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Snippets

The sign was for a holiday event that I have never seen but would like to: “A drive-thru living Nativity.” Do you think there are camels???

A few years back I asked a political scientist what a democratic socialist was. She replied that they used to be called “liberal.” Today’s democratic socialists seem to want to remind Democrats of their roots with concerns for housing and food costs, wages, and childcare with the belief that such issues should not just be left to untrammeled free markets. But now such concerns that led to social security, public housing, Medicare, and Medicaid are considered so left wing as to be out of the mainstream.

For those looking for a holiday gift, a new calendar featuring Vladimir Putin in many poses has been released. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has not announced whether Trump has already obtained his embossed, autographed copy.

It was easy for me to spot the error. Maxwell King in The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers was debunking and ridiculing rumors about Mr. Rogers. Those silly rumors included that he was a convicted child molester and that he wore long sleeve shirts to hide tattoos. Another one was that he had been a sniper in Vietnam with many “kills” to his credit. The author reported that Rogers was never in the military and continued, “Fred Rogers was also much too old to have been drafted, given that the draft started in 1969, when his show was just getting established.” Of course, he could have been in the armed forces without being drafted, but what leapt out to me was the confident assertion that the draft started in 1969. I, along with many, many others, got a draft notice in 1968. The Selective Service Act of 1948 authorized conscription of young men, and many, including many I knew, were drafted into the army between 1948 and 1968. In 1969, the Act was changed to institute the draft lottery (you can look it up), but there was a draft long before that. But back to Mr. Rogers. I learned many fascinating things about him in the book, but I wondered, having spotted the error, whether I should doubt other things I had read in The Good Neighbor. I decided that I should not. The error was not about the life of Fred Rogers but about an extraneous fact. There was no reason to doubt the biographical research.

Fashion is dangerous. According to David Reynolds in Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him, Winston’s mother died at 67 while still lively. She “died suddenly from a haemorrhage. This followed a fall in the high heels to which she was addicted, which had caused a broken ankle, followed by gangrene and the amputation of her foot.”

I grew up a few blocks from the western shores of Lake Michigan, where I spent much time playing, walking a dog, and just gazing out, often seeing long, thin ships carrying ore on the horizon. Even so, I have read little about the Great Lakes partly because, unlike the oceans, rivers, and swamps, little has been written about them. These important bodies of water are largely ignored by most Americans. However, John U. Bacon’s The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald taught me a lot about the commercial importance of the Lakes and the dangers of their waters. Frightening waves are often steeper and come closer together on the Great Lakes than on the oceans. And, of course, there is a good deal to learn about the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank on November 10,1975, a sad and disturbing event that many of us only know about from the Gordon Lightfoot song. The book is a page turner. Highly recommended.

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Deck the Halls (from the spouse)

I am among the least “artsy-craftsy” persons in the world. I never made anything out of macramé, can’t hook a rug, can’t make a damn thing out of popsicle sticks, but…I’m really good at making Christmas decorations!

I’m not sure where this talent – so uncharacteristic of me — came from. Maybe when I was little. When I was the tender age of six or seven, Mother had my sister and me making our own Christmas stockings. Mother cut the template out of green felt, provided us with scissors, sequins, ribbons, other colors of felt, little angels, needle and thread and had us go at it. Do you know how hard it is for a seven-year-old to sew on a sequin??! No glue was provided (was Elmer’s glue even invented back then?). But I did it and am the better for it. I had that stocking (with my sequined name in white felt) until I left for college!

Mother was good at making Christmas decorations, and I copied some of her designs. She was a major felt fan and had made beautiful ornaments using styroform balls covered in felt, gold braid, sequins (you can attach them to styroform with a pin through the middle which is a whole lot easier than sewing!), and other glittery things. When we were first married and living in our first apartment and our first Christmas came around, I was determined to decorate with a little Christmas sparkle. The local Woolworth’s (my go-to place for all home goods) had an eclectic fabric collection in its basement, and they had…FELT! And sequins! And ribbon! And pearl-headed pins! And even little styroform balls! I was in business and set about trying to recreate my mother’s masterpieces. P.S. We still hang these little treasures on our Christmas tree.

The next year I found larger styroform balls, and wider ribbon and made an arrangement of the (felt-covered) balls on various lengths of ribbon to hang from the mantelpiece. And so…I was on my way to Christmas decoration stardom!

When I finally got a real job and opened a real lab (my own!!!), I discovered that the most fabulous florist supply store in all of the New York area was a mere 2 blocks from my lab. Can you even imagine what treasures they have in a florist supply store? I soon found myself in a Christmas decorators’ heaven. At Christmastime, they carried at least 100 kinds of Christmas-themed ribbon, pin lights, regular lights in all colors, extravagant collections of greens (fake, yes, but incredibly realistic), sparkly things of indescribable luxuriousness, life-sized white doves, golden stalks of this and that, and real poinsettias for cheap. I had a house by now – a Victorian house – a house crying out for a full, over-the-top Dickens decorating spree. So I bought:

200 feet of garlands;

10 white doves;

Yards and yards (who was counting?) of 2” wire-stiffened ribbons of various design;

8 luscious stalks containing some sort of exotic fruit surrounded by exotic greens and normal fir-tree-type greens (Sounds awful, doesn’t it? Trust me, they were beautiful.);

2 wreaths;

And goodness knows what else.

I didn’t know what to do with the yards and yards of ribbon, BUT…help came in the form of the famous “Bow-Dabra” (I probably found it in Woolworth’s), a kit that showed one how to make fabulous bows – the best $9.99 purchase I ever made!

