Art is 80

Now, first, this may be the largest blog post title ever. I understand that. But I am not planning on retyping it in its correct place. Sorry about that.

Okay, back to our story.

While everyone knows that DC has a crime problem, everyone also knows that every big city has a crime problem. But everyone should also realize that crime in DC is primarily concentrated in certain areas of the city. For example, in Ward 3, where we live, violent crime is virtually nonexistent. And, although the White House (and maybe right wing media) refuses to admit it, violent crime has been going down city-wide. Furthermore, according to ChatGPT, the DC metropolitan area’s overall crime rate puts it in the bottom 25% of US large metropolitan areas.

Donald Trump was able to win the 2024 presidential race because he was able to politicize immigration as a threat to American security. There were plenty of reasons to oppose the Biden border policies, but security (i.e., fear that immigrants were committing crimes) should have been way down the list. Statistics showed that recent immigrants (for reasons that should be pretty obvious) were less likely to commit crimes, but that didn’t matter. Since Trump views honesty as a weakness, not a virtue, he was able to concentrate on a few tragic incidents, repeat them over and over, and convince the gullible that people were crossing the border for the sole purpose of terrorizing the country.

He is now working on the 2026 midterms. He has ICE and other federal agencies engaged in their own terrorizing activities as they go after foreign-born people and unceremoniously try to send them to Venezuela, Uganda, and South Sudan. To him, this is a continuation of his 2024 narrative about immigrants and crime, and he expects it will be politically successful.

His anti-immigrant push is the focus of his “anti-crime” activity in DC. If you come from a Spanish speaking country, it does not matter if you snuck into the country and escaped detection, if you came into the country legally and are claiming asylum, if you are here on a valid visa (expired or not), if you are have a student visa or a tourist visa, if you are in the process of applying for citizenship, if you were brought into the country when you were a child or an infant, if you are married to a citizen, if you are 90 years old and have been here 75 years, if you work hard and pay your taxes, if you have served in the US military, and sometimes even if you are an actual bona fide US citizen. You are at risk of being scooped up off the streets and sent to a distant site where you will be held incommunicado. This is the reality of America today.

As you would imagine, there are many neighborhoods in the city with high levels of Hispanic populations. Over 10% of DC is Hispanic. People are afraid to go to work, afraid to go to the grocery store, afraid to walk their children to school. Neighbors have gone into action, aided by immigrants support groups. Some non-Hispanics shop for their neighbors. Other walk their neighbors’ children to and from school. And so on. They are well organized. And this is America today. Anyone from a Hispanic country is now a political pawn of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

In the meantime, the city is being economically strangled. Trump does not care. We vote against him, so we are expendable.

The National Guard serve no practical purpose  except to pick up trash. The increase in arrests is largely related to ICE enforcement. Crime appears to be down a bit, but crime is always low in non-democratic countries. And as Trump himself has said (I paraphrase): if a dictator brings down crime, maybe people prefer a dictator.

Enough said. Have a good Labor Day (those who celebrate). What’s this holiday about, anyway?

Last night, we watched Six Degrees of Separation, a film from the ’90s that we had never seen. In fact, it is possible that we haven’t seen any films from the ’90s. We were busy with other things.

Six Degrees, starring Donald Sutherland, Stockard Channing, and Will Smith, among others, is based on a true story, sort of. And that is how we came to watch it.

I should start at the beginning. The beginning starts in the city of Trondheim, Norway, a city we have never visited. Trondheim, the third largest Norwegian city and the northernmost large city on earth, has long intrigued me.

Our friends Michael and Wendy just got back from a Norwegian cruise which I think visited Trondheim. My cousin Richard in Germany, whom I have never met in person, also just finished a Norwegian cruise. A college classmate moved to Trondheim and may be there still. A Norwegian Facebook friend often writes about Trondheim. And I read something about the small Jewish community there and how, in a climate where sometimes the sun barely sets and sometimes barely rises, they set the time for the beginning of Shabbat.

By coincidence, something about traveling to Trondheim appeared on my Facebook feed Thursday night, leading to my opening up the Trondheim Wikipedia page and, after learning – among other things – that Trondheim has over 50,000 university students living there – I went to the list of “famous people” born there.

I had never heard of any of them, but for obvious reasons, the name David Abrahamsen interested me, and then I looked him up. I discovered that he was a member of an long established Trondheim Jewish family, that he was trained as a medical doctor and psychiatrist, and he moved to the United States, becoming an expert on serial killers. He wrote books on David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”) and on Jack the Ripper, among other things.

He had a daughter named (after her second marriage) Inger Elliott, who became a well-known expert and importer of Asian textiles, who once told a writer friend of hers, John Guare, about a young Black man named David Hampton, who came to her New York apartment, telling her untruthfully that he was a friend of one of her children and Sidney Poitier’s son, and needed a place to stay for a night, but that he turned to be a conman. She awakened to find him engaged in a sexual liaison with another man in her guest room and called the police, who arrested him.

Her story became the basis for Six Degrees of Separation.

I thought the film was awful, by the way. Dumb, racist, artificial. But I seem to feel that about at least half the films I see.

Six Degrees, by the way, was a play before it became a film. Unfortunately, it was never made into a musical. But if it had been, perhaps it would have been written by Stephen Sondheim.

Had it been, he may have wanted to express his gratitude to Inger Elliott for starting this particular ball rolling and, at the same time, honoring her father David Abrahamsen, for fathering Inger Elliott, by premiering the musical in his home town.

This is just a long way of suggesting that we have  missed the  possibility of hearing Sondheim in Trondheim.

Anyway, (1) Trondheim, (2) Abrahamsen, (3) Elliott, (4) Hampton, (5) Guare, (6) Channing, Sutherland, or Smith [you choose]. Six degrees of separation.

Maybe tomorrow, we will go back to Trump. He grows more evil by the hour.

I had breakfast with one friend yesterday and lunch with another. Each told me a secret that I am not allowed to repeat.

On another topic, I ordered pancakes twice recently at First Watch. Actually, at different locations, so I will rephrase. I ordered pancakes twice recently at two First Watches. OK, that is not clear, either; you might think I ordered four pancakes, and that would be false

So I will try a third time. On two different recent occasions, I ordered a pancake at First Watch, but guess what? The pancakes were different, and so we’re the First Watches.

I am not going to identify the two First Watches. You can guess, if you want. I will only give you one hint. Here it is: Since June, I have been in four First Watches, and two of them have no connection with what I want to say.

Okay, that was not really a clue. And it also isn’t really accurate. But to explain would be totally confusing and just lead to more questions. And we don’t need that, do we?

To get on with our story, let me say this. If I were asked to grade the two pancakes, one would get an F and the other an A+.

Why am I telling you this? Here is a big clue for this question: because you do not want to hear any more about Donald Trump.

The F pancake was their carrot pecan pancake. I ordered it because it seemed healthy and interesting. It was both. But it wasn’t edible. It was the first time I had ever ordered a pancake at a First Watch, and I vowed I would never order a pancake there again.

Thus (so, therefore, ergo), when I went to First Watch the next time, I ordered a pancake. This time, a multi-grain pancake. With a little syrup, it rated an A+.

By the way, their coffee is quite good. It comes from a district in Colombia, and not the District of Columbia. You order a cup; they give you a pitcher. The Washington Nationals should go to First Watch. Boy, do they need a pitcher.

There are 535 First Watch locations. That means that if you decided to eat every day at a different First Watch every morning and started on January 1, 2026, you would finish on June 19, 2027. That assumes two things. Can you guess what they are? First, you don’t miss a day. Second, the number of First Watches does not change. (I could elaborate on both of those points. But, I won’t.)

