You say you want a revolution?

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Well, today is the day (as you know I love to tell people over and over) that was supposed to be forever cherished as our national Day of Independence. That’s what John Adams expected, and predicted at the time, because that was the day that the Second Continental Congress actually voted to separate these 13 states from the British Empire.

What happened two days later was everybody lined up and signed a piece of paper saying so. And sure, you can call that Independence Day, too, for that very reason. No argument about that. But Adams has always been my favorite Founder, so this date causes me to want to stress his achievement, which was more significant than what Thomas Jefferson did. And yet everyone associates this big move with ol’ Tom. It’s almost like his personal holiday. But come on, people. Jefferson never opened his mouth during those weeks that Adams harangued the Congress so furiously to get them to step off and make the decision. Jefferson wrote the hard-copy version because Adams persuaded him to, because he admired the Virginian’s ability to turn a phrase (and also thought it would help that Jefferson was way more popular in the Congress than he was, since Tom didn’t make such an effort to tick everybody off), and he did it not alone, but as a member of a committee including Adams, Ben Franklin and a couple of other guys.

And I’m afraid that far too many of my favorites Americans, when they think about something beyond hot dogs and fireworks at all, think of the Declaration as somethign that genius Thomas Jefferson dreamed up on his own in his hotel room in Philadelphia, and then unveiled to the whole world’s enduring admiration and gratitude. Or something like that. Which isn’t right, and doesn’t give credit where due. Y’all know that no one respects a well-turned phrase more than I, but Independence was the result of more strenuous efforts than applying quill to paper.

I could go on, but now I’m going to switch to the subject of popular music….

I’ve been sort of halfway following a newsletter feature in The New York Times called The Amplifier. Well, “follow” is a bit strong. Basically, I sometimes look at the song lists they regularly email me, and have frequently been impressed by the selections I find. These folks are widely knowledgable, and you can’t pigeonhole them. They’re neither desperately trying to convince us that pop music in the 21st century is seriously wonderful, nor stuck in 1973 and telling us that all music has been crap since Lester Bangs died, if not earlier. They have a much broader perspective.

Anyway, this week they sent out this list:

10 songs of rebellion and defiance for the Fourth

… so I thought I’d share that with you for your enjoyment, or serious appreciation, or whatever.

I gave you the link for that list above, and I hope it works for you. If not, these are the songs:

  1. Tracy Chapman: ‘Talkin’ Bout a Revolution’
  2. The Isley Brothers: ‘Fight the Power, Pts. 1 and 2’
  3. Public Enemy: ‘Fight the Power’
  4. Michael Franti & Spearhead: ‘Yell Fire!’
  5. Bob Marley & the Wailers: ‘Get Up, Stand Up’
  6. Mavis Staples: ‘Eyes on the Prize’
  7. Patti Smith: ‘People Have the Power’
  8. Björk: ‘Declare Independence’
  9. Rage Against the Machine: ‘Know Your Enemy’
  10. Antibalas: ‘Uprising’

I looked at the list eagerly, having enjoyed past ones, but then I realized something… As much as a lot of people may dig those songs, they’re not really in my wheelhouse, to my knowledge. I haven’t even heard a bunch of them, but that’s beside my point.

My point is that as an Independence Day list, well, it really doesn’t work. But don’t blame the NYT folks. As much as I love American pop music, and have since “Hound Dog,” it’s just not the medium for addressing the American Revolution. Pimply-faced outcries against the Man are certainly within the reach of pop music, but that’s not what this country’s revolution was.

If you even want to call it a “revolution,” which I tend to doubt. You want a revolution? You want something that fits the tone of these kinds of songs? Well, the French had one of those, perhaps the ultimate one. And now that they’re on their Fifth Republic, I’m still not sure think they ever got over the trauma of it. The Russians, in their way, had one, too, and Vladimir Putin still isn’t coping with it in a well-adjusted manner.

Not that I’m running down our own, or anything — certainly not in this first year of our 250th commemoration. No, the American Revolution was one of the most significant and positive developments in the political history of the human race, which is why I am so grief-stricken now as I watch what it produced, all those things I love, being so rudely, stupidly and cruelly dismantled.

What do I call it? Well, one way to describe it is as a parting of the ways between a unique new country that had come into being and the country that had fostered it. This was not about oppressed people (paying taxes on tea? call that oppression?) rising up to destroy the established order, murder the royal family, obliterate religion, and that other sort of carrying-on we’ve seen elsewhere.

And it certainly wasn’t some class uprising by the sans cullotes against the rich and powerful. If you look carefully, the same people, in terms of social class or property or education levels, were in charge after independence as before. People of all classes took part, on both sides. But the guys who initiated and led this were people who knew how to run a city or colony or country (or a business, for that matter), and had been doing it in the past. Which, all the noble (and they are noble) words about freedom aside, is one of the very biggest reasons why our republic worked so well until very recently.

No. Our “revolution” was about serious people who had followed their fathers and grandfathers in building a new kind of country in what was to them (although not to, say, the Hurons) a New World. And they were pretty satisfied with what they’d built, and wanted it to continue. They saw themselves as Englishmen, but they were getting the strong impression that the British Crown didn’t really get them any more, and didn’t fully appreciate what they had become, and how they deserved to run it themselves without increasingly pesky interference from London.

Well, KIng George wasn’t going to go for that — certainly not after having expended all that treasure to protect the colonies from the French a few years earlier, as any Tory could have explained to you at the time. So yeah, there had to be a rupture, a ripping-away of the ties that bound. And eventually, starting a year before the Declaration (which continues to make me very uncomfortable, as I’ll explain again if you need me to), there was a very serious war. A particularly nasty war if you were down here in South Carolina (and elsewhere) — not a simple ones-and-zeroes matter of Patriots vs., Redcoats, but bloody, fratricidal violence between people who lived side-by-side. And (with the help of the French, of course), that war had an astounding outcome, with the world’s great superpower losing to a bunch of farmers, lawyers, shopkeepers and the like with a minimal amount of military expertise.

And the world was never the same again, and in so many ways, I thank God for that.

But “revolution?” In the French sense? In the sense of someone with such a pimply moniker as Rage Against the Machine? No. I don’t think so. It was something far bigger, far more important to human history.

But as I’ve probably also said before many times, I do have a favorite rock song about revolution. When the 45 came out, it seemed that the juke box in the cafeteria of Robinson High School in Tampa was broken. Whenever I was in there, whenever I walked by, I would hear the sweet sound of “Hey, Jude.” Which was wonderful because it’s truly one of the greats, and I love it.

However, I was frustrated because I didn’t think I was hearing the flip side nearly enough, certainly not as much as the tune deserved. So after the bus took me back home to MacDill Air Force Base after school, I made a habit for awhile of walking over over to “the Wherry.” That was a small building a couple of blocks from our apartment that contained two things — a sort of convenience store run by the Base Exchange, and a tiny snack bar where airmen, dependents and such could stop in to order a burger or hot dog or whatever.

And this snack bar had a juke box, which was very well stocked (I can’t remeber all the tunes, but I remember being impressed perusing the choices). At that time of the day the place was pretty empty, but I’d plug in my change and sit and listen to that song, which rang out with all the raw energy of its title. And then do it again. And again.

Mind you, it wouldn’t be all that long before I outgrew thinking John Lennon was a particularly wise political analyst (“Imagine” was a beautiful song, but the lyrics were vapid, which I realize I say in contradiction to wide and fervent popular opinion), but I always thought that he — in his instinctive cynicism — pretty much had the more fiery, self-righteous sort of revolutionary pegged. And he wasn’t buying. I mean people like John Adams’ cousin Samuel, or Robespierre, or certain adolescents who knew little beyond three guitar chords, but felt passionately. In this song, his was the more reflective attitude that there was a lot to consider beyond the romantic notion that revolution, per se, is necessarily a good idea, much less the perfect solution that its enthusiasts so fervently imagine:

You say you want a revolution, well, you know
We all wanna change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution, well, you know
We all wanna change the world…

But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out?

You say you got a real solution, well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution, well, you know
We’re all doin’ what we can…

But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is, brother, you have to wait…

But if you go carryin’ pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow…

Hey, let’s put in a quarter and listen to it AGAIN…

Hot enough for you?

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Yeah, I know this is a couple of days late, but when the heat was at its peak, I didn’t feel like writing about it. It had to get a little cooler first.

A week or two back I was at the beach, and since the Surfside Beach library is constantly getting rid of books, bless them, I picked up some they were selling for about three for a dollar, and one of them was The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth. I’d never read it before. For the uninitiated, it’s fiction, but it’s based on (or perhaps I should say it opens with) a real-life attempt to kill Charles De Gaulle. Not one of those lone-gunman things, but a whole team of conspirators who hated him because he had given up control of Algeria. Really, they felt that strongly about it.

