Open Thread for Friday, Cinco de Mayo, 2023

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My experience over the years has taught me that nobody reads blogs on Fridays, especially not late on Fridays. So that makes this the perfect time to try to slip a few things by you:

  1. What to expect at the coronation of King Charles III — and how to watch it. — Um, let me guess — we should expect a guy to put on a fancy hat, right? Oh, and I saw a picture of the Stone of Destiny this morning, and there was no sword stuck in it! Who overlooked that? I don’t mean to commit lèse-majesté or anything, but these kinds of “guides for the breathless” headlines irritate me. The only ones I hate more are the ones that go, “What you need to know about…” This is a close relative. I reassure myself that the reporters who have to write these hate them as much as I do…
  2. Too many tattoos in Five Points? — Yes, absolutely! In fact, I see too many tattoos pretty much everywhere I go. It’s like every street in America has become the red light district near Subic Bay, circa 1971. But that’s not exactly what you were asking, was it?
  3. The Next Fear on A.I.: Hollywood’s Killer Robots Become the Military’s Tools — Hey, A.I. offers enough things to worry about, and I’ve been meaning to right a post about it. But this consideration alone is bad enough. Like, nightmarish.
  4. WHO declares covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency — Hey, great! So what does that mean? By the way, you know what my eldest daughter had last week, for the second time? Yeah, COVID! Meanwhile, this is also being reported today: “Disease experts warn White House of potential for omicron-like wave of illness.” Oh, and before y’all make me out to be some obsessed COVID alarmist — that’s not what’s happening here. I don’t go around wearing masks anymore, except maybe on airliners (and I often forget there, too). I’m just saying this is not 2019 again, or anything stupid like that. Hey, but if we do get to do a year over, how about 1971? I really enjoyed that one..
  5. Man who died in Spartanburg jail was ignored for hours, records show — Folks, if we’re going to keep locking people up — and that’s a very popular thing to do here in South Carolina — we’re going to have to spend some money to make these places safe for humans! This is obscene…
  6. Yevgeny Prigozhin: Wagner Group boss says he will pull fighters out of Bakhmut — This is the oligarch who runs the big mercenary operation that’s been fighting for Putin, and getting a lot of its guys killed, in Ukraine. It’s not that he’s against killing innocent Ukrainians, it’s just that he doesn’t want his guys doing it without ammunition, so he’s ticked at the Russian supply people. (There’s something kind of oxymoronic about the phrase, “Russian supply people,” isn’t there? I mean, what’s the last government in the world you would rely on to keep you supplied when your life depended on it?) Finally, check out his picture: If you were trying to find a guy to play a Russian oligarch who runs a mercenary operation, this is pretty much the face you would cast, right? This is like Dr. Evil’s way scarier twin brother…

 

I liked one thing Nikki said the other day

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This story, by our own Meg Kinnard, was one of several that featured the word…

The day that I posted that item about Joe Biden, I had meant also to post a good word about Nikki Haley. Or to be more specific, a good word about an even better word she used.

Having anyone use such a word, especially in such a context, is a rare thing, and one that deserves to be encouraged when such an occasion arises.

So, a few days late, here you go. I’m referring to something she had to say on the subject of abortion. See if you can find the word:

Haley said Tuesday that she does “believe there is a federal role on abortion.” She added: “I want to save as many babies and help as many moms as possible. That is my goal. To do that at the federal level, the next president must find national consensus.”…

Yeah, the word is “consensus.” I would fully explain why that word is key if I had time. And it would take a lot of time, because the reasons it appeals to me are so alien in this ones-and-zeroes age in which we live. It would take so many words that lately I’ve been thinking about writing a book about it. But if I were a betting man, I’d lay heavy odds against that book being written. I don’t know when I’d find the time, between the commitments I have at the moment. Especially since I have another book sketched out in my head that I would write first. I don’t know when I’m going to get to that one, much less the consensus one, which is far less fully formed.

But it’s there. And I thank Nikki for reminding me of it.

Perhaps I should explain that I don’t see consensus as key to solving our abortion problem alone. Consensus is something we need on many, many issues, from guns to the national debt limit.

But abortion does provide a particularly stark example. The challenge is, how on Earth do we get from this small thing of an otherwise unimpressive candidate using the word in a speech — in this case, to try to recapture some of the moderate appeal that taking down the flag won her several years ago — to the point at which we have the consensus to which she refers?

I don’t know. Which is a good reason why if I get time to write a book, the other one is coming first. I’ve got that other one pretty well mapped out.

But I’m increasingly sure it’s what we need. And abortion is a good example of why we need it. I don’t see any other way of approaching it that gets us to where that issue — and others — stop tearing our country apart.

I don’t know how else even I, personally, can get to where I feel that we’re on the right track.

You folks who’ve argued vehemently with me over the abortion issue for years probably think ol’ Brad is pretty pleased now that Roe is gone. But I’m not. You see, while I am most definitely and clearly opposed to legalized abortion on demand — to human lives being made subordinate to other individuals’ “personal autonomy” — I’ve never been able to feel at home with the way folks on “my side” approach the issue, either.

And I’ve always seen it as destructive to think of the issue in the terms in which it has been framed in our politics for the last five decades, with both sides embracing the notion that “if we can just elect a president who will change the court so that a majority of justices vote our way, the problem is solved because then we can just cram it down the throats of those bastards on the other side.” Excuse the language, but a big part of the problem is that too many of us now view those who disagree with us in that way.

Consequently, I’ve never made an electoral decision based on such thinking, but millions of others have, and I’ve watched our representative democracy — which is supposed to be based on the deliberative process — crumble away as they have done so.

So what do I mean by “consensus?” Well, that’s hard to explain, especially since most people who read my words have been conditioned to think in ways that preclude understanding it. One thing it is not is numbers. You don’t think in terms of, If I can get five votes for my side and the other side only has four, I win. Consensus is about getting the group to think, Is this something all of us can live with?

It’s the way we got through our morning meetings every day when I editorial page editor at The State. My goal was always to guide discussion of each issue to a position that respected, to varying degrees, the views of everyone in the room. That may sound like a recipe for incoherence, but it wasn’t. We took very clear and strong positions. We just didn’t leave dissenters figuratively bleeding on the floor in defeat. The advantages of this approach ranged from enabling us to move on amicably to the next difficult issue — not a small thing when you have so many issues to consider — to helping us arrive at solutions that were more practical because they might appeal to a broader range of readers.

I didn’t invent this approach. I had actually first encountered it when I served on the parish council of the church we were attending in Tennessee in the early 80s. Our priest didn’t want us to vote on issues. He urged us to seek consensus instead. A lot of us thought this was kind of nuts, but I ended up being impressed with how well it worked.

This idea will engender all kinds of strong objections, and I’ve heard most of them thousands of times. Hearing them again will likely just persuade me even more that I’m on the right track here. Most of the objections — such as, “You just want to force everyone to think just like you!” — will be wildly off-base. But I know what I’m saying is a little hard to follow, in the America of the 21st century. Which is why so many people will reject the premise of this post entirely. Not everyone, but probably most people.

I grew up in what was probably the most consensus-rich time in American history. My favorite examples, which I often cite, tend to include that stunning series of accomplishments when LBJ was president — the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, and so forth. Sure, LBJ was a masterful politician, but he was blessed with a country that, for all its differences, was open to a good argument.

There were still vestiges of this in evidence in the later decades of the century, showing up in Reagan’s amnesty on immigration, and the all-too-temporary banning of assault weapons. But try accomplishing such things in an era in which, for far too many in our country, “amnesty” is a cussword.

