the Jews of North Africa during this period, but there are now a number of scholars working on various aspects of the North African experience, and there have been a number of memoirs written (some published, some not) by those who lived through this period. A very good presentation enjoyed about most of the approximately 200 people who registered for the talk.

By the way (did I say this before), Rabbi Lauren Tuchman’s excellent talk about how the Jewish texts deal with persons with disabilities, and how Jews with disabilities fare today, is now available on the Haberman website under Program Recordings. (www.habermaninstitute.org.) Rabbi Tuchman, who lives here in Washington, is, she believes, the first blind woman ordained into the rabbinate.

Today for me will be devoted to working on my presentation for next Thursday on the Israeli Supreme Court conflict, from an (not always well informed) American perspective.

If this advice had been followed in the year 44 B.C.E., things might be different today. We might have even avoided Donald Trump. Who is to say?

What a week! Pi Day, where we celebrate the St. Louis area code. The Ides of March, which I think is a book by George Eliot. And then Friday is St. Patrick’s Day, when we all get together and honor the Englishman who drove the potatoes out of Ireland.

Friend Tom leaves this morning to head back to snowy Hartford. Last night, the three of us had dinner at Corazon DC, a Mexican restaurant on 14th Street NW near Randolph, with a somewhat quirky and interesting menu, where Edie and I eat fairly often (read that as about two or three times a year). I ordered chicken enchiladas mole verde. They came, but weren’t quite warm enough. So I asked the server if she could put it in the microwave for 30 seconds.

She graciously took it and about five minutes later (not 30 seconds) brought it back to me. The owner (a very nice lady) came over and asked me if I wanted to take the original enchilada order home with me in a box. I was flabbergasted. She told me that they never would just reheat something; they would start from scratch. I was very apologetic. She told me not to be. I told her “I insist”. Then it occurred to me that maybe the restaurant didn’t even have a microwave. That might be too tempting.

She was disappointed when I told her that any chicken in our house had to be kosher, and I was disappointed as well. The second order of enchiladas was the right temperature. I made sure to lick my plate clean.

Earlier in the day, Tom and I went out to Second Story Books’ warehouse, where we perused the 500,000 or so books. I was able to double my Felix Frankfurter collection, by purchasing a book of essays on Judaism, published in the 1920s, which had Felix Frankfurter’s book plate inside. My other Frankfurter piece is a copy of Richard Neustadt’s “Presidential Power”, with a piece of U.S. Supreme Court notepaper taped inside with a note from Frankfurter to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, thanking him for a loan of the book and for calling his attention to the book. It also has a gracious note from Neustadt to Acheson. I think I may put photos on both later today either here, or on Facebook.

Tom and I stopped at Pike Kitchen for lunch. Do you know that place? On Rockville Pike, although it’s name gives you no clue, it is a pan-Asian (well, not quite pan, it is Chinese, Japanese and Korean) restaurant. I have stopped there several times, and it seems there have been some changes made. It’s a place where you go up to the counter to order, and then to pick up your food. It has a number of different stations and you used to order at each station. Now there is a central station to order and pick up, but the various stations still seem to do the preparation. This might be more efficient. They also have now a list of about ten dishes that are lunch “specials”, and they only cost $10. Maybe it includes a drink, too. I ordered a Japanese noodle dish, and a coke, and the bill with tax, was $12.61. Quite a bargain. Food is pretty good.

That’s about it for yesterday. We watched the first episode of the new season of HBO’s Perry Mason last night, and vowed not to watch the second, third or any other. And we had a quick visit from grandchildren Joan and Izzy, and their father.

Today’s factoid? Do you know that Hastings Law School is no longer Hastings Law School, but is now the University of California Law School, San Francisco? The reason? It turns out that Serranus Hasting (the only man to be Chief Justice both of Iowa and California) in his spare time participated in or helped fund the massacre of Yuki Indians in the 1850s. So the school, or the State, voted to rename the institution.

Hastings la via.

My old college and law school friend Tom Morawetz is visiting for a few days. He teaches (and has for over 40 years) at the UConn Law School in Hartford. Most of yesterday was spent in conversation. We covered much of the 62+ years we have known each other.

But there were some highlights involving more than conversation. Tom, Edie and I had dinner last night at I’m Eddie Cano, our neighborhood Italian restaurant and one of our standard carry-out places. The food was great, as usual. Their house red wine was smooth and, as they say, fruity with a hint of chocolate. The perfect after-dinner double espresso was probably a mistake, though, as I spent much of last night staring at the ceiling. (That’s an exaggeration – it was too dark to see the ceiling, but I knew where it was.)

That one block, just two blocks up Connecticut Avenue, now has how many restaurants? Let’s count: I’m Eddie Cano, Rosemary, Italian Bar, Politics and Prose’s cafe, Call Your Mother, Comet Pizza, Muchas Gracias, and Buck’s Camping and Fishing. I count 8. Oh, yeah, and there’s the ice cream place.

After we got home, we watched the extraordinary show “Remember This”, the one man rendition of the life of Jan Karski, the Polish diplomat who visited the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz in 1942, and reported what he saw to Felix Frankfurter (“I don’t believe you.”) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (“Poland was an agricultural country before the war, right? ……. Do you need more horses?”). Performed by David Strathairn, it premiered last year (I think) at Georgetown University, where Karski taught in the Foreign Service School for about 40 years. It was on MPT, Channel 22 (522 on DC Fios), PBS Masterpiece Theater. You can probably access it somewhere, and should.

By the way, Rabbi Lauren Tuchman’s textual presentation on Jews with Disabilities is now up on the Haberman website (www.habermaninstitute.org) under Program Recordings. I recommend it highly.