Anyway, I just started reading it last night, and was struck by a seemingly mild description of the weather on page 4, reproduced above. Note the key sentence: “Even at 7 in the evening of the hottest day of the year the temperature was still twenty-five degrees centigrade.”

I’ll wait a moment while you look up how “hot” that is in real temperature. When I did that, I learned that 25 degress C is 77 degrees F. I just now glanced at my phone and see that at 8:40 p.m., it’s 85 degrees. And to my memory, this is the nicest day we’ve had this week. I’ve been out working in the yard, and am sitting here typing hoping to cool off a bit before showering. But Parisians were abandoning the city because on Aug. 22, 1962, it was 77 degrees and they couldn’t bear it. “Hottest day of the year.”

Maybe that was one of the fictional parts of the book. I hope so. Otherwise, we must believe one of two things: Human expectations have changed more dramatically than I had thought, because of global warming. Or, we must assume that when a character on the Simpsons called the French “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” he was actually referring to their wimpiness regarding weather.

Alas, it’s likely the former. When we visited Boston in July 2022, it was delightfully cool in the mornings and evenings and nicely warm at midday, and it was even cooler in Amsterdam last summer. So you can still have nice weather, from a South Carolinian’s perspective, if you go way up north.

But a couple of days ago, it was 102 in Beantown. That same day, it was 100 in Philadelphia. (And last night when I started reading that book, my phone told me it was 78 in Paris in the wee hours of the morning. In June. So, way warmer than 1962, although not impressive to us.)

It wasn’t that hot here — 99 yesterday, I believe, and 98 the day before — but it was miserable enough. Inexplicably. My phone weather apps kept saying the “air quality” was fine, but for me, that was a lie. The Post and Courier was more honest than that a couple of days ago.., Of course, being an old newspaperman I may be prejudiced but for me, it’s been like trying to breathe green pea soup for about a week. Last week, I started having the first asthma trouble I’d had in a very long time. I started taking prednisone this week. I hate the side effects, but it’s got me breathing again. Still, I’ve been staying indoors, until today.

Today was nice. Really nice. I haven’t been sleeping much, thanks to the steroid, but when I got up this morning a little after 6, I didn’t mind. I started picking up branches that had fallen all over the yard, and when I found what I thought was a gumball tree that had come crashing down out back (actually, it was just a tree-sized branch of a huge one in my neighbor’s yard), I attacked it with relish. A brush saw, a pole saw, two pairs of loppers and a chainsaw, which I wore out. Had to order a new chain. Filled up the bed of my truck, and there’s enough left to fill it again after I haul it to the recycling center this weekend.

While I was working in the morning, it was about 73, I think. (My phone, to my great disappointment, never tells me was the weather was, it just makes predictions about the future, and doesn’t own up when they turn out to be wrong. Kind of like a lot of political writers.)

I hope you had a good day, too….

Edward Fox was the Jackal in the 1973 movie, which was odd. He’s usually a good guy, right?

 

 

 

 

The good news: I can see baseball again, LOTS of it!

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Baseball wasn’t just always there for me, it was always there for my family. That’s my grandfather squatting to the right in this picture. He had been the captain of the team at Washington and Lee, and after college he was always playing on multiple teams in the Maryland suburbs of Washington. He only worked for the Post Office so he could play on this team. You’ll notice that others on the team played for other teams as well — they wore the wrong uniforms on picture day, without the Post Office ‘P.O.’

When I was a kid, baseball was always there.

It didn’t matter my age or where I was. As a preschooler, I always had one of those skinny little wooden bats that were later outlawed by the worrywarts. I think it came with those old solid rubber balls that didn’t bounce much, but since my Dad was a tennis champion, there were always cans full of balls around the house that really traveled when you hit them. I loved that, although Ring Lardner, the enemy of the “lively ball,” would likely have harrumphed.

When we lived in Ecuador from the time I was 9 until I was 11 and a half, I missed out on a lot of critical time for developing basketball and American football skills (which I regretted when I started 7th grade back in this country, in New Orleans), but I didn’t lose ground on baseball. We played it — or at least softball, at recess — whenever were weren’t playing fútbol (which is what we used the school’s concrete basketball court for).

My one regret was that I didn’t get to play Little League (on account of my family always traveling during baseball season) until I was 15, my last year of eligibility for Senior Little League (in Tampa). And by that time, I just hadn’t had the practice trying to hit a ball that someone was deliberately trying to throw past me. The point of “pitching” in sandlot play had always been to let somebody hit the ball, and put it in play. I did manage on one occasion that year to break up a no-hitter in the fifth inning, with a solid base hit to the opposite field. I couldn’t have hit it to left or center, because the red-headed southpaw I was up against had the sort of fastball that nightmares are made of. But I got my single, and they took that pitcher out of the game. It was my one, brief moment of baseball glory.

After that, I stuck to slow-pitch softball — in college intramurals, with the Knights of Columbus team in Jackson, Tenn., and with the Cosmic Ha-Has, a self-deprecating name for the loosely organized team of journos from The State (mostly), sponsored by the now-defunct Mousetrap restaurant and bar. That was more my speed, in the literal sense.

Now, I’m at an age when I’m finally ready to enjoy my sport vicariously. I’m ready to watch the games on TV, the way my elders did when I was a kid. Back then, even though we seldom lived in a place with the three basic channels (and sometimes only one, and that barely visible), baseball was always on the tube. And it was free. But at that age, I considered it boring to watch other people play a game — I wanted to go out and play it myself. Oh, I watched it sometimes, but I wasted a lot of time not watching it, back when it was so easy to find. My parent, grandparents, uncles and such got full enjoyment from it, but I was probably out in the heat whacking at a tennis ball — or inside reading a book. I was a mixed-up kid, right?

And then I grew older, and started wanting to watch it all the time, and it was gone. Especially if you’re like me and long ago cut the cord to cable. (Not being a consumer of TV ‘news,” I had little use for live broadcasting, other than baseball, which was too seldom on offer). Suddenly, even if you still consider it the national pasttime (the pasttime of the country that I love, anyway) you could find no evidence of it by turning on the tube.

You’ve heard me complain about this multiple times on the blog, but not lately. Because now, I have access to more baseball that my elders ever dreamed of, and on a 4k color flat screen rather than a snowy black-and-white that only worked if someone (often me) stood outside turning the antenna atop the house back and forth.

It started late last August, when I saw a promo from MLB.TV offering to let me watch the rest of the season — meaning 10 or twelve Big League games a day, for $29. It seemed worth it, and it was, even though “season” didn’t include the playoffs and World Series — which was OK, because those actually get shown on other platforms that were free to me.

A few months later, I thought a couple of times whether I ought to go in and quit that subscription to keep from being charged for the following season, which I figured would be a LOT more than $29. But I sorta kinda forgot to do it, accidentally on purpose, and next thing I knew, I was informed that $149.99 had already been taken from my account by MLB. Which was bad news. But they also told me I now had access to the whole MLB 2025 season, which was great news. I then confessed to my wife, who is responsible for handling money in this house (on account of being married to a doofus who does things like that), about my failure to prevent it from happening. But as I hoped, she didn’t make me go demand the money back, probably because she knows how much I’ve missed baseball.

I also pointed out that $150 was a lot less than it cost us to see one game at Fenway in 2022. Two seats in the right-field bleachers for about $200. That was just to get in; I paid extra for the peanuts and Crackerjack, and the Polish sausage I had for dinner. But we got to watch the Sox beat the Yankees that night, and beat them soundly! And we had either Jackie Bradley Jr. or Aaron Judge playing right field right in front of us! So it was worth it. But not something we could do every day, or perhaps ever again. Whereas with the MLB deal, I see baseball every day. So, you know, we’re saving money. You see why I don’t handle the accounts?

Anyway, it was and is really great news.

It’s been wonderful. It really has. I’ve loved it, and there’s far more there than I can ever hope to watch. I feel blessed by that. So I just watch a few teams, as I can — the Red Sox, the Phillies, the Dodgers and the Yankees, mostly. What I don’t watch is the Braves, which a few years ago I would have said was my favorite. I don’t say that now because I’m so out of touch with them that I’m not sure that I can name or picture any current players.

Why, you wonder, have I turned away from the Braves? I haven’t. They’ve turned away from me. Or rather, the MLB has separated us. All of their games are blacked out. I thought that at first they were doing that because I live so close to the ballpark. It’s only an 80-hour walk from my house, after all, according to Google Maps. But it’s more complicated than that. MLB also blacks out other games occasionally, ones that I might really, really want to watch — like the Sox playing the Yankees.

