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Snippets

The man being interviewed on the BBC was articulate. He wanted information about Saudi Arabia’s role in the 9/11 attacks to be declassified. He said at least three times, “We want President Biden to be at our side. He should have our backs.” And I wondered: “How can he be at your side and also have your back?” All I could imagine was an awkward sideways hug, but even that wouldn’t do both simultaneously.

The headline asked a question of no importance to me: Is Jeff Bezos an Astronaut?

I was mildly surprised when the woman of about my age and education asked, “What is hash?” I was more surprised, when her husband—the couple lived in San Antonio–pronounced Jose with a jay sound.

“Were it not for bunglers in the manner of doing it, hardly any would ever find out he was laughed at.” Marquis of Halifax.

It is fair and right to question how our Afghani withdrawal was carried out. But it is also clear that after twenty years and more than a trillion dollars, the United States has failed in Afghanistan. Even so, I see on TV people who were involved in our Afghan policies—diplomats, intelligence officials, military officers—opine on that failure but never on their own responsibility for the overall debacle. All of these people helped produce the disaster. Why should anyone listen to them? They have been consistently wrong, even though they don’t seem ever to tell us what fools they were.

 “If I blunder, everyone can notice it; not so, if I lie.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

The formulators of our Afghan policies fall into a group similar to those who believe Space Jam was a documentary.

“Two bears can’t live in one cave.” Old Russian proverb. Ben Mezrich, Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs—A True Story of Ambition, Wealth, Betrayal, and Murder.

How do those who believe in American exceptionalism explain our role in Afghanistan?

A recent Nova Scotia election was won by Progressive Conservatives. Again we should be mystified by Canada. How can there be a progressive conservative? Certainly none exist in the United States.

In August, a half hour after sundown, a cacophonous, stereophonic symphony of cicadas led by an invisible conductor breaks out. The spouse does not like this music. For me it is a sound of summer. When that music ends, summer is over.

“The amount of sleep required by the average person is about five minutes more.” Max Kauffmann

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It Is, and Isn’t, a Fluke

I just finished reading Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, which won the Booker Prize last year. It is a remarkable book, set in Glasgow a generation ago, but it is a hard read. The book centers on a family whose members all love in their own ways, but, because of the society in which they are trapped and the damage that has been inflicted upon them, they do harmful things to themselves and to each other. Stuart does not spare us the pain, but he also produces a book with so much human emotion that I simultaneously wanted to set it down because it is so sad and rush to the end because it is so compelling.  

When I returned the book to the library, I looked for something a bit lighter. I pulled out of the “New Mystery” section Triple Chocolate Cheesecake Murder. I was not familiar with the book or the series of which it is a part (“A Hannah Swenson Mystery with Recipes”) nor its author, Joanne Fluke, but I thought the title promised a pleasant read.

When I got it home, I noticed a blurb on the back that labeled Fluke “the queen of culinary cozies.” I often place the many mysteries I have read into different categories, such as a drawing-room mystery, or dark ones featuring  Scandinavian serial killers, or the sins-of-the-fathers mysteries as in Ross MacDonalds, or a literary mystery such as Dorothy Sayers or Tana French, but I have not known that there were “official” mystery genres, and I had certainly never heard of a “culinary cozy.” So I googled (or safaried or binged, I don’t remember which) and learned that this is an entire category of books presenting a foodie detective—a baker, cook, chef, gourmand—along with many mentions of food and accompanying recipes. Puns and food references sprinkle the titles.  

then looked up Joanne Fluke, which turns out to be a pseudonym for Joanne Gibson Fischmann, who also writes young adult thrillers and romances under other pen names. She has published about fifty books of which thirty or so are in the Hannah Swenson series. Since I have cooked or baked for much of my life, enjoy reading recipes, and often pass the time with a mystery, I thought that this accomplished author’s Triple Chocolate should be a good way to perk me up after Shuggie Bain.

And it was. The recipes were primarily for sweet baked goods, and they sounded delicious, but I am unlikely to make them. I know that my cardiologist would severely chastise me if he knew I was eating them. I apparently would need to buy Costco-sized drums of cream cheese, gallons of cream, and a whole lot of salted butter. (I was taught to use unsalted butter and add my desired amount of salt.) And for the non-pastry dishes, I would have to invest heavily in cans of condensed cream soups and buckets of shredded cheeses.

The writing style did not tax my reading powers. Few things were mentioned only once. Information was repeated often a page or two later and then again in a dozen more page and the prose, including the dialog, was stilted, which I would have edited. (An example: Mike had asked for another piece of pie. “Hannah smiled. If there had been any doubt that Mike liked her pie, it was certainly erased now. He’d already had two pieces and now he wanted another. ‘How about some Chocolate Hazelnut Toast Cookies instead? I just made them this afternoon and they’re great with coffee.’”) (Another example: Norman has just said that he wants to make a Boursin omelet. “‘With that marvelous cheese I love?’ ‘That’s right. I chopped up some shallots and I thought I’d make both of us three-egg omelets.’ ‘Perfect!’ Hannah said quickly, smiling at him. ‘I’d love that, Norman. I haven’t had an omelet in a long time and it sounds great! I don’t think I have ever had one with Boursin cheese and shallots inside.’”)

Although it is not billed that way, I felt as if this book was aimed for those in junior high school. Not surprisingly, the apparent homicide was resolved with everyone happy—the bludgeoned dead guy was a bad person and it was so clearly self-defense that the killer was not even charged.

