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First Sentences

“For a few years during the early 1980s, I lived in Jerusalem for several months at a time, doing research in the private libraries of some the city’s oldest families, including my own.” Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017.

“I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time.” Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind.

“In 1908, one woman’s dream that had become one man’s passion became a reality when The Miriam Osborn Memorial Home opened.” Mark R. Zwerger, Janet M. Malang, and Andrew F. Horn, Images of America: The Osborn.

“It was the best of time, it was the worst of time, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.

“Each man in the squadron carried, along with a sea chest, his own burdensome story.” David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.

“All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths.” Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss.

“I first encountered him in an oil painting, a bizarre rendering that looked like it was painted by a drunken sailor aboard a storm-tossed ship—the brushwork was amateurish, the proportions clumsy, the perspective askew.” Reid Mitenbuler, Wanderlust: An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age.

“Dear Mr Diamond, This is so difficult. Several tries have ended in the bin already. Please be kind and read to the end before making up your mind.” Peter Lovesey, The Secret Hangman.

“It was the weirdest job description Cassie Bongiovanni had ever read, and she had read a lot of them lately.” Laura Trethewey, The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World’s Oceans.

“I let my fingers run along the spine of the book, letting the indentations of the embossed cover guide my skin to something tangible; something that I believed in more than the fiction that was playing out before me.” Evie Woods, The Lost Bookshop.

“Departure day dawned warm and sweet, a merry late-May morning on the shores of the Mediterranean.” Nina Burleigh, Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt.”

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Born Right

The Supreme Court recently heard arguments concerning Trump’s Executive Order redefining birthright citizenship, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” signed on his second first day in office.  The legality of the order was not the issue before the Court. Instead, the arguments were about the propriety of temporary nationwide or universal injunctions prohibiting the enforcement of Trump’s order. The order’s status and the injunctions raise important legal questions, but I set off on flights of fancy and started to ruminate about possibilities if that Executive Order were in effect.

I quickly realized that my birth certificate would now be deficient for citizenship purposes. As the EO recognized, the Fourteenth Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” My certificate says that I was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, which, to the surprise of some, is part of the United States. That has been sufficient to prove my citizenship, but not under the possible new regime.

The Executive Order went on to say, “But the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’” Trump further elucidated his understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment: “Among the categories of individuals born in the United States and not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States: (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary (such as, but not limited to, visiting the United States under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program or visiting on a student, work, or tourist visa) and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”

Trump defines two groups of people (he suggests there are more with the phrase “among the categories of individuals”) not granted the privilege of citizenship by the Constitution. (The EO opens: “The privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift.” The citizenship granted by the Fourteenth Amendment is not a privilege or a gift. It is a constitutional right.) To authenticate my citizenship, I would now need to know more than my birthplace. I would also need to know the citizenship or immigration status of my parents, but my birth certificate, and no doubt yours, does not include that information. Given the implied goals of the current administration, I, a critic of that administration, could be deported if I could not prove my parents’ immigration status and hence, my own citizenship. Far-fetched? I hope so.

The EO, however, gives no indication of how the now-crucial fact of the parents’ status will be determined. The birth attendants—doctors, nurses, midwives—are not experts in immigration matters. Whoever fills out the documents would no doubt get the information from the mother and father. Will the parents’ assertions be sufficient? Will there be someone to challenge what a parent claims, or will the proffered information be simply accepted?

 What if the father is not present? Can we accept the mother’s word both as to who the father is and his status? For citizenship in the past, we did not need paternity tests. Will we need them in the future? And what if this is a birth through an (anonymous) sperm donor?

The EO does not explain who makes the citizenship determinations? Or when? A person deemed a noncitizen should have the right to contest that conclusion. That probably cannot be required during the time the person is an infant, which should mean that people prior to reaching adulthood must have a forum in which to establish they are citizens. This, of course, will be a generation after birth, and that will surely present all sorts of problems.

The Executive Order’s definition of birthright citizenship means many people who were assumed to be citizens were not born citizens. I may not be a citizen if my parents did not have proper status. I assumed my parents were citizens because they, too, were born in Wisconsin, but that birth location is not enough. We may have to know the citizenship and immigration status of their parents. And so on. The Executive Order seeks to untangle that jumble of umbilical cords by saying that the order “shall apply only to persons who are born within the United States after 30 days from the date of this order.” That makes sense from a practical perspective. We can somehow, even if not now clear how, start to record the necessary information for each new birth. But if the EO is followed, we will have two kinds of citizenship —  citizens before 2025 and citizens thereafter — something that can’t be found in the Fourteenth Amendment. All this seems to produce a larger mess than even DOGE could create.

There is a way to handle this problem. Legislation could make all those born before 2025 in the United States citizens without going through ancient birth and immigration records. Oh, wait. We already have such a law. A 1952 statute, 8 U.S.C. 1401, states in part: “The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereto.”