Of course, it’s more than a process or a strategy. It’s more an attitude among the population involved in the process. And how do you get people to have that attitude? How do we get from here to there?

Well, I don’t know. And Nikki Haley doesn’t know, either, which I suppose is why she didn’t take questions after that speech. But I appreciate her using the word…

What do these ‘reluctant’ Democrats want?

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Hey, y’all, I’m back — again. Remember how I told you I’d been on the island of Dominica, and that I would tell you all about it, but didn’t? That’s because I left town again for a few days, to accompany my wife to Memphis for her 50th high school reunion. I try to never miss a chance to go to Memphis. (And yeah, we made it to Pete & Sam’s.)

But before I start sharing travelogues, I thought I’d try to get some basic, everyday posts up. I’ve had several on my mind the last three days, but have been too busy trying to catch up with work (still not there) and emails (about 2,600 waiting, still unread).

So let’s start with this:

If you go to that on Twitter, you’ll see I got some likes, but also some new things to think about from our good friend Phillip Bush. He wrote:

‘Reluctance’ probably isn’t the right word. There’s no single word I can think of for this, but ‘being disheartened that we have no other choice’ probably covers it for many people.

I responded that “disheartened” is hard for me to understand as well. For my part, I’m deeply grateful that Joe is willing to do this. I think he sees, just as I do, that there’s no one else available right now.

But Phillip wasn’t done:

But Joe bears some responsibility for there being “no one else available” on the D side. And, will you still be grateful to Joe when he loses to DeSantis?

I’m not sure how Joe is responsible for the lack of other suitable candidates. That’s a problem that already existed, to which he responded by stepping up himself. (Maybe Phillip can elaborate on that point here.) And I’ll always be grateful to him for stepping forward when his country needed him — whether he succeeds or not.

This leads to my original concern about this “reluctance” I keep hearing about, which I continue to see as irrational and counterproductive.

Irrational because, what is it these people want? Who is it they see out there who could carry the banner better? Who do they think is MORE likely to beat DeSantis, or anyone else? I’m not seeing anybody. And Joe didn’t cause that problem. He stepped forward to offer himself to fill the void.

And it’s counterproductive because if Democrats don’t enthusiastically back Joe — their only option — this nation will plunge back into the steep decline we experienced starting in 2016. And it’s likely to be worse this time around.

So what’s your problem with Joe? His age? Hey, I’d love it if Joe was 20 years younger — he would, too, I’m sure. But that’s not being offered as an option. We’ve got the Joe we’ve got. And I like him…

NYT needs to expand its English vocabulary a bit

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At the beginning of the Wordle craze I found it mildly irritating to see social media references to what people were encountering on the game on a given day. I was all like, “Keep your diversions to yourselves, people!”

That was before I tried the game myself, and became addicted. I’m now on a 94-day streak, but I must confess to having cheated one day back in the low 60s.

I didn’t mean to cheat — or at least, not to the extent that I did. I wasn’t actually looking for the answer. I was going to spend a turn on a throwaway word, just to try out certain letters that might be helpful in getting me toward the answer. But I couldn’t think of one. So I searched for five-letter words with this or that letter in a certain position, and it gave me a list, and my eye scanned the list, and landed on a word that was obviously the answer. And it was.

So really, I’m only on about a 30-day streak. The app just doesn’t know it.

Now I have confessed to the world, and you need not assign me any penance; I assure you I have beaten myself up thoroughly over it.

But I am here today not to speak of my own sins, but to condemn The New York Times, which owns and operates Wordle, for its trespasses. Not particularly grievous sins, but sins nonetheless.

Actually, this list I’m about to share is only partly from Wordle. I’ve also gotten hooked on the NYT’s Spelling Bee, an even greater time waster. And since you end up entering far more words playing that game, most of the words on this list are now from that.

The problem is, I keep entering perfectly good, long-established English words, and they get rejected as “Not in word list.”

Well, I don’t know where they’re getting their “word list,” but the source is obviously not the OED or any other major English dictionary. Here are words that one of these games has recently rejected:

 

  • luff — Oh, don’t ask me what it precisely means, but it’s something sailors used to do with sails. As in, “Luff and touch her!” It also has a noun form.
  • bole — A tree trunk.
  • dibble — Have you never planted a garden?
  • midden — This is a refuse heap.
  • mort — A note played on a hunting horn when a deer is killed.
  • potto — It’s a primate, and to my knowledge, it’s the only word for this species in the English language. OK, I looked it up, and some call it a “softly-softly.” I’m not making this up.
  • nappy — Means a number of things, from being fuzzy to something babies wear.
  • cavitate — Obviously, no one at the NYT has ever read The Hunt for Red October. Probably don’t know what a Crazy Ivan is, either.
  • motte — It’s the hilly part of a fortress, as in “motte and bailey.”
  • clew — To repeat myself: Don’t ask me what it precisely means, but it’s something sailors used to do with sails. As in, “Clew up, mate!” (I’m not trying to be creative here. I’m trying to sound like a foremast jack, not a poet.) It also has a noun form.
  • whinge — Surely you’ve seen this. It’s another form of the word “whine.”
  • coney — Don’t the NYT folk have any alternative ways of saying “bunny?”
  • conn — Again, go read The Hunt for Red October. Or just about any books that involve maneuvering ships on the sea.
  • trull — Don’t call a lady this, because it has a rather specific meaning, and not many would consider it a compliment.
  • wold — I’ll just quote the dictionary: “a usually upland area of open country.”
  • limey — Mind you, this one isn’t a British term. It’s a term Americans use to describe Brits.
  • telly — OK, definitely from across the pond. But we all understand it, don’t we? Just today, Spelling Bee refused it.

Note that each is linked to its dictionary definition.

OK, admittedly a lot of these words are British, and quite a few are nautical. But they are long-established words with definite meanings in English, and should never be rejected. They should be perfectly legitimate by the rules of the games. They’re not proper nouns or anything.

Yeah, I think there’s some sort of mechanism for appealing, or at least reporting, such errata (oh, and notice I haven’t included any words such as “errata,” accepting them as still pretty firmly identified as Latin — my list is purely English). But I couldn’t find it this morning, and I thought I’d just go ahead and complain here.

I left one word off my list. I had originally saved “droog,” but decided that being a Nadsat word disqualified it. But mind you, Nadsat was invented by an English writer. And I, for one, prefer it to Tolkien’s Elvish…

We’ve been in Dominica. More to come…

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Our first glimpse of the island, approaching from the air on April 5. More to come…

Yeah, I know you haven’t heard from me in two weeks. Sorry about that.

We’ve been on the Caribbean island of Dominica, where my youngest daughter lives. Not the whole time. We didn’t leave until April 4, but we were extremely busy getting ready in the days before that. We got back yesterday.

We had a great time, and I plan to tell you about it, but that will probably take me the rest of the weekend, at least. When we came back from Boston last summer, it took me eight days to pull the pieces together and summarize it for y’all. I’ll try to be faster this time.

I’ve found that waiting until a trip is over and trying to put it all in one post works better than trying to tell the story in bits and pieces while in-country. I tried doing it that way in England years ago, and it proved impossible to find the time to sit down with reliable wifi and tell you anything in depth, so on that one I just gave you an occasional hasty tidbit about something I saw in a newspaper or whatever. Not very satisfying.

