Hate the latest iOS update? I don’t blame you…

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WHY would you fade out the ONE thing I need to see clearly in the middle of the night?

Last night, sometime after dinner, a dialogue box appeared on my iPhone screen. It wanted to install an update. With reckless abandon, I allowed it to do so.

I agreed on the basis of vague concern that something I rely upon might not work right in the future, at a moment when I really needed it, if I didn’t go along. In other words, the device was saying to me, “Nice setup ya got heah. Shame if sometin’ was ta happen to it…”

Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of those discreet, unobtrusive, polite updates. This iOS 26.1 is more of a tear-down-everything-you-like-and-replace-it-with-something-far-less-appealing update.

A lot of my problem had to do with what I sometimes refer to as my Tory sensibility — my instinctive conservatism. I’m like those Age of Sail foremast jacks Patrick O’Brian describes. Their daily existence might be strenuous and harsh, but it “was what they were used to, and they liked what they were used to.”as

Amen. I like new things well enough — nothing like a new toy. As long as I don’t have to throw away my old toys to get one.

This time, they’ve messed with the visual appearance of practically everything that is completely within Apple’s control– camera, clock, settings and such. Worse, they’ve messed with the functionality. Actually, I’m exaggerating a bit. The visual and functional design of only a few things have changed. But they’re the things you most often use quickly, without having to think about it. Now you have to stop and think.

As I often say, nothing wrong with thinking. But I’d rather spend that mental energy on more important, complex matters than setting my alarm clock.

Example: When I wake up in the middle of the night, I’m used to glancing at my phone’s lockscreen, without putting on my glasses, to see what time it is. Not the date, not the weather forecast, just the time. In previous iOS versions, they made the time the biggest thing on the screen, apparently recognizing that’s what people needed to see. NOW, it’s the one thing on the page that’s faded into the background. This is a pain. (And don’t dismiss this as an old man’s complaint. I’ve been nearsighted since I was in the third grade.)

But rather than give you a list of all the things I don’t like about it, I’ll push myself to be positive and name the one improvement (and remember, there’s no reason to change things except to improve them) I’ve found so far:

In the past, those alternative camera settings that can be fun but which you seldom use — time lapse, slo-mo, cinematic, portrait, etc. — sometimes got in the way when you didn’t want them. Your finger might have accidentally touched that part of the screen and ruined your shot. Sometimes, I would swear it would drift to those settings on its own.

That won’t happen now. After a fraction-of-a-second glimpse when you first open the app, those settings disappear, leaving only “VIDEO” and “PHOTO” readily available.

As someone on the boob tube used to say, that’s a good thing. But it’s the only one of those I’ve noticed so far…

Oh, wait, I almost forgot the nut graf. Here goes: Why won’t technology companies leave their wonderful products alone and let customers enjoy them? Why do they have to create a constant state of unsettled confusion by gratuitously chaning them? I can only think of one good excuse: Their beancounters would make them fire all the R&D folks if they didn’t keep producing these visible changes.

Hey, I want people to keep their jobs. But a wise company would employ these people to constantly seek ways to improve their products by addressing actual existing problems. Just don’t let them make the change unless it is undeniably an improvement, rather than change for change’s sake.

 

The best podcast you can find: The Rest is History

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Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, hosts of “The Rest is History.”

I’ve previously mentioned my favorite podcast ever: “The Rest is History.” I’ve only mentioned it in passing, though, and have meant for some time to say more about it in a separate post.

And now I have the perfect news peg for doing so.

Apple, which provides the podcast app through which I listen regularly to hosts Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, has named this brilliant gem its 2025 Show of the Year.

And rightly so. I had never heard it before this prize-winning year, but I can attest that what I have heard stands far above any podcast I’ve heard previously. As Apple said:

Apple is proud to celebrate The Rest Is History with the Apple Podcasts Award for Show of the Year, a recognition that honors a show that demonstrates quality and cultural impact in podcasting. Produced by Goalhanger, the series has captivated a global audience with its witty, insightful, and endlessly entertaining exploration of the past, becoming the first UK-based show to be named Show of the Year.
Hosted by acclaimed historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, The Rest Is History has become a fixture at the top of the charts worldwide by bringing history’s biggest moments to life. From the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, to the sinking of the Titanic, the hosts blend deep expertise with gripping storytelling and unexpected humor to make complex subjects accessible and compelling for millions of listeners…

Absolutely. I don’t know about those millions of listeners, but I certainly love it. And in my opinion, their audience should be in the billions — or at least, whatever the number of people who can understand English well enough to follow.

And not just because I think everyone should enjoy the same things I do. As I’m always saying, the failure to understand history is possibly the greatest problem facing our country today. Not that Americans were in general great historians in previous generations. But the gross ignorance today is more dangerous than ever, because we live in a time when dimly-perceived history is one of the favorite weapons of the warring tribes into which our once-great society has been divided. The armies of left and right charge again and again into battle waving their opposing misconceptions like so many heavy, dull swords.

It’s not about names and dates, or about which tribe got wronged by which other tribe in the past, but about understanding. It’s about perceiving and accepting, on a deep level, the people who came before us, and lived normal human lives day after day, just as we do. They’re not black and white object lessons, they’re people, like our families and friends.

And their stories are fascinating. And sometimes hilarious as well. Apple mentions these guys’ “unexpected humor.” Well, it’s not unexpected at all once you get to know these guys. They are brilliant historians, and so comfortable with their material that they fully appreciate the human comedy they are telling about. And while they don’t neglect the serious stuff, sometimes they go off on wonderful digressions about the really fun stuff.

You’ll hear that if you listen to this one short (half an hour, compared to the usual hour) episode they released this week to celebrate their award. They review some of their favorite episodes this year such as:

I became besotted with this show in April, when I ran across it in the middle of their four-part series on the year 1066, a year that of course has tremendous meaning to these two Brits. I immediately found that the site allowed me to go back and hear the previous episodes in the series — and for that matter every one of the more than 800 episodes since the show began.

I hadn’t listened long before I signed up to become a member of the show, which means I don’t have to “tune in next week” to hear the rest of the current series. I also get to hear their bonus episodes either riffing further on the current topic, of going far off the track on something they enjoy talking about.

All that is well worth $6 a month. Go give it a listen. You’ll be glad you did. You’ll also walk away smarter. You could start with the one celebrating their award.

Oh, and as Americans, don’t be put off by their constant “Bully for England” shtik. They worry about that a bit, although it doesn’t stop them:

Tom: What makes us particularly humble is that we are the first non-American show ever to win show of the year. So it’s a victory not just for us, but for Britain.

Dominic: Yeah, in a very real sense, for Britain.

Tom: Yeah. So Dominic, I’m a bit worried that our tone of British smugness may have scared away lots of readers who are tuning in wondering what the fuss is all about, and they’ve never actually listened to us before, so why don’t we just talk a little bit about what we do….”

Which they go on and do. Then, to celebrate the giver of the award, they riff on the Top Five Apples in History. Give it a listen…

Why not a QUIET ‘hold’ option?

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I’m on hold as I type this.

I’m hearing instrumental music — bad, staticky, extremely monotonous “music” — which I could stand, if I must.

(It’s now been 10 minutes.)

What gets me is the earnest robot message about every 30 seconds explaining “we are currently experiencing extremely high call volumes,” followed by a suggestion that we leave a message on the website. Which of course is the point, to the institution from which I’m seeking information that the website does not provide.

At least I’m not being subjected to the bitterly laughable, “We value your call” shtick. This is more honest, but it requires translation: “We don’t want to pay enough humans to help you in a timely manner, so we’re going to torment you until you go away.”