Glossary:

1. I’m Eddie Cano. Pronounce it quickly and it should sound like an Italian saying Americano.
2. David Strathairn. Veteran actor who is always cast in biopics (or their equivalent) playing tall, skinny guys. I wish he had a different name. Even looking at it, I can’t remember it. You probably can.

Finally: Today is Pi Day. Does the Pi Pizza place still exist downtown? It closed in Bethesda pre-pandemic, but I have no idea about the original DC location. Of course, the original original Pi Pizza was located not here, but in St. Louis. Why? Pi. Pizza Pie. Area code 314.

That is all for today, thank you.

We watched the Oscars last night, start to finish. I think they did a decent enough job with the show. I didn’t miss the drama. The one improvement that could be made would be to display the names of the presenters who are called up to the bima. Most of them (read: virtually all of them) are not known to me, and it would have helped if I could put names to faces. Often, when they are announced, their names are slurred through and I miss them completely.

Why don’t I know them? In part, because they act in shows that I haven’t seen, and are featured in magazines and on websites that I don’t look at. In part, because unless a name is George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, I have trouble remembering them any way. In part, because most of these people look identical to each other to me, and have for a long time.

But some I recognize. Take Morgan Freeman, for example. He looked older than the last time I saw him. I guess that isn’t surprising, because he is 85. Jeez. And I remember when he was just 5 years older than I am.

I particularly enjoyed the music. The winning song from RRR was a five star treat. And I enjoyed, as always, Lady Gaga, but found Rihanna disappointing after what I thought was a great (I know it’s controversial) Super Bowl halftime show. The singer who sang the first song (name ?) also has a beautiful voice, I thought.

Other than that? Some of the women were dressed in particularly unflattering clothes, as usual, and some in the audience had head pieces that blocked the view of anyone sitting within three rows behind them. And what about animation? After the award was announced, one of the winners talked about taking animation to the next level. That made it clear to me for the first time. With AI progressing as it is, who needs real actors any more? Film stars will become as obsolete as linotype operators.

Moving on…….I read the NYT pretty much cover to cover this morning. A few things worthy of thought:

1. It’s really true that in Indigenous settlements in Northern Territory of Australia, native peoples are not permitted to buy alchohol? Really?
2. The dilemma of what to do about Prof. Amy Wax of the U. Penn law school is something to ponder. A tenured professor who has taught at Penn for over 20 years, she is an avowed racist, having belittled the capabilities and accomplishments of Blacks, the selfishness of gays, the lack of assimilation tendencies in Hispanics, and the built in left wing biases of Asians. She says (I paraphrase) she is speaking truth to culture. She is certainly sowing dissent at the law school. Do you let her go on, because she is tenured and, besides that, she should have the right to free speech as an academician? Or do you fire her or limit her activities because her speech is deemed destructive to society? And if you discipline her for being to “conservative” (that may not be the right word here), do you distinguish this from disciplining left wing teachers for what they might be saying about American society and its members? A dilemma.
3. And did you know that pharmacies are having a difficult time obtaining drugs to fill legitimate prescriptions for non-opiates that may be deemed habit forming, including drugs to treat depression, anxiety, cancer and ADHD? The article starting on the front page of the Times is eye-opening.

Finally, Mexico beat the U.S. in the World Baseball Classic yesterday. That’s OK with me. Because Major League Baseball players now come from all over, it is hard to identify with them when they are member of a team you support, and then root against them in the WBC. So congratulations to Joey Meneses of the Nationals and the Mexican WBC team for his two home runs yesterday. As the designated, designated hitter for next year, may you do the same for the Nats.

Actually, I don’t really know. It was earlier today when I went out, and my phone told me that it was not going to get above 39 today (that is about 15 degrees below average for March 12), but my guess is that it did. I will find out later when I roll the trash into the street for Monday pickup.

In the meantime, let’s talk baseball a bit. The Nats/Mets game was televised last night and the Nats came from behind to win 10-7. (Today, the Nats are playing the Cardinals and are behind in the 8th.) The poor Nats are still in a rebuilding mode, as you must know. But they don’t look hapless, and much will depend on how the pitching staff works out. But their young guys (some of whom will made the opening day roster and most of whom won’t) do look pretty good, and performed well last night. In addition to the, however, in the late innings, the Nats played two even younger guys (one had just turned 19). Their names are Trey Lipscomb and Armando Cruz. Write their names down – you will see them in a couple of years, and it seems they may be the future of the team after the current future of the team matures.

The Nats game is not being televised today, but I did get to watch most of the Israel/Nicaragua game in the World Baseball Classic series. Played in Miami, Israel came from behind in the 8th to win 3-1. We will see how they do. I can’t say I have devoted a lot of energy to the WBC, but the concept is sure interesting – 20 teams playing in four venues across the world. Many games are being televised on Fox Sports 1 and 2, and a number of major leaguers have joined their national teams. I read the qualifications today – you have to hold the country’s passport, or be eligible for a passport, or have a parent from the country, etc. It’s an interesting way to have some control over the rosters, yet give so many teams the ability to come up with strong lineups. By the way, the U.S. plays Mexico tonight, but the game doesn’t start until 10 p.m. EDT (it’s played in Phoenix). But not to worry – since we didn’t fall back last night, but fell forward (luckily escaping serious injury), it’s really on 9.

Other than that, what am I doing today? I am working on a presentation I have to give to my Thursday breakfast group on the 23rd. I am going to talk about the current battle over the Supreme Court in Israel – the selection of justices, the authority of the Court to review and strike down legislation passed by the Knesset, and whether the Knesset should have the right to overrule the decision of the Court. I will contrast that with our experience here, where the Court system has been functioning for the past 200 years, but probably does not, in many respects, evidence best practices. Our justices are selected politically, and are given life time tenure. They gave themselves the right to review the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress in the case of Marbury v Madison in 1803, and thus have taken on the role of ultimate decider. This is the heart of what is being debated so loudly in Israel today. Who should be the ultimate decider – the courts or the legislature? If the courts, then is that a compromise of democracy since only the legislators are elected? If the legislature, what is to keep a legislature from passing whatever laws it wants, whether or not it violates constitutional or similar provisions, or compromises the rights of minorities who voted for the opposition? The issues are not as simple as they may appear at first.