By the way, they have 14,000 employees. That seems like a lot, but remember Walmart has 2,100,000 employees. That means, for every employee First Watch has, Walmart has 150. This, by the way, is the first time that this comparison has ever been made. Ever.

Sometimes, I am sure that you wonder why you bother to read this blog. Today, I bet, is one of those times.

But stick with it. When all is said and done, you will know the answer to that question. And this I promise you. I will never let you down.

Former Judge J. Michael Luttig said something a few nights ago on MSNBC about the state of the American government today and especially about the state of the American judiciary. He is very critical of the Trump administration for all of the obvious reasons, and he is very critical about Congress for all of the obvious reasons. He is harshly critical of the current Supreme Court.

But Judge Luttig has nothing but praise the the United States District Court judges and, I think, the judges of the appellate courts. They, he says, form the only branch of the government standing up for America.

As to the Supreme Court, we know we have two conservative justices for every liberal justice. And we recognize that this is not the Supreme Court we should have. Not only not the Court we deserve or would like, but not the Court that should exist.

We were cheated out of one justice who would have been appointed by Barack Obama, but for Mitch McConnell’s unprecedented refusal to allow hearings for the nominee, much less to allow the nomination to come to a vote. He took the spurious position that the nomination should belong to the next president, to be elected later that year.

And then, four years after that, to add salt to the wound, McConnell completely reversed his position without a hint of embarrassment and pushed through the nomination of Justice Amy Coney Barrett with unprecedented speed, even though she was nominated only four weeks before the 2020 presidential election. That’s just what happens when you control the Senate, he said. Mitch McConnell is just a bad guy.

And the McConnell Supreme Court (mistakenly called the Roberts court, at times), often surprisingly and very consistently, has backed positions taken by the Trump administration, much being done on its “shadow docket”, without normal process and even without written opinions. Before this past year, who even knew the Court had a shadow docket? For shame!

But the Supreme Court has often been a problem, even before Trump packed the Court. There have been many harmful and unnecessary decisions in recent years. Decisions decimating the Voting Rights Act and stating that the courts should not interfere in partisan gerrymandering disputes. Decisions expanding the definition of free speech, defining corporations as “people,” and cutting off limitations on corporate contributions to political campaigns. And, of course, decisions defining the Second Amendment in absolutist terms, restricting restrictions on guns and other weapons.

Statistics that I have seen show that 80% of homicides in the District of Columbia are the result of gunshots. Other statistics show there are many more guns in the country than there people.

Yet, along with his stated, but undoubtedly insincere, determination to cut homicides in the District, Trump’s recently appointed US Attorney, Jeanine Pirro, has stated that her office will no longer prosecute anyone found to be illegally carrying a firearm. How does this make sense?

One year, it’s at a grade school in Connecticut, then it’s a high-school in Florida, then a grade school in Texas, and now a church school in Minnesota.

The Court’s position on the Second Amendment is different today than it had been for most of this country’s 249 years, and probably one day will be reversed again. But not soon.

Of course, in the best of possible worlds, government officials would all recognize the problem and sit down to try to resolve it. In this country, today, we are unable and unwilling to do that. We can not reach any agreement that crosses party lines, even if the lives of children are at stake. For shame!

On whom should the blame be put? On the MAGA Republicans, who are truly deplorable (remember what that description led to?), or the non-MAGA Republicans, who are scared to death? Or on the Democrats, who made some mistakes during the Biden years, and who nowvl often seem hapless and divided?

Or do we put the blame on ourselves? A recent Bulwark opinion suggested that somewhat over 40% of Americans support fascism, whether they know it or not. This might be our ultimate problem. A problem to which there is no apparent answer.

But we do need to find one. And that really means the Democrats must get their act together, something that becomes very difficult when it seems they don’t even know what their act is.

Or should we simply blame all of it on the bossanova?

If you ask white Americans whether Black slavery was wrong, I would think that almost all would agree with that. The same would be true if you asked about the treatment of native Americans during the colonial period and early years of the Republic.

But white Americans today by and large give little thought to those questions, and, as we see, many Americans, including many who rank high in our government, not only don’t think about them, they don’t want to think about them. They do not want to interrupt their appreciation of the life so many of us lead by thinking about how we got here. And even among those who might think about those things now and then, the questions “If I had been alive then, what would I have thought and how would I have acted?” rarely comes to mind.

Now, let us switch to the Middle East.

Let’s look at Israel 100 years from now. There are at least five  possibilities. I am going to list them, but am not going to give odds as to which are more or less likely.

1. Israel no longer exists as a sovereign state, and the area from the river to the sea is free of Jews.
2. Israel no longer exists and the area comprises a different country with a mixed Jewish-Arab population.
3. Israel exists, and Gaza and the West Bank contain a Palestinian state or states at peace with Israel.
4. Israel exists, and Gaza and the West Bank contain a Palestinian state or states always in a hot or cold war with Israel.
5. Israel has expanded to include Gaza and the West Bank.

The right wing of the Netanyahu coalition, and by now, maybe Netanyahu himself, are banking on scenario number 5. They discount the possibility of scenario 3 and the others are unacceptable. 

Getting to scenario 5 might be brutal, just like getting to today’s United States was brutal, but once you get there, the brutality will be limited to history books. Or, as we see today’s tendencies in this country, the brutality may not even make it big in those books.

Of course, scenario 5 may never be achieved, but the other four possibilities (plus others that you could add to my list) should be, they think, much less appealing to those who want to minimize conflict in the 22nd century. They see the necessity of increased conflict in the 21st to achieve future stability in the 22nd. They feel themselves the bringers of peace to Israel. And they are betting on the potential of achieving scenario 5, and that the conflicts that lead there will largely be forgotten, tacitly approved, or at least understood.

You and I don’t live in the 22nd century. We think about a much shorter term future. We disapprove of how the Palestinians are being treated, just as we strongly disagree with how most Palestinians seem to be thinking about their own future.

After all, a Palestinian could have written the post. His or her scenario 5 would be very different.  Palestine from the river to the sea. Jews exiled or turned into barely second class citizens. And it is that opposite vision that makes scenario 4, a scenario that no one wants, a possibility.

The right wing Israelis and the right wing Palestinians are each willing to sacrifice the 21st century to bring about their version of the 22nd, a version characterized as peaceful, forgetfulness forgiving.

Who are we, looking into the future our own 21st century preferences is likely to bring about, to say they are wrong?

I think of two quotes. First, Senator Joni Ernst, who said, “We’re all going to die”, so (I add) whether it’s by disease or violence, does it matter in the long-run? And Pres. John Adams who talked about the necessity of fighting wars, so that yhe next generation can bring about prosperity, and so the generation after that can enjoy literature and music.

Not a sermon. Just a thought.

This is a good way to start today’s post. Clearly, it is true. What to do about it is another question.

It puzzles me that the further Trump’s popularity falls, the appeal of the Democratic Party falls farther. I don’t understand it, but it seems clear to me that three of the reasons are Chuck Shumer, Halim Jeffries, and Ken Martin. “Ken Martin?”, you ask, “who is he?” That is part of the problem. He is the chair of the party and has made no impression on you.

As to Shumer and Jeffries, I have no problem with either, as legislators. In fact, I like them. But as voices, spokespersons, faces? Clearly not. If they were right for those positions, the Democrats would not be where they are today.

For one thing, both are from New York. The Democrats need leaders from places like Kansas and Texas and Florida. For another, they are both members of perceived minority groups, and the Democrats are in a position where they need to appeal to Trump’s populist targets. That does not mean that the Democrats should become a white man’s club, but they should have some more white faces in their leadership.

On the other hand, the Democrats shouldn’t give up on DEI, although it needs to be managed better. The Democrats should make it clear to all minority groups that, without some recognized form of DEI, their continued progress in this country does not stand a chance.