But I’m still having a great time. Alas, this is the first of a pair of posts on the subject of baseball, and the other will be less cheery, with the headline beginning “The bad news…”

That’s partly because of a piece I read in the NYT  by Joon Lee, headlined “$4,785. That’s How Much It Costs to Be a Sports Fan Now.” It’s not just about the money, or the blackouts. It’s also about how the new business model of professional sports has destroyed the sense of community across the country. In other words, Mr. Lee takes a communitarian approach, as I would. More on that in a day or so…

A picture from our expensive bleacher seats in right field at Fenway. We had a great time.

The great challenge: telling them who you are

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I haven’t given up on electoral politics, even though we’ve seen results now that could tempt even a passionate small-R republican to ask King Charles III to come on over, and resume reigning where George III left off. Because our system of choosing leaders has been doing a shocking job of showing off its failings lately. (And the word “shocking” is an understatement here. I guess I’m just trying to be cool about it.)

I haven’t given up because there are still people out there worth electing, if only we could elect enough of them. And if only enough of them would run, because these days we’re talking about only a very tiny percentage of those who make themselves available. The good people are probably down in the single digits, because so few good candidates are willing to subject themselves to the process.

But as I said, we have some, and I’m grateful for each one. You’ll recall how pleased I was when Russell Ott became my state senator back in November. I had done what I could to help make it happen — doing such pitifully small things as going around and talking neighbors into putting up yard signs for him, and introducing him to friends and family a couple of times. Maybe I got him one vote, or even two — for which, if it’s so, I’m proud. But obviously, a lot of people were doing small things like what I did. And Russell was doing plenty all by himself.

Anyway, I’m very pleased at the result. So even now, I occasionally make a tiny gesture toward helping the occasional good candidate — even when I can’t vote for that person. So it was that some weeks back, I sent a miniscule cash contribution to Abigail Spanberger, the former congresswoman who is running for governor in Virginia.

I’ve never met her, but I’ve liked what I’ve read about her. My friend E.J. Dionne up in Washington has said a lot of good things about her, and sometime back he told me I would like her. I’m pretty sure he’s right.

Anyway, I bring her up today because I got an email from her campaign unveiling the first video ad of her campaign. You can watch it above. There’s not much to it, but what little there is reinforces my existing positive impression. My favorite factoid? When she boasts of having been named the most bipartisan member of Congress from Virginia. The fact that she wants people to know that is what’s important. What makes her appealing to me is that she aspires to such recognition. Almost no one else running campaigns these days would care about that. Too many ads tend to boast about how much the candidate hates the “other side.”

(My second favorite thing is that throughout the ad, she’s doing that “walking and talking” thing that we all know from “The West Wing.” But you know, I’m kinda West Wing crazy.)

But whether I liked it or not is beside the point. She didn’t spend all that money on an ad for me. She did it to try to explain, as well as anyone could in 30 seconds, who she was to people who have never heard of her — despite her having served three terms in Congress from the state.

She has to do that because of what has been, historically, the greatest flaw in democracy. Sure, there are plenty of people in Virginia — especially northern Virginia, where she’s from — who know far, far more about her than I do, and will vote for her as a result. By “plenty,” we’re talking a number somewhere in the thousands. But that’s not nearly enough. More than three million people voted in the last Virginian gubernatorial election.

You’ll recall, I hope, that when someone reportedly told Adlai Stevenson that “Every thinking person in America will be voting for you,” he replied, “I’m afraid that won’t do — I need a majority.” Well, he didn’t get that, losing twice to Dwight Eisenhower for president in the ’50s. Hey, I probably would have voted for Ike, too, given the chance. But I do appreciate a smart, perhaps too-honest candidate like Stevenson.

In his day, and even more in our own, the necessary majority contains a staggering number of people who don’t know who you are, don’t know much (if anything) about the powers and responsibilities of the office you’re seeking, don’t know the relevant issues, and have no overall understanding of how our political system works. I can’t cite you a percentage or anything, but there’s enough such people that you can’t win your majority without a large number of them.

You can only do so much toward turning those folks into “informed voters.” The first and most essential step is simply to expose them to your name, because a shocking number of them will vote on democracy’s most embarrassing basis — name recognition. And then — because your opponent will be grabbing for name recognition too — you’ve also got something to give them some kind of idea who the person behind that name is.

It was our biggest challenge when I was on James Smith’s campaign in 2018. I don’t have those polls we did in front of me, but I seem to remember learning from them that among voters who knew who James was, he was winning. But that number was too small, so we knew that our only chance at victory was to greatly increase it. But we could never afford to do that. We especially couldn’t do it after Henry had a week or so of giving lengthy hurricane briefings every day on TV, which didn’t cost him a dime. I’m not criticizing Henry for that, not a bit. He was doing his job, and our position on it was the say people should listen to the governor. But the political fact is that Jeff Bezos would probably have to scrape to pay for that much exposure, and every bit of it had the subtext, “I’m Henry McMaster, I’m the governor, and I’m keeping you safe.” Them’s the breaks, huh? We could never catch up with that.

Hey, I like Henry. But I knew James was the better candidate. Indications were that most people who knew both men agreed with me. But in our system, the people who actually know enough to be informed voters are too seldom enough for victory.

Just as was the case with Adlai Stevenson. But he lost to a great American. Poor Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump. So did Hillary Clinton.

So why are things so much worse today than in Stevenson’s day? After all, today we’re all drinking “information” from a fire hose, in a volume unimaginable in the 1950s. Trouble is, most of it is junk that comes at us because an algorithm has determined that this is what we want to hear, as opposed to what we need to know to be good citizens. And even the tiny remnants of legacy professional media — the kind people relied upon a generation ago — is affected by that poisonous distortion, in a couple of big ways (another long blog post, alas).

Anyway, to get back to Abigail Spanberger… I’m encouraged that as a congresswoman who served six years in Virginia’s 7th District, she’s got more of a head start than James ever had as a state lawmaker of 24 years. But introducing herself is still something she must do, successfully, to win.

So while I know I won’t ever be able to do enough to help her achieve that goal, I do like to chip in. If I can come up with a few (very few) more bucks, I’ll contribute again. I like to do my infinitessimal bit, when I can…

There was Henry on the telly ever day, telling us how to survive the hurricane…

 

The U.S. strikes upon Iran targets

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I haven’t posted much lately, but of course I feel compelled to say something about this.

But what should I say? I don’t feel qualified to express an opinion about it — yet. I might have in the past, but I’m hobbled by two things:

  1. Donald Trump is president of the United States. He and Pete Hegseth are the main sources available right now as to what just happened, and I can’t trust a word either one says about it. When I say “can’t trust,” I’m not so much talking about lying — although we all know Trump does that almost each time he takes a breath. The thing is, he and Hegseth could be tellling the absolute and complete truth. And from everything I’ve seen, neither one of them understands what’s going on — especially not Trump (I don’t know Hegseth nearly as well).
  2. Second, the way news is reported these days, it’s difficult to get a coherent picture of what has happened from major newspapers. A few years ago, those papers spent the hours before their daily deadline distilling all that was known into a single, coherent story arranged with all the key information in the first paragraph (the lede). You read the first few grafs of a story back then, and you had a pretty decent idea of what had happened. Now, whenever something big happens, you get these moment-to-moment update strings, such as this one and this one. You have to read every update from the last to the first (sometimes stretching over 24 hours) to get anything like a handle on the story, and even then it’s difficult. When something of moderate importance happens, you still get the one, coherent story — with new ledes added as necessary. With the big stories, such as this, newspapers are little help, because you get the “updates” string instead. They no longer focus on helping readers understand; they’re too busy making sure they throw out the latest factoid.

So… that means I turn to the journalists who still write in the old style — and that means opinion writers. Of course, since I know who they are, I look for the ones I know are trustworthy — again, not so much in terms of not being liars (although, of course, that’s a prerequisite), but because they have consistently displayed deep understanding of such matters in the past.

Unfortunately, not many have weighed in yet. For the moment, I recommend checking out Nicholas Kristof (“The Three Unknowns After the U.S. Strike on Iran“) and Max Boot (“Iran badly miscalculated. Now it’s paying the price.“). And while he’s not one of my trustee regular voices, you might want to read this piece (“Why Israel Had to Act“) by Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence. It was written before the U.S. joined in, but I still learned some things from it that help me understand Max Boot’s points.

That’s of course assuming you can read them. If you can’t and you want to, I can try to give you “gift” links. (I’ve tried in the past to share those with you, but I haven’t gotten enough feedback on them to be sure whether they even work when sent to more than one person.)

So I’m waiting to read a lot more, from smart people who’ve been following all this far, far more closely than I have.

But I should say something, right? But all I have now is random, chaotic, piecemeal reactions — which is probably what you’ve seen elsewhere at this point, whether those offering such reactions tell you that or not (especially if you’re someone who forms your impressions of such events by watching television, God help us).