Finally, has anyone here stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Hong Kong? I was reading about this luxury hotel this morning. It isn’t housed in a free standing building, but instead occupies 16 floors of an office building. But the office building is 108 stories tall, and the Ritz occupies the top floors, starting with the 92nd. I went to bookings.com, to see how much I would have to pay if I stayed their tonight. I could get a room for about $650 (I assume that is plus taxes, etc.), but that price would not get me a sea view. In case you are wondering, the Ritz is not the world’s highest hotel. There are hotels in Shanghai and Guangzhou which are even higher. The J Hotel in Shanghai is the highest in the world, it seems, and its restaurant is on the 120th floor, making it the highest restaurant in the world. I will say, though, that the reviews of the J are not nearly as good as the reviews of the Ritz. Prices are comparable.

With all of the difficulties in getting a fix on why so many have so much trouble accessing this site, I feel like the tree falling in the empty forest, not knowing whether no one is hearing the noise I am making, or if perhaps I am just not making any noise at all. And my next question is: did I mix metaphors in the last sentence, or having hanging gerunds or participles or chads or something? It doesn’t read right to me. Oh, well, we will all just have to deal with it.

It’s a chilly March Saturday in Washington, not one for many outside activities. The next week will be the same, it appears.

We started off the morning by going to the opening of the annual used book sale at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. (As an aside, I saw that BCC first opened in 1926. My mother graduated high school as part of the first graduating class at University City High School in MO in 1930. I assume the two were opened at the same time. More or less.)

How many books do they have on sale there? Really a lot. Perhaps even more than usual. I wanted to be selective, and I think I was. I only bought seven books. But (G-d willing, as they say), I think I may go back tomorrow to see if I missed anything important.

What am I looking for? My usual search is for books signed or inscribed by authors which, at the same time, hold some interest for me. Some I will hold on to; some I will put up for sale. (Most of you know we sell books under the name of A. Richard Books and More, on the abebooks.com website) The cost of the books at BCC is $3 each. You can’t go wrong.

I think, of the seven, the book I like the most is “No Dream too High”, inscribed by the author, Buzz Aldrin, who of course walked on the moon. On a clear night in a deserted part of the planet, with the right equipment, do you think you can see his footprints? (Interestingly, I wrote this last sentence before opening the book. Now, having opened it, I see that the first chapter is called “The Sky is not the Limit….There are Footprints on the Moon”. Hmmm.)

In fact, the titles of all thirteen chapters ring true to me (this is a book of “life lessons”) – including (for me) “Keep a Young Mind-set at Every Age”, for my grandchildren “Show Me Your Friends, and I will Show You Your Future”, and for everyone “Practice Respect for all People” (this goes along with my last two posts, on people with disabilities). So this book wins “Best of the Show”.

Next, winner of the “Most Unlikely” category is “The Accidental President of Brazil” by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who led Brazil from 1995-2002. I wasn’t expecting to see this book, inscribed by the author. But I have a lot of books by leaders of other countries – Britain, France, Israel, Germany, Cambodia, the USSR and Russia, to name a few that come to my mind.

“Most Popular” goes to Bob Woodward for his book “The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat”, inscribed by Woodward. It gets this title because this is the third copy of this book that I have owned, and the first two were sold very quickly.

I do like books written by politicians, and I picked up a signed copy of Mitch McConnell’s “The Long Game”, one that I had not found before. I don’t know how to categorize it, especially as McConnell is still hospitalized after his fall. Let’s just leave it at that.

In the “Best Foreign Book” category, the award goes to the 5th book, “On the Wrong Side: My Life in the KGB”, inscribed by the writer, Stanislav Levchenko. I think I have another copy lying around downstairs, but I can’t pass up a signed book by a Russian spy. Don’t know why.

The other two are more ordinary: “Whatever It Takes: The Real Struggle for Political Power in America” by Elizabeth Drew, a signed copy of a 1997 book about the Clinton/Gingrich struggle, and “Leadership in Turbulent Times” by Doris Kearns Goodwin, about the two Roosevelts, Lincoln and Johnson.

We took a break after the book sale (lunch and down time), and then went to the Avalon (our neighborhood non-profit theater) to see “The Quiet Girl”, the Irish film nominated for best foreign film at this weekend’s Oscars. It’s an unusual film, slow moving with minimal dialogue (and what dialogue there is primarily consists of sentences of 1-3 words, not harangues or diatribes). The ending, especially, is touching, and the 12 year old lead, Catherine Clinch, does a fine job.

Tonight I already know what dinner is (because it’s a repeat of last night’s) and I believe that the Nats Spring Training game is being televised, which will mark the first game we have seen since we have returned from seeing two in person in Florida.

Then will come the big question. Do we turn our clocks back tonight or in the morning? Either works, as long as we don’t do both. (Ha! A quick reading subscriber thinks that when I said “turn our clocks back”, I am turning them back counterclockwise, and he has pointed out that this would probably not work out well for us, but I say to him the following: when I say “turn our clocks back”, I really meant “back to the future”, which is another way of saying “turn our clocks forward”, but who would want to say that?)

This is a follow up to yesterday’s blog about Judy Heumann’s funeral, which I hope you read, and about Rabbi Gil Steinlauf’s column in the Times of Israel (blogs.timesofisrael.com) of March 9.