With the help of an extremely skeptical husband, I decked the halls. The garlands outlined the doors; the wreaths went on the outside front door panels (they were promptly stolen – just the way the neighborhood was at the time); the white doves fluttered amid the dining room garlands; the exotic fruit perfumed the living room garlands (well, not really, but they added a salutary bit of sophistication).

It was glorious, if I do say so myself.

When our child came along, I made…yes! green felt stockings for the three of us. Sequins (glued, not sewn!) glittered on our names cut out of white felt. It’s now almost 45 years later, and we still stuff those very same stockings with goodies to open on Christmas morning.

As a wee tot, the AJ was frightened by the white doves (thinking, I guess, that they might fly down and peck at him), but he got used to them at some point. Also, while I favored a Christmas tree trimmed completely in white/gold lights and golden ornaments (sparkly, you know), the AJ preferred a more colorful model with multicolored lights and “traditional” ornaments. Guess who won? For this multicolored extravaganza, I made a tree skirt. Now. I CAN sew a little, so I went to my favorite fabric store (a step up from Woolworth’s), bought yards of red and green velveteen (NOT felt this time) and at least 20 yards of gold braid. This little project designed to save us money (home-made, after all) set us back a month’s mortgage payment, but it fit the tree perfectly, and it WAS elegant, if I do say so myself.

You’d think that would have been enough. Ha! You jest! I have since bought two of those beautifully-crafted carolers (from Byers’ Choice, Ltd.) who sing on the coffee table in their authentic Victorian garb (complete with a real rabbit fur muff for the lady and a leather satchel carried by the man); an elaborate three-foot bearded Santa in a fur-trimmed velvet cape (got him for $10 at a flea market) holding a lighted wreath that’s on a timer (!); and three paunchy “Christmas ladies” whom I fell in love with in Duane Reade (they wear hand-crafted outfits that include real knitted scarves and hats made of…felt). They welcome people to the entrance hall. I didn’t craft any of these personalities (all way beyond my capabilities), but I appreciate their addition to our festivities.

As we got older stringing the garlands over the 10-foot doorways proved a bit too far to go, so the garlands were “repurposed,” and were wound around the banisters outside on the stoop decorated with red bows (no white doves). After the stolen-wreath caper, we never did much to the outside of the house, so this is a departure – one worth repeating in the future.

About four years ago, I realized that I had more pine cones, sequins, baubles, holly berries, ribbons, toy soldiers, exotic fruits, tiny stuffed angels, etc. than I was ever going to be able to use – no matter how many table centerpieces I made. So I gave a party. I provided wine, glue, wire, wreath forms, and sundry vases and watched my friends create their own Christmas cheer out of my cache of wonderment.

I love Christmas decorations.

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Ken Burns and Trump the Outlier

Many people have been enthralled by Ken Burns latest film, this one on the American Revolution. Burns and his crew are tremendous filmmakers. The script always flows seamlessly, incorporating visuals, talking heads, and narration seemingly based on extensive research. He has a winning technique, which he employs no matter the subject matter– jazz, baseball, the Roosevelts, the Dust Bowl or the Revolution. The subject matter is forced to fit the technique, but that technique always seems to leave viewers feeling as if they have learned a lot, that they are intellectual, with little effort on their part.

In a well-prepared presentation at our current events discussion group, a fellow resident talked about Burns’s The American Revolution. Among her points was that the history was more complex than what she was taught when in school; that the outcome may now seem inevitable, but it was not at the time; and that the American “story” is one of a journey that continues. In response to comments, she said that President Trump was only temporary and that she had great confidence in the wisdom of the American people, or at least of her grandchildren. I thought that suggesting Trump was sort of an outlier and that good-sense Americans would soon prevail missed some of the points she drew from the Burns’s documentary. Our history is complicated, but good results are not inevitable.

Unfortunately, Trump is not some outlier. Many if not most mainstream Republicans before Trump took over supported tax cuts skewed to the rich; did not support healthcare for the many; threw up scares about immigrants; opposed “wokeness”; bashed universities; bashed science; suggested there was unconstitutional discrimination against whites, especially white males; maintained that there was rampant discrimination against Christians; promoted islamophobia; and so on. Trump did not create these positions; he just said them more stridently and colorfully than other politicians.

This made me think of Timothy Egan’s, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them (2023), the story of the rise of the twentieth century Ku Klux Klan. This a story not of the deep south, but of Indiana and of D.C. Stephenson, who in effect ruled the Hoosier State in the 1920s. Stephenson did not build this new Klan by himself. Egan points out that the Klan of the 1920s was built with blessing of Protestant clergy. Stephenson, however, had abilities and shamelessness that still exist in modern demagogues. Egan tells us that D.C. Stephenson “had the touch and the charm, the dexterity with words and the drive. He understood people’s fear and their need to blame others for their failures. He discovered that if he said something often enough, no matter how untrue, people would believe it. Small lies were for the timid. The key to telling a big lie was to do it with a conviction.”

The Klan was seeking to make America great again by returning the country to a previous time. It supported eugenics and mandatory sterilizations to limit America to the “right” kind of people that used to be the only Americans. It blessed the restrictive immigration law, the National Origins Act of 1924, which prevented the “wrong” kinds of people from entering the country. It denied the shared humanity of people, and thus the Klan opposed the teaching of evolution because evolution implies that all people had a common origin.

Stephenson’s downfall came when a brave prosecutor arrested and tried him for a horrific rape and murder. Although the disgusting evidence was clear, he still retained power because his followers “believed the trial was a hoax and witch hunt.” The true heroes were the twelve average men of the jury who convicted him leading to a life sentence.