This statutory provision has meant that the children of illegal immigrants born in the United States are citizens. Trump might say that those who drafted and passed this law accepted this position only because they were following an incorrect interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Even if that were so, the clearly evident public meaning of the statute and the intentions of the drafters and adopters of it were to give birthright citizenship to those born here including children of undocumented immigrants. Conservative interpretive principles mean that neither courts nor an executive order can change the law’s meaning understood and intended by those who enacted it even if the statute, like many others, was based on an incorrect premise. If a statute is invalid because of a faulty foundation, our lawbooks will soon be a lot thinner.

If Trump really wants to change birthright citizenship, Congress needs to pass a new law that tracks Trump’s Executive Order. Gee. I wonder why he hasn’t proposed the new legislation.

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Snippets

The spouse is the leader of the discussion of Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. Someone announced she would not attend because they could not make it through the novel even though it won the National Book Award, was on yearly top ten lists, and high on the 100 best books of this century. With its themes of Black and interracial families and the legacy of slavery in southern prisons and much more, this is the book that Pete Hegseth would ban, if he hasn’t already, from the service academies. The woman who pulled out of the book group was a Trumpista. The spouse and I could not help but think that it was the subject matter, not the quality, of the book that was the withdrawal’s motivating factor. With the attacks on DEI, some people may feel that it is unpatriotic even to read Jesmyn Ward. And so it is that America dumbs down.

With summer coming on, I wonder: “If nature is so truly wonderful, then why didn’t she make the mosquito a vegetarian?”

Many political ads last year bemoaned the fentanyl crisis that the ads maintained resulted from a porous southern border. This never made sense. Border patrol officials knew that nearly 90% of the fentanyl that entered from Mexico came in at legal crossings. Furthermore, most apprehended couriers were American citizens, which, of course, makes sense. If you were running the drug smuggling operation, wouldn’t you think that a Mexican or Honduran would be more likely stopped and searched at the border than an American citizen? It was clear that “securing” the border would do little to change our fentanyl crisis. And, of course, the laws of supply and demand mean someone will find a way to bring the opioid into the country as long as there is a market for it. Meanwhile, it turns out that last year while our southern border was so easy to cross according to so many pundits, opioid deaths dropped precipitously. It will be interesting to see with all the government cuts to all sorts of services what will happen to the death rate even with a “secure” border.

I would like to live in a world where data trump beliefs, and ideology does not trump facts. Some days I am an optimist.

A wise person said: An optimist is someone with little experience.

The big, beautiful bill will leave us under a mountain of new debt, which Trump and his supporters now don’t seem to care about. I am reminded of what Kurt Andersen wrote in Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America, A Recent History (2020). He reported that neoconservative Irving Kristol said that if tax cuts for the rich “leave us with a fiscal problem,” that is fine because that would force conservative “opponents to tidy up afterwards.”

With the warmer weather, I am again about to confront one of my biggest golf troubles: I stand too close to the ball after I hit it.

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The Process That Should Be Due 

The president asked the interviewer: “They talk about due process, but do you get due process when you’re here illegally?” I have little confidence about what the Supreme Court will say in the future, but the answer as of today is, Yes. Undocumented immigrants in the country are entitled to due process. The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment says: 

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. 

This provision does not just guarantee rights to citizens or lawful residents. No person, not just citizens, shall be deprived of the double jeopardy or the self-incrimination protections. And no person, not just citizens, shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. In a series of early twentieth century cases, the Supreme Court made clear that these constitutional protections were extended to all aliens within the United States, including those who entered unlawfully. The Court determined that even one whose presence in this country is “unlawful, involuntary, or transitory” is entitled to due process before being deported.  

However, this constitutional protection applies only to people who are within the country. It does not apply to border crossings. Aliens can be excluded from the country at the border without due process. This also applies at points of entry, such as an airport because, while technically on U.S. soil, the would-be immigrants are not considered to have entered the United States. (You, too, have fewer rights when crossing the border. As has happened to many of us when entering the country, you can be searched in ways that the Constitution would not allow within the country.) 

Trump, when told about the undocumenteds’ due process rights, refused to concede what the Constitution commands, but still railed against the practicality of granting due process: “I don’t know. It might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or two million or three million trials.” Surprisingly for Trump, that was an underestimate. He indicates that he wants to remove all those here illegally (except perhaps if they are connected to Elon or to him). Not surprisingly, precise numbers are not available, but the usual estimates are about 11 million illegal aliens are in the country. 

While the Constitution mandates due process, it does not specify what that process entails. The courts have held that it is a variable concept. What Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote more than a century ago is still the law: “What is due process of law depends on circumstances. It varies with the subject-matter and the necessities of the situation.” Justice Felix Frankfurter fifty years later said that due process “is not a technical conception with a fixed content unrelated to time, place and circumstances. . . .  ‘Due process’ cannot be imprisoned within the treacherous limits of any formula.” The procedures are not the same for adjudicating a parking ticket, determining a parole violation, trying a murder charge, or considering the continuation of government benefits or entitlements. 

A famous twentieth-century judge, Henry Friendly, created a list of procedures that would satisfy due process: 

  1. An unbiased tribunal. 
  1. Notice of the proposed action and the grounds asserted for it. 
  1. Opportunity to present reasons why the proposed action should not be taken. 
  1. The right to present evidence, including the right to call witnesses. 
  1. The right to know opposing evidence. 
  1. The right to cross-examine adverse witnesses. 
  1. A decision based exclusively on the evidence presented. 
  1. Opportunity to be represented by counsel. 
  1. Requirement that the tribunal prepare a record of the evidence presented. 
  1. Requirement that the tribunal prepare written findings of fact and reasons for its decision. 