Last night, by remarkable coincidence, the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies, sponsored an on-line talk by Rabbi Lauren Tuchman, titled “The Torah of Human Dignity: Exploring What it Means to be Created in the Image of God”. This illuminating presentation should be on our website (www.habermaninstitute.org) under Program Recordings by early next week, and I recommend you watch it, both for the text of Rabbi Tuchman’s presentation and her responses during the question and answer exchange.

Rabbi Tuchman, who is also a regular at Adas Israel, is to her and our knowledge, the first blind woman to have been ordained as a rabbi (she was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary). Like Judy Heumann, she devotes much of her time to dealing with the treatment of persons with disabilities both in Jewish texts and in the contemporary Jewish community.

Rabbi Tuchman says that the ancient texts can be very, very challenging, but that the proper course is not to ignore them, but to grapple with them, and grapple she does. When you consider this rabbinic approach along with the activist approach of Judy Heumann, you learn how much is being done and how much more can be done to ensure that Jews with disabilities are able to reach their potential as part of the Jewish world. And, of course, a similar path could be taken (and probably is being taken) by members of other religious and non-religious communities across the country and world.

Rabbi Steinlauf said Judy Heumann told him that his teaching of Jewish texts on disability was well meaning, but wrongheaded, and changed his entire way of thinking on the subject. Rabbi Tuchman, who was effusive in her speaking of Judy last evening, would agree with that. As would the three current rabbis at Adas Israel (Aaron Alexander, Lauren Holtzblatt, and Sarah Krinsky), who talked at the funeral Wednesday about how Judy constantly rebuked them when she felt they were not approaching the subject appropriately, and how those rebukes were not resented, but welcomed.

It’s a big topic. How to relate to persons with disabilities, how to treat them as equal human beings with talent and potential, what it means when we say someone is created in the image of God.

I recommend to you Judy’s book “Being Heumann” and Rabbi Tuchman’s presentation for the Haberman Institute and would love to know your reactions.

Most of you probably know who Judy Heumann was – perhaps the country’s, or the world’s, most successful and visible advocate for disability rights, whose book “Being Heumann” was published a year or two ago, and who was one of (perhaps the) central character in the Oscar nominated documentary film, “Crip Camp”. She was a former Assistant Secretary of Education, Director of Services for the Disabled for DC, and Ford Foundation and World Bank official. She worked in the Clinton and Obama administrations. She was the leader of the sit-in that helped push the Americans with Disabilities Act across the finish line. Judy was also a long time, and very active, member of Adas Israel, the synagogue that we belong to, in Washington.

When Judy passed away last week (a surprise to us and to most) at 75, her death made the news, from NPR to Rachel Maddow’s show. And her funeral was scheduled for yesterday morning at Adas Israel, with burial to follow at Judean Garden Cemetery in Olney MD, about 15 miles to the north. Because a large crowd was expected at Adas, a group of us was recruited to help out at the synagogue and cemetery.

The funeral was scheduled for 10, but we were asked to arrive at 8:30, which seemed to me to be much too early. But at 8:30, people were already gathering. It had been assumed that many of the attendees would be disabled, and that access to the building was easier into the social hall (the Kay) that to the sanctuary (the Smith) and, as I understand it, about 700 chairs were set up.

It turned out, however, that the Kay filled, and more seating was made available in other parts of the building, where the services were streamed, including the Smith, which itself had several hundred in attendance. The entire crowd was, by my estimation, about 1200, maybe a few more. And yes, many types of disabilities were found amongst the crowd. Many were in wheelchairs, others were walking but clearly mobility impaired, while others were blind or deaf or had some other apparent, or not so apparent, disability. This required the efforts of us all to make everyone feel comfortable and able to get to a seat, to a rest room and so forth.

All of this was accomplished smoothly, and the service itself, which lasted almost two hours and included short eulogies by the three Adas rabbis, as well as by two who worked with Judy, by her brother, and by her niece. Judy and her husband Jorge Pineda (who is himself disabled) had no children.

By my account again, about 150 or so made their way to the cemetery. The service there was brief, and the largest activity was shoveling dirt onto the coffin after it was lowered into the grave. Normally, there is a big pile of dirt and several shovels, with mourners and friends lining up to put three shovels of dirt in the grave. We had to temporize a bit yesterday, as so many attendees were in wheel chairs. We had boards covering the ground so that the chairs could be rolled next to the grave, and we had buckets of soil, and small shovels, that most of the wheel chair occupants were able to handle, with a little assistance.

Judy was 100% devoted to her cause, and had the remarkable ability to push forward for what was needed for her community without insulting or offending those whose actions had offended her. The rabbis talked about bristling anytime there was a voicemail from Judy, because it was a rebuke for something that they could have, and should have, done better. Former Adas Rabbi Gil Steinlauf, now at Princeton, wrote a wonderful piece in yesterday’s Times of Israel, talking about how he had once given a Torah lesson to begin an Adas Board meeting on the subject of how to help disabled people, only to be publicly rebuked by Judy both as to his words, and as to the religious sources he was siting. He said that he didn’t feel insulted, but rather illuminated, and that it changed his way of thinking about a number of majority/minority issues and how it changed his rabbinate.

I will admit that, after helping out and being on my feet here and there, back and forth, for seven or eight hours, I felt whipped. A small price to pay.

Yesterday was a frustrating one. Nothing terrible happened, it was just frustrating. The first reason is that it was the day I chose to get together all of our tax information to send to our CPA. It took me about four hours to answer all of the questions on her many page questionnaire, even though I had already put most of the necessary backup information into a file to make it easy for me. But, although the four hours were not fun, they were not five hours, or six.

After I finished that task, I began looking at the mail that had collected while we were away. One was a credit card bill that I had to pay within a few days in order to avoid interest charges. All looked OK, except for one item. There was a charge from Terminix for $1,590.

Huh?