It takes hours of concentration and selection (the pictures alone take a lot of that time) to tell it all at once — which I do in a few minutes here, a few there while doing the many other things I have to do in catching up from a trip. But in the end I find it a more satisfying form of storytelling….

Moments later, we had arrived…

 

April Fool to all you dweebs out there!

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My mention of “subsidiarity” last night reminded me of the most elaborate April Fool’s joke every played on me, which I told about here a few years back:

In the years after I first read about it, I was enough of a bore about the concept in the editorial suite of The State that one April 1st, at the instigation of then-Publisher Ann Caulkins, my colleagues played a truly elaborate April Fool’s prank on me that was entirely based on some supposed new research debunking subsidiarity. It was probably the most esoteric, nerdy prank ever played on anyone in South Carolina history. The sort of thing the geeks on “The Big Bang” might play on each other, only with them it would be about physics instead of political philosophy — some knee-slapper having to do with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, perhaps….

In the end, the joke didn’t work out, because I was too impatient to play along. It went like this: We gathered for our morning (or perhaps it was the weekly, since the publisher was there, eager to participate in the gag) editorial board meeting, a session in which all sorts of issues were thrown onto the table for discussion so we could discuss and arrive at positions for editorials.

As we started, Cindi Scoppe produced a long, dry-looking document, bound in the kind of folder we used in school for term papers, that she said contained some important new findings that completely debunked the validity of subsidiarity. She said they were all sure I’d be interested. She urged me to read it immediately.

I got irritated instead of interested. We had a lot of issues to talk about, things we needed to write about. And they wanted to sit there and watch me read something and have my mind magically changed on something this complex? It was absurd anyway; there was no way this could, in a few minutes’ reading, disprove something like that.

But they urged me, “Just look over it!” and “Just scan it briefly!” Which was even more ridiculous, because a mere scan would never convince me of such a thing. I kept putting it down and trying to move on, but finally Cindi said something like, “Just look at the last page!”

So, in order to end it, I did. And of course, it said, “April Fool’s.”

Yeah, OK. Ha, and also ha.

I feel a bit bad for ruining my friends’ fun, but there it was. It had probably been funny when they first thought of it. And it was nice that it was so personalized, so esoteric, so very much something that would appeal only to the kind of dweeb who is on an editorial board. It was, in its way, thoughtful towards me and who I was.

Which reminds me of an old poster I found in my closet while cleaning up the other day. I didn’t go to the conference, but I liked the poster. I’ll see if I can roll it out and take a picture of it…

 

 

 

 

Coinherence

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Detail from the Book of Kells.

I have another another word to try to learn about more deeply, the way I did more than 30 years ago with “subsidiarity,” before driving my friends nuts over it.

It’s “coinherence.” I learned it today — or began learning it today — from Bishop Barron‘s reflection on the Gospel reading of 3/31/23:

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus declares, “The Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

Charles Williams stated that the master idea of Christianity is “coinherence,” mutual indwelling. If you want to see this idea concretely displayed, look to the pages of the Book of Kells, that masterpiece of early Christian illumination. Lines interwoven, designs turning in and around on each other, plays of plants, animals, planets, human beings, angels, and saints. The Germans call it Ineinander (one in the other).

How do we identify ourselves? Almost exclusively through the naming of relationships: we are sons, brothers, daughters, mothers, fathers, members of organizations, members of the Church, etc. We might want to be alone, but no one and nothing is finally an island. Coinherence is indeed the name of the game, at all levels of reality.

And God—the ultimate reality—is a family of coinherent relations, each marked by the capacity for self-emptying. Though Father and Son are really distinct, they are utterly implicated in each other by a mutual act of love.

The impossibly good news is that Jesus and the Father have invited us to enter fully into their divine coinherence. The love between the Father and the Son—which is called “the Holy Spirit”—can be participated in.

I suspect that there’s a simpler way to say it, just as I keep saying the Church should go back to “one in being with the Father” in the Nicene Creed, rather than the new phrase adopted in 2011 — “consubstantial with the Father” — which, as much as I love and respect Latin-derived terms, was not a good move.

But while there may be better words for getting the concept across, there’s nothing simple about the idea itself. I really need to understand it better.

But it appeals to me greatly so far, “at all levels of reality” as the bishop says, for a wide variety of reasons, including:

  • I believe salvation (if even that is the right term, given the way so many use it), is achieved with and through others. It’s not about the I; it’s about the we. (Which is another problem with the new version of the Creed). It’s why there’s a Church. It’s why there are families. It’s why there is such a thing as love.
  • I believe in communitarianism, and most assuredly not libertarianism.
  • I love John Donne’s most famous work, to which the bishop alludes.
  • One of my favorite clichés is, “We’re all in this together.” I mean, if we must have clichés, and apparently we must.
  • It’s a big reason I’m Catholic.
  • It’s why I’ve confused so many people when they ask why I’m Catholic, and I refer them to the last sentence of Joyce’s masterpiece “The Dead.” But read the rest of it first. If it’s still not clear, and I admit it may not be, I’ll try to explain further. Maybe I’ll work in “coinherence.”
  • It’s why, back in my newsroom days, I used to talk about my dream of someday putting out a newspaper that is just one story that has everything that happened in it. Because it’s all connected, and there’s something deeply artificial about presenting the news as separate stories with different headlines. Of course, it might take a year — or at least a week — to write such a “daily” newspaper, but it would be worth it, if the laws of space and time could be suspended.

Now I realize that, except for the Donne reference, the bishop didn’t say exactly any of those things, and I may be mistaking the meaning of coinherence entirely. But it made me think of all those things, and I like thinking about those things.

And I’m just getting started with trying to understand it…

Living the fantasy…

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If only this creature could evolve a LOT more quickly…

No, this isn’t about something starring Stormy Daniels. (That would be the grand jury case I haven’t bothered to comment on this far…)

No, this fantasy is less lurid, but probably more important in the long run. Basically, this post was originally a comment I wrote in reaction to one of bud and Doug’s usual arguments over public vs. private.

Then I started riffing a bit, and it led to something that was really more involved than a comment should be, so I’m raising it to post level.

Here’s what I wrote, in response to this and previous comments:

Well, bud already cited ONE example of something that was done right. I’ll leave it to him to answer your question further. I’m not going to take a couple of years off from life to become someone capable of parsing road contracts and passing judgment on their efficacy.

It’s a silly argument, anyway, talking public vs. private on a function that will only EVER be undertaken by government. The private sector isn’t going to build highways — except as contractors working for the government. That’s the way it is. I’d be fascinated to hear your alternative plan for providing the infrastructure that makes it possible to have an economy in which private businesses can thrive WITHOUT these danged, pesky governments….

It raises some interesting dystopian scenarios. If we ever do get to a scenario in which it economically feasible for a private entity to provide general infrastructure, that private entity will essentially BE the government, at least within that area. You know, like in the Middle Ages, when the local lord of the manor was over everything. The society in which we live is the product of several centuries of Europeans striving to disengage from that sort of system, and try to build a system in which the things upon which we all depend are controlled, at least indirectly, by all citizens.

Not that we haven’t moved that way a number of times as technology has progressed. In the 19th century, it was the railroads. And eventually, government stepped in to control the freewheeling mastery of the environment that the railroad barons wielded. Over time, other technologies have asserted similar societal dominance. (Anyone ever see “The President’s Analyst,” in which — SPOILER ALERT — the power behind everything was the Phone Company?)

Today, we’re engaged in debates about technology that plays a bigger, wider role in our lives than railroads ever did — dominating and reshaping not only how we communicate, but how we think (ones and zeroes). And of course, all that’s in private hands.