Perhaps more than anything else, the Democrats need a platform. Not one of overwhelming detail, and not one so specific that it will be subject to change every time the sun comes up. A platform of unchangeable principles. Perhaps as simple as a set of Democratic Ten Commandments, or a Democratic Pledge of Allegiance.  Not a pledge of allegiance to the Democratic Party, but to a set of invioble principles. You can start with some old ones, like “liberty and justice for all” and build on them.

Similarly, the Democrats need to counter everything bad in Trumpism. A list of, say, 20 no-nos. The list could be longer of course, but for its purpose, maybe even 20 is too many. Examples? “We will not turn the military on American residents.” “We will not whisk people off the streets and hold them in secret locations, not allowing contact with family members or attorneys.” “We will respect the authority of governors and mayors.” Simple, obvious things.

And, perhaps more important than anything else, the Democrats need not only  be prepared to support the integrity of American elections, but to convince the public that our election systems, as constructed and operated state by state, are honest, and the results are accurate. As it stands now, our 2026 election is at enormous risk.

Who is it in The Mikado who keeps “a little list”? The Democrats need to keep a number of them, with contents suggested above. And they need to be published in every way possible in today’s media environment. Again and again and again and again.

Yesterday was a strange one for me. I will try to explain.

My jury summons required me to report to the courthouse, coincidentally (I am sure) located near the Judiciary Square Metro stop, at 9 a.m. I left the house dressed in fresh khakis and a red plaid button down shirt at 8:15, and walked to the Metro, about 15 minutes from the house.

It was not overly warm, but I had done a lot of walking over the past several days (10,000 steps plus on two of the last three) and my legs felt it. In addition, my left foot bunion, which I have been able to ignore for more than 30 years, is finally making its presence felt, so my steps are not as carefree as they have been.

Whatever they reasons, when I got to the Metro (quickly discovering that the street escalator was not functioning), and on the train, I was already, as some used to say and some may still say, plumb tuckered out. How tuckered out was I? So tired that, along with one other man who kept his eyes closed the whole time, I was the only person on the entire and crowded subway car that wasn’t looking at their smartphone.

I got off at Judiciary Square just on time at 8:50, walked to the still sleek and attractive Moultrie Court House, and arrived early at the juror intake room. It was 8:58.

I stood in line for a few minutes, and then it was my turn. Two of three clerks were fighting over me. I told them I could only be in one place at one time. The one with the biggest smile (they were both smiling) won out. She looked at my summons and my driver’s license and said simply: “You want to be excused?” I said that I would like to be because I had a number of things scheduled for the next day, and she said,”Okay, you will get an email telling you that you are permanently excused.”

And that was it. On the one hand, I was surprised. On the other, I was a bit hurt. But as I thought about it, I realized that I had reported for jury duty over 20 times through my adult life and never served on a jury. So, really nothing had changed.

I also should say that I was planning on reading E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End while I was sitting around waiting to be called for a voir dire, but it was not to be.

I decided to walk to the Gallery Place Metro stop, and stay for a while reading at a café, and bought coffee at Gregory’s, where the coffee is always good, but my heart wasn’t in it. So I went to the station, saw four National Guardsmen, all unarmed and bored to death (as well as being cruelly overdressed), and got on the train.

Since I got home, I have taken one of our cars to the service station because it developed a flat tire over the weekend, all on its own. The tire, when placed on a thingamabob to test it for repair, looked just like my bunion. The tire will be replaced. I am stuck with the bunion.

By the way, I did go to a podiatrist several decades ago. He told me I would need surgery. I asked him if anything could go wrong. He said that the surgery might not work, the bunion might reappear, it may make things worse, there may be complications, or I may die. Enough said.

I also closed my eyes for ten minutes (opening them over a half hour later), and then went to the post office, bought a sandwich at Subway, and did a brief grocery run.

Still tired when I got home, I pulled together my strength and picked up my phone, going to Facebook and watching short “reels’ for almost 45 minutes, as they rotated between Rodney Dangerfield clips, short segments of terrific piano playing, and odd examples of Hasidic rabbis dancing with each other. Then, I wrote this much of this post.

Then I watched more clips. Many of the piano performances were from this year’s Cliburn competition. The winner was a young pianist from Hong Kong, named Aristo Wang. We will hear more from him. He was born in Hong Kong, had his early education there and in London, and has a degree in economics from Harvard, and music degrees from both the New England Conservatory and Julliard.

The rest of the day was quiet. J finished the biography of Max Nordau that I have been reading, and went back to Colum McCann’s Thirteen Ways of Looking, which I had started earlier.

I watched, out of the corner of my eye, the Nats-Yankee game. The Nats are shut out for 8 innings, allowing the Yankees to score 10 times. Then, in the 9th, the Nats score 5. It may be that the Nats are in last place in their division, but they are in first place in all the Majors in scoring in the last 2 innings of a game.  And, as I understand it, that is what really counts.

In DC, it is “one day or one trial”. In other words, if I am selected for a jury, I am there for the trial, no matter how long the trial lasts. If I am not selected, I am only on duty for one day. Once you are dismissed, you can not be called for two years. There are no formal exemptions, except for medical exemptions where you have a note from your doctor.

So I have been called for jury duty many times, but never selected. Sometimes you just sit around all day and never even get called for a panel. Sometimes, you get called for a panel, and a panel can be 50 people, with the lawyers looking to whittle it down to 12 jurors and 2 alternates. I have been on several panels, but because I am a lawyer, or because I look too shifty, I have never sat on a jury. Edie, on the other hand, has been on several.

The times in DC are undoubtedly strange, as Donald seems intent on punishing us for voting against him. So far, the biggest effect seems to be on restaurants downtown since potential customers are afraid to be caught in a crossfire, and area residents with Spanish accents, who are being rounded up and shipped off in great secrecy. Terrible times here, and it will only get worse.

Don is now threatening other cities as well (pity the poor Guardsmen and women whose lives are being disrupted), including neighboring Baltimore. As you may recall the Key Bridge on the Baltimore Beltway was damaged by a commercial ship a year or two ago. Our wonderful leader has told Gov. Moore of Maryland that, if Baltimore and the State doesn’t do everything that he orders them to do, he just not pay for the federal share of the cost of a new bridge.

Did I ever tell you that Donald Trump is a terribly evil and bad person, and that if you have Trump Derangement Syndrome, you should not be ashamed, but proud?

Over the weekend, we went to the Smithsonian National African Art Museum on the mall. It is such a delight (the museum itself as well as the art work) that I always feel sad that it never seems to draw a crowd. It appears to draw fewer than 150,000 visitors a year and in 2024 drew only about 130,000, or an average of about 350 a day. That compares to 750,000 at the Hirshhorn down the street, for example.

Part of the problem is that most of us don’t have sufficient context to fully appreciate what is on display in this three story museum, and part is ……. I think there are many reasons.

It is located on Independence Avenue SW, and the entrance is one of three in the Enid Haupt Garden.

I took a few photos of work I especially liked. What do you think of these?

Or these?

I did take some brief notes on the origin of these pieces, some of which are hundreds of years old and some of which are not. But let’s just appreciate them for how they look today.

I left Budapest by train. I had no idea of the amount of space between Budapest and Prague.  It is somewhat more than 300 miles, and the trip took most of the day on Communist era trains. And, to tell you the truth, nothing seen from the window was memorable.

I was in a compartment with only a middle-aged, well-dressed couple. Again, our mutual languages were limited, but over the course of the trip, I guess we spoke quite a bit. They were Hungarian. They were Jewish. They were party members. He was in the diplomatic service. They were stationed in Prague. He was the Hungarian Economic Minister to Czechoslovakia.

I told them my sad story with my reservation in Budapest. We all hoped that would not happen in Prague, but as a failsafe, they gave me their phone number, written on a now long-lost business card.