Here’s the story. We have long had a seasonal ant problem, and have relied on hardware store ant traps to catch them. Maybe, we thought, there was a better way. In addition, from time to time we have noticed some mouse droppings, which meant we probably had a pet we hadn’t met. We tried hardware store mouse traps, but our guy was obviously too smart to fall for that old trick.

I saw an ad for Terminix and said to myself “why not?” My memory (and that is all I have to rely on) is that we could get our house (hopefully) fully protected by quarterly visits that would cost us $265 each. And that this service would cover both ants and mice, and that between the quarterly visits, Terminix would come back out on call for specific problems and that these visits would not cost extra. It made sense to us to try this for a year.

They first came in November, set some traps, and when I looked a week or so later, I saw that we actually caught (through some sort of rat poison that wouldn’t hurt people, dogs or cats) a cute little mouse, for whom I had a lot of sympathy. Because we didn’t know if there were more, we called and told them of their success and asked if they could replenish our traps, which they did. Then, one other time, Terminix called and said they were coming out to do some outside spraying, and that we did not have to invite them in for coffee.

After the first visit in November, we paid them $265. I was expecting another $265 in February. And I assumed they would send us a bill, not that they would use our card information to pay for their bill, much less than their bill would be $1,590.

I called Terminix to try to unravel this. When you call Terminix you call an 800 number and get someone somewhere, but not near you. I got Jessica (or maybe Jennifer), and she was very nice. Somebody I would hire. I explained the story, and she seemed to understand it. She started by saying that we must have signed a service contract for a bunch of services that would total $1,590 a quarter. No, I said, no possible. She told me to hold on while she looked further. I did.

She returned and said that she was confused. I told her she couldn’t be more confused than I was, and she thought she and I were confused about the same. She had no answer for me, and told me that she was going to call the local branch office and that I would hear from them next. So far, nothing.

After I spoke with her, I realized that I could set up an on-line account with Terminix, and I did that, thinking that maybe I could learn something more. It showed the $265 from November and the $1,590 from February, and it had a button I could push to see our “service contract” (which I don’t remember seeing or signing). But when you push that button, you get a never ending moving circle; you never get to a service contract. I assume this is what confused Jessica/Jennifer.

Anyway, we are waiting. Then I called the credit card company (Barclay’s) and ask them to put a hold on that payment. That turned out to be an ordeal, too. I was told, at first, that they couldn’t mark it as a dispute unless I could tell them what services the bill was for. Another “huh?” Isn’t that the definition of a dispute – when you see a charge that you don’t think is legitimate. If I had a charge from Macy’s and hadn’t bought anything at Macy’s, how could I have told them what the charge was for? At any rate, it took a while, but we did get it marked as a matter in dispute or, as Barclay’s calls it, a “claim”.

We will see what happens.

Each year, Adas Israel tries to outdo itself at Purim. Enough already. Let’s have the Megillah read, and have a clever Purim spiel in the interstices. This year we had a skit based on The Survivors, one based on Family Feud, one based on an Abba song, and one I had a hard time understanding and an equally hard time remembering.

There was an enormous crowd. The sanctuary, including most of the balcony, was just about full. That is, I believe, well over 1000 people. About half were masked – some wearing costumes, and some avoiding COVID. I went as a famous blogger, but Edie was a fire chief, and granddaughter Joan was Esther before she became the queen. Know how she dressed then? It was modest and attractive…..but when Joan asked me who she was, I guessed that she was a nun. I got an eye roll. Joan’s Dad read chapter 6 and was on the losing team at Family Feud. The two of us tried to figure out the rules of the show, so that we could understand why his team lost, but we failed at that. Does anyone really watch Family Feud anyway? Anyone I know?

Hamantaschen. What makes a hamantaschen a hamantaschen? And what is the plural of hamantaschen? Is it hamantaschen? And if the plural of hamantaschen is hamantaschen, what is the singular of hamantaschen? Is it hamantaschen, or is it hamantasch? How can I be 80 and not know this, anyway?

I had four hamantaschen today. Three were poppy seed. Two from Breads Unlimited, and one at Adas Israel. The fourth was cherry marzipan. It was made by daughter Michelle. All good, but Michelle’s was the best. Except that it had no poppy seed.

I see I didn’t answer the question about what makes a hamantasch(en) a hamantasch(en). The answer, I think, is that it has three corners – it’s a triangle. Usually, it is sweet, but there is now a trend towards savory.

Which brings me to lunch. I had lunch at Point Chaud Cafe and Crepes on Wisconsin Avenue in Glover Park. Never heard of it? It’s my second time there – the first time was probably a year ago, when I was still masked everywhere and ate at an outside table.

I had a chicken crepe for lunch – chicken, onions, tomatoes and green peppers – cooked to perfection. And the crepe was three cornered. I think I had a hamantasch(en)! Who knew?

Dinner? What did I have for dinner? At Adas, before the reading, there was an enormous crowd in the social hall – and a fair amount of food (and drink). I had a slice of pizza (I’d give it a B-/C+), and that was dinner.

Of course, the tradition is to drink until you can’t tell Mordechai from Haman. I could never figure out the basis of that dumb tradition. But I will say this – there were a lot of people at Adas Israel that I could not identify. I am sure that part of it was that some of them had masks (one kind or the other). But many didn’t, and as to those people whom I couldn’t identify, I decided that maybe it’s because they did have masks on, but that the masks were masks that looked like faces and that if they took off their masks I would know them. I tried to gauge them by height and weight and walk. But they all looked like The Stranger, and they all melded together. If without drinking (or at least without drinking more than sparkling water) I couldn’t tell one congregant from the other, how much would I have to drink to confuse Haman and Mordechai? Not much, I fear. I will let you know.