Oh, this just in…

A different recording kicked in to tell me that it would remain connected with me no longer, and that I must now do what it’s been telling me to do and go to the website and leave a message in a location that sounds like the description of where citizens could find the notice that local government was going to tear down Arthur Dent’s house:

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

In other words, the machine had had it with me and my patience, and wasn’t going to take it anymore. The call ended at the 16-minute point.

But back to my original suggestion, before that last insult: Why can’t these waits at least be quiet and peaceful?

Never mind, I know the answer: The water-torture irritation is key to the institution’s strategy…

So do you have this ‘new’ form of dementia?

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No, this doesn’t show dementia. It’s just an image that was in the public domain.

My wife brought this graf to my attention when she was reading in the NYT about a “new” form of dementia:

He used to have a “wonderful vocabulary,” he said, “but now, my field of words is far reduced.” He still reads books, exercises at a gym and socializes with friends, but he increasingly forgets names and details. He was particularly distressed when he immediately forgot the minister’s homily at church one Sunday, though he’d been listening avidly. “That’s really scary,” he said…

My wife’s reaction was to say she’d had this since she was 4 years old. I don’t want to brag or anything, but I think I had it earlier. Whenever it started, I’ve had it ever since, no matter how well I might have done in school or in my working life.

He forgets names and details? Been there, for about 72 years. He forgot the homily? Hey, I’m lucky when I hear it! And even before my hearing loss began back in 2012, I had a terrible time “listening avidly,” unless it was a really engaging sermon. I felt bad about it, but there it was. It happened, a lot. I’d set out to listen, and the priest would make an interesting point, and I’d start thinking about that point, which would remind me of something else, and I’d think hard about that, and next thing I knew we were reciting the Nicene Creed.

(It’s not that religion bores me — quite the contrary. I’ve long been that way in a lot of secular situations, even when I’ve been well paid to listen. It would occasionally happen in editorial board meetings. Somebody would say something really interesting, and I was off to the races, thinking about what a great column topic that would make, and how it reminded me of something I’d read previously, and … fortunately, Nina Brook and Cindi Scoppe got spookily good at recognizing that look in my eye (Nina in particular seemed alert to it), and would call me back to my duty. At which point I would have to beg the board’s pardon and try to catch up. And I was the guy presiding. I’m not making this up.)

Not that every point the man was making was silly. I, too, have an extensive vocabulary, but there are some words that have eluded me for many years. Take “futon,” for instance. I can usually recall it after a moment or two, but if I need to refer to one in a hurry, I have to change the subject, or fall back on something lame like “one of those pieces of furniture like the daybed thing I have in my office.” Which doesn’t fool anybody.

I don’t know why it gives me trouble. Maybe because I’d never heard of one until I was well into adulthood. Or maybe because, even though it sounds kind of French when you first hear it, it’s not from any of those Latin-derived languages with which I have some passing familiarity. (Of course, even if it had been French, well… that’s the Western language I understand the least.)  Futon is, in fact, Japanese. I might know a handful of words in Japanese — sushi, zori, kimono, hai and banzai, for instance, but I can’t explain the etymology of any of them. I just know if a bunch of guys who are hopped up on saki (hey, another word!) are running toward you yelling “BANZAI,” you might have a problem.

Another such word is “yogurt.” Again, I don’t know why.

OK, I’m avoiding the subject.

The truth is that lately, I’m forgetting more words. Names, too. I’ve never been great at names, but now I’m worse.

This might be about aging, of course. But at the moment, I’m taking something for an old spine injury (dating to when I was 17) that has made me goofier than usual. Gabapentin helps me sleep while this is acting up, but I’ll be glad to stop it. It’s not just forgetting words. It’s also remembering why I just walked across the kitchen. If I think about it a moment I’ll remember, but it’s still not fun.

And sure, I’ve done that sometimes when I was young as well, but now it’s much more common. Which is tiresome. I’m really hoping it stops when I’m not on the drug anymore. Otherwise, in another few years, my vocabulary is likely to descend to Trump level. On the bright side, maybe that means I can go into politics, and win.

The first time I ever had a memory lapse that I felt sure was age-related was something I’ve mentioned before: About 20 years ago, I suddenly realized that I no longer knew all of the lyrics to every Beatles song. This was a shock, but I got used to it. It’s not really something that comes up much anymore.

Anyway, I’m curious what y’all have experienced. For my part, I think I’m going to post more on the subject of aging from a first-person perspective. Might as well make use of whatever new expertise that getting old brings…

A less-subtle meaning of ‘banzai’… (screenshot from a clip I’m having trouble finding now)

Is this a regional difference, or familial?

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One or two of you out there are into genealogy. I wonder whether you’ve noticed patterns similar to what I’ve seen, and what you’ve concluded as a result.

When you’ve built a family tree to more than 10,000 relatives, you start to notice certain trends. Especially when you look at incoming DNA matches on a large scale.

One that makes its presence felt every time I try to find new matches for my tree via DNA is that my previously unknown maternal relatives are far, FAR more likely to pop up on the list than folks on my Dad’s side of the family.

I’ve tried to explain this to myself in various ways. One is that my mother’s family has always seemed closer than my Dad’s. Dad stayed in touch with his parents while they lived, and his four siblings and their families, but that’s about it. And we seldom saw them in person, except when my grandparents lived in South Carolina during my toddler years.

During those years, my Dad did whatever he could to stay in South Carolina — and his detailer obliged by putting him aboard a couple of ships out of Charleston, and Columbia for a year in a recruiting station.

That kept us close to some of his family, but to ALL of my mother’s. And even after we started moving around after my paternal grandfather died when I was 4, we spent almost every summer entirely in SC, and attended every family gathering possible. So I knew loads of maternal second and third cousins, plus all the necessary uncles and aunts. Not so on my Dad’s side, because after my grandfather died, they were mostly up in Maryland.

Still, when I started doing this genealogy stuff and had my DNA done, it initially seemed that the Warthens were more interested in tree-building than the Collinses. Three of my paternal first cousins have had their DNA analyzed, and only one first cousin on my Mom’s side.

But that was too small a sample to draw conclusions. Once I started really digging into the matches, and going beyond the people I knew well, I found a very different pattern.

Look at the illustration above. That’s the top of the results I get when I filter the list for just new matches who have an identifiable (according to the reckoning of AI) common ancestor. I find that to be a useful beginning for finding people I can reliably post on my tree.

That’s carefully cropped to remove identifying information. But you’ll see that in the top eight matches, ALL are maternal. That’s just the beginning. I couldn’t show you more without the image getting ridiculously vertical.

The full list starts with 14 maternal matches. Then there’s one paternal. Then 10 maternal, pausing for one more paternal. Then 13 more maternal to fill out the top 40, where the filtered list ends.

Are the Collinses just mad about tracing family, while the Warthens are less interested? Or is it a regional thing? Are South Carolinians far more interested in finding roots than folks who live in Maryland? Or is it a big-city thing to be less interested? For the last couple of centuries the Warthens had lived in Montgomery County, Maryland, which contains the sprawling northern suburbs of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.

Recently, I’ve run across this sort of thing on my wife’s side of the family, which I’ve carried back past the 14th century, where I found our latest common ancestory. (Yes, I’m married to my 18th cousin once removed. Befored you gasp at the scandal, let me point out that the current king of England is my 16th cousin once removed, and he’s NEVER invited us to the palace. It’s quite likely you’re more closely related to your spouse — and the king — than I am; you just haven’t been crazy enough to do all that tracing.)

Anyway, I had done all that without any DNA evidence. Finally, one of my children sent her DNA to Ancestry. (Previously, three of my kids had done 23andme, which had not been quite as helpful to my tree-building. The two services concentrate on different things.)