All of these procedures are not necessary to satisfy the Constitution in all circumstances. On the other hand, the consensus holds that at a minimum due process requires notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard before a neutral decisionmaker. 

In talking about due process in deportations, Trump said that he has “brilliant lawyers that work for me.” (They actually work for the country.) If so, they should be seeking procedures that satisfy due process and that are simple enough to further Trump’s goals. These procedures cannot just be ones that ensure mass deportations. Instead, they must bear in mind what Chief Justice Earl Warren said: “Due process embodies the differing rules of fair play.” Or what Justice Frankfurter said: Due process is a “respect enforced by law for that feeling of just treatment.” 

Removing people who are not legally here may or may not be good for America but procedures that afford fair play and just treatment as well as the perception of fair play and just treatment are a Constitutional requirement. They are important not only to those the government is trying to strip of liberty but to the rest of us who want a fair and just country. 

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Snippets

The article reported on the weightlifting prowess of women in their 60s, 70s, and even 80s. It concluded that the weightlifters showed that “age is nothing but a number.” Another cliché that is hooey. I have been four and now many multiples of that, and age has never been nothing but a number. I couldn’t drive when I was four and I have trouble cutting my toenails now. If anything, age has my number.

I have a friend whose memory is so good that he can remember sex.

I have thought it possible that Trump was a Russian asset, but now I have my doubts. I have wondered what Putin thinks about Trump proclaiming the United States won World War II, which Trump, disregarding the brutal killing that went on for months longer in the Pacific, maintains ended on May 8, 1945. Of course, one of the turning points of WWII, perhaps the turning point was Stalingrad. Trump should ask Putin how many Russians died during that war. And I am guessing that Trump never heard John and Paul’s song A Day in the Life with its line, “The English army had just won the war.”

Viewpoint is everything. What did one lab rat say to the other? “I’ve got my scientist so well trained that every time I push the buzzer, he brings me a snack.”

For the third straight year, Utah was named the nation’s top state, based on 71 metrics, including education, economy, and crime. The next four states were New Hampshire, Idaho, Minnesota, and Nebraska. The bottom five: Louisiana, Alaska, Mississippi, New Mexico, and West Virginia. I note that four of the bottom five are solidly red states.

I remember when conservatives railed against big government. However, our present administration is trying to take over Harvard. That sounds to me like big government. Where are those conservatives when you need ‘em?

How many Harvard graduates does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Just one. He grabs the bulb and waits for the world to revolve around him.

As a result of Defense Secretary’s war on DEI, West Point, according to a news article, is ordered “to remove any readings that focused on race, gender or the darker moments of American history.” The Defense Department told the Naval Academy to remove 381 books from the library. Hegseth’s order does not just prohibit the teaching of aspects of our history and society; it also commands that the service academies teach that “America and its founding documents remain the most powerful force for good in human history.” And I thought that Pete Hegseth thought of himself as a Christian.

A lot of people these days tell us that this country was founded on Christian principles or, sometimes, being more inclusive, Judeo-Christian principles. I assume that they do not know that North Carolina’s original constitution banned Jews from public office and that in other states only members of specified Protestant denominations could hold office.

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Sanctuary       

It’s a free country, or so the cliché goes. We (supposedly) have free speech. We can travel and live freely within the country without the need for “papers.” We don’t need government approval to seek a job, an education, a lover, or a meal. We can’t lose life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

And part of the reason it is a free country is that we are not required to be a police informer. We do not have to tell law enforcement about the wrongs or suspected wrongs of others. If the police ask me questions about where I or someone else was last night, I don’t have to answer. I have known undocumented immigrants; I am under no obligation to report them. This is a free country partly because we are not forced to be informants. That basic principle is the foundation for the sanctuary city movement.

There is no official definition of a sanctuary city. However, the term usually refers to a locality that refuses to cooperate or limits its cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have sought local assistance in several different ways. ICE asks cities and counties to tell ICE when the localities have encountered an undocumented immigrant. Sanctuary cities usually do not honor these requests. They don’t share their databases with the federal officials. Some localities even forbid the collection of information about immigration status.

ICE often asks to interview people in local jails. Non-sanctuary places may freely allow that. Sanctuary localities, however, may not permit it at all or only if the inmates voluntarily sign a consent form informing them that they don’t have to talk to ICE and are waiving that right.

ICE also lodges detainers asking to be informed when an inmate that ICE believes is deportable will be released from a state or local lockup. Sanctuary cities differ in their responses. Many will tell ICE about the release of someone who has been convicted of a violent offense but not otherwise. Some sanctuaries will not tell ICE about the release of any inmate.