Why is it that, when on the road, the trip always takes the full day? I expect you cannot answer the question because you don’t buy into the premise, right? But for us……

We left the Dunne NC Hampton Inn before 9 a.m. The GPS said it would take us 4 hours 40 minutes to get home. Even stopping for lunch, we should be home by 2:30. Why did we pull in the driveway at 5:30?

Before I answer that, let me ask a different why. Why don’t the rooms in the Hampton Inn in Dunne NC have closets? If you can answer that, you can answer anything.

OK, back to the primary question. I will give you some hints. Did you know that John Eaton was born in Halifax, North Carolina? Or that there is a very big and very kitschy antique mall in Wilson North Carolina?

Did you know that you can get good Mexican food in Prince George VA? Did you even know there was a Prince George VA?

And so it goes.

But we did get back. The traffic could have been worse. The driving weather could not have been better. Within an hour of getting home, I took out trash and recycling, found two ordered books and processed the orders, retrieved my computer from its hiding place, looked at the mail, write our accountant, reviewed a flyer for the Jewish Funeral Practices Committee, volunteered for assistance at an upcoming large funeral, vacuumed a room, and filled in my calendar for the week.

Enough already.

And it’s a long way from Charleston to Dunn, NC. We got here after 7:30.

This morning, the one thing we knew is that we had to get on the road early. That’s why we got up, packed, had breakfast, and then sat around with our hosts until just before noon. Who knew that it would take that long to solve, first, the problems of Israel and, then, the problems of the rest of the world. But some things, I guess, are just tough.

We also didn’t know that we would spend a few hours in Georgetown SC, the third oldest city in South Carolina and home to both a large paper mill and steel plant. But you see none of that in the old commercial district and get no whiff of either when you have lunch at the very nice River Room. We did go to Morgan Park to see the water, but had no time for the Rice Museum, the Gullah Museum or the Maritime Museum.

Driving on, we hadn’t expected to spend time exploring interesting Pawly’s Island. But we did. Worthwhile, too.

Then we drove through hours of trees until we got to Fayettesville at about 6:30. We planned to spend the night there only because there we were. We couldn’t think of any other reason. But, guess what? No room at the inns.

Onward to Dunne (of all places) and the Hampton Inn. A nice dinner next door at the Sagebrush Steakhouse, a surprise for us. You get 10% off if you show your room ticket from the hotel. That’s probably not the only thing we forgot today.

Our restaurant servers have been good the entire trip. Tonight, we were served by Dejah (as in Deja Vu), who recommended her mother’s favorite wine – a 14 Hands Cabernet. Not so good, Mom.

Finally, a warning. There are no closets in our room at this Hampton Inn. So if you plan to stay here, remember to bring your own. This warning will not be repeated. So make a note.

We are 4 hours and 44 minutes from home. Straight shot. See the marsh grass in Morgan Park below.

That is the question I am not going to answer.

We had two good meals yesterday. The first at a small French restaurant whose name I can’t remember. Nevermind. It’s a name no one can remember. Like Pompineau and Levalier. But with very different words. It has no tables, only curved counters, and, except for the baguettes and things starting with croque, nothing seems very French. In fact, a large part of the menu starts with “O’”. Like someone got an O’Rye, as I recall. I didn’t want to go Irish so close to St. Pat’s Day, so I stuck with something closer to French. A curry. Tres bon.

Why did the restaurant choose this name? It’s been almost 50 years since companies began shortening their names: Uniroyal, PepsiCo, and so forth. The branding company that advised most of them was not Lipmar. It was and I think, 50 years later, is still Lippincott and Margulies. Go figure. Oh, well, two Frenchmen can’t be wrong.

In the evening we ate at the Grocery. Nothing started with O’, but you couldn’t buy any groceries. You could buy dinner, though. I asked our waiter “Emory, like the university” what the worse thing on the menu was, and he said the octopus, so for one time in my life, I did not get octopus. Yes, that is a fact, I skipped it. Edie and I split a chopped salad and a pasta dish that had a lot of green in it (a long list). Very good.

Emory’s comment about the octopus led me back to the old days when I had a Morrocan Scramble in Savannah. Although his name has already deserted my steel trap memory, I do recall he told me that the scramble was his fourth favorite thing on the menu.

Short blog today. Hitting the road. Heading north by northeast.

To get onto Jekyll Island, you drive across a causeway and pay a $4 toll. We pulled up to the mechanized toll booth, I took my wallet from my pocket and rolled (you know what I mean) down the window. Then I heard the AI voice from the toll machine say “Your pass is recognized. Please proceed.” And the gate raised for us to pass through.

I add this to the growing list of mysteries that will remain with me until the end of my days.

Did I mention we ate at the Driftwood Bistro? (IM me the answer). Let me say this about that. It’s a very nice place with a quirky menu. Not that the dishes are quirky. But every entree has a choice of being “petite” or “regular”. Each petite is $14 and each regular is $17. Yes, dinner for the price of brunch.

And there is more. They have (in addition to a full bar), two classes of wines – “house” and “better”. A glass of house wine is $9 and a glass of better is $11.50. BUT a bottle of house is $14 and a bottle of better is $19. Go figure.

The last time I was on Jekyll was in or around 1972. I went camping with someone none of you know. Other than the campsite, I remember the deserted old Jekyll Island Club buildings, a beach and a lot of untouched land. Apparently, there were also a few hotels, but I don’t know if we saw them. I don’t remember them at all.

Now the island has a fair number of hotels and other establishments, and the Club (former hangout of Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and the like) and the surrounding “cottages” have been restored to perfection. The broad beaches are beautiful. Nature has everywhere been preserved. I’d like to go there someday.

Our only other stop before Charleston was, of course, Savannah. Just time to drive around and once again admire the old residential areas, take a short walk and have lunch. Tell me again. Why can’t all American cities be this nice?