So maybe I should take back my comment about it being dystopian fantasy. We’re dealing with the fantasy now…

I was teetering there on the cusp of busting out on a bunch of topics that are as habitual to me as public vs. private are to bud and Doug, things that are all affected profoundly by the things that have been coming out of Silicon Valley:

  • The Rabbit Hole.
  • The way technology has exponentially increased the problem of political polarization in our society. It had been a problem for decades, but in the years since the development of “social” media and broader technology that makes everyone on the planet more powerful (in terms of ability to instantly communicate with every other person on the planet, without editors or fact checkers or any other sort of mediation) than any newspaper publisher in history ever dreamed of being, humans have been trained to think like computers, in binary terms — ones and zeroes. Everything is black and white (words that newspapers now capitalize, by the way). There are no degrees of gray; there are no subtleties or nuances. There is no tolerance of those who disagree.
  • Of course, I include traditional media in this failure to cope with the problem. The new technology, having reshaped brains, distorts political events so that this madness is what the MSM have to cover, and tragically, they fall back on their old, comfortable love of conflict, covering politics like sports. And I don’t mean multilateral sports like golf or marathon running. I mean contests in which there are only two teams, and therefore only two ways of looking at anything. The deepest questions that get asked are: Who’s winning? Who’s losing? Which is profoundly tragic.
  • The inability of Western-style liberal democracies to deal with such polarizing forces, causing elements of the public to turn, over and over, to more oppressive, far less liberal, figures and imagined solutions. (The latest victim being Israel, trailing behind the U.S., of course.)
  • On a much deeper level than any of the above, the inability of Homo Sapiens to effectively cope with the change, since evolution takes millions of years longer than technological development.
  • That last point alone, of course, is one we could worry over for the rest of our lives, and still not get anywhere close to a helpful answer.

Seeing all of it as too much for a comment, I brought it here…

In “The President’s Analyst,” The Phone Company was Behind It All…

This does not inspire confidence, people!

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As y’all may have noticed that I haven’t had any bad words to say lately about SC DOT’s ginormous, biggest-ever, construction project, which they call — hang on, I’ve got to go look that up, because nobody but DOT calls it that — the Carolina Crossroads Project.

It’s what everyone else calls “the project to fix Malfunction Junction.”

To resume, I haven’t had anything bad to say about it, even as it’s finally gotten visibly under way, because they decided back in 2017 not to run it through my house. I thought that was nice of them. But mainly, I’ve lost interest, so that’s why I seem to have held back.

But I’ve got to show you the sign that I pass pretty much every day on my way to visit my mother.

This does not inspire confidence.

And if you don’t see what’s wrong, look again. It’s been there, spelled like that, for at least a month or two. Does DOT have hundreds of other signs like that, or is this one unique? I hope it’s unique, although I’m not sure how that would happen, unless they make them by hand in a shack back behind DOT HQ.

And maybe it doesn’t bother normal people. Normal people’s brains probably automatically fix the spelling as they read it, and they don’t notice, and they go on with their lives. But it certainly bothers those of us who have been editors for so many decades…

See? It’s still like that.

 

Hey, Hollywood! Have I got a pitch for you, baby…

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Michael Jayston as Peter Guillam in 1979.

OK, admittedly it’s not boffo in, say, Marvel Universe terms, or last year’s “Top Gun” sequel. We’re talking more of a niche thing here. In fact, few of my readers here will take interest, unless they are avid Le Carré fans. (Which they should be.)

There’d be nothing blowing up, or people flying about under their own power in colorful tights, or other improbable things. In fact, maybe this idea might not be right for you, Hollywood, in your current state. Can we book Shepperton?

But it would be good. I’m excited about it. Just as I was excited last year, when I read one of Mr. Le Carré’s last efforts, A Legacy of Spies. It was such a gift to those of us to whom Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy opened such a wonderful world half a century ago.

It’s at this point I will lose you, dear reader, if you’re not into Le Carré….

Basically, Legacy plunged back through the decades to resurrect favorite characters from Tinker, and from the earlier masterpiece, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. It was better than a high school reunion, way better. (At least, I assume that. I didn’t go to my 50th reunion; I’m not even sure that there was one. I had only been in touch with one of my 600 classmates — our good friend Burl — and he died two years before such a gathering would have taken place.)

Better in the sense that it wasn’t just wandering about glancing at name tags and trying to figure out who these old fogeys were back in your heyday. This book took one of our very best friends from those days and plunged him back into the events of that intense time, in a way that was immediately relevant to all concerned.

To set the scene — Peter Guillam, George Smiley’s long-ago protégé, is in retirement on a farm in France. Out of nowhere, present officials of the Circus (or former Circus) descend on him from their garish new building on the Thames, requiring that he come to London and dive into the records and explain to them what happened to Alec Leamas — and to what extent Control, and Smiley, and Peter himself are responsible for those shocking Cold War goings-on.

You know how tediously judgmental these young folks can be about such things — come back, old man, and justify yourself.

I’m not going to tell you any more, except to say that as Peter endures their interrogations and immerses himself in the official, and unofficial, records, much of the novel takes place in his flashbacks, and the past comes very much to life.

I really enjoyed reading it last year.

So imagine how pleased I was to see Peter Guillam himself appear before me just last night, much older but still the same former head of Scalphunters.

OK, not the fictional character himself, but the next best thing: It was Michael Jayston, who portrayed him so perfectly in the 1979 Tinker Tailer TV series (possibly the best TV show in history), alongside Alex Guinness as Smiley. He was Guillam. Sorry, Michael Byrne and Benedict Cumberbatch, but he was, and you were not — especially not you, Benedict.

Here’s how it happened — I had just come in last night from a late-evening walk, finishing up my 10,000 steps for the day. My wife was watching the very last episode of “Murder in Suburbia” (an underrated ITV cops programme that only lasted two “seasons,” as the Americans call them) on Britbox, and she called my attention to the screen and said, “Look who it is!” She was talking about Olivia Coleman. But a couple of seconds later, someone else showed up.

It was Michael Jayston. It was Peter! Much older and greyer, of course, but unmistakably the same guy. He even had the same hair cut, and the same expression he wore when listening to Ricki Tarr tell his tale about the mole.

Of course, this had first been aired in… July 2005, shortly after I started this blog. And while he looked perfect for the part on the screen, he’s now, um… 87. Oh. Dang….

But so what? 2005 was just minutes ago, and this is Peter Bloody Guillam! Certainly he’s stayed in shape! But let’s get moving. I’m envisioning a high-quality TV-series rendition of A Legacy of Spies here, and I can’t wait to see it! And no one else (especially not you, Mr. Cumberbatch) could play the main protagonist.

I stand ready to help in this noble endeavor. Writing, casting, whatever you need done.

In fact, it occurs to me that Alex Guinness is no longer available, and here I am. Of course, I’m somewhat young for the role, unless you want me for the flashback scenes.

But I’ll do anything you need. Be the third assistant gofer to the gaffer, whatever. Let’s just get started…

And suddenly, there he was — Peter Guillam, much older! (The guy in the middle. Duh…(

I’d forgotten Adolf Hitler was ‘woke’

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McMaster et al applauding the Scout deal. Photo from Henry’s Twitter feed.

If I ever knew it, that is. Guess I need to go back and read my history some more, after reading this this morning:

Gov. Henry McMaster on Monday defended South Carolina’s $1.3 billion incentive deal with Volkswagen subsidiary Scout Motors after a group of conservative lawmakers this month criticized the company as “woke.”