Arriving in Prague, I went to the then new Park Hotel, the pride of the city, only to find out that they, too, had never heard of me, and that they had a room for that night, but not the following night. There were two American men, probably in their 40s, checking in who expressed their sympathy.

I saw the two men an hour or so later when I went to the hotel restaurant and they invited me to join them. What an experience that was. They both were economists working for the United Nations labor office in Geneva. They were in Prague on business. They were both from New York, and one of them knew everything there was to know about any subject you could throw at him. At first, he told me more than The Encyclopedia Britannica could have about Czechoslovakia and the UN’s office in Geneva. But then it turned out he had an absolutely encyclopedic knowledge about baseball statistics over the last 50 years or so. And then opera – who sang what roles where and when, and what the critics thought. I was astounded. I had never met anyone like that.

For those who have been in Prague during the past 25 years or so, it is probably impossible to conceptualize how sad and depressing and lifeless it was in 1973. I saw the castle and the Old City and the Jewish quarter (synagogues and cemetery). It was about 5 years since the Prague Spring, and it looked like the city was wallowing in despair.

And I had no place to stay the next night. I found a pay phone and somehow figured out how to call my train companions for advice, and they (reluctantly, I am sure) gave me directions to their apartment. It must have been dangerous for them to invite an American to  stay.

I took a street car out of central Prague to an area of Soviet Era high rises, a large number of identical, dilapidated gray buildings with no landscaping, and found the right one. The elevator was broken, the lobby was very drab and unwelcoming. I remember little about the apartment itself. I had supper there with them. They were very friendly and accommodating.  I don’t even remember if they had a second bedroom or if I slept on a couch.

When I left the next morning on a train for Frankfort, they wished me well, but warned me not to try to send them a thank you note or anything. The evening, they said, never happened. Or at least that is what I think say said.

I was intrigued when the train stopped at Marienbad (I had seen the film and didn’t even know it was a real place) and at Pilsner, and I was ecstatic to get out of Czechoslovakia.

Deep breath. Frankfurt. Immediately change trains. Swiss Alps. Rome. Naples. Pompeii. More adventures. But you are tired of this trip.

I will tell you more if you ask. The exiled member of the Russian nobility. The young lady in Rome. The train strike in Naples and how I almost lost my life crossing the street. The drugged out American teenagers. Even the surprise visit from the FBI after I got back home.

But tomorrow – back to 2025.

My only frames of reference for judging Communist Hungary in 1973 was to compare it to East Berlin in 1962 and Moscow and Leningrad, which I visited in the winter of 1970. East Berlin, the year after the wall was built, was empty and sterile. And I know that housing conditions in the USSR in 1970 were terrible, but I wasn’t in anyone’s dwelling units then, so all I saw were the public sections of the cities. I was not restricted in any way, so I made my way around the two Russian cities anywhere I wanted to go. The streets were busy, everyone seemed well-dressed, the stores were busy, restaurants were filled, I went to the ballet, to museums, to the circus. I was surprised at how relaxed and liveable it seemed from the eyes of a visitor. On the other hand, the elderly women cleaning the streets at dawn, the concierge on every hotel floor, the lack of laughter in the streets, and the fact that each shop was government owned made it clear that this was not Kansas.

Budapest in 1973 was different. It could have been Chicago or Boston. It was alive, there were what appeared to be private stores and restaurants, people smiled and laughed. I felt a bit off center because there were no familiar labels and no western cars, so there was some feeling of being in a parallel universe. But it seemed separate but equal.

I wasn’t there long enough to do everything, but I did do quite a lot. I ate in restaurants that looked like this

where I could get a full, multi-course meal with wine for $3.

I went to the opera

where I saw Don Giovanni (I think) in Hungarian, which made it sound to me like they were using made up syllables. The opera, pictured above as it looks today, was unrestored and drab in 1973. I was able to get into the Doheny Street Synagogue before it was fixed up after being damaged in World War II, when it was closed to the public, not being used, and still had holes in the roof where water fell on the Bima and the seats. Today, it looks like this

Then, not at all. I was lucky to get in. There was a workman doing something and he opened the door for me.

On our more recent trip to Budapest, Edie and I went to the opera and toured the synagogue. To say it was night and day is to understate the differences.

From Budapest, I went to Prague by train. Night and day again. I think I will tell the Prague story tomorrow and then come back to 2025.

To get context for this post, please be sure you have first read yesterday’s.

After six hours of a relatively monotonous Danube shoreline, Budapest, spreading on both sides of the river, came as a total shock, its beauty fulfilling all of the hype given me on the boat. If you have been there, you know what I mean.

The castle on the Buda side.

The parliament building on the Pest side.

It was late afternoon, as I recall, when we arrived, and I bounded up the stairs on the dock with a feeling that I had arrived in paradise and nothing could go wrong. Following the instructions from my travel agent, I located the small office of Ibusz, the state tourist agency, near the dock, where I was to collect my hotel voucher.

I arrived just as the two young employees, one male, one female, were closing for the day. They were about my age and, because I was now an energetic young fellow who had just entered paradise, I was sure they would become my best friends.

I told them my name and why I was there and showed them my receipt from my travel agency. They each had the same response – a blank stare. They had never heard of me. They had never heard of the travel agency. They had no hotel room for me. There were no hotel rooms in Budapest available that night. I should get on the next train and go back to Vienna.

Now, had I been Arthur Hessel that day, that is probably what I would have done. But I was Super Art, invincible, and I could control my own destiny, Ibusz be damned.

I told them that there was no way that there was no room in all of Budapest for me and that, if we worked together as the perfect trio I knew we were, we would find me a place to stay. Again, normally they would have ignored me, but because I was Super Art, they happily agreed to stick around, keep the office open after hours, and man the phones. After about half an hour, they found a place.

It was not a hotel, and  airbnbs had not been invented, but they had found a room in the apartment of a woman who could use a little money.

She lived in a typical Pest tenament building. From the street, these late 19th century Budapest neighborhoods sort of look like the Bronx, but the overall footprint of the buildings is very different because they are built around large open courtyards with the apartments reached by external stairs within the courtyards, like this:

But hers, of course, was not nearly as fancy.

She was an old woman and spoke no English. We could communicate with my high school German but not perfectly. I know nothing at all about her and didn’t find out much then, either. Her apartment (cold water only) was very run down. The furniture was old. She clearly had no money, but……

She told me she had a grandson, and more than anything else, she wanted to buy my blue jeans (obviously then a valuable commodity in Hungary) to give to him. In fact, this poor, old woman kept raising the price she would pay me for my jeans until she got to the equivalent of 40 US dollars. $40 in 1973 would be close to $300 today.

I was aghast. How could anyone pay that much for a pair of jeans? How could this woman, seemingly lacking everything, pay that much? Even had I been willing to get rid of my jeans, I would never have taken that much from her. I would rather just give them to her. But then what would I wear the rest of my trip?

Of course, there were other possibilities. Maybe she had no grandson. Or no grandson who wanted jeans. Maybe this was simply a business proposition. Maybe she knew she could sell them for $50. I will never know.

But I did realize that I had made a mistake. Had I brought a few extra pairs of jeans with me, I could have paid for my entire trip. Or perhaps wound up behind bars.

Guess what? I am out of space again, and I still haven’t told you about my time in Budapest.

Come back tomorrow, OK?

For some reason, Budapest has a special attraction to me. It isn’t that I have any connection to the city. I certainly have no feel for general Hungarian history. And the Hungarian language is obviously a mystery to me. But if I had to move to Budapest, I think I would immediately feel perfectly comfortable and at home. I have only been there twice, first in the early 1970s when Hungary was Communist, and once about 35 or so years later.