There is much worth studying in this story. The prosecutor pointed out that “‘Stephenson forced a super oath’ on public officials. This super oath was greater than the oath of constitutional authority.” When loyalty to an individual becomes stronger than to the greater good or the constitution, society is in danger. Stephenson demonstrated that “democracy was a fragile thing, stable and steady until it was broken and trampled. A man who didn’t care about shattering every convention, and then found new ways to vandalize the contract that allowed free people to govern themselves, could do unthinkable damage.” And our journey continues. Stephenson’s downfall was not inevitable. Because he committed a horrific crime, he was the eventual cause of his own downfall. But it took a brave prosecutor and brave jurors to make sure that downfall occurred.

As unusual as Stephenson may now seem, Timothy Egan asks the still relevant question: “What if the leaders of the 1920s Klan didn’t drive public sentiment, but rode it? A vein of hatred was always there for the tapping. It’s still there, and explains much of the madness threatening American life a hundred years after Stephenson made a mockery of the moral principles of the Heartland.”

What if Trump does not drive public sentiment but rides it? A vein of hatred will exist after Trump departs. Glass-more-than-half-full optimism about the American people and seeing Trump as an outlier will not change that. I wish I were mistaken.

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                                                            Sing, Sing, Sing, and Dance

               “There is no such thing as hell, of course, but if there was, then the sound track to the screaming, the pitchfork action and the infernal wailing of damned souls would be a looped medley of ‘show tunes’ drawn from the annals of musical theater.” Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.

I took a six-week course at my residence, Topics in American Musical Theater. It was presented by a marvelous teacher, Dan Egan, who also teaches at Yale. We students were charged with watching a specific musical or two before each class and were also given some short reading. We started with Oklahoma!, the seminal show integrating music, lyrics, text, and dance.

The second week we moved on to Kiss Me Kate (by happenstance, the spouse is in a play-reading group making its way through Taming of the Shrew) and Guys and Dolls. I watched an online version of Kiss Me, which I had not seen before. Not my favorite. I also watched the movie Guys and Dolls, which I had seen before. The film is not the encapsulation of the stage show, since four or five songs were dropped from the movie, including “A Bushel and a Peck,” which I remember my mother singing when I was a tyke. When I first saw the movie, I thought Marlon Brando was miscast. This time I realized that Frank Sinatra was out of place, but I had seen a wonderful revival on Broadway with the always marvelous Nathan Lane. I came out, however, not humming any of his songs but singing “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat.”

The next week we considered West Side Story and Music Man. I had seen movie versions of both. Some years ago the spouse and I went to see a re-release of the 1961 West Side Story at a small theater in Brooklyn. Just before its start, a dozen male and female students from a nearby “elite” high school walked in. When the whistling and the finger popping and the crouched dancing began, the teenage-boy jokes started flying. The scene was easy to make fun of, and even the St. Anne’s students could think they were tougher than these 1950s dancing juvenile delinquents. The students, however, soon settled into watch. By the end, most were crying. Seeing it again this time, both the spouse and I were in tears, too.

I have seen the Music Man movie many more times since it was something the son watched over and over and over again at one stage of childhood. Because he liked it so much, I took him to a summer stock production of the musical. He came out critical. It did not have Robert Preston. It starred Gary Sandy, best known as a star of WKRP in Cincinnati. The production seemed more semi-professional than professional, and I learned that every presentation of a classical musical is not necessarily worth attending. Somewhat to my surprise, I have never seen a stage production of West Side Story.

I did not know that these two quite different musicals opened a few months apart and vied for that year’s Tony award with Meredith Wilson’s production winning in a controversial, close vote. The assigned reading maintained that the two plays showed different ways of dealing with America’s race or ethnic differences. Of course, West Side Story deals with those issues, but I was not convinced about Music Man. The thesis just seemed to be an academic overreach. I was pleased, however, that the instructor played a video of Larry Kert, the original Broadway Tony, singing. He had a marvelous voice. We did not discuss, however, the appropriateness of movies casting leads and then dubbing their singing as was done in West Side Story, or Natalie Wood’s attempt at a Puerto Rican accent.

I also felt as if I irritated the instructor that class. I had privately corrected him a week or two before. He was talking about Vaudevillian villains who twirled their mustaches and referred to such a person as Dudley Do-Right. As a devoted follower of George of the Jungle, I knew he meant Snidely Whiplash. Dan graciously accepted the correction. That was minor, but it felt more important when he labeled the Jets in West Side Story as W.A.S.Ps. I, privately told him that there was no way a gang on the west side in 1950s New York were white Anglo-Saxon protestants. In fact, there is a point in the production where ethnic slurs are tossed about and Tony, an original leader of the Jets, is called a Polack. I said the Jets were not high up on the social ladder, only a bit higher than the Sharks, and that was part of the reason for the intense bitterness between them. Dan maintained that in the literature the Jets are called wasps. I said that if so, those commentators were wrong. That seemed to irritate him, and I dropped the topic.

The “students” in the course were of my generation, and several repeatedly made the point that they did not like contemporary musicals because they were no longer musical. Many seemed almost hostile when we turned to Sweeney Todd, where hummable tunes were few but strident,  emotionally powerful singing plentiful. The instructor did a marvelous job explicating the innovative music and the remarkable lyrics. The repeated T sound in “Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd,” for example, is brilliant, but so is much else in the show. I had seen a filmed version of Sweeney Todd with the always marvelous Angela Lansbury and George Hearn, and one Broadway production featuring Patti Lupone (she played the tuba), but I had not fully realized Sweeney Todd’s brilliance until I was led through it by Dan.