My wife, you see, is a very sensible lady and has no interest in doing her own DNA. But my daughter’s data got me started on her fam.

And I found that those folks from Memphis and elsewhere in West Tennessee are, if anything, less interested in sending in their saliva than most of my Dad’s family. (On the other hand, I’ve filled out my wife’s side of the tree pretty well to third cousins — and back well into the medieval period, despite that lack of DNA. Indicating that maybe interest in DNA doesn’t correllate to closeness of families at all.)

But is that because people who moved that far West were less interested in where they came from, while the East-Coasters — especially southerners — were more into establishing their pedigrees?

Or is it just something about Phelans and Warthens in contrast to Collinses?

I don’t know. Perhaps if you have run into something like this, you have some insight…

DeMarco: A.I., my mechanic, and my patients

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The Op-Ed Page

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

Like many of you, I am struggling to understand the repercussions artificial intelligence might have on my life and on my neighbors around the globe.

I’ve read some articles and listened to many podcasts about AI. I’ve heard opinions from the sanguine to the apocalyptic. Experience being the best teacher, I have observed how AI has affected my life and my practice, and thus far, I am cautiously optimistic.

That said, it’s frustrating to have such a small window on the impact AI is having on so many of us. I know it’s eliminating some jobs, while creating others. I sense from a distance that it is transforming the way we educate our children. How do you teach children to think critically and write insightfully when AI can do both for them? AI is already changing the way we interface with the world. Have you called a business and spoken to an AI assistant yet? If not, you soon will.

There are myriad ways AI could influence my corner of the world, primary care medicine. Two are currently top of mind. First, I hope that AI will eventually do most of my documentation. Although there has been some buzz on this front, I have yet to see a system that is anywhere close to a human scribe. However, it’s possible to imagine an AI scribe that would be faster, less expensive, and more helpful than a human one (albeit less enjoyable to work with).

Second, and more interesting to me is how AI will be used in the exam room. A recent visit to my mechanic may give a clue. Several months ago, a vibration began emanating from the front passenger side of my trusty 2016 Ford Escape. The noise had some peculiar characteristics – it was loudest when I first started the car and tended to improve as the engine warmed up and achieved high gear. Once I was at cruising speed, it was barely noticeable.

I took the car to my local mechanic, in whom I have absolute trust, for a regular service. The noise had just began and I had not listened carefully to it at that point. Based on my vague description, he replaced a sway bar link. There was no improvement. Since the noise wasn’t diminishing the car’s performance, I waited several months to return to him. Then I did what I tell my patients not to do. I went to the internet. Prior to AI, I found searches for questions like this one to be mostly unhelpful. In my patients’ hands, medical searches have often led to inaccurate and needlessly anxiety-provoking results. AI has changed the game. Well-constructed prompts can return genuinely useful answers in seconds. I described the noise in detail, and ChatGPT gave me a differential diagnosis. After several rounds of back and forth, the leading candidate was a faulty engine mount.

My mechanic called me that afternoon with a different diagnosis involving the axle. But because the noise was loudest with the car in park, I was dubious. He wondered if we were each hearing different noises. “Let me come first thing tomorrow morning,” I said, “and we can talk about this.”

As I sat with him in the car the next morning, I told him about my AI research. I was uncomfortable as a true amateur (I had no idea what an engine mount (or a sway bar link was until ChatGPT informed me) disagreeing with an expert. But we had a relationship, and I asked if he would replace the engine mount first. If that didn’t fix the noise, he would investigate the axle. Two days later (the mount had to be ordered), I was back on the road and the noise had disappeared.

This could be a guide to how AI will affect my practice. As a generalist, I accept that there are many specialist physicians who know more about a particular aspect of my patients’ illnesses than I do. I expect to need help from them and other parts of the medical team (nurses, pharmacists, social workers, counselors, therapists, etc.). AI could be another member of the team. Since AI can be accessed from both directions– by the patient and the provider– it could also be a bridge to improve patients’ engagement in managing their chronic medical conditions. ChatGPT is imperfect, but often provides reasonable answers to well-written lay medical questions. Providers have access to an AI-powered tool called OpenEvidence that is even more reliable than ChatGPT.

I’m curious about how AI could alter my conversations with patients. I sometimes use OpenEvidence in the room with a patient and let the patient know what I’m doing. I haven’t yet used it to try to change a patient’s mind – for example, to urge acceptance of a vaccine of which the patient is skeptical. But it would provide an authoritative, neutral voice in that discussion.

I don’t perceive AI to be a threat. Nor do I believe primary care doctors could be replaced by AI. Human beings need other human beings to care for and about them. I hope that AI can be successfully incorporated into the doctor-patient relationship to better inform and connect both parties.

A version of this column appeared in the Nov. 14th edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.

The Beloved Children of the Holocaust

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I’ve mentioned my neighbor Mary Burkett before. We had one of her campaign signs in our yard ahead of the last election. She won election to the Lexington District 2 school board.

Hers was one of five signs we had in our yard, four of whom won, but no one running for school board won as big as Mary did. And if you knew her, you would understand why.

But Mary’s more than a pleasant neighbor and someone with real concern for our schools. Several years back, she took on a new avocation: She started drawing portraits of children who died in the Holocaust. This was in January 2017. Over the course of the next seven months, she produced a collection she calls “Beloved: Children of the Holocaust.”

Why did she do this? She explains:

I felt that not only their lives, but their voices had been taken from them, and I wanted to give them a chance to speak to the world. Simply put, I wanted to honor their precious little lives. My hope is that you will be blessed by them as I have been.

She had no great ambition in taking this on. She doesn’t even see herself as an artist. But her work has been celebrated. Three years ago, a film about her project was shown in Greenville at the Peace Center. If you missed that, you can find it on Amazon Prime.

Anyway, I suppose that’s enough to set up what I wanted to tell you about. I saw this a few days ago on her Facebook page:

I’m going to open us up for a little discussion today, but please remember not to name specific politicians or parties from any country.
Here we go… A major university in the US recently denied a faculty request to show my exhibit, In the Land of Wooden Shoes. Their reason? It is too political…now if you have followed Beloved for any time at all, you know that this work is purposefully non-political.
So, here’s our point of discussion –
How does this type of action relate to Germany in the 1930s, if at all? Perhaps it is simply prudent on the part of the university not to exhibit historical portraits that might be deemed controversial. On the other hand, does the silencing of history matter and where might it lead?
We have a large worldwide audience here; let’s see what people think…

When I called Mary to ask about this, she explained that “In the Land of Wooden Shoes” is a sort of offshoot of her initial “Beloved,” and is “a joint project between myself and the Anne Frank Center at USC.” (Mary was a recipient of the Anne Frank Award in 2024.) It consists of six portraits of Anne at different ages, plus 20 of other children taken from the Netherlands by the Nazis and sent east to their deaths. The portraits are accompanied by biographies.

That’s it. “I don’t tell people what to think. There’s never a punch line.
Look at the pictures, read their stories, and walk away with what you perceive…. I don’t show and don’t talk about numbers of trains” or other details of the Final Solution.

The exhibit has been presented to 5th-graders without causing a problem. Yet for a “major university,” it was too much. Too “political.” (Speaking of universities, though, there was also a showing at the South Caroliniana Library.)

The thing is, Mary is very, very careful to stay away from politics. Note her appeal to commenters “not to name specific politicians or parties from any country.” Makes her kind of the opposite of me, huh? But I appreciate what she’s trying to do, and it’s a version of what I’ve praised and called for in the past. It’s a worthy goal for me, and for all of us, if we’ll only embrace it.