Woke? Scout Motors? The subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group? Here’s how that company got started:

Volkswagen (meaning ‘People’s car’ in German) was founded in Berlin as the Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH (‘Limited Liability Company for the preparation of the German People’s Car’, abbreviated to Gezuvor) by the National Socialist Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labour Front) and incorporated on 28 May 1937.[14][15][16] The purpose of the company was to manufacture the Volkswagen car, originally referred to as the Porsche Type 60, then the Volkswagen Type 1, and commonly called the Volkswagen Beetle.[17] This vehicle was designed by Ferdinand Porsche‘s consulting firm, and the company was backed by the support of Adolf Hitler.[18]

Whatever der Führer‘s role (and see the photo below), if you say a company got started in Berlin in 1937, the last word I think of is “woke.” Although there was, to be sure, an element of populism in the production of an affordable “People’s Car.” But as we all know, populism is a persistent feature of both the left and the right.

Folks, I can think of reasons to oppose this Scout deal, if you press me. But I can also think of a number of reasons to support it, and I suppose those win out.

But this “woke” business?

You learn something new every day. Or at least  I do…

1938: Hitler lays the foundation stone of the first Volkswagen plant…

Three approaches to a new Second Amendment

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I was intrigued when I saw this headline this morning in The Washington Post: “What a new 2nd Amendment could look like.”

But then, I was disappointed that Paul Waldman didn’t get into the actual wording of such an amended amendment. Fortunately, he told us where to look for one — or rather, for three:

The National Constitution Center made an attempt to rewrite the Constitution some time ago. Their conservative, liberal and libertarian experts came up with dramatically different answers on what a new Second Amendment would look like. Yet only the libertarians wanted virtually unlimited gun rights of the kind the courts are now creating; even the conservatives’ version made room for restrictions….

So I followed the link, and looked at the three different versions. Actually, there are three whole, separate constitutions there. If you have the time, you might want to peruse them. But in my renewed effort to keep posts brief, I just focused on the Second Amendment.

And as he said, the Libertarians looked at the mess that is our present amendment, and challenged themselves: How can we make this even crazier? I know! Remove any reference to a “well regulated Militia!” Libertarians, you know, hate to see anything be regulated. In fact, I’m a bit surprised to see them deigning to participate in drafting a constitution. Here’s their version:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Of course, the Progressive Constitution was all about some regulation, first and foremost:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms is subject to reasonable regulation by the United States and by the States.

And now, a drumroll for the Conservative Constitution, which says… hang on, I’m having trouble finding the Bill of Rights… OK, this is weird. The amendments we know are not presented as a Bill of Rights, and in fact are not presented as amendments (which I guess sort of makes sense, if you’re sort of starting over). They’re just blended in, awkwardly, in Section 12 of Article I:

Neither the States nor the United State shall make or enforce any law infringing the right to keep and bear arms of the sort ordinarily used for self-defense or recreational purposes, provided that States, and the United States in places subject to its general regulatory authority, may enact and enforce reasonable regulations on the bearing of arms, and the keeping of arms by persons determined, with due process, to be dangerous to themselves or others.

Whoa! And I thought the old one was hard to read, with the random commas scattered here and there. Good luck to any court trying to parse this baby. If we go for that one, we’re going to have to set up a bunch of new law schools.

Anyway, I just thought I’d throw those ideas out for discussion…

And if they all worked like this, even “progressives” would see little reason to regulate them.

Well, I hope you’re properly attired today

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I met my daughter for lunch at Whole Foods, where she took this…

Well, I remembered just as I was going out the door for a rare trip downtown, and grabbed and donned the hat I’ve been after savin’ for this day.

As you know, since we went to Boston over the summer, my regular everyday hat (or one of them) is the one you see below, photographed in its natural habitat.

But later in the trip I popped into a shop in the downtown area and picked up the green one as well, but I haven’t worn it in public until now.

Here’s hoping you remembered, too. Happy St. Patrick’s Day…

The regular version in it’s natural habitat — or rather at the Charlestown Navy Yahd, with Boston in the background.

Images of USC campus as pandemic closed things down back in March 2020

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Four days ago, my phone invited me to look back on pictures from that date — March 11 — in years past. So I did, and saw some pictures taken on what I suspect was my last walk around the USC campus and downtown Columbia in 2020, before we closed down the office for the duration of the pandemic.

Of course, I stayed home, but ADCO eventually ended up opening another office downtown, and some of my colleagues actually go there, but not every day. Sometimes we have our weekly meeting on Zoom and I see everyone’s there in the conference room; other times everyone’s at home like me.

I do my walking around my neighborhood, and on the elliptical, which is satisfactory to me.

But I did like walking around the campus, especially during summer and spring break when there weren’t all those people about. I felt a bit like a landed lord taking a turn through my private park. It was peaceful, and healthy.

But this day things were so peaceful, they were starting to feel a bit weird…

Below, you see:

  1. The Horseshoe.
  2. A copy of The Washington Post in Thomas Cooper library. Note that six were dead in the U.S. at that point. As you are probably aware, that number is now at 1,117,856. Or at least, it was on March 3. There was some cheery news, though, with other Dems lining up behind my man Joe.
  3. A sign on a rest room in Thomas Cooper library. Nothing like a dose of British pluck to help a chap deal with adversity, what?
  4. The seating area — or what normally would have been the seating area — in the food court area of the Russell House.
  5. Greene Street in front of the Russell House. Not really bustling that day.

Good thing we’ve got these smartphones, huh?

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OK, technically this image is from my PC, not my phone, but you get the idea…

That’s that I said to my wife this morning: Good thing we’ve got these smartphones! Or pretty much any device with Google. (Or Microsoft’s Sydney, if you’re the adventurous type.)

This morning, after my shower (sure, I work from home now, but occasionally I do still take a shower), I was drying off and for the life of me, could not remember how many guitar pickers there were in Nashville. I was thinking it was 1,552, but I kept running it through my head, and I wasn’t at all sure about it.

Fortunately, my iPhone was right there on the cabinet where we keep the towels, so I didn’t have to wait until getting dressed and leaving the room to get my answer. Before I started shaving, I Googled it:

Nashville cats, play clean as country water
Nashville cats, play wild as mountain dew
Nashville cats, been playin’ since they’s babies
Nashville cats, get work before they’re two

Well, there’s thirteen hundred and fifty two
Guitar pickers in Nashville
And they can pick more notes than the number of ants
On a Tennessee ant hill…

And so forth. So I was like 200 git-tar pickers off. No telling what would have happened if I couldn’t have found out right away. My head might have exploded or something.

I don’t know what we did before having these phones, and Google. Well, I sort of know. I had a dictionary on my desk at the paper. I tried to avoid looking at it, and fortunately I’m good at spelling so I seldom had to. But occasionally I would think, “Is that really the word I want in this context?” and open it.

Well, that would be it for awhile. I’d look up that word, and the definition would contain another word that I just had to look up or bust. And something about that word would remind me of another one I hadn’t run into in awhile, and this suggested fond memories, and couldn’t resist looking that one up too for old times’ sake, and before you knew it, I’d have been darting here and there in that volume for 15 or 20 minutes, with deadline bearing down on me.

Of course, today we have Google and HTML links, which are among the most wonderful inventions in human history, and the problems I had back in the day with a mere dead-tree dictionary look pretty pitiful. Or at least quaint.