We finished with Hamilton. Time and again during the class I had heard how someone had gone to the show with their grandchildren, who loved it, while the grandparent had gotten little from it. Once again, however, the class opened my eyes and ears. I realized how remarkable Hamilton is, a truly transformative musical. Thanks, Dan.

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Snippets

Larry Summers, former Harvard President and former Secretary of the Treasury, said that he would be stepping back from public commitments after a release of emails between him and Jeffrey Epstein showed that Summers stayed in touch with Epstein even after the pedophile was convicted. Summers said, “I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.” Of course, he should have felt the same shame a week, a month, a year ago. His actions that supposedly bring the shame had already occurred. Apparently as long as the emails weren’t public, he was not ashamed.

The girl in the comic strip asks how best to deal with A.I., and Lars, the space alien, responds, “Become an oligarch.” She asks how to do that, and Lars says that this planet’s requirements are “you need to be a white male narcissist with inherited wealth and live in a country run like a banana republic.” She mutters, “Well, I got one out of three, so it’s a start.”

A coupon urged me to buy beef sticks because they contained “real ingredients.”

All my life I have heard conservatives rail against big government, but I have never been sure of the definition of “big government.” Apparently, food stamps or a subsidy to the poor is big government, but a tariff and/or owning a share in a private company, another form of governmental subsidy, is apparently not big government. Why is that?

A member of the book group denounced a novel “as written for money.” I thought the greatest writers—e.g., Shakespeare and Dickens—wrote for money. Perhaps the only authors who do not write for money are academics, and I assure you that even many of them dream of dollar signs.

“Socialism” is thrown around as an epithet a lot these days. So is “communism.” I wish that those who did so would define the terms, or does it just mean something the person does not like?

Tim Weiner in The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century quotes David Petraeus: “You really should have a deep understanding of a country and all aspects of it before you invade it.” I hope this is kept in mind as Trump considers actions in Venezuela. It didn’t work out very well in Iraq.

As Ian Frazier was signing my copy of his latest book, Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York’s Greatest Borough, I told him I had been his admirer since Great Plains written more than thirty years ago. He thanked me, and I continued that Paradise Bronx, too, was marvelous . . . except for the ludicrous subtitle. “You didn’t like the subtitle?” I explained that I had been a Brooklyn boy for over a half century. He continued that the subtitle had not been his but the choice of his editors.

I am fascinated by those religious institutions that allow so many to feel self-righteous by making the lives of others so much worse.

A perspicacious person said: “A bigot delights in public ridicule, for he begins to think he is a martyr.”

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First Sentences

“On the morning of April 20,2001, George Tenet gazed out the glass wall of his seventh-floor suite at the Central Intelligence Agency, looking upon a vision of serenity, tall green trees reaching as far as the eye could see.” Tim Weiner, The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century.

“Behold. Forty-four-year-old him. A low-budget, Black Jack London shivering in the frozen north called Minnesota.” Jason Mott, People Like Us.

“The Bronx is a hand reaching down to pull the other boroughs of New York City out of the harbor and the sea.” Ian Frazier, Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York’s Greatest Borough.

“A prim girl stood still as a fencepost on Rhys Kinnick’s front porch.” Jess Walter, So Far Gone.

“History shows us how to behave.” David McCullough, History Matters (ed. Dorie McCullough Lawson & Michael Hill.)

“The seventeenth century was a tough time to be alive.” Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689.

“The body floats downstream.” Ariel Lawhon, The Frozen River.

“In 1991, a generational tale of parking’s role in American life began in Solana Beach, California.” Henry Grabar, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World.

“At least it gives me an excuse for sweating, thought Peter Pascoe, as he scuttled toward the shelter of the first of the two cars parked across the road from number 3.” Reginald Hill, Death Comes for the Fat Man.

“Robert Langdon awoke peacefully, enjoyed the gentle strains of classical music from his phone’s alarm on the bedside table.” Dan Brown, The Secret of Secrets.

“After a hasty exit, I patted myself down, checking my pockets to see whether I had stashed anything useful.” Hannah Carlson, Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close.

“In 1959 Florence Green occasionally passed a night when she was not absolutely sure whether she had slept or not.” Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop.

“On the southern slopes of Mount Zion, alongside the ruins of biblical Jerusalem, lies a small Protestant cemetery.” Tom Segev, One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (translated by Haim Watzman).

“In conversation play, the important thing is to get in early and stay there.” Stephen Potter, Lifemanship: Some Notes on Lifemanship with a Summary of Recent Research in Gamesmanship.

“Every Wednesday afternoon in the laboratory where I used to work, we had an event called journal club.” Chris v. Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food that Isn’t Food.

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Brace Yourself (Guest Post from the Sp0use)

I was born 79 years ago with one leg shorter than the other. Well, that’s the easy explanation. Currently my right leg is, in fact, 10 inches shorter than my left, but the medical explanation is somewhat more complicated. The textbook calls it “focal femoral deficiency,” which means that I lacked a femur, and, hence, the hip socket that awaited the head of that femur went without. Happily for me, a small nubbin of bone was the single representative of the missing femur, and, as you will see, it was pressed into service.

My mother must have been horrified to find that her second baby girl was going to be “crippled” (as they said in those days). She had classic Rita Hayworth legs of which she was justifiably proud, and would have expected to pass them along to her daughters. More than the absence of pretty legs, though, her second baby girl might not walk.

Mother being at a loss and, no doubt, bereft, my father took on the orthopedic duties. Good man that he was, he took a leave from graduate school and moved the family lock, stock, and barrel from Evanston, Illinois, to Washington, D.C. World War II had ended the previous summer, and the Veterans’ Administration was geared up for equipping returning soldiers with artificial limbs of all sorts. Dad must have known someone in the VA because he seemed certain that people there could outfit me with some sort of apparatus that would allow me to walk. He was right.