We picked a convenient place for an outdoor, on-the-sidewalk lunch. I had a Morrocan Scramble, which consisted of eggs on pita with, on top of the eggs, ground lamb, sliced avocado (for Edie), greens, radishes, tomatoes, peppers, pine nuts and chick peas. You see, I like to order local and simple.

Then on to Charleston where we found our old friends’ new house with no trouble. We went to a small neighborhood pizza house which was an anti-Villages eating establishment. Add the ages of all the other customers together, and you wouldn’t reach ours.

This was followed by about 4 hours of conversation where we filled each other in on all the good and the bad.

And that was the day that was.

Our final time in The Villages started with a golf cart ride about 4 miles through town to TooJays for breakfast. Here’s my take. Comfortable enough, but you need to hold on as you round corners. Slow (has a monitor that won’t let you go over 23 mph). Noisy. But it gets you there.

Our friends have 2 cars and a cart. But it’s the cart they use. Put on it over 10,000 miles per year, they say. Go figure.

At any rate, TwoJays was very busy, crowded with Don Ameches and Angela Lansburys. A comic scene, we both thought. But top quality oatmeal.

Moving out, avoiding all superhighways, we felt we had left Middle Earth and returned to the home planet. We went through Ocala quickly, surprised to see so many beautiful and prosperous looking horse farms. Didn’t quite look like KY, but pretty close.

North of Ocala, on our way to Gainesville, we passed the turnoff for Micanopy (accentuate the first syllable). Not sure why I found it crucial to go to Micanopy, but I did. We saw several of its 600 residents, fewer than when it was thriving in the 1800s. Interesting old brick buildings, a coffee shop which serves espresso made from Cuban coffee beans (highly recommended – we had had a brief discussion about Cuban coffee with someone cleaning the condo hall in West Palm Beach), and a selective and affordable antique store. We also saw a placque dedicated to Moises Levy, an early Moroccan born Jewish merchant.

This was interesting for two reasons. First (for close readers, and if memory serves) was the same name of the Jewish merchant so prominent in Manning SC (yesterday seems so far away). Second, this Moises Levy was actually Moises Yulee Levy,the father of David Yulee (he dropped his last name), the first Jewish US senator.

A Mexican lunch at a walk up to the window place in Gainesville. A stop at the Florida Museum of Natural History, with their big, big butterfly rain forest building, and their very large and sophisticated lepidopterist laboratories, as well as a spider exhibit (The butterflies were in the open….but not the spiders. Call the SCLU.) And mastodon and mammoth skeletons, enormous jaws of extinct sharks and so on.

Back in the car. Cows and cows and cows and goats. And onto Jekyll Island where Priceline got us a nice room at the Hampton Inn and where the Hampton Inn recommended the Driftwood Bistro and even drove us there and back.

We are in The Villages in central Florida, being very well hosted by a high school friend of Edie’s and her husband. We got a full tour, had a very fine dinner at the Bluefin Grill, and heard a very listenable r and b band play in a town center square.

How do I describe The Villages?

We will start with facts. About 160,000 people, almost all over 55, living in an ever expanding universe controlled by the Morse family, an area located in three Florida counties, larger than Manhattan Island, with middle and upper class families, virtually all white, who like to golf, eat and party the night away. The residents are mostly Trump supporters, some are snowbirds, some live here full time, almost all retired from their jobs somewhere else.

There seem to be more golf carts than automobiles, chugging up the sidewalkless streets. There about twelve golf courses, several recreational centers, three boisterous town centers, a full school system (serving children of outsiders who work in The Villages), and several health care and assisted living facilities, funeral parlors, churches and synagogues.

The governmental structure is impossible to understand and the boundaries are always expanding change, but the entire mammoth development is the product of the benevolent (and filthy rich) Morse family, the paternalistic monarchs who rule their own Magic Kingdom.

There are many restaurants, theaters and the like and more opportunities for extracurricular activities than you can imagine. And every night, in the three city centers, live entertainment with dancing outside. And crowds beyond imagination. Did you hear what I said? Beyond imagination.

All built from scratch over the last forty and for the most part over the last 25. Attractive enough, very American, and very clean and well maintained.

An hour northwest of Disney World, The Villages is a world unto itself.

Everyone seems happy, relaxed, and content.

My final thoughts about the place? HELP, GET ME OUT OF HERE.

We made some new friends. Nemo, Buoy, Grayson among others. They are ill and we visited them in the hospital. One wasn’t eating enough, another was in a boating accident, one had metastasized cancer. Yep, these were three sick sea turtles. But they are all doing well at the Loggerhead Marine Center hospital and we have hope for them.

Now we are in Florida where, as you know, gender identification is important. But you cannot tell a sea turtle’s gender until they are about 25 years old. Poor Governor Desantis. It must drive him crazy.

Worth Avenue in Palm Beach looks to be thriving. Clematis Street in West PB? Not so much. It needs help – give what you can. And if you happen to be in the market for 10 or 12 empty store spaces, this street’s for you.

Yes, we went by Mar-a-Lago. Nuthin’ happening there, I don’t think. Skip it. We also went by Manatee Lagoon. Nuthin’ happening there, either. I wondered why, and then it was clear. It must have been Manatee Day at Mar-a-Lago. Imagine it. Donald and the manatees cavorting in the pool. Having a great time.

Good food yesterday at two chain restaurants. Rocco’s Tacos and Seasons 52. Sort of a surprise. Reminds me of a time in London years ago when I was at a restaurant and asked the waiter whether the restaurant was a chain. In a heavy accent, he said: “No, it’s Italian”.

That’s it. Thanks to our great hosts. On to The Villages. Yes, that’s where we are going.

Wow. We saw the Nats win two games in a row. First, against the Cardinals and then against the World Series winning Astros. In each game, the Nats used a different pitcher each inning. This may be the secret to a winning season. We saw both Gore and Cavelli and they looked good, as did all the relievers. We saw some of the youngsters get hits and make some great fielding plays. We even saw Victor Robles strike out twice. What more can you ask?