What, or who, is responsible for my feelings? I blame it on a number of Hungarian-Americans I met on a hydrofoil traveling down the Danube in 1974. Let me explain.

In my earlier years, I took a number of solo trips to Europe. A Moscow-Leningrad trip. A Spain-Portugal trip. A week in Florence trip. And a trip focused on Budapest and Prague.

In the early 1970s, few Americans were traveling behind the Iron Curtain. It was not considered “the thing to do”, logistics were difficult, and there was a fair amount of trepidation involved. But I had been told there was a travel agency in DC (its name will remain unknown to protect the guilty) which had connections and specialized in trips to Communist countries, so I went to see them for a trip that would take me first to Vienna (I had been there before), and then to Budapest and Prague, and finally (on my own) to Rome, Naples and Pompeii, where I had also been previously. Two or three weeks altogether.

The travel agency made my reservations from Vienna to Budapest by boat. I went to and from Prague by train. I am not sure who arranged for that. The agency made hotel reservations, three nights in Budapest and two in Prague, for me

I flew to Vienna. I don’t remember if I had hotel reservations there or if I found a place after I arrived. I probably had reservations (just one night) and probably the travel agency booked it for me as well. It was one of those European style hotels that actually occupied one floor of an office building or apartment house, and it was awful. It was on the dingy-spooky side, and the room I was given (the only one available) was so narrow that lying in the small bed, I think I could touch both walls. There was a dresser whose drawers could not be fully opened and a small window that looked into an air shaft. For the first and (so far) only time in my life, I suffered from acute claustrophobia.

It was in the old city of Vienna, inside the Ringstrasse, and I remember having a nice meal with a glass or two of good Austrian red wine at an old restaurant nearby that claimed to have been Franz Schubert’s favorite spot. I guess I was gullible back then, and remember wondering whether this was where Schubert ate his famous Unfinished Dinner. (Okay, I just now made up that last line.) But the restaurant was filled with Austrian gemütlichkeit, and my mind relaxed.

I went back to the hotel, went to bed if not to sleep, and lay there with the walls closing in on me, even in the dark.

At some ungodly hour, well after midnight, I got up, dressed and zipped my suitcase, left the hotel

I could stand no more, and wandered the streets. I think I found another and better place to spend four or five hours, but my mind is rather murky on that. I don’t remember sleeping on a park bench.

At any rate, the next day I made my way to the hydrofoil dock on the not very blue (and in Vienna not very attractive) Danube and boarded the boat (as I recall, a new contraption at the time) for my 6 or so hour trip to parts unknown.

It was a beautiful day, the sky was a bright blue. The boat was festive and crowded.

While that section of the Danube is not especially awe inspiring, it was a pleasant trip. I remember three things.

First, it was not that long after leaving Vienna that we had Czechoslovakia on our left and Hungary on our right. I could tell we weren’t in Kansas any more because, I think in both countries, there were armed guard towers at very regular intervals, obviously to make sure no one was going to dive into the river with the goal of escaping the country. Second, I remember passing by Bratislava and wondering what it would be like going into a second tier Communist city, one that then probably never saw Americans.

But third, I remember the Hungarian-Americans on the boat, most 20 or 30 years older than me. Many were going back to  Budapest for the first time since the aborted 1956 revolution, when they escaped the country. These folks were elated to be going back. They LOVED Budapest. It was the MOST AMAZING CITY IN THE WORLD. I was going to have the best time, eat the best food, meet the best people. Their excitement was more than contagious, it was all enveloping. I was hooked. I couldn’t wait.

Then…….

I now see that I have a full blog post thinking about Budapest, but only talking about Vienna and the trip down the Danube. Maybe, we will return to this thrilling tale of yesteryear tomorrow. There is quite a bit to say.

This post is a companion to yesterday’s about Trump’s lack of an end game in his supposed pursuit to make Washington great again.

I took some out of town visitors on a tour of Washington yesterday. They have been to Washington a few other times and they had seen the main tourist sites, so we decided to skip those and see parts of Washington that tourists normally do not get to.

We left our house about 10:30 and returned about 2:30. We stopped and had a sandwich in the middle (30 to 45 minutes).

I report the following: no signs of National Guard or additional law enforcement.

As I said, we stayed away from the government buildings and major museums and tourists sites. We hit residential areas such as Westmoreland Terrace, AU Park, Forest Hills, Georgetown, Glover Park, Cleveland Park, Massachusetts Heights, and Kalorama. We visited the National Cathedral grounds and the Basilica grounds. We saw the campuses of American University, UDC and Catholic University. We visited embassy areas. We were in Rock Creek Park and the Dupont Circle neighborhood. We saw no law enforcement.

It seems clear that if we had gone to the National Mall, to Capitol Hill, to the major monuments, we would have seen National Guard contingents. If we had crossed the Anacostia and gone to Wards 7 and 8, perhaps we would have seen or sensed something. But we did none of these things.

I saw polls today in the Washington Post which show general opposition to everything going on. Polling maybe in the 80-20 range, although I did not see this by area of the city. But it is also clear that crime, for some DC neighborhoods and some DC residents, is a major concern. Even so, however, only 18% of DC resodents think that the inceased enforcement makes them safer and over 60% says it makes them feel less safe.

I did look at some of the crime statistics reported by the 8 DC administrative wards, which have approximately equal populations. We live in Ward 3, a geographically large ward, which has very little crime. Yes, some property crime, but virtually no violent crime. The homicide level for Ward 3 through August 20, 2025 for this year, for example, is 0. Wards 7 and 8 together have shown over 30 murders already this year.

The property crime situation, which I assume includes carjacking, is different. Although property crimes are not high in Ward 3, they are quite high in Ward 2. Ward 2 includes the downtown area, the Dupont Circle area, and some of the highly touristed parts of the city. The property crime situation, according to the statistics I saw, is higher in Ward 2 than it is in either Ward 7 or 8. This is something, if true, that I did not know, and would lead to thinking that more enforcement is needed. Apparently, this is because Ward 2 contains the most commercial activity of any area of the city and commercial activity attracts property crime. I don’t know.

But it goes back to so much of what the Trump administration does. Because so much is done to obtain emotional responses, rather than to actually solve problems, the type of thought that you would want to go into an activity such as increased crime protection is not there. I don’t think that anyone has matched particular responses to particular crimes. It’s just bring out the National Guard, and have the FBI ignore their other more important responsibilities and do night patrols in DC neighborhoods.

And then of course, there is ICE, involved in a very different kind of crime control, but one which gets conflated with violent crimes and property crimes. And unfortunately, the targeting of people speaking Spanish or with an accent and whisking them off the streets without knowing anything about them and without providing them with any semblance of due process, sometimes taking them, holding them incommunicado without an opportunity to inform family members as to where they are, or to obtain counsel, as outrageous as it is, is simply getting lost as one aspect of making DC safe again, something on which it has little, and maybe no, effect.

As all this activity is going on, are you being distracted from other things, such as the shakeup at all American museums, which are too woke, as can be proved by all of the negative information being provided on slavery, for example? That is the latest, so add it to the list.

Remember when the US went into Iraq? Or when we went into Afghanistan? Or when Israel struck back at Hamas? No end game. What will be done the day after?

I would suggest that this is exactly the position the Trump administration is going to find itself in here in DC.

Arrests in DC have picked up. Let’s leave out the ICE pickups of people who have not committed violent crimes; that is a different story and a large number of the arrests. Let us assume that these arrests have led to less crime, although there is no clear connection there. If you arrest someone for a driving violation, for example, the effect on crime will probably not exist.

But let’s assume for the moment that those being arrested include many whp are intent on committing future crimes (although no one really can tell that and intention to commit future crimes is not a crime itself). Or, let’s divorce the increase in law enforcement personnel from arrest statistics entirely, and simply conclude that their presence will deter some crime. That is highly possible.