Let me stop to interject a word about prosthetists — those people who make braces and artificial limbs. In my opinion they are among the most creative problem-solvers on the planet. Prosthetics were pretty much in their infancy after WWII, and these guys were confronted with a vast variety of injuries. Braces are not made on an assembly line — not in those days anyway; they had to meet a wide spectrum of individual needs. They routinely work one-on-one to develop a constructive strategy. As it turns out, these folks also are among the most patient of all people. I have had many over my lifetime, and they are all good listeners, kind, and just plain nice.

My first brace was an elaborate piece of metal sculpture. These men (and they were routinely men in those days) were artists as well as craftsmen. There were two steel uprights surrounding my leg; a shoe could be attached to a metal footplate; and below the steel footplate were some more steel uprights reaching to the ground where there was a rubber “heel.” A leather strap encircled my leg just below the primitive “knee.” But that’s not all. There was something called an “ischial seat,” a semi-circle of padded leather that tucked in under my right buttock. And yes, I could “sit” on it. But wait; there’s more. A leather belt was attached so that I was strapped in from waist to toe. There must have been a hinge at the waist because I think I could bend over. Otherwise, there was no flexure; the uprights were unbending.

But I could walk (which was, after all, the point). Stiff-legged, but I could walk. And this contraption turned out to be more than just a crutch. With constant use of my legs, that little nubbin of bone managed to grow into a functional femur. It found a place to attach itself, not at the hip socket, but to some soft tissue in the vicinity of my hip. It nestled there, and that attachment became strong enough to support me even without the brace. However, its journey northward pulled my leg up with it resulting in shortening the leg. During most of my childhood I wore the brace to school, but at home I ran, jumped, rode bicycles, climbed trees and swam without it. It didn’t bother me that one of my legs was 4, 6, or 8 inches shorter than the other. Looking like a “normal” person, however, required the brace. Interestingly, I never named it.

But the brace was uncomfortable. In summer, the leather was hot and stuck to my skin. That ischial seat was fine while standing, but it was like a large lump on a schoolroom desk chair. And I couldn’t bend my knee. I was a stiff-legged robot with it on. And heaven knows how much the thing weighed. It also affected my wardrobe. I couldn’t wear slacks because I couldn’t get them over the brace, and I certainly wasn’t going to wear it outside the pants!

As I grew stronger (constant lifting it probably helped), the upper leather belt of the brace was removed, considered unnecessary. A relief for sure, but I was still a robot. In junior high school I was invited (by a boy!) to attend the “Eighth Grade Dance” (catchy title). His dad was going to pick me up with another couple or two and drive us to the dance and then home afterward. I was horrified to find out that I was to be squashed into the back seat with four other people. My brace had nowhere to go. It ended up poking a hole into the back upholstery of the front seat. I was too mortified to say anything. I don’t think I was invited to do anything with that boy again.

Because I was born with one leg shorter than the other, I have always worn a brace. It remained roughly the same into my teens, but two major innovations occurred in high school. One: some clever brace maker (did I mention that they are creative as all get-out?) figured out a way to hinge the brace at the knee. Yay! I could bend my knee! Major breakthrough Two: I figured out how to put a zipper in the inseam of slacks so that I could get pants over the brace. I could wear slacks!

The final innovation didn’t occur until college when the extension of steel above my knee was removed completely, and I was left with only the lower part of the brace. No need for a hinge; no need for zippers. It probably weighed half of the original.

One major vulnerability remained, however: the steel footplate. My husband and I were traveling to visit my grandmother in rural Alabama when the steel footplate snapped in two. You’d think steel could manage the weight of a young woman, but it snapped. Where does one go in rural Alabama to get metal repaired? A blacksmith! Who did, in fact, solder or weld the thing back together enough for us to complete our trip.

It snapped again when we were visiting Florence. Yes, that Florence. No blacksmiths available, but the orthopedic department of a Florentine hospital managed to glue me back together enough to carry on. The orthopedist who helped me found me and my brace quite exotic and asked many, many questions. He spoke bad English and I spoke no Italian, so I don’t know how much medical information I was actually able to impart. After that, I had the footplate reinforced with a steel rod. It has not broken since.

Recently, one of my braces (I had two working models) broke. That is, the steel upright cracked…unusual, but there it is. No one makes braces like mine anymore; the last time I had a brace made — maybe 35 or 40 years ago — they sent to Detroit to have it fabricated, but even that alternative is no longer available. So for the first time, I really didn’t have a prosthetist. But it’s just metal, right? People who work with metal could fix it, right? Yes! Fortunately, I found a wonderful metal fabricator in Brooklyn. He makes things out of metal, like metal shelves for vinyl records. It’s a niche market that he has cornered. This wonderful man agreed to try fixing up an old, retired brace to see if it could be a stand-in in case my “good” one broke. David did a stellar job — one of the best prosthetists I have ever had. I keep his card with me always!

I am thankful to all of the prosthetists who have taken care of me and my brace over the years. When I was a child, it was an emerging profession. The field has made marvelous advances over the years, but it remains hard to find a prosthetic device as individualized as mine has had to be. David is now my go-to miracle man.

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Whither Populism? Marxism? No, wait, Nationalism? No, wait…

I have been trying to understand terms I hear in current political discourse.