I don’t know if this writing style is the same for all culinary cozies, but I am unlikely to read more to find out. Nevertheless, the repetitive, unnatural prose reminds me of another genre which, to my surprise, I have picked up more than once–Amish romances. My Poconos home is not in Pennsylvania Dutch country, but there is a weekly Amish farmers’ market. Through the years I have chatted with a few of the Amish and learned a little bit about them. However, upon a visit to Sarasota, Florida, I saw a boy and girl walking near the waterfront in what I took to be Amish garb. Then in various parts of town, I saw several men with beards and suspenders and women in long dresses and distinctive head coverings that signaled Amish. In driving around town, a mile or two from the Gulf, I found an enclave of modest houses on narrow streets with families in Amish attire getting around on three-wheel bikes.

When I asked about this, people told me that there was an Amish settlement in Sarasota. (It could have been old world Mennonites, but who can tell the difference?) They were driven down each winter in big buses and stayed until it was planting time up north. The town had several Amish restaurants, and they had good food, but the pie was always especially outstanding.

When I went to one of the restaurants, I stopped in the gift shop on the way out. I found a rack of paperbacks, many of which had a heavily clothed, attractive young woman on the cover. I read the back cover of one and found that it was a romance about some Amish young people. I enjoyed reading it mostly because I felt as if I was learning some about the Amish. For example, each congregation has different rules; some but not all could have a telephone booth on the property but not in the house. Also, Amish and Mennonite women can be distinguished by the style of head coverings, but I no longer remember the distinctions. The prose, like that in the culinary cozy, was repetitive and simple, and I assumed that this was necessary for Amish readers who had not received much formal education. The stories were pleasant with love winning out without clothes being shed. I read a few more of the Amish romances, and I thought I would ask the Amish at the Pennsylvania market if they wanted the books, but every time I went to buy corn, tomatoes, and watermelons, I forgot to bring them.

Now I am glad that I failed in what I thought were good intentions. I had noticed that the authors of the Amish romances I read were not Amish, although the women (all the books I read were written by women) claimed to have Amish friends who helped them understand the Amish culture. I did a bit of research which informed me that the authors of Amish romances are almost always evangelical Christians, and that the Amish are mystified by these romances partly because the books often misrepresent Amish theology.

I learned also that this genre (some call the genre “Bonnet Rippers”) has hundreds of titles. While the Amish do not buy these books, somebody does. One source said that the top three writers of Amish romances have sold over 24 million books (!).

And yet again, I wonder if I made wrong career choices.

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The Wide World of Sports

          A friend asserted that China wins so many Olympic medals because it trains athletes to compete in events other countries don’t care about. She was not specific about which events she had in mind, and I assumed that her comment showed a provinciality based on the notion that if an athletic endeavor was not popular in the United States, or at least in Europe, it did not garner much international attention. And although this ultra-liberal woman would be shocked by the thought, a bit of chauvinism may have been behind her remarks, but they got me to thinking about international sports.

If a sport is truly so widespread that it has a strong interest throughout the world, then you would think that the top competitors in that sport would be dispersed relatively equally throughout all the countries. Not many Olympic sports fall into this category, however. Instead, for most events, a handful of nations dominate. When the United States is not in that dominating group, it does not necessarily mean that the sport holds little international appeal. This assumption made me wonder about worldwide interest in various sports.

I did in-depth research on the internet for about ten minute and found different, but similar, lists of the most popular sports in the world. Several ranked sports by the number of worldwide followers. For example, one source placed soccer first with 3 billion followers followed by cricket (2.5 billion), basketball (2.2), field hockey (2), tennis (1), volleyball (900 million), table tennis (850), baseball (500), American football/rugby (410), and golf (390).

Few American sports fans would list soccer as their most favorite sport, although that number may be increasing. Fewer follow cricket, even though the devotion to that sport is fervent in much of the world. That was hammered home to me at a Thanksgiving dinner which we shared one year with five or six of the spouse’s students from India. They exchanged stories about how holidays and other national events were treated in their various parts of that subcontinent. The practices varied widely, and they talked further about the two dozen or more national languages and the many fractures in their societies, but when asked what it was that made India one country, they responded immediately and simultaneously, “Cricket.” Some of them set alarms so that they could watch matches aired in the middle of the night. An obsession in many portions of the globe, few Americans, even devoted sports fans, understand the basic rules of that game much less its nuances.

Many of us at least know that cricket is popular in many places, but that list of the world’s most popular sports also included field hockey, table tennis, and volleyball in its top ten. I know a few people who are college volleyball fans, but its worldwide popularity came as a surprise. It has to be a tiny percentage of Americans who, outside of the Olympics, watch or read about field hockey or table tennis. It’s not particularly surprising, then, that other countries perform better in these events than our athletes.

          The popularity list, however, must be viewed with some skepticism. Who lumps American football and rugby together as that ranking did? They are clearly not the same sport at all. Another list, however, gives similar rankings for worldwide followers of sports although it gives different numbers for the fans. Soccer is still first, but according to this ranking, it has a billion more followers at four billion. So what is it? Three billion plus or minus a billion? That’s a pretty big spread. It lists hockey third after cricket, but it puts ice hockey and field hockey together as the same sport. (I don’t think so.) However, like the other list, it also places volleyball and table tennis in the top ten for international popularity. It has rugby at ninth without combining it with American football, but it claims that rugby has 475 million followers–65 million more than American football/rugby had in the other ranking. Absolute numbers aside, the lists indicate that a good portion of the world are fans of sports that do not routinely get much attention in the United States.