A sanctuary city does not cooperate with federal immigration authorities, and it does not act as an informant. That, however, does not mean that an undocumented immigrant gets sanctuary from deportation. ICE may still arrest undocumented people and deport them even if they are found in a sanctuary city. They just have to do so without local help. (Many states and cities, of course, do cooperate with federal immigration authorities, and some states have banned sanctuary cities within their borders. This cooperation, however, is voluntary.)

Trump, however, has taken steps to change the long-established norms that have led to sanctuary cities. Last month Trump ordered the attorney general to publish a list of jurisdictions “that obstruct the enforcement of Federal immigration laws.” If, after notice, the jurisdictions “remain in defiance of Federal law,” their federal funds may be cut. Lower courts have already preliminarily blocked such Trumpian actions because the constitutional “spending clause” gives Congress, not the president, the power to finance programs.

The Trump administration has also sued some states and cities, including Colorado and Illinois and Denver, Chicago, and Rochester, NY, for laws and policies that restrict or prohibit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

I have not been able to find the legal papers filed in the recent Colorado and Denver suits (if you know how to access them, let me know), but news reports say that lawsuits contend that the state and local laws are unconstitutional. The Trumpian actions want to “restore the supremacy of federal immigration law.” I like to think that I have a reasonable grasp of constitutional law, but I can’t figure out the government’s claim. And non-cooperation with federal law enforcement does not destroy the supremacy of federal laws.

A small (but relevant) digression on legal procedure:

The Trump administration recently arrested a Milwaukee judge for a sanctuary-like action. It appears that an undocumented immigrant was appearing in the judge’s courtroom as a defendant in a domestic violence case. ICE agents, armed with an “administrative warrant,” came into the courtroom to arrest the defendant. The judge would not permit the apprehension in her courtroom and told the agents to wait outside. After the court proceeding, she helped the defendant to leave the courtroom by a door not used by the general public. The agents apprehended the man not far from the courthouse and a week later arrested the judge for obstructing their duties.

The judge’s arrest highlights a legal reality: while we free citizens do not have to cooperate with ICE and hand over or identify undocumented people, that does not mean that we can obstruct ICE agents. However, the line between noncooperation and obstruction can be a fine one. Misleading an agent may be obstruction, but lying to a federal officer is a crime. Take my advice: Even though you may lie to friends, relatives, or lovers, don’t lie to law enforcement. You may choose not to speak or respond at all, but don’t actively mislead.

On the other hand, law enforcement agents are not prohibited from lying to or misleading us. An “administrative warrant” is misleading. A real warrant is issued by a judicial officer and gives law enforcement general powers to arrest. An administrative warrant, however, is not issued by a neutral magistrate. It is an in-house document, issued by ICE itself to itself. In essence, it is merely a note-to-self to arrest someone. The administrative warrant gives law enforcement no more authority to apprehend someone than if the warrant did not exist. Without a citizen’s consent law enforcement can only enter a non-public space to arrest someone if they have a judicial warrant. They can’t do so with an administrative warrant. However, if they have good grounds to do so, law enforcement can arrest a suspect in a public place with an “administrative warrant,” but they can also do so without one.  An “administrative warrant” may sound as though it carries some weight, but it doesn’t. It is a meaningless document.

Back to sanctuary cities:

Sanctuary jurisdictions maintain that their lack of cooperation is not only legal but also good policy. They point out that in sanctuary cities local resources are properly allocated to local priorities not to areas under federal government jurisdiction.  The federal government, however, says that sanctuary policies endanger the citizenry. Trump’s press secretary, who might be an Amy Schumer relative if the she had either charm or wit, announced that the sanctuary jurisdictions are giving a safe haven to criminals and endangering residents and that the Trumpian attacks on the states and cities are “focused on protecting American communities from criminal aliens.” Sanctuary cities, however, maintain that they are safer because of their policies.

The jurisdictions highlight that deportation before a verdict and/or punishment (which often happens) deprives communities of the deterrence provided by the criminal justice system. A person returned to his home country before serving a sentence does not send deterrence message to the community that jail followed by deportation is a circumstance to avoid.

The sanctuary jurisdictions also want undocumented people to feel comfortable cooperating with the police. Without that cooperation crimes will not be reported and prosecuted. Undocumented immigrants won’t come forward to report crimes or be witnesses if, as a consequence, they will be deported.  Criminals, whether citizens or not, will go free, and the community will be more crime-ridden.

Furthermore, a city might be healthier, safer, and more of a community if undocumented people become more comfortable interacting with government authorities, not just police, but schools, hospitals, clinics, employment, and housing authorities.

Those opposed to sanctuary policies contend they make places dangerous. They often support that assertion with an anecdote about a single, heinous crime. On the other hand, sanctuary cities point to study after study showing that sanctuary cities are safer than other cities and that sanctuary cities, have, on average, more vibrant economies. The Trump administration, as it often does, avoids or denies the accuracy of such studies and blindly continues its activities unfettered by data and truth.

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All Dressed Up (Spouse’s Guest Post)

My physical therapist and I talked about prom dresses this morning. Her son (in 7th grade) went to the school’s dance over the weekend, and she was surprised at the outfits of the tweenage girls. She described sparkly, tight-fitting dresses ending mid-thigh. But the pièce de résistance was the footwear: white tennis shoes! Whoever heard of such a thing?!?