Let’s take, e.g., “Populism.” Okay. Populism, government for the people, opposes elites. Originally that meant economic elites, which were seen as controlling both society and the government. Populists were against corporate power, the banks, and the rich generally. That has changed. Now Elon Musk and Donald Trump are labeled Populists. Really? There seems now to be little of the traditional concern about the power of obscene wealth, and the populist movement–certainly not that of Trump and Musk–does not seek to break up or restrict corporate greed or banks. 

Modern populism now targets the cultural elite. This change may have been initiated in the 1960s by George Wallace, who denounced “pointy headed liberals” and Ivy League intellectuals (read, the Kennedys) telling ordinary people what to do. In his case it was the “cultural elite” telling his southern constituents what to do about civil rights. The modern populist has little concern about the economic elites getting more and more while ordinary people cling to their modest means. Instead, the concern is that they may be dislodged by an undeserving class of people (read, Blacks and immigrants) who have been anointed and protected by the cultural elites. In modern populism, the economic elites have won and go unchallenged.

Now. What about Marxism? Marxism was originally a movement to shield workers from the economic inequality created by an aristocratic ruling class. However, this concept, too, has changed. Terms like “bourgeoisie,” “proletariat,” and “means of production” have disappeared. Now, at least in the U.S., “Marxism” is preceded by “cultural.” [Many right-wing people see it as a Jewish conspiracy to subvert Western civilization.] A report published by the American Heritage foundation offers its definition of this ism: “Cloaking their goals under the pretense of social justice, [cultural Marxists] now seek to dismantle the foundations of the American republic by rewriting history; reintroducing racism; creating privileged classes; and determining what can be said in public discourse, the military, and houses of worship. Unless Marxist thought is defeated again, today’s cultural Marxists will achieve what the Soviet Union never could: the subjugation of the United States to a totalitarian, soul-destroying ideology.” Those protecting me from the presumed dangers of cultural Marxism, surprisingly, believe that the presentation of history and discourse in various forums can have enough power to destroy Western culture. Presumably these stalwarts know the “correct” history. How did they learn it? And their coy definition does not spell out what they mean by the reintroduction of racism (i.e., racism against whites?) or what privileged classes are being created. They certainly don’t mean economic elites.

The oxymoronic ism known as Christian Nationalism is somewhat new to me. Christian Nationalism, which is really American Christian Nationalism, which is really white American Christian Nationalism, maintains that this country was founded on Christian principles, or, despite the downfall of DEI, more inclusively, Judeo-Christian principles. First of all, there weren’t many Jews in the country at our founding. Ironically (and confusingly), those opposing cultural Marxism are often allied with Christian Nationalists even though those Nationalists are rewriting history. Historians who don’t just make things up maintain that Christianity, Judeo or otherwise, had little effect on our formation. For example,Thomas E. Ricks in First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped our Country (2020) reports that Christianity and religious influence in general was low in colonial America and remained subdued until 1815. Despite the first so-called Great Awakening in America in the 1730’s, in 1776 the states had only one minister for every 1500. Robert Putnam with Shaylan Romney Garrett in The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again (2020) similarly tell us that colonial era was not as religiously observant as myths would have it. At the Revolution perhaps twenty percent were members of a religious body, which had increased to thirty-four percent by 1850. Jill Lepore in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018) also concludes that this country was founded in one of its most secular eras.

Give yourself a little test. Think of all the Founders who were known for their devout Christianity. The list is not short; it is nonexistent. Instead, perhaps you thought of Thomas Jefferson who famously did a cut-and-paste job on his Bible to remove all the supernatural elements from the New Testament including the resurrection. Or consider Fergus M. Bordewich in The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government (2016) who said that while Washington was raised as an Anglican and had some sort of belief in God, “it is doubtful that he believed in the divinity of and resurrection of Christ, and he certainly did not consider the US government based on the Christian religion.” Many of the founding fathers were, in fact, proponents of Deism, a rational theology that acknowledges the existence of a creative force but does not recognize a supernatural deity directing the lives of humans.

Apparently, however, to the (white)(American) Christian Nationalists all this historical evidence is fake history, and they continue to maintain that the country was founded on Christian principles. They point to the Declaration of Independence which does refer to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” They fail to realize that both are given a decidedly un-Christian equal billing, and they ignore that referencing “Nature’s God” does not evoke Christianity. The Declaration also goes on to say “that all men are . . . endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” It is an unimaginable stretch to believe that that unambiguously refers to Yahweh or the Father or anything else Judeo-Christian. Note the Deist-like reference to “the Creator.” And, of course, neither God, Jesus, or even the Creator appear in the Constitution.

In addition, the notion that the country was founded on Christian principles takes a delusional reading of the Bible. At least I can’t find a hint of separation of powers in the Good Book. Or that Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce. Or that only Congress can declare war. Or that the president can be removed upon a conviction for impeachment. Etc. Etc.

(John Butman and Simon Targett in New World, Inc.: The Making of America by England’s Merchant Adventurersdestroy another myth when they report that when Puritan leader William Bradford gave reasons for Pilgrims to go to the new world, he did not include religious freedom. The Pilgrims already enjoyed that in Holland. As has been true throughout our history for people immigrating here, they came seeking work.)

A second tenet of Christian Nationalism is that America, by divine inspiration, is superior to other nations. Many of these “Christians” come from religious traditions that proclaim that the Bible must be taken literally, but I have not found anywhere references to Jesus the Patriot or Jesus the (white) (American) Christian Nationalism. If Jehovah has whispered America’s superiority into some ears, could you tell Him to speak up so the rest of the world can hear it?