          Another source listed the popularity of sports not just by the number of followers but by other factors including, among other things, the cost of TV rights, the number of sponsorships, the number of professional leagues, the number of headlines a sport produces, and the sport’s social media presence. This generated a ranking where soccer was again first, but it was followed by basketball, cricket, tennis, athletics (what I would call track and field), rugby, Formula 1, boxing, ice hockey, and volleyball.

          Another way to measure the popularity of a sport is to count those who participate in it. One internet source again ranks soccer at the top with 265 million participants and another five million referees. Second place is held by badminton with 220 million, followed by field hockey, volleyball, basketball, tennis, cricket, table tennis, baseball/softball, and golf. Active Americans participate regularly in only a few of these games and thus seem out of tune with the world.

          These listings remind me that although I am a sports fan and continue to be a participant, my interest and knowledge diverge from fans around the world. I truly do not know much about athletics around the world, something that struck home a few years ago on a trip to Sicily. I had asked the server in a Palermo restaurant how he had learned such excellent English. He responded that he had studied it in school but became more proficient because of American teammates on his professional football teams. He rattled off names as if I should recognize them. I was surprised that there were so many Americans playing professional soccer in Italy. Only as the conversation progressed did I realize that he was talking about American football. I had not known that there even was American football played in Italy, much less a professional variety. He had played for teams in several Italian cities and proudly reported that he had been on the Blue team, which he told me is the Italian national team. He did not look big enough to play professional football in America, and he said that his weight had dropped from 215 pounds to 170 since he stopped playing. (He did not quote kilograms for his American football weight.) He said that he was not smart enough to play offense and asked me to guess what position he played. Thinking of professional football in America, I responded cornerback or perhaps safety, but he said that he had been an outside linebacker and was proud of his pass-rushing ability. I jokingly said that professional football must have made him wealthy. He laughed and said that waiting on tables paid more than playing American football. He had made only $1,000 a month (he did not give his football salary in Euros) but went on to say that he also got his food, a place to live, and the use of a car. He no longer played football. He gave up the game after several surgeries. Now he was working on being a power lifter.

          There is so much to learn about the world that I do not know, and that includes sports.

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Snippets

I fell off my bike. I did not immediately check for bruises or broken bones. Instead, I did what any sensible person would do: I looked around to see if anyone had witnessed my clumsiness. No one had, so it was not a bad fall. But then I had to do the difficult thing at my age and get to a standing position. Of course, no one came to my assistance since there was no one around. I was happy about that.

As I was paying for a green tomato at the weekly Amish market, I asked Annie, who collects the money, if she had ever eaten a fried green tomato. She hesitated but then replied, “Yes.” I said, “Just one?” She answered, “There are better foods.” “Like what?” I asked. “Just about anything,” she responded.

I chatted with Amos before getting into my car. He asked where I lived, and I said that while I had a summer home in Pennsylvania, I had lived in Brooklyn for a long time. “City slicker,” he said with a smile. I asked if he had ever been to a city. He said only the outskirts and mentioned some New Jersey suburbs of New York. Even so, he was quite sure that he did not like cities: “Too much hustle and bustle. Too much activity. Too much rushing.” He told me that Annie was his sister and that she was eighteen and that he was sixteen. Helping Annie was a younger girl. Amos said that Emma was also a sister. He paused and looked as though he were adding and subtracting but couldn’t be sure of his calculations. Finally he said, “Emma is about twelve.”

Annie is a schoolteacher in her community’s one-room schoolhouse. She teaches in English. “It is required.” “Do you speak German at home?” I asked. “Pennsylvania Dutch.”

On the second half of the two-hour car trip, I scanned for radio stations. I stopped on one that was playing some sort of rock-style ballads. The music stopped, and a recorded voice said that there was good news. The man said that just because bad things happened, it did not mean you were a bad person and being punished by God. “Remember, Jesus was poor and suffered, too.” Although there is an assumption that Jesus did not have wealth, I don’t think anything in the Bible says that he was poor. Certainly nothing indicates that he had the distended belly of the malnourished. The announcer said that listeners should not assume they were bad people if they got a bad diagnosis or prognosis. Jesus, he again reminded us, went through bad things. Ya think? There was that crucifixion thing, but I am not aware that he was told that he had cancer or gall bladder disease.

This inspirational message was followed by five minutes of commercials. Pastor Wiggins in the last one stated that he was crossing the street, when a car turned onto Fourth Avenue without looking and nearly sent the religious man to Kingdom Come. He was put into an induced coma and suffered brain damage. After he got out of the hospital, a parishioner told Wiggins about this wonderful lawyer, who, for Wiggins’s medical expenses and pain and suffering, got him MONEY. The attorney was apparently a Gift from God that others could benefit from.

“Trust in God, her mother said, but never dance in a small boat.” Paulette Jiles, Simon the Fiddler.

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The Last Book I Ever Need to Read

Paperbacks printed years ago often contain promotions on the covers for other books. I read this material to see how many of those books published back then or their authors I even recognize. They are sometimes the most entertaining part of the book. Take, for example, the ads in my oldest softcover book printed by the American News Company in 1895.