So here you go:

  • I’m very, very worried. Smart leaders (pretty much everyone who’s been in relevant office before Trump was elected) have avoided war with Iran for very good reasons. One of the biggest is something Kristof mentions: By and large, the Iranian public is quite pro-U.S. What they need is new leaders, if they can manage to get them. And the fastest way to turn them against us is military action. That change in Iran public opinion would be disastrous.
  • That said, it is indeed essential to make sure that Iran, whose current leaders hate the U.S. almost as much as they do Israel, does not obtain nuclear weapons. If you look at that and only that, these U.S. strikes are good news — if they were effective, by which I mean they set Iranian nuclear efforts back many years without killing civilians. That’s a big “if.”
  • The one thing that makes me tentatively optimistic (and only slightly) on that last point is that Iran can’t hide facilities essential to its own Manhattan Project in tunnels under civilian dwellings, hospitals and schools — they way we know its ally Hamas does. At least, I don’t think so. But I don’t know that.
  • As much as I may search for reasons not to be terrified at this point, I know that even if all the steps taken up to this point by Trump and Netanyahu (and there’s a fragile liferaft to cling to), have been wise and correct, I know that Trump, at least, is capable of turning in another direction in a split-second, prompted by something as idiotic as a social media post he doesn’t like.
  • That’s the situation that a majority of U.S. voters put us in on Nov. 5, 2024. And the only recommendation I have for dealing with that is to pray. If you don’t know how to do that, it’s past time to learn…

 

 

 

A misnamed battle, 250 years ago today

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A few days back, I missed mentioning D-Day the way I usually do, so I’ll try to make up for it by saying something about the famously misnamed Battle of Bunker Hill that occurred on June 18, 1775.

Actually, I’ll share several somethings about it, since it’s been on my mind lately…

  • First, the easy one… this fight mostly occurred on nearby Breed’s Hill, not Bunker — although the Patriots did end up retreating over Bunker at the end of the battle.
  • Second, I’ve mentioned that I’ve been helping the Relic Room with its frequent Noon Debrief free lectures, at the museum itself, and at Richland and Lexington County libraries. We’ve had some good military history programs, and lately we’ve been rewarded by growing crowds of attendees. Anyway, the latest one, just this past Friday, was about “Bunker Hill,” and it was delivered at Richland Library by our own inimitable Joe Long, curator of education at the museum. I had helped set it up, but missed this particular program. So I’m going to go back and watch it, which you can do at your convenience at this address. I hope you enjoy, and decide to come to a future program. Here’s some info about our next one, on July 11. You can also read about other recent programs at this address.
  • This being the first year of the big Sestercentennial, you’ve probably already heard about South Carolina being the place where the most Revolutionary battles occurred. Of course, the Boston area had a little to do with it, with this battle being firm evidence of the fact. Today, the Boston Globe had a story touching on that, headlined “The Revolutionary War was more brutal than you probably learned in school.” This battle was a prominent example of them of that — for the Patriots, who were forced to give up their position on Breed’s Hill, but especially for the British, who “won” a particularly costly engagement. They suffered 1,054 casualties to the rebels’ 450, with a total of 226 killed compared to 115 American lives lost.
  • Those numbers convinced Britain, the world’s greatest power, that this was going to be a real war, and would take a lot more to win than anyone had imagined. They were up against a determined enemy that wasn’t just trying to register a protest. The colonists famously waited (although scholars doubted anyone actually said it) until they saw the whites of the British regulars’ eyes, and shot to kill. This was more than a year before the Declaration of Independence.
  • It also helped solidify resolve among American onlookers. The Washington Post ran a piece today by the historian Joseph Ellis, who has begun a series in the paper based on the correspondence between Abigail and John Adams. John was off doing his thing with the Continental Congress in Philadelpia (a year later he would convince his colleagues that independence was necessary). Abigail was home in Braintree (now Quincy), a few miles south of the battle in Charlestown, but she and eldest son John Quincy watched it from a height near their home, a good four-hour walk south of the fighting. They couldn’t see much from there, and they didn’t know until later that their family doctor Joseph Warren had been killed, shot between the eyes as the third wave of redcoats attacked, and the Americans had run out of ammunition. Abigail wrote to John that ““Our dear Friend Dr. Warren is no more… but fell gloriously fighting for his Country.” The thing her husband was debating in Philadelphia was intensely personal back home.
  • I’ve been both to Quincy and Breed’s hill, where I saw the Bunker Hill monument. Seeing that obelisk from the banks of the Charles River, I had thought “not much of a hill…” I was wrong. On our last day in Boston, with my wife resting back at the B&B with back pain, I went to see the USS Constitution for a second time. When I had walked her decks long enough (not that I won’t go back if I get the chance), I looked up the hill and decided to climb it. I assure you there was plenty of hill for a July day, even in that mild Massachusetts summer.

After I had respectfully considered the battle site and descended back toward the Charles, I still had my mixed feelings about what happened up there. Y’all know I’m a pretty patriotic guy, and deeply love this country that is fading now before our eyes. Some of my post-Vietnam friends out there even see me as jingoistic, a war-monger. But I remain torn about those early events in Massachusetts, such as the “Boston Massacre,” the Tea Party, and those shots fired at Lexington and Concord some weeks before this battle. Well, more than torn. I’m unable to justify taking up arms against the duly consituted authority and shooting and killing draftees from Liverpool and such places because of a few unpopular taxes. King George had his faults like all of us, but he was no Hitler, or even a Saddam Hussein.

Being a Rule of Law guy, I feel differently about the war that continued after the Declaration. A definite course of separation had been decided upon after due process and prolonged deliberation. And if I’d been in Congress, I think I’d have been persuaded by Abigail’s husband. After all, he was a rule-of-law guy himself, who had even defended the soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre. He was nothing like his cousin Samuel. In fact, I don’t think anyone but John Adams could have convinced me.

And I can understand why Abigail felt as she did. After all, their friend the doctor would still have been alive if the Brits hadn’t insisted on taking that hill.

I admire the doctor’s courage. I’m just not sure I’d have been able to justify, at that particular point in time, before the Declaration. I really, really wish I felt differently, though.

It’s ironic, isn’t it? I have all these arguments with people who think our involvement in Vietnam, and later Iraq, are The Worst Things That Ever Happened and totally unjustified. I disagree almost completely with them, yet here I am, having all these doubts about the steps that led to the country I love so much….

In the summer of 2022, I visited the Bunker Hill monument, hiking up from the Navy Yard.

‘A lot of people are saying…’

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This morning’s Gospel reading was the following, from the Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 5:43-48

Jesus said to his disciples:
“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,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

After reading that, I watched the video reflection on the U.S. Catholic Bishops site. I almost skipped it when I saw that today’s commenter was Deacon Arthur L. Miller from Hartford. I love the guy and also gain value from his insights, but they tend to be about twice as long as those from others. I listened anyway, and once again gained value.

That happened when he shared a thought that was the same thing I had wondered about when I had read the passage. As you may have noticed, Jesus frequently used this rhetorical device in which he would cite Scripture (Old Testament Scripture, from our perspective) and then add a new insight into its meaning. (He had done it earlier in this same sermon, with such concepts as “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”)

Deacon Miller was thinking the same thing when he read, “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” As he said:

You know what dawned on me? … I looked up where was it that Scripture said — you know, in the Hebrew text, in the Old Testament — where did it say that we are to hate our enemies? Well, it doesn’t say that.

Then he realized that what Jesus was saying there was, “you have heard it said.” In other words, “something that was often used by the people of that time…”

Well, that certainly sounded familiar. But it didn’t make me think of “the people of that time.” It made me think about a certain person in our own time who uses a similar phrase to justify the things that he chooses to believe. This was first widely noted early in the 2016 campaign:

‘A lot of people are saying . . . ’: How Trump spreads conspiracies and innuendoes

In case, like that certain person, you prefer video to the written word, you can look at this NBC clip from 2018.

I suppose the folks I’m obviously addressing here are those who say they are Christians, and yet have voted for that certain person on multiple times. Basically, a guy who justifies himself by saying that a lot is a guy who follows the precise opposite of Christian teaching, which is that we are to “love one another as I have loved you.” And not just your friends, but also “those who persecute you.”

That is the Christian message boiled down to as few words as possible. The rest is elaboration on the idea that we are to love God, and love each other as ourselves.

So I’m harrumphing at the MAGA people, there’s no denying it. But I’d be pretty thick if I didn’t see that the rest of us are enjoined to love the MAGA people, too.

That’s the tricky part, you see. Simple concept, difficult to carry out. I expect to be working on that for the rest of my life. I am obliged to do so, to put it mildly…

Well, they’re getting more specific, anyway…

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All of us probably get spam claiming that we owe a fine for, say, traveling on a toll road, and if we don’t pay right NOW, all sorts of mean, nasty, ugly penalties will be imposed upon us.