Yet in her unassuming work, she’s run into “politics” in recent years. Take that Facebook page. Before Oct. 7, 2023, she had a huge following — about 5 million at one point, from all over the world. Then, it dropped to about 20,000. Apparently, there were complaints that it was “offensive.”

She thought the drop was something Facebook was doing deliberately. Then she hears from the social medium that “Because of your high-quality content, we’re going to extend your reach.”

Her following has gone back up (to 53,000 at the moment), but is “nowhere in the range of where it was.” She is sad that “Very few from Europe, Canada, Australia comment any more.” She suspects they’re not able to see it. This is because she frequently gets FB messages from abroad asking where her page went.

Note that Mary doesn’t name the university or the faculty member who proposed to show the exhibit. The last thing she wants to do is hurt anyone. I didn’t press her on that. I just wanted to share what I’ve shared here.

By the way, at her website, you can learn about some other projects she’s taken on, such as “Beloved: Legacy of Slavery.”

Wonder where I’ve been?

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No, it wasn’t THESE three IT folks who helped me. Mine were more effective, but less funny,

Maybe you haven’t, since I’m in the habit of going walkabout these days.

But for a suprising number of these last days, I’ve been completely unable to do anything with the blog — post, moderate, comment, or even READ it.

Just 504 and 505 error messages. I even got a 503 once.

I hoped it would go away for days. Sometimes these things do. Finally, I gave up and reached out to my host for help. I was on a chat with a tech person — actually three different IT folks — for more than three hours today. It took awhile, but they got it up and running. Huzzah!

I’m going to take a nap now. I’ll try to post something tonight.

OK, I’m tired — but quite happy with the result

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At some point during the extra innings last night — or perhaps it was after midnight this morning — I thought about sending out a Tweet about the tense, exciting, protracted 7th game of the World Series. With everything in doubt, I would have said something like:

Whoever loses this game is going to be far more disappointed than they would be losing any Series I’ve seen up to now…

I didn’t post it because I didn’t want to recognize that my Dodgers might lose. But really, truly, anything could have happened until that very last second when Alejandro Kirk’s bat broke, and my favorite Dodger Mookie Betts scooped it up, hustled to second then threw over to Freddie Freeman for the double play, ending it all. (Here’s a great picture of that moment, with Freddie towering over the Blue Jays’ catcher, leaping with joy while Kirk seems to do a sort of dance of sadness on first base.)

Both teams deserved to win. And those Toronto fans, as well as the players, seemed to want it more. So I felt bad for them. Too bad the last game wasn’t in L.A.

On the other hand, my sympathy had been somewhat tempered because I was sick of the announcers going on and on about how the poor things hadn’t seen their team win a championship for 32 years. They kept saying it. At one point, there was this montage as they cut from one anxious, longing face in the crowd, while yammering again about those 32 years.

You know what happened 32 years ago? I do. So does John Smoltz. At my age, that’s like 18 months ago. They had won the year before that, too! I had been there in Atlanta for the first game of that previous Series, and I’ve always thought it was cool to have been present to hear a foreign anthem played at a World Series — even though they ended up beating my Braves. But come on, guys! You win your first Series ever, and then you win again the next year, and what — you expect to win them all now?

But still, I sympathized. So when I spoke afterward with my brother-in-law, who had rooted for Toronto, I was able to offer my condolences sincerely, and tell him that his guys had deserved to win. But of course, so had the Dodgers. One thing we agreed on — if everybody in America had watched this whole amazing Series, baseball might once again approach something like its former popularity. And America could return to its former greatness.

I’ll just toss out a few things that made this Series wonderful:

  • Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The pitcher who is made of iron. As Chelsea Janes wrote, “Yamamoto threw 2⅔ innings of scoreless relief to close out the 5-4 win a day after he threw six innings in Game 6, a performance that combined with his complete game in Game 2 made him the World Series MVP.” Oh, and you know that complete game? He went all nine innings in the game in his last game before that.
  • Guys who showed they appreciated getting a chance. I’m thinking about Miguel Rojas, whom I hadn’t seen (or at least hadn’t noticed) in the series before Game 6, who was falling down when he through the ball to Will Smith (because the bases were loaded) to barely, just barely saving the game and the Series, and the season — one of many such moments in Game 7. Also, he hit a rare (for him) home run tying the game. I’m also thinking of Andy Pages, who had just been put in at center field, jumping on top of Kiké Hernández to catch the ball on the wall and… again, saving the game, etc. He was so happy, but he seemed a little worried when he looked back and saw Kiké lying there possibly dead. But he was OK.
  • Shohei Ohtani, of course. By this time, his amazing performances in previous days were overshadowed, but hey, he did pitch again — if not as wonderfully as before. And he did have two hits. Which ain’t nothing.
  • Will Smith. There’s nothing harder in baseball than catching, and he did it every inning of every game in the Series, including the 11-inning final game and the 18-inning nightmare several days earlier. Try doing that in a squatting position without committing a Series-losing fumble of a wild pitch. He caught 73 innings, “the most by any catcher in World Series history.” Never mind such shining moments as, you know, hitting the homer that put the Dodgers in the lead.

I could, as usual, go on and on. But let me mention some of the other guys for a moment:

  • Vladimir Guerrero Jr. — That surname means “Warrior,” by the way. Nobody wanted it more than this guy, who underlined his yearning by writing the name of Diós in the dirt each time he came to bat, and hit as though the Lord was definitely taking his side. And he played some tenacious D, such as his diving catch on the first-base line, and that ball he fielded and threw to second in time to have it thrown back to him for a key double play. No one was more passionate, more celebratory about his own achievements and those of his compadres. And the saddest moment came when the camera caught him apparently weaping in the dugout when it was over.
  • Addison Barger — That guy was a terror (from a Dodgers perspective). The internet claims he’s NOT related to Sonny Barger of Hell’s Angels infamy, but think about it — can’t you get “Sonny” as a nickname if you’re called “AddiSON?” Did you notice how several times, Dodgers baserunners decided NOT to try to take an extra base for the simple fact that the hit had gone to right field? That’s because Barger has a cannon for an arm, as he demonstrated to L.A.’s woe a couple of times with throws to home and third base.
  • George Springer. The guy was really racked up. He had a bad arm, a bad leg and a bad haircut. But he stood there at the plate and tried, although quite a few swings looked like they could be his last. Yet he managed to hit with very good effect (from a Toronto perspective) a couple of times, and once for an RBI.
  • Alejandro Kirk. First, he’s not as short as he looks. He’s 5’8″, but looks shorter because he weighs 245 pounds. I think it’s all muscle, the way he hits. At first he looks clumsy, swinging so hard that he sometimes falls down. But thing his next swing sends the ball over the wall…

OK, that’s enough. I know I’m getting a little like Shooter when he was in rehab, raving so about the game that they had to put the straitjacket on him. Like Shooter, I love “the greatest game ever invented.” He’s just confused about which game that is.

And now it’s over. We have the long, empty winter ahead of us. But this Series gave me enough to tide me through those months — even though the Red Sox weren’t in it.

If there’s another baseball fan out there somewhere, perhaps you’d like to add some words…

A tale of three caps

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It occurred to me that some of you might have thought the other day, “Why is this Red Sox fan so excited about a Dodgers game?”

I’m sure this has worried you. It’s no doubt keeping you awake at night.

So I’ll explain, as I try to do everything. I don’t like having ambiguities linger on my blog.

I’ll explain it with the hats. My father had a huge collection of hats in his later years — most of them related either to the Navy or golf tournaments he played in. I’ve adopted a similar practice (which you are certainly not to assume is a sign of advanced age). About half or more of my hats have to do with baseball.