Bought for a buck or two at an art and antique show. I was attracted to it not because I was familiar with the title or author but because of the remarkable picture on the cover of the author–or as I am guessing she, Miss Laura Jean Libbey, might have called herself–the authoress. She is staring straight ahead. Her eyes are hypnotic, but it is almost impossible to concentrate on them because the gaze is drawn to the noteworthy hat that spreads wide over the head and has three visible plumes plus something else I cannot identify. The back cover shows a fuller, three-quarters view of the same picture, which shows that Libbey had an enviable bust and a waist, surely cinched in, that does not look humanly possible.

I was also drawn to the book because of its title—When His Love Grew Cold. Her other books that were advertised inside the covers showed that Libbey had a way with titles that at least attracted me: Miss Middleton’s Lover: or Parted on their Bridal Tour; A Forbidden Marriage: or in Love with a Handsome Spendthrift; He Loved, but was Lured Away; and Lovers Once, but Strangers Now. A couple of her titles at first glance were letdowns, but only until I read their descriptions. I learned about Olive’s Courtship that “the quiet title does not prepare you for the powerful story that follows. No living author has ever equaled it.” And the reader “will never lay down That Pretty Young Girl until you discover who killed the handsome, profligate Earl of Dunraven on his wedding night, and unravel the mystery which surrounds the beautiful, hapless Helen, whom to love—was fatal.” Strong stuff.

Nearly as surprising as this body of work was to me was the conclusion of the preface. Libbey, after teasing her readers–as she had apparently done before–with the suggestion that this would be her last book, not only gives her name, but her address: No. 916 President Street, Brooklyn—a house that in all probability still exists.

Other ads in my older paperbacks pique my interest. I read in small doses The Sardonic Humor of Ambrose Bierce, which was reprinted in 1963 and published by Dover Books. It has an eight-page catalog of other Dover Books at the back of the volume. Three of those pages are for art books, including the intriguing Foot-High Letters: A Guide to Lettering (A Practical Syllabus for Teachers).

I only recognize a few of the authors in the “Entertainments, Humor” section of the Dover Books list. A book I am not familiar with, however, fascinates me: The Bear that Wasn’t by Frank Tashlin. Its description: “What does it mean? Is it simply delightful wry humor, or a charming story of a bear who wakes up in the midst of a factory, or a satire on Big Business, or an existential cartoon-story of the human condition, or a symbolization of the struggle between conformity and the individual?” Sounds like quite a book.

I recognize more of the authors in “Fiction,” but not always the listed books. I have read Tarzan, and take a certain pride that Tarzan has a Wisconsin connection. But should I now read Three Martian Novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs? Or the other Mars novels by Burroughs that are listed? Further down in “Fiction” I found the listing for Five Great Dog Novels and tried to think of five dog novels, period. Maybe you will recognize more than the only one I did: Call of the Wild by Jack London; Rab and his Friends by John Brown; Bob, Son of Battle, by Alfred Ollivant; Beautiful Joe by Marshall Saunders; and A Dog of Flanders by Ouida. Who knew?

My favorite, however, was the last listing: Gesta Romanorum, translated by Charles Swan and edited by Wynnard Hooper. “181 tales of Greeks, Roman, Britons, Biblical characters, comprise one of (sic) greatest medieval story collections, source of plots for writers including Shakespeare, Chaucer, Gower, etc. Imaginative tales of wars, incest, thwarted love, magic, fantasy, allegory, humor, tell about kings, prostitutes, philosophers, fair damsels, knights, Noah, pirates, all walks, stations of life.” I feel as if my education is sorely lacking for never having heard of this book. Surely, it has everything, and if I had read it, I would not have to read anything else ever again. Five hundred pages, and the list price: $1.85. Where can I find this?

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Brace Myself

(Guest Post from the Spouse)

July was Disability Pride Month. It came as a surprise to me, even though I am one of those that some would call “disabled.” There are those who find “handicapped” offensive. I’m not certain why that is. I find the term “disabled” more offensive—well not offensive, just inaccurate because some of us who would appear to be disabled are not really. But I get ahead of myself.

My “disability” is because my right leg is ten inches shorter than my left. I wear a brace with a pogo-stick-like bottom to compensate for the difference in length. A shoe is attached to a footplate at the proper height for my right foot. Two steel uprights hold the footplate and are topped by a leather cuff that encircles my calf. The whole contraption weighs about eight pounds. It’s a little bit unwieldy, but it allows me to stand upright and walk like a normal person, albeit with a limp. Walking without it is possible (I used to do it a lot when I was a kid), but not as comfortable as it once was, and besides, I look funny bobbing up and down as I walk.

Because the brace is plain for all to see, little kids are curious about it. Mostly they stare, and their mothers whisper to them that it’s not polite to stare. The most inquisitive just come right out and ask, “What happened to your leg?” I prefer the direct approach of the kids. My routine answer is, “I was born with one leg shorter than the other.” And then I ask questions back. Depending on the age of the kid, “Which leg is shorter?” and/or “Are your legs the same length?” They look down at themselves, realize that they have two legs of the same length and, having their curiosity satisfied, they go on to more interesting topics like whether they have a dog.

In summer I have the advantage of having a vacation home in a community with a lovely Olympic-size swimming pool that I attend regularly. It is swarming with kids. Some of them ask me about my leg; others just stare. Most of the kids attend a summer camp nearby, so, even though I was unaware that July was Disability Pride Month, I thought I’d ask the camp director if she’d like me to talk to the kids about people with disabilities. Her eagerness in accepting my offer caught me somewhat by surprise, but her enthusiasm did not seem phony. So on one Friday morning in July, I went to the camp to talk to the kids. We had decided that I would talk to the older kids (8-12) for 30 minutes, and the younger ones (4-7) about 15 minutes.