I had an uptick of those last summer, shortly after we’d spent a week in Florida (where they actually have such roads), so just to make sure, I scanned them… and saw that they not only failed to mention Florida (or ANY state) or its state government, but had no mention of a date or location where said offense allegedly occurred. I’d received legit notices (by snail mail, I believe) correctly mentioning my having actually traveled on this or that toll road on such-and-such a date, and had paid them. (I wonder what happened to all those folks who used to staff tollbooths….)

So, spam. Perhaps directly seeking my money, but like as not just wanting me to respond so that my identity might be stolen.

So I ditched them, and all the similar nonsense I’ve received since then.

But this one today was interesting. Here’s the whole text, although I urge you NOT to go to the URL mentioned (I’d like to, out of curiosity, and in case the state of South Carolina actually has switched to such an idiotically suspicious mode of communication, but worry that that’s just what the scammers want):

South Carolina Department of Vehicles (DMV) Final Notice: Enforcement Penalties Begin on June 5.
Our records show that as of today, you still have an outstanding traffic ticket. In accordance with New South Carolina Administrative Code 15C-16.003, if you do not complete payment by June 4, 2025, we will take the following actions:

1. Report to the DMV violation database
2. Suspend your vehicle registration starting June 5
3. Suspend driving privileges for 30 days
4. Transfer to a toll booth and charge a 35% service fee
5. You may be prosecuted and your credit score will be affected
Pay Now:

https://scdmv.gov-xfpp.cc/pay (I post this not for your risky use, but to see if you’ve seen this same ploy before, and can shed light)

Please pay immediately before enforcement to avoid license suspension and further legal disputes.
(Reply Y and re-open this message to click the link, or copy it to your browser.) (Uh, no — don’t do that.)

Are you getting that one? Or does the DOT really want my money, or else? And if so, for what — seeing there is no mention of the specific offense, or when or where I supposedly committed it?

The alarming “Final Notice” is entertaining, though — seeing as there were no previous notices.

It came, by the way, from “websterisabel@marchmail.com.” Shame on you, Isabel! (Unless, of course, this is legit. In which case I await notification — first notification — of the specifics. You know how to reach me.)

Smoke signals

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Coming home from Mass Sunday night, I saw what you see in the picture above — a strange, dull, red sun in a hazy sky, far too high to be that color.

Stopping at a light to take the picture, I pointed out that there was an odd haze in the air, “and not a purple one, either.” It wasn’t just the sun; it was barely detectable as I looked down Sunset Boulevard ahead of me. I asked my wife to check her weather apps.

She said one of them reported that wildfire smoke could be expected Monday morning. “Well, it’s here now.”

I suppose it’s a measure of how little I pay attention to news these days, so when I ran across this in The Washington Post this morning, I had to look for something tying it to South Carolina. I found this:

Smoke from Canadian wildfires moved into the Palmetto state this weekend. Most of the smoke particles and ozone associated with the fires are present at higher elevations in the atmosphere, but the added pollution from the fires also contributes to an increase in ground level ozone. Local weather conditions are also contributing to an increasing in ground level ozone. The stable layer of air near the surface and the light winds in the upstate Monday are preventing mixing and allowing ozone levels to build up.

I guess that’s what it was. There was a time when I would have been aware of this earlier, not because of looking for it, but because, well, local newspapers used to go sort of nuts over weather phenomena, so I couldn’t miss it. No more.

But the world is still with us, whether covered or not. Interesting that I could see what was happening in Manitoba just driving through West Columbia. Perhaps that red sun had given me, temporarily, one of Superman’s powers.

At least we’re not in North Dakota, something for which I am constantly grateful, whenever the place comes to mind. Which isn’t all that often…

The mind of a soldier, and the soul of a country

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What causes them to charge into enemy fire?

I’ve mentioned before that I’m cleaning up old emails that backed up way last summer when we were in Europe. Well, I’m still doing it, making my way through a few hundred each day. Which is progress, just not fast progress.

Anyway, today I ran across something I had set aside to consider writing about (which I may have done in passing; I don’t recall now). It was an Ezra Klein podcast (he’s always good) headlined, “What’s Wrong With Trump?”

I gave you a link to that if you want to go back and hear it, or read the transcript. But I’d rather you spend time reading what I’m thinking about today, which is on the much larger topic, which is Trumpism, and what is wrong with that. Which is, of course, an immense topic (since it’s about what is killing our country), but this is at least a digestible bite out of the subject.

It’s a David Brooks column from several days ago, and it’s headlined, “I’m Normally a Mild Guy. Here’s What’s Pushed Me Over the Edge.” (That, by the way, is one of those “share full article” links that the NYT offers, so please let me know whether it works for you).

It very much goes to the core of my own views, because it arises from Brooks’ marked tendencies toward communitarianism, which is one of the main reasons I enjoy reading him, and am often inspired by his words.

He starts this way:

Last Monday afternoon, I was communing with my phone when I came across a Memorial Day essay that the Notre Dame political scientist Patrick Deneen wrote back in 2009. In that essay, Deneen argued that soldiers aren’t motivated to risk their lives in combat by their ideals. He wrote, “They die not for abstractions — ideas, ideals, natural right, the American way of life, rights, or even their fellow citizens — so much as they are willing to brave all for the men and women of their unit.”

This may seem like a strange thing to get angry about. After all, fighting for your buddies is a noble thing to do. But Deneen is the Lawrence Welk of postliberalism, the popularizer of the closest thing the Trump administration has to a guiding philosophy. He’s a central figure in the national conservatism movement, the place where a lot of Trump acolytes cut their teeth….

He then mentions that J.D. Vance made a similar point at his inauguration, and that “these little statements point to the moral rot at the core of Trumpism, which every day disgraces our country, which we are proud of and love. Trumpism can be seen as a giant attempt to amputate the highest aspirations of the human spirit and to reduce us to our most primitive, atavistic tendencies.”

Of course, Brooks isn’t saying soldiers don’t lay their lives on the line for their buddies. “Of course warriors fight for their comrades.” And they do. I’ve made that point many times on this blog. (Based of course upon study, not personal experience. But what I’m studying is the experiences and memories of combat veterans.) When battle is at its hairiest, that’s an essential factor that keeps soldiers from turning tail and running — the comrades beside them. To see what happens when that factor breaks down, read the first part of The Red Badge of Courage, when the protagonist flees the battlefield because others around him are doing the same.

But there are larger questions — the factors that cause a someone to become a soldier to begin with, and don the uniform and go through all that training, long before they’ve even met those comrades who will keep them from running.

That’s what Brooks is writing about. And it’s what Deneen and Vance are dumping on when they say soldiers are never motivated by “abstractions — ideas, ideals, natural right, the American way of life, rights, or even their fellow citizens.”

That is not only an insult of immense proportions to soldiers (and sailors and Marines and others who serve) but to all Americans, whether they’re capable of perceiving the insult or not. It’s an insult to the idea of America. It’s an insult to ideas, period — to democracy, to freedom, to humanity, to God. It reduces us to grunting animals who can’t see past their own feeding troughs, and don’t care.

So it’s worth getting “angry about,” as Brooks so mildly puts it:

Deneen’s and Vance’s comments about men in combat are part of a larger project at the core of Trumpism. It is to rebut the notion that America is not only a homeland, though it is that, but it is also an idea and a moral cause — that America stands for a set of universal principles: the principle that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with inalienable rights, that democracy is the form of government that best recognizes human dignity and best honors beings who are made in the image of God.

There are two forms of nationalism. There is the aspirational nationalism of people, ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, who emphasize that America is not only a land but was founded to embody and spread the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. Then there is the ancestors and homeland nationalism, traditionally more common in Europe, of Donald Trump and Vance, the belief that America is just another collection of people whose job is to take care of our own. In his Republican National Convention acceptance speech Vance did acknowledge that America is partly a set of ideas (though he talked about religious liberty and pointedly not the Declaration). But then when it came time to define America, he talked about a cemetery in Kentucky where his ancestors have been buried for generations. That invocation is the dictionary definition of ancestors and homeland nationalism.

Trump and Vance have to rebut the idea that America is the embodiment of universal ideals. If America is an idea, then Black and brown people from all over the world can become Americans by coming here and believing that idea. If America is an idea, then Americans have a responsibility to promote democracy. We can’t betray democratic Ukraine in order to kowtow to a dictator like Vladimir Putin. If America is an idea, we have to care about human dignity and human rights. You can’t have a president go to Saudi Arabia, as Trump did this month, and effectively tell them we don’t care how you treat your people. If you want to dismember journalists you don’t like, we’re not going to worry about it….

Well, I’ve probably gone what the lawyers at the NYT would consider “Fair Use,” so I won’t quote any more.