But what is the end game? Whether the federal occupation deters crime by its simple existence, or by its specific activities, what is the end game?

Unless the occupation is to remain forever, at some point it will be over. (Arthur, at last you have said something everyone can agree with.) And then what? What is to stop crime from returning to its former levels?

Mayor Bowser was, to a large extent, correct when she said: give me more money to increase the MPD by the number of folks you have sent to town, and I will increase arrests and bring down crime, too. Just like you say you are.

She is probably correct, and that would be an appropriate end game. Increase the DC budget for increased law enforcement, and increase the annual federal payment (or find an equivalent resource) accordingly, and you have an end game. But that is very unlikely to occur.

And, I think there is another problem. The DC police force is already a few hundred officers short of its current approved capacity. This is a problem everywhere, it seems. There are not a sufficient number of qualified people to take on this stressful and dangerous occupation. And without a large enough group of candidates, this, too, is not an end game.

So what are other answers? Poverty relief programs, after school activity programs, criminal rehabilitation and post-confinement programs, more drug enforcement, stricter gun laws, more mental health support? The list could go on and on, as you know. And somewhere in this long list of possibilities are recipes for success.

You need the right leaders, sufficient funding, and the freedom to experiment. All three of these. Do we have any now? And obviously the Trump administration has different goals. It goals are to exaggerate crime in blue cities, show that Trump is tough on crime, accuse Democrats of being soft on crime, and hope to hold onto Congress in 2026. (Of course, they have other ways to hold onto their political power, some of which may in fact include criminal activity, but that is for another day.)

Another thing to keep in mind. When law enforcement success is measured by the number of arrests, mistakes will be made in the process. Innocent people will be arrested, innocent people will be terrorized. This is what happens in most totalitarian societies. You can eat off the streets, you can walk through dark alleys at midnight. But you are at risk of being whisked off the streets at any time, for good reason or for no reason, by government forces. And recourse, if it exists at all, is limited.

So, back to the beginning. What is the end game here? Until we know that, nothing can be really accomplished.

(1) Question: What are two promises that are impossible to believe? First, Putin saying, “Just give me part of the Ukrainian land I have been demanding, and I promise I will never try to get more.” Second, Trump saying, “Don’t worry. If Ukraine gives Putin that part of its land he now wants and Putin later tries to take more, we will defend Ukraine as if it were a part of NATO”.

So, today is a big day. Zelenskyy and Trump meeting. What will happen? Will Trump want to say, “Vlod, take this deal or not one more penny from the US.”? Maybe. And that is why, to make sure he doesn’t, the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, NATO, and the EU are interrupting their August and coming to town.

(2) I read that the addition of federal DEA and FBI and ICE agents, along with the DC National Guard, when added to the 40+ police forces already in the city, are not enough to bring down DC’s already falling crime rate. So we are adding Guard members from West Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio. It is like a big party filled with people you would never want to invite to a party. Other than innocent people being swept up off the streets, and maybe some injuries and deaths, nothing will come of this, I am sure.

(3) Let’s go on to something more interesting and, only because of the passage of time, less depressing.

You remember the French novelist Emile Zola, who stood up for the innocence of French-Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus, who was accused of treason. Do you know how Zola died? Zola died in his early 60s of carbon monoxide poisoning due to a clogged chimney. Did you know that?

Did you know that it was ruled an accident, but that Zola’s great granddaughter reported that her grandfather (Zola’s son) told her when she was young that a man came to see him some time after the incident and told him that someone the man knew, a chimney sweep who just passed away, told him before he died that he had been paid to block Zola’s chimney so air could not escape?

Do you know also that the French government interred Zola in the Pantheon and that Alfred Dreyfus was at the ceremony? Did you know that someone shot Dreyfus at the ceremony and wounded him? Did you know that it was Zionist leader and writer Max Nordau, Herzl’s associate, who tackled the would be assassin, and turned him over to the police? And did you know that the shooter was tried, but found not guilty of attempted murder on the basis of his testimony that he did not intend to kill Dreyfus, but just to injure him?

(4) It is August in Washington DC and my phone tells me it won’t get higher than the low 80s all week. My phone is very optimistic.

Tired of Trump? Then read on. Want to read about him? I guess you should come back tomorrow.

I went to another random shelf in our dining room not to look at the books per se, but to look at the art works in the books. Not that there was anything special about the art work in these books, all books of fiction, but that was the point. Book illustration itself is often a unrecognized art form and should not be ignored.

The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler. Illustrated by Andre Durenceau (1904-1985). Durenceau was a French born painter, muralist, jewelry designer and stage and costume designer, as well as book illustrator. He may be best known for mural work for the 1969 New York World’s Fair.

Tolstoy’s War and Peace, with woodcuts by Fritz Eichenberg (1901-1990).  Eichenberg, who taught at the New School and at Pratt Institute, was a prolific book illustrator. Born Jewish in Berlin, he came to the U. S. in 1933 and became a life long Quaker and pacifist.

The illustrator of a oversized edition of Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey is Everard Hopkins (1860-1928), born in England, brother of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. He illustrated this book in 1910, and along with illustrating several others, he was a cartoonist for the British magazine, Punch.

John Austen (1886-1948) illustrated an edition of Lord Byron’s Don Juan. A Beardsley-like illustrator, he also created advertisements and advertising posters.

A volume titled The Golden Tales of Anatole France was illustrated by L.A. Patterson. Here is an example of the book illustrator problem. L.A. Patterson (Lawrence A. Patterson, 1896-1964) was a California native, a junior college art teacher and illustrator of a small number of books. I could not locate him on a Google Search. Thank you, ChatGPT. The illustrations in this book are his best known works.

What do you think? Trump is more interesting?

I did finish The Jungle. And I know a lot about Chicago in 1905. Stock yards, steel mills, machine shops, immigrant conditions, taverns, brothels, Lake Shore Drive mansions, jails, unions, politics, capitalism, trusts, socialism. Quite a tour de force by 27 year old Upton Sinclair. You really should read it.

What is a “press conference”? According to ChatGPT, it is an event when someone speaks to a group of journalists and answers their questions. Using that definition, the event led by Trump and Putin in Anchorage last night does not qualify. They answered no questions. In fact, they avoided speaking about the matters which led to their summit. Putin gave a undergraduate-level talk on Russia-American relations in Alaska over the years. And Trump bad-mouthed Biden, talked about the “Russia hoax” and told everyone again what a great relationship he has with “Vladimir”. No other details were given.

The one thing that is certain? There are a lot of journalists who wonder why they took the trouble to fly to Anchorage.

My day was pretty quiet. Took Edie to the ophthamologist for her day-after-cataract surgery visit, and sat around with her most of the day to make sure she didn’t bend down below the waist. (I actually first wrote “below the waste.” That, too.)

I did watch a bad (but very well acted) film on Netflix once again. This one called Night Always Comes. But even a bad film can prove a point. The point is that American cities (in this case, Portland OR) contain some people who are down and out, and who are destined to remain down and out. Lynette (Vanessa Kirby) grew up in an impoverished house with a selfish and incompetent mother and an older brother with developmental disabilities. Her father had deserted the family. Kirby had got involved with drugs and sex when still underage and, try as she might, was never able to fully break away. She lives with her mother and brother in a small rented house and works more than one job to keep the family afloat and her brother out of an institution. The house goes up for sale and Kirby and her mother have saved enough for a down payment to become homeowners and have some stability for the first time. But her mother torpedoes the deal the day before closing by spending all her share of the down payment on a car (about $25,000. Kirby has until the morning to come up with the money that her mother decided to spend elsewhere. She turns out to be resourceful, but also reluctantly both unethical and criminal, as she (with the help of a co-worker) threatens to blackmail a married lover, steals a safe from her girlfriend’s apartment, and sells the cocaine found in the safe.