I was nervous and didn’t know quite how to get started. In the first session (with the older kids), I started telling them what I told you: that I don’t much like the term “disabled” (because I didn’t really feel disabled). In response to the question that I knew they had (“What happened to your leg?”), I told them that I usually told younger kids that I was born with one leg shorter than the other, but that was a simplification. After a short anatomy lesson about legs (femur, tibia, fibula), I told them that I was born without a femur, and that being born immediately after the end of WWII, I was taken to Washington, D.C. where the Veterans’ Administration was building braces for wounded soldiers, and they built a brace for me, too. The floodgates having been opened, the questions and comments poured in. “My grandfather was born in 1946, too!” “Can you drive a car?” “I know she can ‘cuz I’ve seen her at the pool!” (An opportunity to tell them about FDR and his custom-built car.) “What do you do when you take a shower?” “How much does your brace weigh?” I took it off and passed it around. “Wow, it’s heavy!” “How do you fasten the shoe on?” “Can you change your shoes?” “Does it hurt?” “Won’t your leg ever grow longer?” “Is your foot ‘normal’?” (Display foot.) From one of the tween-age girls: “Have you had to have clothes specially made for you?” An unexpectedly mature question: “How has your family been affected by your disability?” “How do you walk without it?” (Demonstrate bobbing up-and-down walk.)

I told them that my left leg had become very strong in compensation for the weakness in my right leg, and they were amazed that I had been a high jumper in junior high school. There ensued a discussion of other types of compensation: blind people who had very acute hearing, for example.

Forty-five minutes passed in a second.

Then the younger kids came. They were similarly curious, courteous, and ever so slightly more rambunctious. After a bit I was talking about how people would stare at me and my Korean child (“My Dad is from Korea!”), and how we didn’t much like it.  I guess I included talk of my child again and maybe again. “Is your child a boy or a girl?” someone asked since I hadn’t said. I turned questioningly to the camp Director who nodded encouragingly. “My child does not identify as either a boy or a girl,” I said. “That is known as non-binary.” “I’m non-binary,” said a kid enthusiastically, “and I prefer the pronoun ‘they’.” New floodgates opened. One little boy in the back allowed as how he didn’t much like being a boy. The kids seemed to accept without question that this was something some kids felt. No big deal. Just like my “disability.”

Kids wave at me at the pool now. Sometimes they come up and ask, “How’s your leg today?” “About the same,” I say. “Great,” they respond.

Kids are cool.

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A Baseball Tour. And Hooters (concluded)

          The next day after the Cleveland game the baseball touring entourage were back on the bus for the longish trip to Baltimore. To break up the journey, the baseball movie Ed was shown. I will forgive you if you are not familiar with this movie, so I will summarize what I remember. “Deuce,” played by Matt LeBlanc, is a raw pitching prospect from a California farm. For some now forgotten, but I am sure entirely plausible reason, he rooms with a chimpanzee, who wields quite a good bat, on his minor league team. Surprise, surprise, Deuce and Ed become—get ready for it–“friends.” There is also a love interest, and this lovely lady has a kid or maybe two. On Deuce’s big day with major league scouts in attendance, he starts out disastrously, but—I don’t know why they weren’t in attendance earlier—the love interest, the adorable child or children, and, of course, Ed find seats in the park. Deuce becomes the pitcher that was always within him, blows away the other team, and gets promoted to the Los Angeles Dodgers. I am sure that this will shock you, but the movie got 0% from Rotten Tomatoes and was near the top (or is it the bottom) of the lists for the worst film of the year. Despite this, I thought that Ed was the Citizen Kane of chimpanzee-baseball-playing movies. On the other hand, the film may have made the six-hour trip even longer.

          Camden Yards in Baltimore at that time was a new ballpark that had gotten many raves, and I became one of the ravers. It was my favorite place to see a ballgame, and I loved the barbecue from Boog Powell’s place. We all sat together behind the right field foul (fair?) pole. Phil sought out the roving camera man who shot images of the fans to display on the jumbotron telling him that we were a special group who should be shown. I hope that my lasting fame does not depend on the few moments my face was available for all in the stadium to see. (For an essay about some of my media appearances, see post of January 18, 2018 Meet the Press – AJ’s Dad (ajsdad.blog).)

          The next morning we were off to the most anticipated stop for almost all—Yankee Stadium. The stadium was the most iconic park we were visiting, and few on our trip had even been to New York City. As we approached the Lincoln Tunnel for our entrance into midtown Manhattan, the tour guide started making announcements. We were staying at a hotel on Lexington Avenue, and the bus would have to double park on the left hand side of the street. We would have to get off and collect luggage on the street with traffic a few feet from us. We needed to be careful. I tuned out as he talked, but since he repeated himself several times, I began to realize that he was not just warning about the traffic. He was also indicating that New York City was not just dangerous from whizzing vehicles, but because this was New York, we could be mugged during our walk from the bus to the hotel lobby. There was disgust and fear in his voice as he repeated his refrain about the dangers of New York City. At first I was amused by this yahooism, but then it bothered me. I was about to go to the front of the bus to ask for the microphone to explain that I lived in this city. There was no more danger on Lexington Avenue than there had been in Cleveland or Baltimore and that New York was safer than most big American cities and that New Yorkers were helpful, friendly, smart, attractive, and many were knowledgeable about baseball although a disturbing number were Mets fans. Before I did that, a member of the group came up to me and said that he wanted to see the Empire State Building and could I tell him how to get there. I replied that I would take him there, and hearing that, others asked if they could join us. They were excited to be in New York and wanted to experience it, and I realized that not everyone from the other side of the Hudson had the same New York fear and disgust as the tour guide.