But I urge you to go read the piece, and reflect upon it. It’s worth your time…

DeMarco (again!): Reflections of an inexperienced traveler

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The Op-Ed Page

Our ‘inexperienced traveler,’ using his ‘feeble’ Italian to ask Signore Giugui for directions.

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

EDITOR’S NOTE: Paul sent me this the same day as the one about Dr. Ceriani, but I held it a couple of days to space them out a bit. When he sent it, he noted that this would be “more is your wheelhouse — genealogy and travel.” Indeed.

I just turned 62 and have traveled internationally as an adult three times in my life, all in the last 5 years (Tanzania with the USC School of Medicine in early 2020, just before COVID, and Italy and Sicily in 2022 and again in April 2025). Looked at one way, I am exceptionally lucky. Even one trip out of my own country is more than the vast majority of the world’s people are afforded. I have carried that knowledge with me on each trip and hope to continue to hold it close. I never want to lose the wonder I feel as a jet first leaves the ground or as I navigate a foreign land where I feel the obligation to represent my homeland well.

Being an amateur (and sometimes absent-minded) traveler does have its downsides. There was the time I tried to go through security with a Swiss army knife in my backpack. On the 2022 trip I left my laptop in the Rome airport (happily, I was finally able to retrieve it months later). And on this last trip we had an overnight layover in London coming home, but our luggage got checked through to our final destination (Charlotte). The silver lining was I didn’t have any difficulty picking out my outfit for the next morning’s flight home.

This last trip to Sicily was especially meaningful for two reasons. First, I had a merry band of companions – my wife, my son and daughter, and their spouses. Second, I was able to visit my grandfather’s birthplace for the first time.

My grandfather, Poppy, was born in 1903 in Porto Empedocle, a suburb of Agrigento, a city of about 55,000 on the southern coast of Sicily. The city is built on a ridge overlooking the azure blue waters of the Mediterranean and is home to some of the most well-preserved Greek temples in the world. We had a picture of his home that Poppy’s son, my father, had taken on a previous trip and a street name, but not a house number. Our driver took us to the high end of the street. We had a beautiful view of the sea, but I thought we should have started at the other, lower end.

As we exited the van, I had resigned myself to not finding the house. It would be enough to say that I had walked on the same street as he had. Like many Sicilians of his generation, he gambled that life in America was worth leaving everything he knew, making a transatlantic voyage, and staking a claim in the new world. At the conclusion of his journey, he sailed by the Statue of Liberty to Ellis Island. He spent the rest of his days in her shadow in a duplex nestled in an Italian neighborhood in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. He married a first-generation Italian woman (my grandmother, Rosalie), worked as a barber, and had a side business repairing radios in the basement of their home.

As I was taking in the landscape of my ancestral home, my son had walked on ahead. “I think that’s it,” he said, pointing. We had found it. The feeling that I had then, and that I have now as I write about the moment is both precious and curious to me. It looked just like the picture my father had given me. I suspect, if I had done some research, I could have found it on Google Maps street view and seen it without ever leaving home. But blood ties are powerful and inescapable. There is nothing that could replace my being there, nor replace being home but knowing I have been there.

Charlie the dog wth ‘Sophia,,’ Debbie, Salvatore e Paul.

Even meeting people who were not closely related to me, but were my people, felt electric. In a raucous street market in Catania, on the eastern coast of Sicily, my wife, Debbie, made friends with a small dog. The dog (whose name. we soon learned, was Charlie), was accompanied by his elderly owner (Salvatore) and his dark-haired, dark-eyed granddaughter (whose name, unfortunately, we didn’t ask for). Let’s call her Sophia. Salvatore spoke no English, but we were able to converse with Sophia in a mix of her broken English and my feeble Italian. When she translated our question about how long Salvatore had owned the dog, tears rolled down his face as he kissed the dog again and again to indicate how much he loved him. As the two of them departed he kissed Debbie and me. For any readers planning on travelling to Sicily, be prepared – Sicilians do kiss a lot. I received many double-cheek kisses, both from women and men.

My family teases me for all the pictures I take on vacation. I probably took more than two thousand on this trip. But I am glad I took a selfie with the four of us and the little dog he loved so much. I have loaded that photo, pictures of Poppy’s birthplace, and many others from the trip on my digital frame. Those images are not just preserved in the dim file of my memory but are available to me as I walk by the frame, in vibrant color and astonishing detail.

I hope to return to Sicily many more times, but I want always to maintain my perspective as an inexperienced traveler.

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

The moment of discovery: Ben points out Poppy’s home!

Dennis and his band were some wild and crazy guys!

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Jump out of the way! Here come some Wild and Crazy Guys!

I met my daughter at the Habitat ReStore over the weekend to pickup up some furniture she bought there. While she was in line to pay for it, I browsed a bit.

Of course, I ended up making my way to the vinyl records department, and was impressed by some of the albums I found there. Lots of stuff from the 1950s.

But I really cracked up when I saw the title of this one: “CAUTION! MEN SWINGING

Jump out of the way, everybody! They are too hip for us!

I took it straight to the register, offered to pay the $1.25 marked on the cover, and found out it was only fifty cents!

The cover was just perfect! What ironic artistry — to pair that ultra desperate-to-seem-cool title with that whitebread gentleman in the Ban-Lon shirt (I think that’s a Ban-Lon shirt; I haven’t seen one in a while) who appears to be out mowing the lawn. In the background, I almost hear his wife calling, “And when you’re done with the grass, please fix our picket fence! It’s falling apart!”

Or maybe — I’m closely scrutinizing for “Paul is dead”-style clues here — Dennis and the guys got too close to that one board on the fence while swinging, and it stripped the paint right off!

OK, now I’m feeling bad, after looking up Dennis on Wikipedia. He was this cat who came down from Canada, and although I had never heard of him, he apparently made a bit of a mark in Hollywood:

His movie credits include the score for the 1966 Tony Curtis film Arrivederci, Baby!. For television, he composed music for the Bat Out of Hell (TV series); some episodes of the British children’s series Follyfoot (1971); and wrote the notable themes for Jay Ward‘s satiric Fractured Flickers (1961-3) and the London Weekend Television production Bouquet of Barbed Wire (1976). In 2002 EMI Records Ltd released “Soho Lounge Heat: Hip Jazz, Funk and Soul Grooves for Films & TV 1969-1977”, a compilation of library music compiled by Dickie Klenchblaize which contains 20 Farnon-composed tracks recorded between 1969 and 1974.

But even if he’d had no success at all, the guy was doing his best and probably loved his music and worked hard at it, so I shouldn’t make fun. But dang, he should have found the way to restrain those wild men in the RCA Victor marketing department when they pinned this label on his work.

Of course, to someone who entered his teens in the ’60s, anything that looks in any way like it had to do with the ’50s is obviously, painfully uncool. (And this was about 1958, according to the liner notes.) Therefore, the idea of this Perry Como-looking fellow’s band “swinging” so hard everyone needed to get out of their way is patently hilarious.

But forgive me, Dennis. You were probably much cooler than I. I see that some of your music was featured on “Ren and Stimpy”, and as we all know, they’re way existential.

By the way, if you want to actually hear how cool, or un-, Dennis and his band were, you can hear the whole album here, without shelling out fifty cents….

The new Steel Hands uptown location

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I guess I should have taken a shot of the area where the customers sit. It’s very nice. But all this shiny new gear impressed me more…

Well, here’s a local business that appears to be doing well.

I just share this because I ran across the new, downtown Steel Hands brewpub on Gervais Street in the Vista. I had no idea it was there — I just thought of it as that place a bit hidden away off Frink Street.

According to the barkeep, it’s been there since October, but I don’t walk up and down that street as much as I used to. I would have stopped for a pint in addition to satisfying my curiosity, but it was around lunchtime yesterday and I needed to get home.

It’s nice to see something born in a less visible part of Cayce going all uptown like that.

I wish Hunter-Gatherer would do that; I miss the loss of it from the dowtown area. Don’t get me wrong — I love the historic hangar location out at Owens Field. Bryan Caskey and I met there a few weeks back to share some pints and talk baseball. I had the ESB, which I think is the best beer brewed in Columbia.

Of course, pubs can’t make business decisions based on what I want. I’m not what most would call a regular customer. I hadn’t been out to the hangar since Election Eve in 2018, It was the way we ended our odyssey on The Bus. I didn’t even spend any money there then, but other folks brought me a couple of ESBs that night as I stepped off the bus. Which was nice after that long haul…

DeMarco: The images that shape our lives

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The Op-Ed Page

Dr. Ernest Guy Ceriani

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

As a graduation present, one of my best friends from college gave me a book titled Let Truth Be the Prejudice by photojournalist W. Eugene Smith. She knew I was on my way to medical school and chose the book because of a photo essay called “Country Doctor.” It documented the work of Ernest Ceriani, the sole physician for the people of Kremmling, Colorado, an isolated hamlet of about a thousand. The essay was published in 1948, when Ceriani was 32.