My favorites have to do with the Red Sox. I have three I currently wear. That’s my best, special-occasion Red Sox hat above. Unlike my other baseball lids, this is a REAL cap — not one of those cheap, one-size-fits-all jobs. I had to go to Lansdowne Street, in the shadow of Fenway itself, and try them on until one fit perfectly.

Where other hats have a strap at the very back that can be adjusted to various sizes, this one has a tiny Red Sox logo, blown up slightly at right, which my wife and daughters think is cute, and I find to be quite tasteful.

I loved the Red Sox long before I was specifically a fan of the team. I have loved their hats more or less ever since I learned that my name started with a B — so, a while. I felt early on that any hat with a B on it was pretty much meant for me.

Add to that the matter of aesthetics. I think it’s a beautiful hat. Dark blue — whether indigo or Navy or whatever the specific nomenclature — is my favorite color. It goes best with either white or a deep, rich red — both of which are present in the B.

Then there’s the fact that over the years, I’ve been aware of and impressed by various Red Sox stars — Babe Ruth (before the Curse), Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Carl Yastrzemski, Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens, Pudge Fisk, Mookie Betts, Big Papi Ortiz, and our own Jackie Bradley Jr. Oh, wait — I forgot Cy Young.

I was also aware of it as a real baseball team with long-term history, dating back more than half a century before my birth. That matters to me. History confers legitimacy.

Then I went to visit Boston for a few days, and loved it — especially the perfect night when we sat there in the Fenway bleachers, right behind Jackie Bradley Jr., and literally ate peanuts and Cracker Jack while we watched the Sox thump the Yankees. I’m not going to blaspheme and call it a religious experience, but as plain old secular ones go, it was pretty special.

Finally, when I shelled out all that money this year to watch Major League Baseball constantly the whole season, my love grew stronger. I watched other teams, but mainly enjoyed and worried over the Sox — my favorites Ceddane Rafaela, Alex Bregman, Jarren Duran, Trevor Story, Garrett Crochet, Aroldis Chapman — well, and all the rest.

They had a good run this year, but it was not to be, as they lost to… oh, let’s not name them — in the Wild Card series.

You might think I’d stop watching at that point, but I actually love baseball, and not just one team. That means enjoying all MLB (and sometimes less glorious) teams. But I do have a hierarchy of preferences, which usually keeps me watching a team I like, if only a little bit in a bad year, all the way through the World Series.

My second fave club is the Phillies.

It’s not the P or the hats or the uniforms in particular, although the one you see above is my fave among the ones they wear. It’s more about a family connection, combined with the way the post-seasons have broken the last few years.

My wife’s first cousin Tim McCarver played the last few years of his career with the Phils. Sure, you might associate him with the Cardinals, and so did I. I was a fan of his when he played for St. Louis in those early glory years — long before I became a bigger fan of his cousin. But by the time he stopped playing ball and started his new career in broadcasting, he had been with the Phillies long enough for a strong identification to develop, in my mind anyway. Besides, he had Steve Carlton — also a former fellow Card — with him (I met Carlton the first time I even saw Tim play in person, down in St. Pete in 1969). It just seemed natural to cheer for their team.

Also, in these recent dark years when baseball disappeared on free broadcast TV, I only got to see ANY baseball by watching the post-season games, which TV deigned to carry still. And the Phillies made regular appearances on that stage the last few years. Thus, I became a fan of the surly Bryce Harper, plus Kyle Schwarber, Brandon Marsh, Alex Bohm, and J.T. Realmuto.

That continued and deepened this season, when MLB.TV finally gave me generous access to baseball every day and night of the season.

But alas, the Phillies fell to my third-favorite team. And they’re still in it (despite the shock of the playoffs, in which they got mistreated by a team I NEVER follow).

My attachment to the Dodgers is a tad more complicated.

First of all, note the B. I of course have no interest in wearing LA on my hat, when I can wear a B. Besides, it goes to my belief in history conferring legitimacy. I think of them as the Brooklyn team that just recently moved (when I was three years old) to another city. Enriching that history we have Jackie Robinson, not to mention Pee Wee Reese, Sandy Koufax, Roy Campanella, and, if you’ll allow one remembered as an owner more than a player, Branch Rickey. Also, they were my Dad’s favorite team.

Today, in that less-reputable West Coast location, they’re still a great team, with Mookie Betts (who should still be in Boston), Freddy Freeman (the only memorable Brave I still get to see, now that MLB.TV lets me watch anything but the Braves), Kike and Teoscar Hernandez and the gentleman I referred to earlier, who is today’s nearest approximation to Babe Ruth… Shohei Ohtani.

Here’s hoping they do better tonight against those strangers from the Great White North…

Well, duh. What a silly question…

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Above you see, highlighted in blue, the silliest question I’ve seen so far today in my email.

Who should be governor of Virginia?

What nonsense, when the answer is so obvious.

It should be Abigail Spanberger, of course. As I’ve previously mentioned.

That email led me to an NYT feature called “The Choice.” I almost turned away when I saw what this feature was about: the Times had “convened a panel of nine people with varied backgrounds and areas of expertise… to assess the candidates’ potential to handle the issues Virginians face.”

There are few things more useless than a man-on-the-street feature — something I learned painfully at the very beginning of my career as a newspaperman (I’ll tell that story later). Obviously the Times has done endeavored to improve on that here — this panel contains people with “varied backgrounds and areas of expertise,” which include “a former lieutenant governor and a laid-off federal worker; a small business owner and a postgraduate student.”

While it might be better, it still seems to share DNA with the man-on-the-street interview. Maybe a third cousin once removed, I’m thinking.

But I suppressed my initial aversion and took a look. And ya know, the Times seems to have successfully assembled a sensible group. See the graphic below.

If you can arrange to get those folks walking toward me down the street, I might even consent to go out and talk with them. Except maybe that one guy you see in the bottom right of the graphic…

But seriously, folks… I’m a big fan of Abigail, and I’ve given you serious reasons for that. She’s truly about the only person actively involved in politics at the moment whom I would support without qualms — which says a lot about the state of American politics.

Since the Times sent me a goofy question, I’ll add a goofy reason to the serious ones I have for supporting Rep. Spanberger:

She doesn’t pepper me all day with texts, giving me stupid reasons to send her money. I’ve really, truly had it with those. (You know what I hate most about them? They tell me I can opt out by replying “STOP,” and I do, and they acknowledge the reply, and then resume sending me the stupid texts.)

Now, to level with you completely, Abigail does send me emails fairly frequently. (Or rather, ActBlue does on her behalf.) But they all go to my “Promotions” subfolder, which means they tend to be deleted en masse. (You’ll note in that first image above that when I grabbed it, there were 99 of them awaiting annihilation.)

But when I see her name, I sometimes skim the message before deleting, and I can say while I’ve seen some of the usual ActBlue stuff intended to make Democrats’ knees go wobbly, it hasn’t been too bad so far.

Anyway, for all sorts of reasons, I hope Rep. Spanberger wins. And I would send her more money if I had it.

Oh, if only someone like her would run for governor here in South Carolina. It seems that at least in the political sphere, that other mountain of conceit keeps rising higher, while ours has sadly sunk into the slough of despond…

DeMarco: Why Many Evangelicals Tolerate ‘I Hate My Opponent’

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The Op-Ed Page

Charlie Kirk and Trump

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

It is hard to be surprised by anything Donald Trump says. But his statement at Charlie Kirk’s Sept. 21 memorial service that, unlike Charlie, “I hate my opponent” was striking.

First, because it was by all indications true, and truth-telling is not Trump’s strong suit. Second, because it should have been an affront to the evangelical Christians who are some of his most fervent supporters (roughly 75-80% of people identifying as evangelical Christians support Trump).