But it’s fun. Anyway, after looking up the Lovin’ Spoonful, I thought about taking a crack at Wordle, but resisted the temptation and went ahead and shaved. Discipline, baby, discipline.

Managing one’s time takes more willpower than our fathers e’er dreamed of…

What should have won, since 1976

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Can you BELIEVE it wasn’t even nominated?

As y’all know, I love movies, and I used to care about the Oscars. I even made a point back in the day of seeing all the Best Picture nominees before the big night — and mind you, in those days that meant going to the theater and buying a ticket. But I stopped caring after the debacle of 1998. I knew the Academy’s judgments were random, whimsical, and dumb before that, but that was the last straw.

And since then, I haven’t seen any evidence that my 1998 judgment was wrong.

So while I generally ignored all the hoopla over the Oscars over the weekend, my attention was grabbed by this story in The Washington Post: “The Oscars always get it wrong. Here are the real best pictures of the past 47 years.”

By the Post‘s critic’s standards (I’m using “critics” loosely here), that headline is somewhat misleading, since they occasionally agreed with the Academy’s judgment. And so do I. But in general, it states a truism.

I don’t know why they started with 1976, but since that is about when I started reviewing movies for The Jackson Sun, it works for me.

So I copied their list, and corrected it, by stating which was truly the Best Picture in these given years. You can thank me later. Oh, and to explain — especially in the earlier years, a huge criterion for me is whether it holds up. Is it as impressive now as it was then, or even more so? Do I think “Star Wars” was a great, profound cinematic statement? No. But boy, has it held up…

If I say “I dunno,” it’s because I didn’t see the nominated films — or saw one or two and was unimpressed, and wasn’t interested enough to see the others. You’ll see me do that a lot in the last few years. I’ve seen some good films over those years, but no really great ones — and of course I’ve felt far less obliged to go out and see them. I mean, I’ve got a nice HD screen in my house. I wait at least until they appear on a streaming service that will show them for “free.”

And no, I didn’t give this a lot of thought, and didn’t elaborate. I just saw it as a good topic for discussion. Or a bunch of such topics. If anyone engages, I’ll explain my choices.

My version of the list:

1976
Nominees: All the President’s Men, Bound for Glory, Network, Rocky, Taxi Driver
Best Picture winner: Rocky
The actual best picture: All the President’s Men, OR Rocky. Quite a year.

1977
Nominees: Annie Hall, The Goodbye Girl, Julia, Star Wars, The Turning Point
Best Picture winner: Annie Hall
The actual best picture: Star Wars

1978
Nominees: Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, Heaven Can Wait, Midnight Express, An Unmarried Woman
Best Picture winner: The Deer Hunter
The actual best picture: The Deer Hunter

1979
Nominees: All That Jazz, Apocalypse Now, Breaking Away, Kramer vs. Kramer, Norma Rae
Best Picture winner: Kramer vs. Kramer
The actual best picture: Apocalypse Now, with a good word thrown in for Breaking Away

1980
Nominees: Coal Miner’s Daughter, The Elephant Man, Ordinary People, Raging Bull, Tess
Best Picture winner: Ordinary People
The actual best picture: Coal Miner’s Daughter

1981
Nominees: Atlantic City, Chariots of Fire, On Golden Pond, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Reds
Best Picture winner: Chariots of Fire
The actual best picture: Chariots of Fire

1982
Nominees: E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Gandhi, Missing, Tootsie, The Verdict
Best Picture winner: Gandhi
The actual best picture: E.T.

1983
Nominees: The Big Chill, The Dresser, The Right Stuff, Tender Mercies, Terms of Endearment
Best Picture winner: Terms of Endearment
The actual best picture: The Right Stuff, OR Tender Mercies

1984
Nominees: Amadeus, The Killing Fields, A Passage to India, Places in the Heart, A Soldier’s Story
Best Picture winner: Amadeus
The actual best picture: Amadeus

1985
Nominees: The Color Purple, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Out of Africa, Prizzi’s Honor, Witness
Best Picture winner: Out of Africa
The actual best picture: Witness

1986
Nominees: Children of a Lesser God, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Mission, Platoon, A Room with a View
Best Picture winner: Platoon
The actual best picture: Hannah and Her Sisters

1987
Nominees: Broadcast News, Fatal Attraction, Hope and Glory, The Last Emperor, Moonstruck
Best Picture winner: The Last Emperor
The actual best picture: Moonstruck

1988
Nominees: The Accidental Tourist, Dangerous Liaisons, Mississippi Burning, Rain Man, Working Girl
Best Picture winner: Rain Man
The actual best picture: Working Girl

1989
Nominees: Born on the Fourth of July, Dead Poets Society, Driving Miss Daisy, Field of Dreams, My Left Foot
Best Picture winner: Driving Miss Daisy
The actual best picture: Field of Dreams

1990
Nominees: Awakenings, Dances With Wolves, Ghost, The Godfather Part III, Goodfellas
Best Picture winner: Dances With Wolves
The actual best picture: Goodfellas

1991
Nominees: Beauty and the Beast, Bugsy, JFK, The Prince of Tides, The Silence of the Lambs
Best Picture winner: The Silence of the Lambs
The actual best picture: Oh, surely there had to be something better than these.

1992
Nominees: The Crying Game, A Few Good Men, Howards End, Scent of a Woman, Unforgiven
Best Picture winner: Unforgiven
The actual best picture: Unforgiven

1993
Nominees: The Fugitive, In the Name of the Father, The Piano, The Remains of the Day, Schindler’s List
Best Picture winner: Schindler’s List
The actual best picture: The Piano

1994
Nominees: Forrest Gump, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, The Shawshank Redemption
Best Picture winner: Forrest Gump
The actual best picture: Four Weddings and a Funeral

1995
Nominees: Apollo 13, Babe, Braveheart, Il Postino, Sense and Sensibility
Best Picture winner: Braveheart
The actual best picture: Apollo 13. (The critics simply said “not that,” referring to the Mel Gibson film. They’re right.)

1996
Nominees: The English Patient, Fargo, Jerry Maguire, Secrets & Lies, Shine
Best Picture winner: The English Patient
The actual best picture: Fargo

1997
Nominees: As Good as It Gets, The Full Monty, Good Will Hunting, L.A. Confidential, Titanic
Best Picture winner: Titanic
The actual best picture: As Good as It Gets, OR Good Will Hunting

1998
Nominees: Elizabeth, Life Is Beautiful, Saving Private Ryan, Shakespeare in Love, The Thin Red Line
Best Picture winner: Shakespeare in Love
The actual best picture: Life Is Beautiful, OR Saving Private Ryan

1999
Nominees: American Beauty, The Cider House Rules, The Green Mile, The Insider, The Sixth Sense
Best Picture winner: American Beauty
The actual best picture: The Sixth Sense

2000
Nominees: Chocolat, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Erin Brockovich, Gladiator, Traffic
Best Picture winner: Gladiator
The actual best picture: Gladiator, for the lack of anything better.

2001
Nominees: A Beautiful Mind, Gosford Park, In the Bedroom, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Moulin Rouge!
Best Picture winner: A Beautiful Mind
The actual best picture: The Lord of the Rings, starring New Zealand

2002
Nominees: Chicago, Gangs of New York, The Hours, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Pianist
Best Picture winner: Chicago
The actual best picture: Chicago

2003
Nominees: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Lost in Translation, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Mystic River, Seabiscuit
Best Picture winner: The Lord of the Rings
The actual best picture: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Duh.