The images captivated me. There was a reality, a chest grabbing truth contained within. Smith said of the essay “I spent four weeks living with him. I made very few pictures at first. I mainly tried to learn what made the doctor tick.”

His patience was rewarded. The image that has been my lodestar captures Ceriani in the wee hours. He is in a homey hospital kitchen after completing a lengthy surgery. He wears a cloth surgical gown and cap. His mask is untied. He is slumped against the counter with the stub of a cigarette in his left hand and a slightly listing cup of coffee in his right. His exhaustion is palpable. In another photo (see below), he is holding the head of a 2-year-old child who had been kicked in the head by a horse. His brow is deeply furrowed. He is worried, afraid for the child’s sight. In another, he is on a home visit. He is sitting on a bed, listening to the chest of an elderly man dying of a heart attack.

I must admit that I had no idea what I had signed up for when I committed to medicine. I was the first doctor in my family and had never experienced a serious illness, nor had any family member or friend. I didn’t have a mentor to tell me what medicine would be like, but in a moment, these stark black and white photos showed me. I saw that being a doctor means to sometimes be afraid, to sometimes suffer, to carry the burden of your patient’s illnesses, to watch them die.

I write this not to tell you I have succeeded in my hope to follow in Ceriani’s footsteps. He bore a burden that I doubt I could have carried. Nor is it to say that the type of medicine I do is the most important or most difficult. There are physicians that put their lives on the line in war zones, brilliant bench researchers, and masterful surgeons whose accomplishments dwarf mine.

I tell you this for two reasons. First because Ceriani’s example is still powerful, and should remain relevant in patient care of all kinds, including quotidian practices such as mine. I teach medical students and give a talk every year entitled “Joy in Medicine.” Perhaps that wasn’t the title you would expect, given my description of medicine’s trials. Medicine is, of course, also full of joys and rewards. But accepting those requires no training. What allows doctors to maintain their sanguinity is an ability to anticipate and then face tragedy.

Physicians can make two mistakes confronting this reality. One is to be subsumed by the distress of their patients and become overwhelmed. But the more common mistake is to remain aloof, to treat medicine as a job rather than a vocation, as a means to a lifestyle. In these days of incentive contracts which reward physicians for increasing the number of patients they see or procedures they do, patients who gum up the works with thorny problems or unexpected complications become unwelcome. I can’t count the number of patients who over the years have broken into tears during a visit. There is no extra reimbursement for giving a despondent patient your undivided attention. I can rarely offer any helpful advice. But I do all I can do, which is listen. Surprisingly often, we both feel better for the time we spend together.

I ask the students to imagine a middle way in which we do our best to fully acknowledge our patient’s dignity without losing our bearings. I have had patients who have suffered unimaginably. One dealt with the death of her husband and then the tragic death of her son two days later. I can only go a certain distance into that pain. But I try to walk with the patient far enough.

Students want to know how far that is. I can’t fully articulate it. It’s the same sense I have that keeps me from getting too close to a campfire or to a cliff. Sometimes I go farther than I might, knowing that I will have help recovering. My medical colleagues, including my wife, who is a nurse and has lived the pressures of primary care practice with me, are there to support me in my temporary grief for my patients.

I have walked that line mostly successfully for thirty years thanks to the lessons contained in “Country Doctor.” Some days I don’t give enough, and others I let the pressure of getting the work done truncate my ability to fully engage. I could not have lived Dr. Ceriani’s life as a solo practitioner in the Rocky Mountains. But he has been my constant inspiration, and I am surely better for my friend’s thoughtful gift, one of the most important I have ever received.

A version of this column appeared in the April 16th edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.

Open Thread for Wednesday, May 21, 2025

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We haven’t had one of these in awhile, so here goes:

  1. May God send his healing grace upon Joe Biden — I’m so sorry, but not surprised (given the wearing toll of the presidency), to hear of Joe’s cancer. I had so hoped he, in his forced retirement, would have a few healthy years to enjoy the company of his grandchildren. They say that he may have some years left. I pray that is so, and that they are happy, comfortable ones. He deserves that, if anyone does.
  2. Which is dumber: ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Golden Dome?’ — I just mean the name, not so much the idea of a missile defense system. Once upon a time, military plans bore names that took some pains to be discrete, and secure: Overlord, Torch, MIncemeat. That showed some dignity. Now that marketing has overruled security (we want the adversary to know we have these kinds of plans), we go for the dumbest, least imaginative names we can think of, going for the very lowest common denominators to make sure everyone in our increasingly culturally illiterate world will get it, and Be Afraid. Or something. Even upcoming offensive operations (Operation Iraqi Freedom) follow this new style. Which seems very plastic, to an embarrassing degree. I’m picturing a certain high elected official saying, “The Israelis have an ‘Iron Dome.’ Let’s call ours ‘Lead Dome,’ or ‘Tin Dome.’ No, wait! I love gilded things! Let’s call it GOLDEN DOME!”
  3. I’m running to retire Lindsey Graham — That’s the headline on an email I got from a guy named Lee Johnson. Who’s Lee Johnson? I dunno. I’ve never seen him do anything else in public life before running for this lofty office. Based on his website, that’s because he’s an engineer who hasn’t done anything along those lines, unless he has and he’s just keeping that a secret, in a bid for the Trump vote. I’m not criticizing this guy. Bless him for trying. I’m bemoaning that this is our situation today. We live in a world in which no Democrat who knows anything about politics would consider wasting the time, energy and money on such a race. That said, I hope he wins, just to dissipate everyone’s cynicism, including my own. You go, Lee…
  4. Justice Opens Inquiry Into Cuomo, Singling Out Another Political Target — Yeah, this is the same Justice Department that just dropped charges against Eric Adams, against whom Cuomo is running. Yeah, that’s the Justice Department under the guy who was convicted on 34 felony charges last year, and is still walking around free. How are you feeling these days about that glory of the American system, the Rule of Law?
  5. A Guardian ad saved my family from the Nazis — Wow. That was the headline on an email marketing The Guardian — but it wasn’t written by marketers. That’s the actual family story of Jordan Barger, senior international correspondent. You should check it out. And since The Guardian didn’t have pay walls last time I looked, I think maybe you can.
  6. Norm! — I figured the best way to mark his passing would be to link you to the home newspaper of Cheers. You might not be able to read it, though. But you already know this sad news, don’t you?

 

 

Rob says it ain’t so, finally

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“Rob” being Rob Manfred, mentioned in this lede:

NEW YORK — Pete Rose and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson were reinstated by baseball commissioner Rob Manfred on Tuesday, making both eligible for the sport’s Hall of Fame after their careers were tarnished by sports gambling scandals….

At least our fellow South Carolinian Joe Jackson got mentioned in the lede (and the headline) in The Boston Globe. The NYT only named Pete.

I suppose that makes sense, in an era in which news media seem to be unaware of things that happened a week ago, much less a century back. I suppose it’s a bit of a miracle that they remember Pete Rose, who died way back in September.

I remember Pete mainly from my one in-person meeting with him. I was probably about 14, and he was still in his crewcut days. (He never looked quite right to me with his hair grown out. Not like himself. It looked unnatural, like he was wearing a wig that didn’t fit him right. Like he was impersonating Moe Howard.)

This was in those glorious days when we lived in Tampa, with at least three teams — the Reds, the Cardinals and the Mets — having their spring training bases right there in the bay area. We went to a lot of games, although we only went to see the Mets once, after my little brother walked all the way across a training field next to Tom Seaver, begging him for an autograph, and Seaver never even looked at him. (This was the spring after they had shed their rep as the Joke of the World and actually won the World Series. Their heads were very swollen.)

That was an outrage because it violated the established spirit of informality that characterized spring training in those days. Tickets to the exhibition games were cheap, the players were entirely accessible, and if you couldn’t get at least a dozen good autographs at a game, you weren’t trying.

The Reds were right there in Tampa, and we enjoyed going to see the team that included not only Charlie Hustle, but that great rookie Johnny Bench. Anyway, to get to my story…

After one Reds game, my Dad told us to wait outside a minute while he stepped into the locker room. Yeah, you could do that. It would ever have occurred to me to try, but my Dad had played sports at a high level all his life, which paid for his college education, and I suppose he was more at home in such a sanctorum. Of course, it might just have been that he was a great Dad.

I waited outside holding my then-new Rawlings glove, the best glove I ever had. My Dad came back out and told me to go on in, because Pete Rose had promised to sign it for me. I felt about like a medieval urchin who’d been told to cross the drawbridge and go on into the castle because the King wanted to knight me.