In my day (and, I remind, it was quite some time ago), we knew how to dress for a formal occasion, and it most assuredly did NOT include white tennis shoes (mostly for me it included high-heeled shoes that were damned uncomfortable). At my 7th grade dance, I wore a white strapless (it must have been very tight around the bodice since I had nothing else holding it up) gown with little flowers around the bustline and a skirt comprising layers of white tulle. So precious; I never liked it much. I went to the dance with a boy I don’t remember. Did we dance? Who knows?

In high school, though, things were different. This was the Jackie Kennedy era, and elegance was the order of the day. Not being able to afford an original Dior (duh), I made (I know! Right?!?) a straight skirt out of white satin. It was lined with Pellon, a stiff interfacing that made it slightly puff-balled at the waist, but it fell straight to the floor. VERY elegant. The mother then found a seamstress who fashioned a halter top covered in bridal lace (that was far beyond my sewing skills). It was lovely and hung gracefully just over the waist of the satin skirt. We had a coral-colored satin cummerbund and a royal blue taffeta cummerbund; different cummerbund for different occasions. White over-the-elbow gloves completed the picture. I wore it; my mother wore it; my sister wore it. We were gorgeous, if I do say so myself.

This was also the 60’s South, and regular cotillions required more than one gown. I don’t remember if the dress code for this particular dance required it or whether I just wanted to wear it, but I borrowed a hoop-skirted gown and learned to sway in it. Mostly I remember the hoop-skirt part, but the dress fabric itself was a wispy white with purple flowers scattered through. Very pretty, very feminine. However, have you ever worn a hoop skirt? Pay attention when you sit down or else the thing will fly up in front of your face and disgrace you. You must reach down and grab the hoop at around knee level, lift it gently, and sit while maintaining your hold on it. It then settles gracefully around your chair. Practice makes perfect, but it’s quite an art.

My wedding gown was also borrowed, this time from a cousin. She and I were exactly the same size, so it made sense. It was a lovely gown, full skirted with a lacy bodice — sort of like that halter top except it had three-quarter sleeves and was attached to the dress. A beaded crown with a long tulle veil completed the picture. I was a beautiful bride, if I do say so myself.

Two gowns complete my most-favorite list. The first was bought in a vintage shop in Brooklyn. It was floor-length, made of black crepe with long sleeves. The bodice was completely plain except for a hint of white circling a rather high neckline. Sounds dismal, right? But…the back, the back! There wasn’t much to the back…at least not until your eyes found the waist where a white organdy ruffle cascaded to the floor. So elegant. It’s just that you had to turn around for people to see how elegant it was. In the bag coming with it from the shop was a postcard with a photograph of a woman wearing that very dress, but you couldn’t tell who she was because she had a lampshade on her head. However, she was clearly a bon vivant who knew how to party.

At one stage in my career, I was required to attend “functions,” mostly fund-raisers, but they were formal affairs, and my black crepe was a bit too outlandish for the stodginess of the crowd. However, I stumbled upon a beauty in JC Penny’s prom section. Form-fitting blue velvet to the floor (I had a form then), it had what I think is called a “portrait collar,” a delicately draped circle of velvet, showing enough neck that I could wear some sort of sparkly necklace (which I had fun finding). A navy blue beaded handbag was found somewhere, and those long white gloves were recalled into service. I looked like a million bucks. Just ask anybody!

My evening gown days are over, but I look back on those dresses fondly. Not as fondly as some coats I’ve owned (see blog of March 14, 2022: “I Get a Kick Out of  . . . Coats”), but fondly nonetheless.

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“It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall”

I stumbled on Martin Scorsese’s early Bob Dylan documentary. Then I saw last year’s movie about the singer, “A Complete Unknown.” These experiences had me thinking about the first time I saw Bob Dylan perform live. I had just started college.

I have no ability to perform music. I cannot carry a tune. I don’t play an instrument. Even so, I have always enjoyed music. My earliest musical exposures were limited. Music did not exactly saturate my early childhood home. We did not have a hi-fi or any kind of record player. The local station to which our radio was tuned had eclectic programming from Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club to Paul Harvey and only sometimes played music. Instead, a lot of my musical knowledge came from television variety shows, which, befitting their name, had a wide variety of musical acts.

Glen, my best friend in grade school, also shaped my musical tastes. Unlike me, he was a musician. He would tell me about new songs he had liked and when and where I could find them on the radio because some stations played the same song every day at a similar time. And thus, among many others, I learned about Jody Reynolds and “Endless Sleep,” a teenaged schlock song that still today can get stuck in my head.

I spent more time in cars as I got older. If a teenager was driving, the radio was inevitably tuned to the top forty station, WOKY, which was pronounced by the DJs to rhyme with its hometown, Milwaukee. (We could get a learner’s permit six months before our sixteenth birthday, and the goal was to pass the driver’s test and get a license on the sixteenth birthday. These were full licenses. Our driving was not limited in geography or to the time of day.) This was the beginning of rock n’ roll. Top forty radio was not just trite and tired music. New songs and new sounds seemed to come weekly. I, and many others my age, fell in love with the innovative music of Elvis, Buddy Holly, the Everley Brothers, the Beach Boys, and on and on. (I first heard Presley when in the car with my father. He was appalled. I knew the world had changed.)