2004
Nominees: The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Million Dollar Baby, Ray, Sideways
Best Picture winner: Million Dollar Baby
The actual best picture: The Aviator

2005
Nominees: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, Munich
Best Picture winner: Crash
The actual best picture: Munich, or Capote

2006
Nominees: Babel, The Departed, Letters From Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen
Best Picture winner: The Departed
The actual best picture: The Departed

2007
Nominees: Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood
Best Picture winner: No Country for Old Men
The actual best picture: Michael Clayton

2008
Nominees: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire
Best Picture winner: Slumdog Millionaire
The actual best picture: Gran Torino, which I can’t believe wasn’t nominated. Actually, yes I can.

2009
Nominees: Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire, A Serious Man, Up, Up in the Air
Best Picture winner: The Hurt Locker
The actual best picture: The Hurt Locker OR A Serious Man

2010
Nominees: Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech, 127 Hours, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter’s Bone
Best Picture winner: The King’s Speech
The actual best picture: The King’s Speech

2011
Nominees: The Artist, The Descendants, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, War Horse
Best Picture winner: The Artist
The actual best picture: Moneyball

2012
Nominees: Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty
Best Picture winner: Argo
The actual best picture: Lincoln

2013
Nominees: American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, Philomena, 12 Years a Slave, The Wolf of Wall Street
Best Picture winner: 12 Years a Slave
The actual best picture: Gravity

2014
Nominees: American Sniper, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Selma, The Theory of Everything, Whiplash
Best Picture winner: Birdman
The actual best picture: Dunno — despite the fact I saw most of these.

2015
Nominees: The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Room, Spotlight
Best Picture winner: Spotlight
The actual best picture: Brooklyn, OR Spotlight

2016
Nominees: La La Land, Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, Arrival, Fences, Lion, Hidden Figures, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water
Best Picture winner: La La — no, wait! MOONLIGHT!
The actual best picture: Manchester by the Sea

2017
Nominees: Call Me By Your Name; Darkest Hour; Dunkirk; Get Out; Lady Bird; Phantom Thread; The Post; The Shape of Water; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Best Picture winner: The Shape of Water
The actual best picture: Dunkirk

2018
Nominees: BlacKkKlansman, Black Panther, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Green Book, Roma, A Star Is Born, Vice
Best Picture winner: Green Book
The actual best picture: Dunno.

2019
Nominees: Ford v Ferrari, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Little Women, Marriage Story, 1917, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, Parasite
Best Picture winner: Parasite
The actual best picture: Jojo Rabbit (or anything, I’m sad to say, other than The Irishman)

2020
Nominees: The Father, Judas and the Black Messiah, Mank, Minari, Nomadland, Promising Young Woman, Sound of Metal, The Trial of the Chicago 7
Best Picture winner: Nomadland
The actual best picture: Dunno. Tried to watch both Mank and Trial of the Chicago 7, but didn’t get to the end of either.

2021
Nominees: Belfast, CODA, Don’t Look Up, Drive My Car, Dune, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, The Power of the Dog, West Side Story
Best Picture winner: CODA
The actual best picture: Dunno.

2022
Nominees: All Quiet on the Western Front, Avatar: The Way of Water, The Banshees of Inisherin, Elvis, Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Fabelmans, Tár, Top Gun: Maverick, Triangle of Sadness, Women Talking
Best Picture winner: Everything Everywhere All at Once
The actual best picture: Dunno, although I still plan to see All Quiet on the Western Front and The Banshees of Inisherin, soon as I can grab the time.

I had meant to post this over the weekend before the Oscars, but didn’t, and who cares? I didn’t have an opinion on this year’s…

Hey, I liked it when I reviewed it at the time, and it holds up.

Cool it on trying to start a run on banks, people

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Like most days lately, I don’t foresee a lot of time today for blogging. So I’m just going to offer this, which I tweeted yesterday, as a topic for discussion:

About the time I posted that, I was somewhat comforted by the fact that the hourly NPR news summary started with this, far more consequential, story. Of course, the second story was further yammering about the banks.

Then, this morning, I was really dismayed to see the first screen of my Washington Post app covered with additional headlines about the banks.

We’re not having a general run and a national economic collapse yet, but keep pushing, everybody. Maybe if you keep trying, you can make the average person nervous enough…

Another song I should have paid attention to at the time

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Almost 10 years ago, I put up a post headlined, “Top 12 Songs I Either Missed Entirely, or Didn’t Fully Appreciate at the Time.” I enjoyed looking back at it just now, although it filled me again with regret for the decades during which I had missed some amazing music.

This happened to me again the other day. I was looking for something else on YouTube, and it suggested I might want to watch the above video of The Moody Blues playing “Go Now.” I immediately remembered it was a great song and wanted to hear it, although I hadn’t known, or had forgotten, that it was by The Moody Blues. Another one of those bands I had been aware of but not really followed in the ’60s. And when I say “aware of,” I mean just barely. I immediately thought something along the lines of “oh, that artsy band with one of those two songs with ‘white’ in the title.”

Yes, to embarrass myself further, I can’t ever remember which is which between “Nights in White Satin” and “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” not for sure, until it gets going good — maybe not until I actually hear the title in the song. (Which means I recognize the Moody Blues song more quickly.) And I know even less about Procol Harum than about The Moody Blues. (But gimme a break on my confusion — don’t both songs have a similar atmosphere about them? They’re in a category together in my head.)

Anyway, once I know who it is, I can tell, and think, Yeah, this is what the “Nights in White Satin” group would have sounded like three years earlier, at the height of the British Invasion. (For you kids just joining us, in the 1960s, music and fashion changed so quickly, everybody went through an eon or two of cultural evolution each year. Today, everybody dresses and looks the same as they did 30 years ago.)

See how different they looked in 1967, boys and girls?

Oh, and speaking of the fact that this was 1964, I’ve thought of an excuse for why “Go Now” was dim in my memory — I didn’t hear it until a long time later. I was living in Ecuador at the time (from November 1962 to April 1965), and missed a lot of stuff. The Beatles had filtered down to us, and to some extent The Beach Boys, but that was about it.

Anyway, as I learned the other day, the song is more wonderful than I had dimly remembered from having heard in on oldie stations over the years. In fact, the thing that makes it so wonderful is that series of piano chords you hear over and over, so I’m hoping Phillip Bush will read this and explain to me the spell those chords cast.

The closest I come to having any musical insight into it is to recognize that it’s in a minor key. And I may be wrong about that. I think it’s F minor, but I got that specific detail from Googling, and there were dissenting opinions (don’t go trying to tell me about the “wisdom of the crowd”). But Phillip will know. I was just going by it having a minor-key feel.

But the story gets more interesting. I was so into in the song as I listened that I started reading about it online, and found that unlike “Nights in White Satin,” this was not originally a Moody Blues song.

You know the old story of pop music — of white guys making it big with black folks’ music? This is kinda one of those stories.