Hatred is absolutely contraindicated in the New Testament. Jesus explicitly condemns it in the fifth chapter of Matthew: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Admittedly, this is a high bar. It’s one of the “hard sayings” in the Bible, the commands that are most difficult for us mortals to obey. Moments before Trump spoke, Erika Kirk crossed that bar by forgiving her husband’s murderer.

Erika Kirk

Any sensible human, and particularly any sensible Christian, would have let Mrs. Kirk’s loving statement be. Not Trump, who had to voice a (in his mind) better opinion: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.”

For a secular person, this remark is unnerving, given Trump’s penchant for using the power of the federal government to target his enemies. For a Christian, it is abhorrent. Trump’s enablers recognized this. They knew it couldn’t be defended. JD Vance said he was “joking.” Karoline Leavitt, his press secretary, took a different tack when asked about it in the briefing room. “Look, the president is authentically himself. I think that’s why millions of Americans across the country love him and support him.”

Her first statement is arguable. Who knows who Donald Trump is? He has taken positions on both sides of many issues over his career – abortion, immigration, health care, Ukraine, cryptocurrency, Tik-Tok, etc. It would be more accurate to call him an opportunist or a shapeshifter. The next statement was the most revealing: “that’s why millions of Americans… love and support him.”

They love and support him because he hates his opponents. Trump taps into our deep-seated human capacity for hatred. That’s why the biblical call to reject it is radical – and also liberating, because hating someone is soul-shriveling drudgery. Even those who despise Trump’s policies would do well not to hate the man or his supporters. It contorts our dialogue, and therefore our society.

Conservatives and progressives alike have succumbed to the temptation to demonize and hate their opponents. Neither side is currently occupying the moral high ground.

I hold evangelicals to a higher standard since they are fellow Christians. Secular progressives don’t have a sacred book given from God.  Christians, including many liberals, do. Even a casual reader of the Bible, which warns frequently of the perils of anger and revenge-seeking, should find Trump unacceptable.

I worry about how this disregard for core Christian values is affecting young people who are searching for a principled faith community. Surveys indicate that the most cited reason young people leave the church is its perceived hypocrisy. It is easy to understand how those who loudly represent themselves simultaneously as Christ followers and Trump supporters give young people whiplash.

Blinded by anger, many evangelicals have rejected the bedrock of their faith. No evangelical pastor could use Trump’s words about hate as text for a sermon except as a negative example. Nor is there much in his personal life that aligns with Christian teaching. If one were forced to include Trump in a sermon, it might be as a living example of a golden calf, which the nation of Israel built in their fear that God had abandoned them.

Many evangelicals try to defend their votes for Trump by citing his (new-found) opposition to abortion. However, in 2016, all the Republican candidates were anti-abortion. Evangelicals had a raft of devout and morally superior candidates, among them Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister; Ted Cruz, son of a conservative preacher; Rick Santorum, a faithful Catholic; and Ben Carson, a Seventh-day Adventist. All these men spoke the language of faith more fluently and convincingly than Trump. Evangelicals’ main motivation for their vote in 2016 could not have been their faith. It was in response to his unique capability to stoke and channel anger and hatred.

In 2024, evangelicals had a near-perfect candidate, Mike Pence, who described himself as a “Bible-believing Christian,” whose public life has been scandal-free, and who saved the country from a constitutional crisis in 2020 by correctly certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Apparently, Pence wasn’t angry enough, or to put it another way, he was too biblical for many evangelicals.

A version of this column appeared in the October 20th edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.

But these go to 8

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This feels a little like déjà vu, since I just did a post about another NYT feature I’ve praised before, but here goes anyway, because I can’t resist a good Top Five list, even when it inappropriately goes to 8…

I’ve expressed appreciation for “The Amplifier” before, and I’m impressed again by their “8 really great songs from fake movie bands” list, which hit my In box about an hour ago.

Here’s the list:

  1. The Wonders, “That Thing You Do!”
  2. Stillwater, “Fever Dog”
  3. The Soggy Bottom Boys, “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow”
  4. The Folksmen, “Old Joe’s Place”
  5. Josie and the Pussycats, “3 Small Words”
  6. Sex Bob-Omb, “We Are Sex Bob-Omb”
  7. The Lonely Island featuring Michael Bolton and Mr. Fish, “Incredible Thoughts”
  8. Spinal Tap, “Stonehenge”

Excellent, excellent list. I would definitely top my own Top Five list of “songs from fake movie bands” with “That Thing You Do.” (I’m referring, of course, to the peppy version that followed Guy Patterson’s beat — the one that turned the Oneders into “teen sensations” — not the insipid original submitted by that jerk Jimmy, who also thought up “Oneders.”)

I’ve never heard another fake movie band song that comes close to it. I would also include “Man of Constant Sorrow” (although I’m not convinced it fits the criteria, since it was a traditional folk song) and “Stonehenge,” which I would probably place at No. 2, after the Wonders. I don’t know at the moment what the other two would be without thinking about it awhile, and I didn’t want that process to hold up sharing this with y’all.

Enjoy. And react, if you are so moved…

Whoa! I’ve never missed by THAT much…

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… At least, not on anything that happened in the past century!

I’ve called y’all’s attention to the NYT’s Flashback quiz before, explaining why I like it so much. And it’s not just because I almost always get 100 percent on it.

I do occasionally miss one of the items, but I’ve never swung and missed by this much on something happening between, say, 1750 and now.

Here’s the one I totally missed on the most recent one:

Germany makes the last payment of its World War I reparations. The total bill adds up to 121 billion gold marks, plus interest.

So do you know the date? Without looking it up? (And Ken, you’re disqualified, on account of your connections to the Vaterland.)

Maybe you all do. All I know is, I was quite embarrassed. I console myself by reflecting that I got this one right, even though when I get one wrong, it’s usually a B.C. date:

Egyptian elites entomb their loved ones with “Books of the Dead,” convinced their spells will help them master a happy afterlife.

But by way of full disclosure, I should tell you that that whole millennium was wide open, so it would have been hard to miss…

DeMarco: Bill Cassidy Must Remedy Danger of RFK Jr.

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The Op-Ed Page

Sen. Bill Cassidy, La.-R

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy and I have never met, but we are contemporaries (I’m five years his junior). Our medical careers have seen tremendous advances regarding the public health. We have watched HIV go from a death sentence to a disease that can often be managed with a single tablet. We have seen smoking rates plummet by more than 50 percent. Lung cancer rates and cardiovascular disease rates have fallen precipitously. Cancer death rates have dropped by roughly a third.

At our graduation from medical school, we took a sacred oath pledging to care for our patients ethically, to offer cure when possible and comfort at the end of life. Cassidy’s medical career seems exemplary. As a physician in Louisiana, he helped establish a free clinic in Baton Rouge. When he embarked on a political career in 2006, he was, I suspect, motivated by the same benevolent impulses that led him to medicine.

Politics, unfortunately, is a fickle and contorting business. Cassidy, a Republican, has done back flips in his relationship with Donald Trump. After courageously voting to impeach him after January 6th, he has shrunk into the toady Trump demands. Still, I am confident he cares about his constituents and his country. He has accepted his humiliation by Trump as the price of remaining in his Senate seat where he can continue to do good work.

The dilemma of being a physician and a senator is that Cassidy has taken two weighty oaths, one to his country and one to his patients. We have watched him struggle with the pull of these oaths as he agonized about whether to confirm Kennedy. He attempted to assuage his conscience by extracting a series of promises during his confirmation process, both in private conversations and during the public hearings. But since his confirmation, Kennedy has flouted Cassidy again and again. In a private conversation Cassidy said Kennedy assured him that he would make no changes in the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (Kennedy denies making this promise). In June, Kennedy purged the committee of all 17 members, replacing them with seven members, several of whom are vaccine skeptics.