While present populists, opponents of cultural Marxism (significantly, no one seems to advocate for cultural Marxism), and Christian Nationalists all seem to come from the same right-wing pool, Democratic Socialists come from elsewhere. Some leading politicians give themselves this label, but I am struggling to understand their philosophy as well. (Many more politicians call themselves Democrats, but I have little idea what they stand for either. Republicans are easier to understand. They have no mind of their own, and back whatever Trump wants.) I look up definitions of Democratic Socialism, and I get different answers, not all of them consistent with each other. Some sources indicate that Democratic Socialists wish to have socialism achieved through democratic means, but then the definers quickly say that the Democratic Socialists don’t agree what “socialism” is. So far I have not heard the DS politicians seeking state control of all businesses or institutions (uh, no, that seems to be the bailiwick of Trump, see below). Instead, I hear them proclaim that government should commit to affordable housing, healthcare, childcare, food, and transportation; increases in the minimum wage; reversing the widening income inequality; and higher taxes on the super-rich. (If populism means “for the people,” this kinda sounds like populism to me.) At one time, these concerns would have been called liberal. Now they are labeled “left wing,” which indicates how far our country has lurched to the right.

Whatever Democratic Socialists do stand for, it is clear that they are in opposition to the widespread, Candide-like notion that a laissez faire government is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

However, there is another movement that rejects government neutrality in picking winners and losers so that efficient markets and only efficient markets can drive the economy and the rest of society. Surprisingly, this movement comes from our current president.

The president and a small, unelected group around him–let’s call them the Deep State–have sought or demanded control over many institutions including universities, cultural entities, think tanks, historical associations, and NGOs. Because of fear of or desire for government actions controlled by the president and his deep state, traditional and social media have altered their behaviors. Because of government power to affect them, individuals and companies have felt compelled to donate money to favored Trump projects, such as his inauguration or the ballroom. (None dare call it extortion, but then again, the Supreme Court says that the president can’t be prosecuted.) Corporations have felt compelled to expunge any traces of DEI and have gone well beyond avoiding affirmative action. In spite of proclaimed conservative principles, the current government wants to be involved in shaping corporate decisions. Despite the government’s saying that it is a threat to national security to sell chips to China, the president says you can do it if you give us a share of the profits. Give the president a “golden share” and you can buy the company.

This is not the capitalism that conservatives have touted as essential. This is not the laissez-faire in which markets control outcomes. It is the widespread intervention by a few into society and corporate economies. The decisions made by these billionaires and a few piker multimillionaires is beginning to feel a lot like a Russian-style government takeover ruled by oligarchs, but we dare not call it socialism. What would you call it? Suggestions?

Posted on by rjonakait

Murder or War Crimes?

I was recently asked by a facilitator of a current events discussion group to talk about Venezuela. It reminded me of my only conversation with a Venezuelan, and it happened some years ago. He was sitting next to me at a jazz brunch, part of a Pennsylvania music festival. Surprisingly, he and his wife had a home in a nearby Poconos community. He explained how that came about, but I don’t remember the explanation. I knew very little about Venezuela, but I had wondered why baseball was so popular there when it was not in the rest of South America. My brunch partner did not have an answer, but he was a baseball fan and seemed to know of every Venezuelan who was in the major leagues. (Today there are more than a hundred.) I asked him about conditions in Venezuela. I was aware that the president, Hugo Chavez, was an authoritarian who styled himself a socialist and that economic conditions had been deteriorating in the country. My retired companion had been the head of the Venezuelan branch of an American insurance giant. He told me that one of his sons had already left the country for Panama, and he was about to buy a place in that country as well. He said that he and his wife worried that someday they might have to flee their country in a few hours’ notice, and they needed a place to go to. I tried to imagine how unsettling that must feel. Now my imagination can more easily encompass such thoughts, even though I have not investigated an escape route from the U.S. Got suggestions?

While many of the Venezuelan economic problems seem unchanged since my conversation with the jazz lover, I was asked to speak at the current events group about America’s recent actions around and possibly in the country. I started by saying that it was hard to talk about the legality of our sinking boats and blowing up humans because the administration has not made public justifications for our destruction. Slogans have been tossed around—self-defense, unlawful combatants, narcoterrorism, foreign terrorist organizations—but not any true legal rationales. We have not been given any facts. How did we know that the boats carried drugs? Even if they did, how did we know that the drugs were destined for the United States and not other Caribbean nations, Europe, or West Africa? These, too are destinations for drugs leaving Venezuela.

Without legal and the information, it seems that we are in an unauthorized war. If so, we may have already committed war crimes; if not, we may murdered people. Moreover, we don’t know how far Trump’s reasoning carries (if it’s reasoned at all). If we can blow up those who are supposed drug dealers, why should it only be in foreign or international waters? By Trump’s logic, drug dealers within the U.S. are aiding drug cartels that Trump labels foreign terrorist organizations. Drug distributors and perhaps drug users could be labeled unlawful combatants under his reasoning. Can Trump have them summarily killed in this country?

Trump has said that each of the ten bombed boats were carrying drugs that could kill 25,000 Americans. In his mind, he has saved 250,000 lives. The Centers for Disease Control collects information about drug overdose deaths. The latest reports are from 2023 when there were 105,007 overdose deaths from all drugs, which is a slight decline from the previous year. Synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl) caused 72,776 of those deaths in 2023, also a slight decline. As tragic as drug deaths are, Trump’s figures are vastly exaggerated.

Of course, synthetic opioid deaths did not start with fentanyl and originally weren’t foreign. There were the prescription drugs oxycontin and oxycodone. In 2023, about 13,000 deaths came from these prescription opioids. Most meth, which has harmed many Americans, is not imported. Ask Walter White.

In Trump’s first term, which he does not mention, opioid deaths increased roughly 50%. One of his campaign pledges was to end the fentanyl crisis.