          After checking into the hotel and depositing luggage in our rooms, five or six met me at the front door, and long before I became a licensed New York City guide, I led my first tour. We went down Fifth Avenue so they could see St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the New York Public Library, and then went on to the Empire State Building. We went through the lobby but did not have time to ascend to the viewing platforms. Instead, we went a few blocks west and then north to go through Times Square. They, like many seeing New York for the first time, were wide-eyed and full of excited questions, which I did my best to answer trying, mostly successfully, not to make anything up. 

          The group left early for the game so that they could visit Monument Park, with statues and other memorials of great Yankees of the past, before the opening pitch. I had been there several times. I decided to rest and take my usual route to Yankee Stadium, the subway. When I got to our seats, I was pleased to see my fellow travelers still talking about the Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio images.

          The next day I parted ways with the tour. They were going to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. I had never been there, but it did not interest me to take the bus from there to Toronto only to have to catch a flight back to JFK. Instead, I chose to go to Pennsylvania to play in a parent-child tennis tournament. I might say that I felt that I should do this to satisfy the child, but in all likelihood, that child was not at all eager to play in it. The NBP did not like competition in general and doubles tennis in particular, but I felt that it was my parental duty. It’s also very conceivable that I was influenced by images of a long, long bus ride for the purpose of getting on a plane to get back to where I already was.

          I headed home with my memories one of which was my first, and so far only, trip to a Hooters. The trip had been in the hot season during a hot spell. Every place we went had above-normal temperatures. Baltimore was particularly brutal, and after the game, Phil and I headed off to our hotel, located in the recently “renovated” harbor district. The renovation had taken a distinctive part of the city and turned it into what looked like a mall that could be found in hundreds of other places. Phil said that he would like to get a beer before going to bed, and I agreed. He pointed out a Hooters not far from the hotel and said, “I’ve always wanted to go to a Hooters.” I did not know what to make of the statement. I had never wanted to go to one. I like women. I like looking at women, but Hooters to me was a place that demeaned women. Nevertheless, I agreed to go. The area may have been renovated, but few people were around, and the Hooters seemed remarkably desultory. It had few patrons when we entered. Phil was jovial; I was not at ease. If I had been there without a minister maybe I would have felt different, but it all seemed surreal to me. My discomfort increased when Phil, with a big grin, announced to everyone within earshot that he was a minister. On the other hand, the servers were indeed attractive.

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A Baseball Tour. And Hooters

          The next morning after the Toronto baseball game Phil and I and others boarded a bus for a four-or five-hour trip to Cleveland. If I had been traveling alone, I would have read for much of the trip, but that seemed rude sitting next to Phil, who did not seem to have any reading material. So I chatted with Phil some and then started to learn a bit about others on the excursion, all of whom, except for Phil and his companion (me), had paid for it. I was curious, but never asked anyone how much it cost.

The tour company was Canadian and there were a smattering of Canadians on board, but I felt that most of my companions represented aspects of an America where baseball was still the true national pastime. A young couple were on their honeymoon shortly before he was to start a new job as a baseball coach at a small college in upstate New York. Nice people, but I could never get him to explain how he threw a slider versus a curve ball. A young, single woman, who always seemed to have her energy switch on, was from one of the Dakotas (Ok. It shows some sort of prejudice in me that I can’t keep the two apart in my mind.) She had never been to the eastern part of the U.S., where the trip was going to take place, and although she regularly attended minor league games in her hometown in one of the Dakotas (Again: I can’t keep them straight and am still somewhat surprised there are two of them), and before the previous night, she had never attended a major league game. Two decades older and quieter was another woman traveling by herself who, too, had never before been to a major league game, but she was an avid college baseball fan, especially of Louisiana State, whose games she regularly attended near her home. My favorites were a forty-year-old man traveling with his father. They were extremely knowledgeable baseball fans from Dallas and were excited about seeing baseball parks they had only viewed on television. I especially liked what I saw as a deep bond between. I thought that on some level this was as American as it gets—a father and son at baseball games discussing the pitchers and whether there should be a sacrifice and moaning over an error.

          The Toronto-Cleveland trip took us past exits for Niagara Falls, but this was not the usual sightseeing trip. We motored on until we got to the hotel not far from what was then called Jacobs Field. In the early afternoon, we walked to The Jake for a guided tour. I was interested in this because this park was then at the forefront of a change in baseball architecture. For a generation newly-built stadiums were large with little character, but Jacobs Field was smaller, more intimate with quirks to give it a personality. The Indians had been regularly selling out the stadium, partly because Cleveland was fielding good teams but also because the park was a fun place to watch a game. As an employee of the club showed us around under the stands, I also learned something about home field advantage. We were shown subterranean batting cages and video monitors for players to practice swings and study pitchers and hitters. I don’t know whether baseball rules required that such home team facilities—or their equivalent–be made available to the visiting team, but if so, equality had its limits. So, e.g., just because the Indians had air conditioning in their practice area, that did not mean that the “equivalent” one had to be cooled. On a mid-summer afternoon, the visitors’ under-the-stands batting cage was stifling.