In the hearings Cassidy asked Kennedy to state unequivocally that vaccines do not cause autism. He refused to do so. Instead, in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Kennedy claimed without evidence that the Hepatitis B vaccine was linked to autism in a study that the CDC had suppressed.

Antoine Bechamp

None of this should come as a surprise. Kennedy’s scientific views are antediluvian. He does not believe in modern germ theory. Let me repeat that. The current occupant of America’s most powerful public health agency, responsible for protecting and promoting the health of more than 340 million people, doesn’t subscribe to one of the foundational principles of modern medicine. He made this no secret. Cassidy had to know this before confirming him. In Kennedy’s 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci, he rejects germ theory for a discredited theory from 19th century scientist Antoine Bechamp called terrain theory. Bechamp proposed that disease arises from the body’s internal environment (terrain) and not from external pathogens. This theory has been discredited so completely that it’s not taught in medical school. In my 36 years as a physician, I had never heard of it until I read about Kennedy.

Cassidy and I trained at a time when it was common for doctors to do our own gram stains. We collected a sample from a hospitalized patient, placed it on a slide and stained it. Then we looked through a microscope to identify the offending organism. If we saw one, we could then treat our patient with an antibiotic specific to that pathogen. Often, we would then see our patient recover, sometimes miraculously. No physician who has cured a patient that way would be tempted to waste time with Bechamps’ bogus idea.

Cassidy brought Kennedy back to the hearing room on Sept. 4 to express his displeasure. He and the Democrats on the committee criticized him harshly. Kennedy was castigated for his claim that mRNA vaccines were not effective (he cancelled nearly $500 million in research funding), despite estimates they saved more than two million American lives and prevented many millions more hospitalizations. He would not answer Sen. John Warners’ question about how many Americans died of COVID (The CDC estimates approximately 1.2 million).

Kennedy claimed he could not trust the CDC’s COVID mortality data. But I don’t have to rely on figures. I lost several friends and patients to COVID. The first death in 2020 was a woman in her 50s who was still teaching. I have close colleagues who worked in the ICU during the pandemic and saw many needless deaths in unvaccinated patients. Overall, it is estimated that more than 200,000 lives could have been saved if unvaccinated people would have taken the vaccine.

Both of Cassidy’s oaths propel him to remedy the danger he has inflicted on America. He knew Kennedy was unqualified. He allowed a naïve hope and empty promises to sway him. Imagine if Kamala Harris had won the election and had offered Kennedy up as the HHS nominee. The nomination would have been dead on arrival. Cassidy compromised his oath to his country and to his patients to protect his seat.

He has three choices: convince Trump to fire Kennedy, lead a successful impeachment of the secretary, or relinquish his medical license.

A version of this column appeared in the September 18th edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.

RFK Jr., who apparently found one of his Dad’s old ties in the attic.

Shohei Ohtani is every good thing they say he is, and more

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I would have posted this Friday night when it happened, but the item in the Post was only brought to my attention yesterday.

It says things I might have said if I were more confident in my ability to comment on baseball. But on Friday night, I was just saying “Wow,” and not going much beyond that.

Now, I find it being said by an actual professional sportswriter, and said in these words: “Shohei Ohtani just played the greatest game in baseball history.” Sure, Chelsea Janes isn’t Ring Lardner, and she’s young, but she’s The Washington Post‘s “national baseball writer,” and Ring Lardner’s dead. So I’m going with what she said, since the same idea was kinda roaming around in my gut when it happened.

Hers was a daring statement. Journalists don’t usually go out on a limb this far, because they know other journalists will snicker and give them the business. But I think that in this case, what that headline says may well be right on the mark. And that fact alone is pretty exciting.

Here, in part, is how she supports her claim:

LOS ANGELES — This is Beethoven at a piano. This is Shakespeare with a quill. This is Michael Jordan in the Finals. This is Tiger Woods in Sunday red.

This is too good to be true with no reason to doubt it. This is the beginning of every baseball conversation and the end of the debate: Shohei Ohtani is the best baseball player who has ever played the game, the most talented hitter and pitcher of an era in which data and nutrition have made an everyman’s sport a game for superhumans. And Friday night, when he helped his Los Angeles Dodgers win the pennant with a 5-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, was his Mona Lisa.

It’s hard to say when the possibility of exaggeration around Ohtani evaporated. Maybe it was when he struck out the side in the top of the first, then hit a leadoff home run in the bottom of the inning, though that is almost banal by his standards.

Maybe it was when his second homer sailed over the pavilion in right-center field at Dodger Stadium and landed 469 feet away, at which point Ohtani had more hits in four innings than he had allowed to the Brewers — and scored as many runs in those four innings as Milwaukee had in Games 1 and 2 combined.

Certainly, by the time he hit his third homer in the seventh inning and sent many of his teammates’ heads into their hands in disbelief, everyone in the ballpark knew they were watching the greatest game any player had ever played: Ohtani pitched six-plus scoreless innings and struck out 10. He also had the 13th three-homer game in postseason history — the first, it goes without saying, that included walking off the pitcher’s mound to a standing ovation….

Convinced? If you’re not, you probably missed the game…

Did you go to the Fair? How was it?

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Getting in touch with what fairs are all about. If you’re wondering, the shirt says “ENGLISH IS IMPORTANT, BUT HISTORY IS IMPORTANTER.” Which of course is very true.

I used to always go to the State Fair. Especially when we lived in Kansas, where farming was such a HUGE deal. You may know that Kansas grows the most winter wheat in the country, but did you know it has the third most cattle, after Texas and Nebraska? In Kansas, the Fair was such a huge deal that when I was there, the Wichita paper parked a trailer there in Hutchinson (53 miles away), full of reporters and photographers, for the duration.

When I came to The State in 1987, there was no need for trailers, since the Fairgrounds were right across the street — and in easy walking distance even after we moved to the new building (which is now crumbling in decay). It still got fairly decent coverage, but not as much as in Kansas, because farming isn’t as big a deal in South Carolina. People here are far more interested in what goes on in that stadium that loomed over the old newspaper building.

But I still loved going to the Fair. I don’t normally enjoy walking around through crowds of people, but the Fair has always been an exception. And for years, as my kids grew up, and then when our grandchildren were young, we went every year. But we haven’t gone that often in recent years, as grandchildren have moved into adolescence and beyond. They still go, just with their friends.

But this year, I DID go twice — once with my wife last Sunday night, and once with my youngest daughter on Friday. And a fine time was had by each of us. We didn’t stay long, but we touched the main bases, which for me are:

  • The art competitions in the Cantey Building.
  • The prizewinning row crops — watermelons, pumpkins, sweet potatoes and such.
  • The farm animals in their buildings on the eastern side of the fairgrounds.
  • Fiske Fries (twice)
  • Cotton Candy (also twice, getting a monstah bag the second time because I was wearing one of my Red Sox hats).

You’ll note that there were no rides on the list. Also, the activities (aside from fries and cotton candy) were free. Our admission was also free. The first time because we wore our Walk for Life shirts, and the second time because we did the lunch deal. Two hours is plenty enough time for me to do what I go there for.

How about you? Did you go? How did you spend your time? How was it?

There are ways to avoid the crowds. There was a slight drizzle — a mist, really — falling on the first Sunday night. This in no way diminished my enjoyment. Note that my Walk for Life shirt clashes a bit with my rain jacket, but hey — it got me in free.

An occasion worth celebrating, while still mourning

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You can look upon the release of the Israeli hostages — that is, those still living after two years of unspeakable horror — with joy.