I thought that I had a respectable grounding in modern music, but then I went to college. One of my three freshman roommates came with a collection of records, some of which were by artists unknown to me. There was Josh White, (“You gets no bread with one meatball” still carousels through my head some days.) There was the much different jazzy sound of Lambert, Hendricks, & Ross. There were many others but the most surprising was Bob Dylan, whose songs were not on any radio I listened to. I was fascinated by the lyrics he sang (“And I drove down 42nd Street/In my Cadillac. Good car to drive after a war.”).

College, of course, is a time for new experiences, including music. A new experience was the social life. I was at a non-coed school. For days, maybe sometimes weeks, I hadno interchanges with anyone of the female persuasion, and when one occurred it was usually not with someone of a comparable age. However, on “big” weekends, girls (I did not consider myself a man, and I did not think of them as “women”) came for the weekend. Families in town rented out rooms for the dates, but the girls were allowed in our rooms up to a point. I don’t remember what the regular hours were, but on those big weekends, girls could be in the dorms until midnight. Upperclassman had a place to be at that bewitching hour. They were in clubs where partying went on until three or four o’clock, but freshmen were not club members and would have nothing to do once twelve o’clock struck. To avoid this, the university had midnight concerts, and to my surprise then and now, in November 1963, Bob Dylan was booked.

I don’t have the novelistic ability to capture the bizarreness. The calendar said it was the 60s, and Dylan helped define that time. But while perhaps what we now think of the 60s may have been emerging in the Greenwich Village that helped spawn Dylan, that new decade had not yet hit most of the country. Certainly it had not come to the central New Jersey, Ivy League campus filled with conformist boys who wanted to take their place with bankers and bankers’ lawyers and doctors with upscale practices.

I only knew of Dylan because my roommate had owned The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. A large portion of the audience had never heard of him. They were there, many slightly to extremely drunk (even though underage, no one stopped our campus drinking), because there was nowhere else to go. There was a stark contrast between the Ivy League audience dressed as preppies and preppy wannabes and Dylan, still in his acoustic stage, with his entourage dressed in jeans and leather vests and bandanas and motorcycle caps and cowboy hats. Many were shocked not only by his wardrobe but by his singing.

Dylan just introduced his songs and sang and made no comment about the audience. I still wonder what Dylan was thinking about while performing for us. But my admiration for Dylan increased that night.

Posted on by rjonakait

Putin, America, and the Politics of Being (Concluded)

          Putin, coming out of relative obscurity, was elected Russian president in 2000 with 53% of the vote. He consolidated his power quickly and extensively in ways large and small and was reelected in 2004 with a reported 71% of the vote. The Russian constitution then only allowed the president two consecutive four-year terms preventing his run for a third term. Putin endorsed Dmitry Medvedev for the March 2008 election and Medvedev got more than 70% of the votes. He then appointed Putin his prime minister.

          A constitutional change during Medvedev’s term increased the presidential term to six years, and Putin again ran for president in 2012. The election was viewed by many within and without Russia as corrupt. In her book The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (2012), Masha Gessen reports: “Putin declared victory in the first round of the presidential election, with 63 percent of the vote. Holding a virtual monopoly on the ballot, the media, and the polls themselves, he could have claimed any figure, but he opted for a landslide, and a slap in the face to the Movement for Fair Elections.” The Movement had been part of widespread demonstrations that started months before the election. The protestors wore white ribbons, which Putin crudely sexualized by saying the cloth looked like condoms.

          Putin won, but it was clear that a significant portion of Russians were unhappy with him and the direction of their society. Putin had invaded Georgia in 2008, which perhaps was initially popular, but became less so as the war wore on. Privatization of industry had put money into private hands, but little of it went to anyone other than what are now known as the oligarchs. Russians could increasingly see the results of wealth, but few experienced it. Russia became the most economically unequal society in the world. More and more people felt dangerously unsettled. Gessen again: “Many Russians, however, got poorer—or at least felt a lot poorer: there were so many more goods in the stores now but they could afford so little. Nearly everyone lost the one thing that had been in abundant supply during the Era of Stagnation: the unshakeable belief that tomorrow will not be different from today. Uncertainty made people feel ever poorer.” And people took to the streets in numbers that Putin could not ignore.

          He responded not by trying to distribute wealth more equally, increasing civil liberties, or having fairer elections. Instead, in something that should feel familiar to Americans today, he sought to unite Russians by launching an anti-homosexual crusade. Gessen states, “In the spring of 2012, Putin decided to pick on the gays. In the lead-up to the March 2012 election, faced with mass protests, Putin briefly panicked. . . . And faced with the protest movement, the new Kremlin crew reached for the bluntest instrument it could: it called the protesters queer.” Timothy Snyder in The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America sees Putin as making this an external threat: “Some intractable foreign foe had to be linked to protestors, so that they, rather than Putin himself, could be portrayed as the danger to Russian statehood. Protestors’ actions had to be uncoupled from the very real domestic problem that Putin had created and associated with a fake foreign threat to Russian sovereignty. [The protestors] were mindless agents of global sexual decadence whose actions threatened the innocent national organism.” Putin claimed that these protestors were the tools of a foreign power, a power embodied in the person many American conservatives loathed. “Three days after the protests began, Putin blamed Hillary Clinton for initiating them: ‘she gave the signal.’” A few days later, without providing evidence, he claimed that the protestors had been paid.