To put this in some perspective: There were 46,728 deaths by guns in 2023. About 18,000 of these were homicides. Another 27,000 were suicides. We don’t have a “war on guns.”

About 41,000 people died in motor vehicle accidents.

Is the drug problem in America an emergency? The War on Drugs was proclaimed by President Nixon in 1971. In 50-plus years we have not been able to quash the drug trade or drug use. One problem: Illegal drugs are a commercial product that Americans want and are willing to pay for. Trump says this is an emergency. Has he just learned about it?

Trump now hints at land actions in Venezuela. The National Security Act of 1947 authorizes the CIA to collect intelligence, conduct counterintelligence, and undertake covert action. The point to covert actions had been to be able to deny them if compromised. By publicly announcing “covert activities” in Venezuela, Trump is again a norm breaker. According to the 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act, the CIA must act only on the basis of presidential findings for covert actions, and the findings must be monitored by House and Senate Committees. This is not happening.

There have probably been many more covert actions in our history than we are aware of, but until now there have been two major realms of activities. The first came out of the Cold War. We undertook many actions fueled by anticommunism. The second came after 9/11 and were part of the War on Terror.

Our government now relies on another rationale, which we could call part of the War on Drugs, a war now longer than our war in Afghanistan and an even bigger failure. But the validity of the drug rationale is dubious, since Venezuela had not been a major supplier of drugs to the U.S. compared to other South American countries. Moreover, cocaine is primarily the drug that comes out of Venezuela, not fentanyl. (Cocaine overdose deaths were 29,449 in 2023.) Fentanyl most often comes from China through Mexico.

Perhaps there is a concern about Venezuelan drugs, but our actions really seem designed to convince Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro that he can’t remain in power. A recent Wall Street Journal article as well as other sources suggest that Marco Rubio has been the prime architect of our Venezuela policy. Rubio as Senator tried for a decade to oust Nicolas Maduro and now he is getting his chance as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. In Republican circles, Florida, particularly Cuban-Americans in Florida, have strong anti-Maduro sentiments, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Rubio are all from Florida. Bondi has placed a $50 million bounty on Maduro, accusing him of working with criminal organizations.

We have a heavy military presence in the region, which has been increased. Nuclear-capable B-52 bombers have been flying off Venezuela’s shores, and an aircraft carrier has been sent to the region. We have thousands of troops at our Caribbean military bases.

Venezuela has moved troops into position and mobilized its militia. This is scary stuff. What would be our reaction if Venezuela were sinking American boats? What if Venezuela shoots down the aircraft blowing up the boats and Venezuelans?

Why force Maduro out? One answer: Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Perhaps our foreign policy is truly always about oil.

But our policy may also be a throwback to the Cold War.  Maduro proclaims his socialism. Hugo Chavez, who was president of Venezuela from 1999 to his death in 2013, expropriated the assets of hundreds of companies. Nicolas Maduro was Chavez’s (last) vice-president and has continued many of these policies. General Motors and Kimberley-Clark are among the factories that have been seized.

But the situation is even more complicated. Venezuela has not expropriated the property of American oil giant Chevron, which has operated in Venezuela since 1923 and now accounts for about a quarter of the country’s oil production. Opposition leaders see Chevron as propping up the autocratic regime, but Chevron says it is a stabilizing force. Chevron’s role in Trump’s policies is not clear.

What is Trump trying to accomplish with all this saber-rattling? We are still guessing.

Posted on by rjonakait · 1 Comment

Snippets

My main exposure to farming in Maine came from my friend and colleague Don. His grandfather had a farm near the New Brunswick border, and Don spent part of his high school summers helping out there. The grandfather seemed to be the last of the New England Yankees. He heated his house with wood, and without power tools he cut and split cords upon cords to be ready for the winter. The grandfather may have grown several crops, but Don only talked about the potatoes and the hard work of tilling the soil, burying the seed potatoes, and then later pulling them out. Unpredictable rainfall made the onerous work even harder some years. Don, who had sensitive skin, did not have to worry about the dangerous sun when he was out in the field. He said that the notorious Maine black flies were so bad that he would only go out in full beekeeper’s regalia, which kept the flies from biting but made the hot work even hotter. When Don told me about these summers, he made clear how miserable he had been.

I thought again about Maine farm work when reading The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters for a book group at my residence. The book’s core is a group of Mi’kmaq people who came from Nova Scotia to pick blueberries in Maine. Haad I even been aware that a lot of blueberries are grown in Maine, I had never thought about how they were harvested. My images of migrant workers are people from south of border cutting lettuce or plucking strawberries, not people from the north harvesting fruit in New England. But now those images include those Canadians, and I wonder about other crops. Who harvests cherries in Michigan or wild rice in Minnesota?

The No Kings protest I attended was peaceful, like the others, but small. It was in suburban New York City. A few hundred people lined an intersection waving signs. (The one I saw most often: “No Faux King Way.”) I wore my tee shirt with the faded lettering: “Trump: His Mother Did Not Have Him Tested.” Maybe one or two people understood it. (N.B.: you have to be a fan of “The Big Bang Theory” TV show.) Perhaps I was hoping to be energized, and perhaps that would have happened if I had attended a truly mass rally of thousands like the ones elsewhere in the country. But mostly I was bored and wondered why I was there.

Nevertheless:

“For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.” Thomas Paine.

“The links in the chains of tyranny are usually forged, singly and silently, and sometimes unconsciously, by those who are destined to wear them.” Tully Scott.

“A king can stand people’s fighting but he can’t last long if people start thinking.” Will Rogers.

“Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” Thomas Jefferson.

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” James Madison.