The point is not that you should applaud Kirby for falling further into criminality as the night goes on, but you can see how it could happen when you are at the bottom of a well, with no visible way out.

I always wondered what I would do in such a situation and thought about how easy it might be to wind up there. I have a law degree and that, of course, meant a lot. But I am a very untalented person and not at all a risk taker by nature. If I had found myself without professional credentials, money, or connections (and even more so if I had a mental illness, a phtsical disability or a drug, alcohol, or health problem), what would I have done? What could I gave done? And if on top of that if I debt, or enemies? It’s a frightening thought and watching Night Always Comes, you realize that this is a central facet of American society. The country is filled with people without economic hope. And we obviously take this for granted and, as a society, do not really care.

But Putin and Trump weren’t talking about poverty in the US or Russia. They were talking about territory in Ukraine and maybe about rare minerals.

Rare minerals? Yes, remember our deal to get a share of Ukraine’s rare minerals? You haven’t heard much about it since the day it was signed.

That’s because most of these rare minerals are located in the four Ukrainian provinces claimed by Russia. So here’s my latest thought: the US supports terratorial shifts to Russia in return for a deal (now kept secret) to give us a share of those rare minerals. Add that to my theory about Trump and Russian real estate.

We will find out details of their conversation when they are made public or  leaked. My guess is, once again, Trump will look foolish.

One thing we know. Russian bombardment of Ukraine will continue. There was no ceasefire.

Just like there was no press conference.

And speaking of “no”, why is Russia one of the only countries with no tariffs?

Help. This morning, Pam Bondi says that she is making Terry Cole emergency Chief of Police, and DC’s Mayor and Attorney General say that is illegal and does not have to be recognized. I just heard that DC sued Trump over this latest move. What a mess.

Cole knows nothing about policing and nothing about Washington. The plan must be to create absolute chaos here in order to prove that even more draconian and fascistic steps are needed.

Trump is on the way to Russian America to meet with Russia’s leader. Maybe he will give back Alaska to Russia in return for the right to finally build that hotel in Moscow. Russia is prepared. A Putin aide said that the flight from Moscow to Anchorage was just a domestic hop.

Alaska, by the way, is the only state that I have not visited. I know I should take one of those cruises, but I understand it is on a boat, so I will demur. I will have to fly or, better yet, drive. Whatever happened to the Alcan Highway? I assume it is still there.

It goes from Dawson Creek BC to Delta Junction AK, about 1300 hundred miles. And from our home to Dawson Creek is about 2700 miles. So the total trip will be 4000 miles each way. Times 2 equals 8000 (higher math). And that’s before side trips.

I would like one of those trips to be to Sitka, the former capital of Russian America, but I know I cannot drive there until someone builds a bridge. Vladimir, are you listening to me?

Of course, Trump doesn’t want to lose his Alaskan Republican House and Senate votes, so the arrangement we might see is this. If Alaska continues to vote Republican, nothing will change. But if one Democrat or Independent candidate is elected, the State of Alaska will automatically become the Federated Alaskan Russian Republic. Yes, Alaskans will have a choice.

Remember this from when you were young? What did Delaware? A New Jersey. Are you sure? I think so, but Alaska. That joke was important in my life. It is when I realized that all jokes are not funny. Some are just stupid.

Oh well, did you hear the one about the man who started to meditate for an hour every morning and how it changed his life? First, he was late to work. Eventually, he lost his job. And then his wife left him. Meditation really changed his life.

I am now going to formally stop, even though I am not ahead. Happy Friday.  (BTW, my chief critic says that this last paragraph is not at all necessary. Please feel free to ignore it if you wish.)

The confusion has already begun. DC citizens sitting on their front porch were arrested or questioned for smoking marijuana. My understanding is that a porch is private property and marijuana legal. They were told to go inside.

Another was arrested for throwing a Subway sandwich at a DEA patroller . Now, throwing a sandwich is a bad idea, to be sure. But is it a felony?

National Guardsmen have been patrolling both the Monuments and Georgetown. Those areas are almost crime free as the inside of my house. As I said yesterday, all for show. And who cares that the Guard members have to leave their jobs, etc., to fulfill these unneccessary duties?

And last night, in the very busy and safe 14th Street district, filled with restaurants, theaters and more, there was a massive operation, including random car stops and at least one person handcuffed and carted away.

The motto on the sides of DC police cars is something like “We are here to help.” If ever true, no longer.

Okay, let’s change the subject, although the federal takeover is front and center in everyone’s mind here.

I am spending the morning waiting for Edie’s cataract surgery to be over. Maybe another 90 minutes or so. She has had one eye done before; I have had both eyes done. I especially enjoyed my first surgery, because I think the anesthesiologist gave me LSD by mistake, and I spent the entire time being entertained by colorful hallucinations of intricate designs. He must have realized his mistake the second time, because there were no hallucinations. I thought about asking for a discount, but then realized I wasn’t paying anything, so I let it go.

During my wait, I am going to continue reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which I started reading yesterday when I spent another morning in “waiting mode”, that time at a car dealership while my car got a post-trip checkup. My copy is the Penguin edition, which used the smallest font I have seen in a Penguin.

If you can read this, you do not need cataract surgery. Edie could not read it. I can, but it’s a struggle.

I am only about 25% through the book, a novel set in the Chicago stockyards in 1905. Sinclair wrote it when still in his 20s. I find the writing extraordinary. Unbelievably descriptive, and written with enormous detail. Detail that draws you in, not that pushes you away.

Yesterday, I was reading while I was sitting at the Corner Bakery, across the street from the car dealership. I was sitting at an outside table, nursing my daily green tea. A man walked by. I would guess he was in his 50s, unshaven, moderately dissheveled, looked half asleep. He surprised me by asking me what I thought of thr book. He told me he had just read it last month. We pretty much agreed on the book’s pluses. Who knows? Maybe everyone is reading The Jungle. It would be a good use of your time.

I would suggest reading The Jungle is better than living in one. In DC today, perhaps we are.

As I understand it, DC’s Metropolitan Police Department is authorized and funded to employ 4000 officers, but it is 800 officers short because there have not been sufficient qualified candidates to fill the empty spaces. I also understand that this is a national problem, not a DC problem alone.

Because of this shortfall, the idea of additional law enforcement personnel coming as part of the federal takeover is welcomed by the police and in particular by the police union. I would bet, however, that this is not because they think this is going to significantly decrease crime, but because it will take the pressure off them to work double shifts, excessive overtime, and the like. And for all of us, this is important. Our police will do a better job if they have less pressure, have time just to kick back, and can get a full night’s sleep.

That is the first point I want to make. The counterpoint, of course, is that those being brought in by the federal government are untrained to do police work. You don’t simply get hired by MPD and be given a badge. You undergo a full course of instruction at the Police Academy, and you have to pass that course. There are not only physical requirements, but there are many intellectual requirements, such as knowing DC laws, knowing police protocols, and knowing how to deal with all sorts of people. That does come easily or quickly. The federal newbies will make mistakes. The residents of the District will suffer because of them.

To complicate matters, policing in DC is more complicated than in other locations throughout the country. Not that crime is more prevalent, but because the city is home not only to the MPD, but to numerous other police forces, some of which are, in fact, federal. There are the Capitol Police, the Park Police, the Secret Service, and, according to ChatGPT, 23 other federal uniformed police forces. ChatGPT also lists 11 uniformed locally run police forces, and 8 university police forces. And, of course, this does not include the police forces found in the many suburban jurisdictions making up the Washington metropolitan area. All this must be coordinated.

And none of this includes the National Guard being activated, nor the FBI and ICE officers, all untrained in police activity. The National Guard, I would guess, will not be expected to do much, and are there mostly for show or to help in administrative tasks. And that is wrong on so many levels.