          The propaganda maintained that the forces promoting sodomy were not just trying to affect Russia. They were also infiltrating Ukraine. “European integration (of Ukraine) was interpreted by Russian politicians to mean the legalization of same-sex partnership (which was not an element of Ukraine’s association agreement with the EU) and thus the spread of homosexuality.” Gessen tells us that a Russian politician “warned that if Ukraine went west, that would lead to ‘a broadening of the sphere of gay culture, which has become the European Union’s official policy.’ Over the next couple of months, the image of the Western threat menacing Ukraine broadened to include not only the gays but also the Americans, for whom the gays were always a stand-in anyway.”

          Whether or not American manifest destiny compares to Russian exceptionalism, Putin’s turn to sexual matters does have American parallels. How American does this sound? Putin announced, Gessen reports, that he was “defending traditional values.” Russia passed legislation “not only banning ‘homosexual propaganda’ but also ‘protecting children from harmful information,’ which meant, first and foremost, any mention of homosexuality, but also mention of death, violence, suicide, domestic abuse, unhappiness, and, really, life itself.” (The law was entitled, “For the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values.” Perhaps it produces a snappy acronym in Russian.) Russian kiddies should not learn of things that might make them uncomfortable. It is clear that a similar agenda is being implemented in an increasing number of American schools.

          Putin has learned a basic political trick: when the topic is about the shortcomings of Russia or of Putin himself, shift the topic. “Putin was enunciating a basic principle of his Eurasian civilization: when the subject is inequality, change it to sexuality.” American conservatives have followed a similar path to avoid confronting American shortcomings. Instead of addressing homelessness, switch the topic to any number of other topics — critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, DEI, or the ever-handy rainbow flag of gaydom and transgenderism. American conservatives and Putin share the goal of wanting to make “politics about being rather than doing.”

          Russia has recently been meddling in the affairs of other countries. For example, when Germany’s Angela Merkel admitted Syrian refugees causing a backlash among some of her constituents, Russia increased its bombing of Syrian targets, thereby creating more refugees. Through Twitter accounts and the media outlets it controls, Russia published false reports about the crime wave in Germany supposedly caused by the refugees. This had me thinking about conservatives who talk about crimes and diseases brought by immigrants to this country. They have little data to back up their claims and seldom mention that almost all who come here expect to work hard to attain a better life. Moreover, they fail to mention that birth rates are dropping in the U.S., and we need those workers.    

          Before the vote on Scottish independence, Russian media, hoping to encourage the disruption of the United Kingdom, rattled on about the terrible consequences for Scotland if it remained in Great Britain. After the referendum failed, Russia cast doubt about the vote’s validity. Internet video suggested vote rigging, and the videos were promoted on Twitter by accounts based in Russia. Timothy Snyder states, “Although no actual irregularities were reported, roughly a third of Scottish voters gained the impression that something fraudulent had taken place.” Sound familiar?

          Russia favored Brexit–anything to disrupt European unity–and over 400 Twitter accounts heavily promoting the “exit” position were traced to Russia. Russian media did not attack the outcome of the referendum. Snyder says, “This time, no Russian voice questioned the result, presumably since the voting had gone the way Moscow had wished. Brexit was a major triumph for Russian foreign policy to weaken the United Kingdom. The margin of the vote was 52% for leaving and 48% for staying.”

          Why should Russia seek to destabilize other countries? There are at least two reasons. Masha Gessen reports that Putin understands strength to mean that “the country is as great as the fear it inspires.” Thus, Russia’s ability to influence the internal affairs of other countries demonstrates its powers. In addition, because Russia has not been able to raise itself up in the world, it has begun to define success “not in terms of prosperity and freedom but in terms of sexuality and culture, and [suggests] that the European Union (and the United States) be defined as threats not because of anything they did but because of the values they supposedly represented.” Russia’s method of moving up in the standings is to tear others down. Snyder points out, “The essence of Russia’s foreign policy is strategic relativism: Russia cannot become stronger, so it must make others weaker. The simplest way is to make them like Russia.”

          The reasoning would suggest that Russia thinks itself better or, at least, not so bad when people in other countries doubt their institutions and their society’s values. Russia suggested that a Conservative win in the UK was the result of a rigged election. If it can get Britishers to believe that, Russia’s elections appear similar to British ones. Moscow does not try “to project some ideal of their own, only to bring out the worst in the United States.” Under communism, the Soviet Union tried to convince the world that it had a better system than the west — one that would eventually prevail and bring a better life for the Soviets and people around the world. Russia no longer has that ideology. It cannot produce or promise an improving society; it can only tear down others.