          We continued on to the Indians dugout, but we were not going to go farther. The head groundskeeper stood on the top step that led to the playing field. He explained that The Jake’s infield was composed of some very, very, VERY special dirt. It was not the sandy color of other ballparks, but a deep black that reminded me of the bottomland soil of the Mississippi delta (or what I imagined that delta soil to look like because I had never actually seen it). I was not paying much attention as the groundskeeper told us–at length–of the dirt’s special qualities, where it came from, and what painstaking care he took to maintain it. I was just curious to touch it, and perhaps put a tiny, tiny sample in my pocket. I doubt that he could read my mind; I am sure it was a standing rule. He made it clear–at length–that we were not going to put one single solitary step on to that field, and we were not going to get to the dugout’s top step to even touch it. Overwhelmingly disappointed, I mostly tuned him out, but I believe that he mentioned–at length–the Cuyahoga County Jail.

          We strolled back to the hotel, but I have no memory of what we did before we headed back to the park for the game. Our group’s tickets were scattered, and Phil and I had seats in the lower deck down the right field line. Baseball games, with long pauses between intermittent actions, almost compel conversation with those seated nearby, and we started talking to some young men in the row behind us. Walking to our seats I had noticed that The Jake sold a wide choice of beers, and these new friends were sampling many of them. I don’t remember anything about the game itself, which is true for many games that I have seen, but I do remember that the liquid refreshments made our recently acquired companions increasingly loquacious. They insisted time and again that we go with them to their favorite bar in the neighborhood after the game, and we agreed.

          The establishment was crowded and smoke-filled with a pool table and dart boards, but my eyes were drawn to framed photographs around the place. I would have expected them to be of Cleveland Indian players of the past and present—Tris Speaker, Bob Feller, and the like. Or because Cleveland once had a proud professional football history, the walls would have pictures of Jim Brown and Otto Graham. Instead, what I saw were Paul Hornung, Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke, and other Green Bay Packers of the Vince Lombardi era, fierce rivals of the Cleveland Browns, who lost crucial games to the Packers. I turned to the new friend and asked why the bar had pictures of famous Packers. He replied with the simultaneously obvious and mystifying answer, “This is a Packer bar.”

(concluded August 4)

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A Baseball Tour. And Hooters

          The only time I have gone to a Hooters was at the insistence of a minister.

          Phil and I had gone to grade school and high school together. We were not close friends, but we were friendly and traveled in the same circles. During the summers of college years, we were teammates on a successful slow-pitch softball team. I played various infield positions, and he was at first base. His play aggravated me. He loved to stretch as far as he could for a throw, but he would stretch before the ball was tossed not to meet the throw giving the infielder (meaning me) a smaller target than he should have. (In those days, we had little or no instruction in proper techniques in any sport we played.) I had a few throwing errors (very few I still maintain, and I doubt that the record books still exist to prove me wrong) that a proper first baseman would have easily caught.

          After that team disbanded, I don’t remember seeing Phil until I settled in New York City. I received a call from him and learned that he was working in an administrative position at a prestigious women’s college—I think it was Smith. He was coming to New York for a weekend, and we attended a college basketball game at Madison Square Garden, a venue he had always wanted to see. Over the next year, I saw him a few more times, but then we lost touch again.

          Two decades later, he called. He had become an ordained minister in the Reformed Church, known in my youth as the Dutch Reformed Church. I had not the least inkling that he was religious, and although he had a Dutch surname, I was a bit surprised by his career. His church was in New York City on the Queens-Brooklyn border, an area whose Dutch roots went back to the seventeenth century.

          We got together a few times after his arrival, including a Thanksgiving dinner as he was still settling into his new location, but soon his time became taken up by his job, and we drifted apart again. A few years later, he called me. He had just won a contest, and the prize was a trip for two to tour major league ballparks. Phil went on to say that he had two brothers, and he did not want to choose between them. He also did not want to make a choice among his parishioners. Then he embarrassedly added that the contest had been sponsored by a major brewing company, and he did not want his church to know that. Would I go with him? “After all,” he added, “you and I played a lot of sports together.” And so Phil and I went visiting baseball stadiums.

          I flew to Toronto, where Phil had proceeded me. On the trip, Phil and I shared hotel rooms, and this one overlooked Lake Ontario. (Later on, an old girlfriend, having heard about this trip, asked if I was concerned about sharing a room with Phil. She and others thought Phil, who never married, was gay. Phil and she had dated. She said that their experiences were pleasant enough, but that “nothing ever happened. He never tried. He was always a ‘gentleman.’”) I don’t remember much about what Phil and I did before going to the ballgame except that I discovered I had a previously unknown fear. We went to the top of the tower next to the stadium, which afforded lovely views, but part of the floor was made of glass. I had been to the observation deck of the World Trade Tower several times where there were seats right next to glass from which I could look out not only at New York but could almost look straight down to the street a hundred stories below. I always enjoyed it and had noticed with arrogant amusement that a fear kept many people away from the windows. But in the Toronto observatory, I found that while I could look out at the city, when I stood on the glass floor and looked straight down the forty stories or so, my heart started an unknown rhythm, my breathing became irregular, and my stomach clenched. I had to move to the more normal floor. I, of course, glanced around hoping that no one had noticed my wussy characteristics.