Other news. The food at the Nats’ park is much better than the food at the Cardinals’. No question. The location off the Cards’ park (surrounded by restaurants and stores) is much better than the Nats’ surroundings (scrub and grass). The Cardinals have a fine scoreboard. The Nats, to put it mildly, do not. The Nats scoreboard has writing so small that it’s a strain even for my eagle eyes, and when you do see it, it doesn’t tell you much. That is for three reasons: it doesn’t try to tell you all you’d like to know, it was completely off part of the time, and what information it gives you is not reliable.

Seating in both parks is good and mostly shaded. Parking is adequate but set up very differently. The Nats win the Star Spangled Banner competition, but lose the Take Me Out to the Ballgame challenge. It’s like the song disappeared midstream, but the words stayed on the scoreb, until the last two lines, which we’re neither audible or visible.

The morning was spent on a forest and dune walk at the MacArthur Nature Center, with our volunteer guide, Gregg Olsen, a retired psychiatrist. We learned a lot. How to tell a mangrove from a manatee, how to predict the sex of a sea turtle, the difference between red, black and white mangroves (nothing to do with color) and how to distinguish talk from shorter palm trees. Seriously, folks, it was one great tour, and Ed our cart driver back to the parking lot, a retired computer science professor from Czechoslovakia, was also an interesting companion. And his driving was good, while the driver who took us to our car at Nats Park was clearly a frustrated Formula One driver, who narrowly avoided hitting people while ignoring the difference between pavement and grass. One great ride.

Last night, dinner at The Old Key Lime House in Lantana with our hosts and a high school classmate of Edie’s, who also brought along her husband.

The lime green restaurant opened in 1887 and had more customers than either ball park did. It has about two hundred rooms, inside and out, and we waited over an hour in one of its floating bars to be seated. In addition to people, there was loud music and screen after screen, and I was sure we had landed in the worst possible place. Until we were seated at a nice round table, with plenty of room, and the food came. Plank salmon and salad were excellent. And eventually everyone but us disappeared. We arrived at 6 and left at ten.

After a morning of sitting around, catching up, we went for a trip up the road to the John D. MacArthur State Park, a nature reserve and beach. We never got to the beach and paid no attention to the nature reserve, but took a short walk and got back to the car. Why? Because we spent so much time catching up that we didn’t leave enough time for the visit. We had a ball game to get to.

Digression. John MacArthur founded the MacArthur Genius Awards. Helen Hayes was his sister in law.

And we did get to the game on time. The Cardinals/Marlins spring training stadium in Jupiter is well set up, seating 5000 plus, mostly in the shade. We sat behind the plate a little to the third base side. The weather was 84, no humidity, cooling breeze. Perfect.

Our last spring training venture, when the Nats were in Viera was not much fun. This one was great. The Nats held the Cardinals to 5 hits and won 3-2. A different pitcher every inning. Got to look at some of the new guys. All looked good. The Nats are on a roll.

With the new pitch clock, the game took.2.5 hours. But it will take some getting used to. As will the larger bases. More balls will hit the bases, it will be harder to throw out someone at first, etc.

After the game, we went to Juno Beach Pier, where there were quite a number of fisherman. They all had something in common. Not catching anything. On to the Jupiter Lighthouse (closed) and down Ocean Boulevard back to our home away from home.

Dinner at Carmine’s, a very, very loud and crowded Italian restaurant. The valets handle Bentleys, McClarens and Farraris. We were in an Acura and parked ourselves. It was fun. My food was ok.

Late night conversation. And this morning? Getting ready for another ball game. Split team, two games today. Ours is against the Astros. They can’t be very good, can they?

We started our day in Florence SC.

Let me divert a minute. I remember driving through the beach town of Florence, Oregon. On the beach was a young man with a saddled camel, standing next to a sign which identified him as Lawrence of Florence.

Still diverting, here is a trivia question? Why did the Nightingales name their daughter Florence? Because she was born (conceived) in Florence, Italy. Google it.

Back on the road, heading South. People driving fast. Big trucks. No problem.

So let’s take a break. Get some coffee. Manning, SC. What’s there? Small town, seen better days. Nicest building. The high school, which has been in use over 100 years. Biggest surprise? Stores with the names Levy, Schwartz and Weinberg. That led to a Google search. Manning had quite a Jewish history from 1850s through early 20th century. Who knew? And a great cup of coffee for only $1. McDonald’s.

Onward. Let’s have lunch in Darien GA. Why? Because we can also go to Fort King George. What’s that? We’ll find out.

Small waterfront town on a river whose name starts and ends with an A. Lunch was a pastrami Reuben made of too much pastrami, the right amount of cheese and sauerkraut and two slices of dark rye. Not bad, but I didn’t do it justice.

King George was George I. The fort was the first British fort in Georgia, from1721 or so. Beautiful site with water and marsh views and many live oaks. Fort has been completely rebuilt. As well as an house like the native American tribe members had, and a Scottish looking house to memorialize the Scottish legion that was quartered there, and a cemetery. The fort did not last long. The enemies were the Spanish. They never fought there.

We watched a short intro film, toured the small but interesting museum (worth more time than we had), and hit the road.

And we drove and drove and drove, getting to our friends’ condo in Riviera Beach/West Palm Beach/Singer Island at about 8:30.

Ended with dinner at Johnny Longboat (I think). Very crowded in a commercial area with a lot of very crowded restaurants. Foreign country, this. The food – my ahi tuna wrap could have been better. Just sayin’, Johnny.

Tomorrow, baseball. I have a good chance of being the Nats starting third baseman. Stayed up all last night trying to decide what number I wanted on my jersey. Thoughts?