          It is more than a little frightening to picture Putin giggling in triumph, but he must be more than a little pleased with recent American trends as conservatives seek to undermine the basic validity of our elections. If, in this bastion of democracy, our votes are rigged, then Russian elections look better. The Russian portrayal of America as a land of sexual decadence is only promoted when conservatives “find” homosexual and transexual groomers hiding in American classrooms. Russia’s own repression of Russians who contest their country’s direction looks sounder when U.S. schools are portrayed as places for racial and woke indoctrination. The conservatives may not be consciously seeking to make Putin stronger, but they are unwittingly playing into his hands. Perhaps when the cameras are off, he runs victory laps around those huge conference tables he often sits behind wearing a MAGA cap. And giggling.

Posted on by rjonakait

Putin, America, and the Politics of Being

          The Trump administration is trying to coerce Ukraine into accepting a peace settlement with Russia even though Russia may not want peace. The deal would basically have Ukraine capitulate to Putin. This reminds me of the books The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (2018) by Timothy Snyder and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (2012) by Masha Gessen. Both books were written before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and our 2020 and 2024 elections, but the two books complement each other in their portraits of Putin and Russia. They present pictures that aid in understanding the present Ukraine situation and illuminate for me aspects of our own politics. Reading them did not lead to a full-blown depression, but it did not improve my mood.

          Putin’s obsession with Ukraine is longstanding. The Soviet Union, founded in 1922, was a federation of national republics that included Ukraine. However, during the 1970s and 1980s every Soviet Republic increasingly felt as though they were being exploited by some other republic. In March 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the USSR, organized a referendum on whether to maintain the Soviet Union as a single entity. Voters in nine of the fifteen constituent republics voted in favor of unity, but six republics boycotted the vote. A few weeks later, Georgia held its own referendum and voted to secede from the USSR. Two months later, Ukraine declared its independence from the USSR, as did Chechnya, which had been part of Russia. The latter led to a destructive war with Russia. (In August 1991, President George H.W. Bush went to Kyiv and urged Ukrainians not to leave the Soviet Union, saying “Freedom is not the same as independence.”) More than 90% of the Ukrainians voted for independence.       A coup to remove Gorbachev failed, but in the aftermath, Gorbachev resigned and his successor, Boris Yeltsin, became increasingly popular. He was soon head of the Soviet Union and removed Russia from the USSR ending the federation. Putin followed him as president of Russia in 1999. After a brief hiatus (2008-2012), Putin has been elected president ever since.

          Putin proclaims religious, ethnic, and near mythical connections between Russia and Ukraine. Snyder says Putin sees Ukraine as “an inseparable organ of the virginal Russian body” and that Putin has said that Russians and Ukrainians “are one people.” The independent Ukraine that came into being in 1991 may have been tolerable to Putin as long as it remained receptive to Russia’s desires and provided it with oil, food and precious metals. Viktor Yanukovych was elected head of Ukraine in 2010 and, according to Snyder, began his term “by offering Russia essentially everything that Ukraine could give, including basing rights for the Russian navy on Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.” At the time it was understood that this installation would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.

          The Ukrainian population, however, increasingly looked not to Russia for guidance and inspiration but to the West. When Yanukovych canceled an association agreement with the European Union in 2013, pro-European demonstrations broke out in Ukraine. After several elections, the present government took power, and as we all know, this is not a Ukraine that takes orders from Moscow.

          The westward turn by Ukraine has been especially troubling for those who have “Mother Russia” feelings about Ukraine. While former Soviet satellite countries and the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had joined the European Union in 2004 and 2007, the EU had not extended into any territory that had been part of the original Soviet federation of 1922.

          This history and Putin’s viewpoints about Ukraine struck me as quintessentially Russian. The first time I read in Crime and Punishment about Raskolnikov’s kissing the soil at the crossroads, I tried to understand his semi-mystical feeling for Mother Russia. Snyder writes that Russian slavophiles believe “that Russia was endowed with a particular genius. Orthodox Christianity and popular mysticism, they maintained, expressed a depth of spirit unknown in the West. The slavophiles imagined that Russian history had begun with a Christian conversion in Kyiv a thousand years before.”

          But as I thought about these aspects of Russian culture, I wondered whether there were counterparts in American history. Putin apparently believes that Ukraine is an integral part of Russia, and it is Russia’s destiny to include Ukraine. How much different is that from the nineteenth century American faith in “manifest destiny”? At the time, many felt that it was the express mission of Americans to push onward to the Pacific even though other peoples already lived there. Didn’t the use of the word “destiny” imply that this path was preordained by the Almighty? Putin and others believe that Russia is exceptional, distinct and more holy than other lands. And Americans? Of course, America is exceptional, and just below the surface of that notion is a kind of religious belief. Surely when Jesus returns, he will not go to Galilee, but instead will come to the holiest of holies, America. (That is, if he can navigate our immigration laws, for nothing in them would allow him to enter. He might be able to walk over the river, but what if a border wall keeps him out, and he is consigned to a squalid camp on the Mexican side?)

          Perhaps finding links between Mother Russia, manifest destiny, and American exceptionalism is a stretch, but comparing some aspects of recent Russian and American political history is not.

(Concluded April 30)