          I remember little of the Toronto baseball game, as I remember little of any of the games I saw on the trip. I have gone to many baseball games and seen on TV and heard on the radio many more. I appreciate the skill and strategy involved, but, like others, I find baseball intrinsically boring. I have to be a fan of a particular team playing to get immersed into a game. I didn’t care about the Toronto game and don’t even remember who the Blue Jays played. Even so, it is magical to go into a major league stadium, and I enjoyed myself. As I do at almost all baseball games I attend, I walked around the stadium to watch the game from different viewpoints to notice how the game seems to slightly change from varying vantage points, but I also always notice what food is for sale. This trip was at a time when concession choices, at least at the New York ballparks, had not expanded, but Toronto was on the forefront of the change. It had a much broader array of beers than at Yankee stadium, and to my surprise, it offered one of my favorite foods—funnel cake—which I had only had at carnivals and street fairs. I don’t go to ball games expecting to eat healthily, but I did not expect to have artisanal beer with fried, powder-sugared dough. I can’t say that I would recommend this combo, but it was memorable. And I loved it.

(continued August 2)

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Anti-Vaxxers Should Know this History

          The disease did not originate there, but a preventive measure began in China. The measure spread around the world. Knowledge of it came to North America, where the disease had helped Europeans dominate the land, on a slave ship. The preventive inoculations led to claims of violations of personal and religious liberty. A vaccine was developed, and states began to require its use. Courts were asked to find a law requiring vaccinations unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court upheld the statutes. The vaccine was so successful that widespread inoculations have led to the elimination of the disease. This particular virus is no longer the scourge that killed hundreds of millions.

We don’t know precisely how or when smallpox developed, but we have evidence of it five thousand years ago in Egypt. It endured through the millennia. By the fifteenth century, it had spread to all parts of the globe except the Americas. That changed when Europeans brought it to what they thought of as the new world. Native populations, who had no immunity to the disease, succumbed at perhaps a 90% rate, making it easier for the Spanish and English to colonize what had once been extensively populated lands. Smallpox persisted. Millions of cases still occurred in the second half of the last century.

          People tried to prevent the disease, and by the sixteenth century, China was using an immunization method against smallpox in which powdered smallpox scabs were inserted into scratches made in the skin of the healthy. When this went well, the recipient developed only a mild form of the disease, but one that gave the person lifetime immunity. This inoculation method called variolation (Variola is the virus that causes smallpox) spread to the Middle East and Africa.

          Puritan Minister Cotton Mather learned this technique from his West African slave Onesimus and used it in the 1720s when Boston suffered a smallpox outbreak. Objections to the inoculations were strong. Although Cotton Mather was hardly lax on the religiosity front, the method was said to be ungodly because it was not mentioned in the Bible. Furthermore, it affronted God’s right to determine who was to die and how and when they should meet God. Others raised the non-religious objection that using the product of a disease to prevent a disease did not make sense. But the empirical data overwhelmingly showed that variolation prevented deaths from smallpox. The practice spread in colonial America, and in 1775 George Washington required the variolation of the Continental Army. It soon gained general acceptance in the larger cities and towns of the United States.

          The practice, however, did have dangers. While the inoculation recipient usually got only a mild case of the disease, occasionally it was severe, and deaths occurred. Near the end of the eighteenth century many recognized that a cowpox infection (which is related to, but much less virulent than, smallpox) seemed to protect against the more serious infection. Dr. Edward Jenner vaccinated (the terms vaccine and vaccination are derived from the name of the cowpox virus, variolae vaccinae) people with the cowpox virus and then later showed that this made the recipient immune to smallpox. Jenner is credited with creating a smallpox vaccine–the first vaccine ever. In doing so he is thought to have saved more lives than anyone else in history.

          Even with the vaccine, however, smallpox continued not just in backwaters or “primitive” areas of the world, but also in the United States. In 1827, Boston was the first American city to require school children to be vaccinated against smallpox, and other states and cities adopted the policy and added similar requirements as other vaccines were developed. Over a century after Jenner’s discovery, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in response to an outbreak and pursuant to a state law, required adults to get smallpox vaccinations.

          Henning Jacobson said that forcing him to be vaccinated violated the liberty guaranteed by the Constitution and that no one should be subjected to the law if they objected to vaccination no matter what their reason. The issue made its way to the United States Supreme Court. In 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts held that individual liberty could be restrained by reasonable laws for the safety of the general public and that “real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own liberty, whether in respect of his person or property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.” Jacobson had offered proof that some medical authorities contended that vaccinations would not stop the spread of smallpox and would cause other diseases and adverse consequences. The Court noted, however, that many other medical authorities held contrary opinions. The Court concluded that legislatures—not the courts– had the authority to decide how to protect the public. The mandatory vaccination requirement for adults was upheld.

          In 1922 the Supreme Court extended its Jacobson ruling. Zucht v. King upheld the San Antonio, Texas, school district’s rule that excluded children from both public and private schools if they did not have a smallpox vaccination. Since then lower courts have found many different vaccination requirements to be constitutional.

          Smallpox vaccinations, of course, have been a huge success. Intensive containment and vaccination efforts in the second half of the last century led to the worldwide eradication of the disease. The last case of it was in 1978.

          Since the development of the smallpox vaccine, many other vaccines have prevented much human misery, but in spite of what the Supreme Court held more than a century ago, many claim they have a constitutional right to refuse a mandated vaccination. The law and the Constitution are not on their side. They will succeed only if the present Court will be activist enough to overturn the settled precedents and find that individuals have a right never before found, a right to place others in peril. If so, society will suffer. And American life expectancy, which took the largest nosedive since World War II under Trump, the Has Been Guy, will drop further. Such a finding will, in fact, MALG–Make America Less Great.