But I went, and there he was. He was sitting on a table with his feet on the bench seat. He was in the middle of an interview. The sportswriter had interrupted him in the middle of preparing to shower. He had removed his shirt, but was still in his pants and cleats. He never really looked at me, being intent on the sportwriter’s questions, his head slightly cocked to one side as he listened, and then answering. But he reached out and took the glove and signed it, out on the thumb, while talking.

It was a beautiful autograph. He had a great, clear, handwriting — as clear as the “Willie Mays” autograph that came on the Rawlings glove from the factory. I was amazed he had managed to write that clearly under the circumstances.

I showed it off proudly while it lasted. But it didn’t last. This was my everyday glove that I played ball with. I’m not the “don’t take the figurine out of the package” type. After a couple of years, it had worn off, and I suppose any force that it might have transmitted from Charlie Hustle to me faded with it. Maybe that’s why you don’t hear any anecdotes from me about playing in the big leagues.

But I appreciate Pete signing to this day, and yeah, he should definitely be in the Hall.

So should Joe Jackson. Not only was he a better hitter than many who are in the Hall already, but unlike Pete, he was innocent. Or at least relatively so. That’s what we hear, and I find the tales persuasive. Joe just went along with the other guys, but delivered nothing to the gamblers — he played his heart out in the 1919 Series.

Of course, Rob Manfred didn’t exactly say it ain’t so. But he’s saying Joe should be reinstated, and he certainly should. Pete, too. Whatever happened off the field, their accomplishments ON it deserve to be remembered, and honored…

Not my style, but I got a kick out of it…

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I ran across this (slightly poorly cropped) photo of the reaction of Chicago’s two newspapers. I only ever worked at papers that took the Tribune’s approach — proper, sober, respectful, matter-of-fact. A bit of local pride expressed, but cool about it.

And that’s still the way for me.

But I got a kick out of The Sun-Times approach.

Too bad Chris Farley is no longer with us. SNL could have had some fun with the news. “Da Bears!”…

¿Hispano como yo?

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On prominent display at All Good Books.

Over the weekend, my wife and I were browsing at All Good Books in Five Points — which you should definitely visit often, because Good Books are the only kind you find there — and ran across the volume you see above: America, América, by Greg Grandin.

From the jacket blurb:

The story of how the United States’ identity was formed is almost invariably told by looking east to Europe. But as Greg Grandin vividly demonstrates, the nation’s unique sense of itself was in fact forged facing south toward Latin America. In turn, Latin America developed its own identity in struggle with the looming colossus to the north. In this stunningly original reinterpretation of the New World, Grandin reveals how North and South emerged from a constant, turbulent engagement with each other…

Intriguing. Given my background, I want to read this book. I’ll put it on my Gimme List for Father’s Day, etc. I know many of the ways influence has flowed from the U.S. to the South, but I’m very interesting to see how he backs up the claim that it flows strongly the other way.

Since I lived in Ecuador longer than in any other one place in my childhood, Latin America had a huge effect in forming me. But I’ve been looking around me ever since, and the lack of consciousness of the rest of the hemisphere that I see in my fellow gringos continues to shock, after all these years. And of course, the foolishness that led to the results in our recent election has sunk us as a nation to new depths in that regard.

But until I read it, I can’t say much about the book. It reminds me, however, of something else I’ve been meaning to mention: Our new American pope — who was born in Chicago, to be sure, but has spent so much of his adult life in Peru — even to the point of dual citizenship. (Which I suppose drives the MAGA types who claim to be Catholic nuts. I mean the people who complained that he spoke no English in his first papal greeting.)

No doubt, Pope Leo XIV spent way more time in Peru than I spent in Ecuador. But hey, those were adult years. Kid years are like dog years, if not more so. A year is like an eon. Although I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, those two years, four-and-a-half months (from the ages of 9-11) seemed far longer than any one of the recent decades of my life.

You can tell as soon as he opens his mouth — in Spanish, that is. Also, when it comes to knowing a place and a people, I’m sure his time as a shepherd in Peru gave him an exponentially greater understanding and affinity than I gained goofing around in the streets of Guayaquil.

But still, I feel an affinity. Sort of the way I did with both John McCain and Barack Obama in 2008. I wrote columns about that at the time (and ahem, I headlined the one about Obama “Barack Like Me,” a not-so-subtle literary reference that I have played upon again above).

He’s my kinda pope, so far. He’s also my kind of American — the kind who can think in languages other than English (alas, my own Spanish is in sad shape today), and cares about the rest of the world. This is the kind of leader the Church needs. It’s also the kind of leader America needs, more desperately than at any time in our chauvinistic history. I look forward to him being able to influence the course of events back in his own native country, which is no longer what it was when he and I were kids.

Of course, the parallels with Pope Francis are enormously sharper than any shared characteristics I can claim. Leo is an American who spent his ministry until recently in Peru. He was elevated to cardinal, and carefully placed in a pivotal position) by a son of Italian immigrants who spent his pre-papal life in Argentina.

My man Joe Biden failed rather spectacularly to set up some other sane, qualified person with the electoral appeal to succeed him. And as much as I love Joe, that’s what got us into our current disastrous predicament. (All I can say in Joe’s defense is that the Church offered more material to work with than the Democratic Party has lately.)

It appears that Francis succeeded just as spectacularly, setting up a seemingly ideal successor — who (while it remains to be seen for sure) seems to be like him in more meaningful ways than coming from South America. I pray that impression proves to be accurate.

Of course, Francis didn’t do it alone. I told y’all, during that brief hour or two between the white smoke and learning the new pope’s identity, that I was “trusting the Holy Spirit on this.”

I still am. And I’m very eager to see what happens next…

POSTSCRIPT:

Speaking of Black Like Me (parenthetically, several grafs above), when one applies the “one-drop” rule, Leo is also our first black pope. Well, I can’t claim to touch him in that category. Ancestry keeps going back and forth on just how Scottish I am, but it never wavers on the idea of me being totally, unforgiveably, European.

(Mind you, 23andMe says I’m .1 percent Somali. And Helix — the service MUSC used to analyze my DNA — has somehow discovered I am .3 East Asian! “Austronesian-Filipino,” to be exact. But as a white boy who routinely shifts by 10 or 20 percent on Scottishness, depending on how Ancestry is reading the data that day, I suspect those tiny fractions are well within the margin of error. I will make no extragagant claims to possessing “color.”)

The Holy Father just keeps getting more cosmopolitan every moment! Especially since that part of his heritage came through New Orleans, the most cosmopolitan place I ever lived (that was right after Ecuador).

This is great, and very much as it should be. Remember above when I referred to “the MAGA types who claim to be Catholic?” I put it that way because “catholic” most assuredly does not mean “America First,” or America Only.

It means “universal.” And that’s what the Church, and all believers, must be…

‘Tis a very Irish day we’re after having…

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You can still see the thin spots in the lawn, but overall, I mainly see GREEN.

Actually, I’m thinking perhaps I laid on my stereotypical idioms a bit thick there… but to move on…

Ireland from the air, the green a bit dulled by the haze.

The landscape seems transformed on this third day of rain. I haven’t seen this much green since we were in Ireland in 2019. (That was a cliche I was delighted to find confirmed — from the air before we landed, and everywhere we rode or walked across the land. “Emerald” is no exaggeration.)

There’s a piece of our yard that always looks green — having been regularly irrigated since we had sod laid last year in place of a bunch of runaway juniper that I suspected of harboring copperheads — but this is not that part. Yet now it’s almost lush.

How’s it going where you are? I sincerely hope you have not washed away, in spite of the apocalyptic flood warnings Alexa keeps issuing. I wonder whether Amazon would let me change her name to Cassandra?…

The view out back. I need to replace those couple of loose deck boards. If it ever stops raining.

WHITE SMOKE!

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Congratulations to my diocese — as far as I’m concerned, Bishop Jacques Fabre-Jeune just scooped the world. I received first a text, then an email, from his office without having heard a word ere that.

Which is a bit surprising. I must have turned off more notifications from news sources than I thought.

Anyway, I then looked, and sure enough:

So now, everybody can pack up and go home, and stop trying so hard to predict who the new pope is. Or at least, they can when we actually know who he is.

I don’t remember this kind of blanket coverage in the past — when we lost John Paul II, or when Benedict retired. It has seemed, well, unseemly.

Some things should be done in private, without the jostling elbows of the world intruding. This is one of those things.

That may sound odd coming from an old newspaperman, but I’m also a (sort of, dating to my conversion in 1981) old Catholic. And I’ve got this archaic thing of trusting the Holy Spirit on this.

Oh, I may complain now and again about the new Holy Father — hey, no mortal is perfect — but I assure you I’m quite at peace on this as we receive the news…