It was written by an American R&B man named Larry Banks. It was first recorded by his estranged wife Bessie Banks. She thought it was going to make her career, because it was getting some airplay. Then the Moody Blues released it, that that was pretty much it for major stardom for her. There’s this quote from her on Wikipedia:

I remember 1963 Kennedy was assassinated; it was announced over the radio. At the time, I was rehearsing in the office of Leiber and Stoller. We called it a day. Everyone was in tears. “Come back next week and we will be ready to record ‘Go Now'”; and we did so. I was happy and excited that maybe this time I’ll make it. ‘Go Now’ was released in January 1964, and right away it was chosen Pick Hit of the Week on W.I.N.S. Radio. That means your record is played for seven days. Four days went by, I was so thrilled. On day five, when I heard the first line, I thought it was me, but all of a sudden, I realized it wasn’t. At the end of the song it was announced, “The Moody Blues singing ‘Go Now’.” I was too out-done. This was the time of the English Invasion and the end of Bessie Banks’ career, so I thought. America’s DJs had stopped promoting American artists.[3]

Wikipedia sort of questions her details because the Moody Blues’ version didn’t come out until a year after hers. But, when it happened, I don’t doubt a bit that it was a moment of deep dismay for her. She and Larry were splitting up at the time, near as I can make out from looking it up. I sure hope she got some of the money. Come to think of it, I hope Larry got some money from the deal.

I don’t blame the Moody Blues for this at all. They heard a song that sounded good, covered it, and got rich and famous. It launched them to stardom. Although they didn’t do much to “make it theirs.” It’s very much the same as hers, down to those piano chords. They may have speeded it up slightly, à la “That Thing You Do.” But that’s about it.

For that matter, going to the larger historical trend, I don’t blame Elvis, either. Elvis was making the music that welled up out of him. He couldn’t help it that Sam Phillips saw him as the “white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel” he’d been looking for….

You want to blame somebody? Blame the white fans. (But don’t blame me on “Go Now;” I was in Ecuador.) But I do feel bad for Bessie Banks. Her version was great as it was. In both cases, though, I think the piano was a big part of what made it so…

On streaming British and European cop shows

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“Murder in Suburbia:”

OK, I did it again. I was riffing on Doc Martin because Paul had brought him up, and got carried away on the topic of British and European cop shows, and decided to turn it into a separate post. This could be a Top Five list, or a couple of them, but I’ve got stuff to do and I don’t have the time. Anyway, here it is:

Oh, speaking of Doc Martin — you know the pretty dark-haired woman who plays his wife on that?

We’ve been watching and enjoying a good buddy-cop story that stars her. It’s called “Murder in Suburbia,” and she’s the more normal, straitlaced detective who is paired with a blonde who is a bit of a mess. (But this being TV, she’s also quite pretty — actually, that’s not a prerequisite so much on British TV, but she is.)

You can watch it on BritBox if you have that (and you should; it’s good). If you don’t, if you get the PBS Masterpiece add-on on Prime, I think it’s there, too.

As y’all know, my wife and I have been watching a LOT of Brit murder mystery/police procedural shows lately. (Two of the best we’ve watched in the last year or so — “McDonald and Dodds” and “Sherwood“) Sometimes we start watching one we don’t like, but most are good.

And we’ve been branching out to the continent lately, with German shows (“Luna and Sophie,” which has a very similar female-buddy-cop dynamic to Murder in Suburbia) and French ones — “Paris Murders,” “Astrid.”

The female-buddy-cop show is big across the pond — and across the Channel, in a number of languages. I recommend both “The Bay” and “Scott & Bailey.” My wife loves “Vera,” and I like it, too, but haven’t seen it as much. That’s not a female-buddy one, though. Vera works with guys up there on the Tyne.

“Astrid” is a twist on that buddy thing. In France, it’s called “Astrid et Raphaëlle.” Raphaëlle is the detective, and Astrid is the brilliant autistic criminal records keeper who becomes her friend and informal partner — the one who always has the insights that solve the crimes. Lately, that’s been my fave…

“Astrid et Raphaëlle.”

Jimmy Carter is going to die. So are we all.

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The Op-Ed Page

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

In a scene from the television series Doc Martin, a scathingly curmudgeonly English surgeon turned primary care doctor, he is visited by an anxious preadolescent girl and her mother for the daughter’s minor complaint. After being given a cursory exam, the girl asks, “Am I going to die?” Doc Martin stares at her incredulously and retorts in hilariously untherapeutic but unassailably truthful fashion, “Yes, we all die.” The girl begins to cry as Doc Martin moves on to his next patient.

There are essentially three ways to approach Doc Martin’s response: full denial, full acceptance, and a usually unhappy middle ground. As a physician who spends part of his days seeing hospice patients, I have seen all three up close. This has led me to the conclusion that one of the most important decisions we can make in life is how we are going to conceive of our deaths. The meaning of life, said Kafka, is that it ends. So it is profitable that each of us have a reliable concept of where we are going.

When I talk about this subject with medical students, I don’t recommend a particular path (although, if asked, I tell them my Christianity frames my approach to death). Instead, I stress to them that they must find a path, through organized religion or some other framework, that provides them a way of understanding life and death. It is much easier for physicians to engage with patients and families about life-threatening illnesses if we have decided what happens to us when we die.

Over my thirty years of practice, I have seen hundreds of patients die. Each death is a blow, especially the unexpected ones. But when there is time to prepare, death can be beautiful. Such deaths require planning and support. That support is often in the form of hospice. That’s why I am so glad that Jimmy Carter chose to make public his decision to enter hospice care. Although his presidency was turbulent and his leadership uneven, his post-presidency has been remarkable, easily one of the best presidential second acts in American history. His choice of hospice will be his last exemplary act.

Hospice provides patients and families a much-needed embrace. We surround the patient with a team of experts who understand how human beings die. Dying can be hard work, as can watching a loved one succumb. It can be overwhelming without enough help. Having hospice team members to nurture and guide you can be shelter in the storm.

No other medical discipline is more rigorous in their team approach than hospice. Every patient is seen in their home by a nurse at least once a week, often more. Each team has a social worker and a chaplain who visit monthly or more if the patient wishes. The team member that is most appreciated is often the hospice aide who bathes, dresses, and provides other personal care to our patients. Their intimate, loving care of patients as they wash and reposition a frail human body is a balm for both the patient and the caregiver. Hospice volunteers are available to sit with, talk with, and read to patients, providing caregivers a brief respite. The team is led by a physician who provides oversight and visits patients when needed.

Choosing hospice is a recognition that death is near, which for some is a difficult bridge to cross. Those patients and families who approach death with fear and denial may, in so doing, deprive themselves of a rich and sustaining hospice experience. If you visit your primary care provider and think hospice might be appropriate for yourself or your family member, please ask (the criteria is a prognosis of six months or less). Some providers are hesitant to make a referral without a signal from the family.

Sometimes death comes quickly and hospice is not feasible. But in most cases, death can be anticipated and hospice can be called months in advance. This is the setting in which hospice works best. When the team members visit and call week after week, they become members of the family.

One of the ironic things about working in hospice is the disposition of my fellow team members. You might assume that people who work with dying patients all day would be in a permanent state of melancholy. However, the opposite is true. Perhaps there are some cynical hospice workers out there, but I don’t know any. Understanding death, it turns out, is key to enjoying life. At our weekly meeting there are often tears, but there is also laughter as we relate stories of funny things that team members, family members, or patients have said and done.

I grew up thinking that a deathbed was a place for hushed tones and whispering. But my team, my patients, and my families have taught me that the end of life is a profound experience to be savored and which can hold every emotion from intense sadness to side-splitting amusement. One of life’s sweetest moments is hearing a family member tell an amusing story about a dying patient which ends with the gathered doubled over. That kind of laughter is precious, for we know that our loved ones won’t be around to hear that story being told on them again.

So I encourage you, figure out what you believe about death. It will help you live better. And at the end, choose hospice.

A version of this article appeared in the March 8th edition of the Florence Morning News. Dr. DeMarco’s opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of McLeod Hospice.