We don’t how all this will work out on the ground. Or who will be calling the shots. We don’t even know who will be keeping the statistics.

As a DC resident, I have my own ideas as to what we will see over the next 30 days. I think we will see arrests. How else can success be measured?

To be a little more definitive, I expect arrests of persons deemed engaged in criminal activity at any level, homeless individuals of all ages, perceived non-citizens without appropriate paper work, people without any guilt or suspicion of guilt who are deemed simply to be talking back to officials and who will quickly be deemed as resisting arrest. I expect these people, once picked up, may be transported to far away places ((they would overwhelm local facilities) to undisclosed locations, to be treated poorly, not allowed counsel, and so forth. The pattern set generally by ICE will become the norm. And it will happen quickly.

Will crime go down? Maybe. In fascist and other forms of authoritarian countries, crime can be non-existent. Pull the tongues out of the mouths of a few jaywalkers, and jaywalking will become a thing of the past.

Yes, we can have a perfectly safe and clean capital city. I can point out one to you that functions very well today, and just might be Donald’s model.

The name of the city is Pyongyang.

The president’s action is only good for 30 days. So, 27 to go. From what I hear, there shouldn’t be 60 Senate votes to extend it. I can already hear the “Dems are soft on crime” chant.

SPOILER ALERT: the answer to 10-down in this morning’s NYT puzzle is “bigmess”. The definition could be “what Donald Trump is creating in the District of Columbia”.

A Washington DC with no crime. A Washington DC with no criminals. A Washington DC with nobody homeless. A Washington DC spotlessly clean. A Washington DC with no graffiti. A Washington DC with no slums. A Washington DC with no illegals. The Washington DC that is  about to materialize thanks to the promises of Donald John Trump.

On a more personal level, after living in the District of Columbia for over 55 years, I am looking forward to being able to leave my house without fear that any minute, someone was going to attack me. Never did I think I could be freed from that overwhelming sense of dread. But now, with the National Guard, the FBI and ICE patrolling our streets, all fear has been lifted. What more could I ask for?

But seriously, folks….

Could you ever imagine a US president lying about the condition of the nation’s capital for all the world to hear for the sole purposes of offending the 700,000 residents of DC (almost all of whom voted against him) and of extending his authoritarian rule in one more brand new direction?

Remember (as if you could forget) that Donald Trump is no ordinary president. He is a criminal himself, a convicted felon. And he is the president who pardoned 1500 other convicted criminals who participated in the January 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, including many who viciously attacked law enforcement officers on a day when he did not call out the National Guard.

Years ago, I heard community organizer Saul Alinsky speak when a heckler called out, “What do you think of Communists?”, and heard Alinsky cooly respond, “Our Communists or their Communists?”

So, “Mr. Trump, what do you think of criminals?” “It depends? My criminals or other criminals?”

Already, a lot has been written about today’s executive announcements and I am not going to repeat what others have been saying. There will be much time for that. I want to look at something very different. Let’s get our minds off Donald Trump.  Let’s look at a few of the many, many  rabbits hanging out at the Montgomery County Fair.

And at a cow

And at granddaughter Joan engaging in a very long Connect 4 game with Officer McCloud of the Montgomery County Police, who is able to spend his time playing games because the County, as opposed to DC, is already, I suppose, crime free. In fact, four other (only two shown below) County police officers were able to spend their morning watching the McCloud-Joan game.

Pretty soon, we will be able to have similar good times right here in safe Washington, and not have to venture out into distant parts of the metro area for fun.

It’s important to increase your vocabulary. That’s a lesson I learned in elementary school, and one that is important even today.  The word I learned today is “tengai”, also (and this is a hint) known as “tengai hat”.

I learned that word because my cousin in Denmark, Kiku Day, wore a tengai when she played the shakuhachi at the Danish commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. I saw the video of the ceremony, but do not have a still shot. But I do have a still of Kiku (I think) in a practice session.

As I understand it, the hat is worn to separate the music from the musician, eliminating both distraction and ego. What a great idea.

And now, you too have a new word in your vocabulary.

I watched a video yesterday about Franco and Spain. It had a few things I hadn’t focused on before, like Franco’s youth and early army years, and how his military career was boosted by his cruelty and fearlessness.  And how, after the Spanish Civil War was won, Franco went after his enemies and perceived enemies in the country. If I recall correctly, he had once said that he was going to save Spain, even if he had to kill half of the Spaniards. That was Franco.

This last item was of interest to me because, even if it isn’t accurate, Donald Trump sometimes (and on purpose) gives that same impression with all of his comments, his threats, his forced resignations and firings, his political mischief, his purported investigations, and his law suits. You have to watch the video to see how familiar it seemed.

I saw an interview with an individual who has been targeted by Trump. Put aside whether this individual will ever be found to have behaved improperly either civally or criminally. The stress of what he and his family members are going through, the monetary cost of defending himself, the effect on current income, and more, show that, come what may, Trump is working hard to punish those he deems not on his side.

Nicole Wallace, on her show the other day, talked about, while our democratic principles have been torn to pieces, life basically proceeds normally for most Americans.

It reminds me of my first trip to Spain in 1972. Franco was still in control 35 years after the Civil War ended, and had long silenced most of his opposition. You couldn’t see the pain that so many had suffered, and yes, life looked normal. In some ways, better than normal.

But the country’s national police, the Guardia Civil, was ever present. And more than once I was warned, even though as a tourist I was pretty safe, to take those guys very, very seriously. The country was still governed by fear.

Today, Trump is giving a speech about DC. What will he do? Bring out the National Guard to patrol the streets. Round up the homeless and transport them to the Everglades? Rename the Commanders? Take over the schools? Move into our guestroom? So many possibilities?

As to his remarks about eliminating the homeless from DC, remember Martin Niemöller: “First they came for the Communists…”

First they came for the aliens, then they came for the homeless….

You might say we had a bad Shabbos. You can certainly say we had a Bad Shabbos Shabbos. That’s because we went to the Avalon to see the new film, Bad Shabbos. Rotten Tomatoes rated it 85%. IMDB 7.1. The Edie Art Rating is well below either of those.

Here is the premise. (Okay, SPOILER ALERT, although it seems hard to spoil a film that is this rotten to begin with.) The Catholic parents of Jewish David’s fiance are in New York to meet his quirky, but religiously observant, parents. They were invited for Friday night dinner at the parents’ Upper West Side apartment. Also at dinner will be David’s sister and her boyfriend (whom nobody, including David’s sister, likes) and David’s younger brother, who, let’s just say, has some issues.

Before the Catholic parents arrive, there is a little squabbling. The result of course is that the disliked boyfriend winds up dead in the bathroom. The goal of the family is then  to dispose of the body and, at the same time, to entertain their guests as if nothing is wrong. Of course, everything and more goes wrong. That goes without saying.

Now, Edie and I both thought it a terrible film. When Edie thinks a film is terrible, she simply thinks it is terrible. But I gave this one a bit more attention.

I decided that, as terrible films go, this one is pretty good. That does not mean that I think it less terrible than other terrible films. Not at all. Simply that if you put all the terrible films together, and rated them as exemplars of the genre of terrible films, this one would rate pretty high. Again, it is clear that this is a very bad, horrible, terrible film. But as a film in that genre (“let’s set out to make a good example of a terrible film”), this one is a great example.

Then, I thought about that sterling organization, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the folks who give out Oscars. They provide winners in many categories. Drama, Comedies, Documentaries and so on. But they don’t have a category called “Terrible Films”. I suggest they create this category, awarding the prize not to the most terrble film, and not to the film that barely snuck into the category, but to best Terrible Film of the year. Bad Shabbos would certainly be  finalist.