You can also note this moment grimly as you think of the dead, and the long recovery so many of the living hostages have ahead of them, if then even do return to any bearable form of future life. Trauma on this level tends to lead to lead to scars that never heal completely.

But here’s something of lesser note that at least celebrating without reservation, to some extent:

This bipartisan release isn’t at all surprising to me. It’s what I would expect. While there is a lot of partisan silliness to be sure (mostly, it seems, generated by the so-called “Freedom Caucus”), relations between Democrats and Republicans aren’t nearly so grossly dysfunctional in Columbia as they are in Washington.

But since bitterly divisive conflicts are what makes most of the political news that is thrown at you day after day, I thought I would share with you this note from two decent people who disagree about many things — one a Republican and Christian, one a Democrat and Jewish — but gladly come together over such things as this.

And look at that — I wrote a short post for once…

‘All right, y’all! Here we go again…’

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I’m quoting Jack Ridley, as portrayed by Levon Helm, as he prepares to release Chuck Yeager way up in the thin air so he can pursue another speed record. It’s at the very beginning of the clip above.

That’s what came to mind when I saw that Ancestry was launching yet another rescrambling of my “ethnicity estimate.” Only this revamp was way beyond any we’d seen before, so much so that in recent days Ancestry’s been warning us about it — although in classic “You’re going to be so excited!” marketing lingo.

This was way more than the usual “you’re more Scottish than English/no, wait! You’re more English than Scottish” stuff. This was like entering a whole new dimension of perception. This was like Yeager having eaten too many peyote buttons out in the desert before going aloft.

For instance, there is no “England” any more. Alfred the Great might as well not have gone to all the trouble he had pulling it together. Now we have “Northern Wales and North West England,” “Southeastern England & Northwestern Europe” “North East England,” and even added altogether they don’t add up to “Central Scotland and Northern Ireland.”

Speaking of Alfred, it made more sense to speak in terms of “Mercia” and “Northumberland” and “Wessex.” At least you could find them on a map!

They even have a category called “Germans in Russia.” What’s that? A bunch who got left behind when Hitler’s boys skedaddled back from Leningrad? Some lost remnant of the Teutonic Knights? And when you try to find them on a map, they’re mostly out east of Ukraine (see the purple above).

About the clearest thing on the map is when they say I’m 3 percent Dutch. Yet they never said I was Dutch at all before I went and stayed in Amsterdam for a week or so last summer — like it rubs off on you or something.

Give me a break. Why don’t you take “Central Scotland” and make it a separate category from “Northern Ireland?” I mean, you’ve gotta cross the North Channel of the Irish Sea to get from one to the other! Yeah, I know, there’s this category we call “Scotch-Irish” that made such a trek centuries ago, but why don’t you just call it that, if that’s what you mean?

(This isn’t as weird as the “England and Northwestern Europe” category they’ve been pushing for years. You know what that means? It doesn’t mean “England plus France, Belgium, the Netherlands and maybe a big hunk of Germany.” It has meant “England and a tiny bit of France that’s more or less within walking distance of Calais” — although that has changed a bit from year to year. That used to describe it. Now it’s — well, it’s hard to describe.

But you know what? Instead of getting all upset with Ancestry, I’m going to assume the best of intentions. Y’all know how I’m always moaning about how sick I am of Identity Politics (most recently in my previous post)? Well, maybe this is Ancestry’s way to make sure I never fall into that trap myself. They don’t want me starting some kind of Scots-supremacy group. They don’t want me to start expressing my opinions by saying something like, “Here’s what I t’ink, speaking as a right-handed, heterosexual, near-sighted Irishman (to paraphrase Clint Eastwood in the middle of this clip).”

And I guess I should appreciate them looking out for me that way…

 

A finished column I never ran, 30 years ago

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Here’s where I was in the project last November. I had already eliminated 11 boxes.

I found what you will see below last night, when I resumed the ongoing, off-and-on, project of cleaning out our two-car garage enough that I can at least park one vehicle in out of the weather.

The problem isn’t the household items one or another of our kids have stored there, or the tools accumulated over the years. The toughest category of clutter is the result of my own packrat tendencies — mostly, the boxes of paper and other items that I packed up and brought home with me when I left The State 16 years ago.

It was a huge mountain to begin with, taking me two full weeks of hauling home in the bed of my truck every night of those last two weeks. (I had a big office, but that was just the beginning. The editorial department had a roomful of filing cabinets almost entirely devoted to my files, and I had a box here and there in other locations. There wasn’t time to sort through it all; I just brought it home.) This is my third time sifting through it all. Each of the first two times, I reduced the pile somewhat. This time, I’ve been throwing away most of what I find. But occasionally, I open a box that’s harder to give up, and I have to make my way through it sheet by sheet, reading some of the letters, notes and such all the way to the end. Those I tend to keep.

I was particularly interested to find this one. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but couldn’t find it to post. I wrote a lot of columns in long draft form over the years that I ended up trashing. Sometimes I found the premise just didn’t work once I had developed it. But usually it was simply that a better idea emerged at the last minute, and I wrote and ran that instead.

But this is the only one I can remember actually completing and having ready to go, and then spiking even though I didn’t write another one to replace it with. I think maybe it was already on the page and I yanked it off and replaced it with a syndicated piece. But I’m not sure, now that 30 years have passed.

I wouldn’t have done that a year or two later. But this was very early in my time on the editorial board. I wasn’t the editor yet, or even an associate editor. This was less than two years after I left news for opinion writing, and I was just an editorial writer. And at that early stage, I couldn’t see publishing an opinion piece that didn’t offer a solution. All I was doing here was describing the problem, and that seemed incomplete. I though it was my duty to prescribe a cure.

I should have run it. It was a decent piece. It had its flaws that jump out at me now, such as that jarring, sudden switch from past to present tense in the fourth graf. But it was worth running, and I wish I had — especially since it identified a problem that at that time was just starting to tear the country apart. It hadn’t fully metasticized yet. If I had known then how bad things would get — it’s one of the things that led both to Trumpism and to the Democratic Party being completely unable to counter it — I would have run it and perhaps even campaigned (unsuccessfully, of course, due to the fundamental division between news and editorial) to have it placed on the front page.

At that time, we were already becoming a country that couldn’t pull together to solve problems. Oh, a few things came along later that harked back to the “we’re all in this together” spirit of the Second World War or LBJ’s extraordinary string of domestic policy victories in the middle ’60s — such as Teddy Kennedy initially supporting George W. Bush’s effort to add prescription coverage to Medicare, or the bipartisan successes Joe Biden had in Congress early in his all-too-brief time in the White House.

But mostly, we have hardened the divisions between “my group vs. your group” that would do our country in. Young people have never known a time when we were regularly able to see each other as fellow Americans and pull together in common cause. For older people, the memories are dimming. Sometimes the problem is simply the rapidly growing party division that started getting bad in the ’80s, and just got worse and worse each decade. Sometimes it’s the inexplicable cult of Trump. Other times, it’s about what this column was about — the growing power of identity, which has fed both of those other two problems.

Look at it either way — that my black colleagues in that gym were blinded by identity, or I was, as the white guy who couldn’t wrap my head around how they could possibly identify with that rich celebrity who had so little in common with them or me. Either way, I found the cognitive divide between my co-workers and me shocking. I thought it was a problem we needed to talk about. I should have run the column.

To place this unpublished column in time: The Simpson verdict was announced on October 3, 1995 — my 42nd birthday. When I left that gym, I showered, headed up to the third floor and wrote the column quickly enough for it to run in the next day’s paper. But it didn’t.

Here it is, as it came off the dot matrix printer, like so many other things I saved from those times: