DeMarco: NPs and PAs should continue to be supervised by physicians

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

In 1993, as a new physician fresh from residency, I joined an internal medicine practice composed of three doctors and one physician assistant in Marion. The next year, one of the doctors left the practice and our call schedule went from every fourth to every third night. I was the father of two young children, and this sudden increase in my workload threatened to overwhelm me. I would have left the practice and probably the Pee Dee if we hadn’t hired another PA. She enabled me to remain living and practicing in Marion.

I tell you this to underscore how important physician assistants (PAs) and nurse practitioners (NPs), collectively known as advanced practice providers (APPs), are to the practice of medicine. In my 30-plus years of practice I have worked closely with six APPs in two different internal medicine practices. Practicing with them as colleagues has been a privilege and of great benefit to me and my patients.

However, despite my love and respect for APPs, I oppose the current bills in the SC Legislature that would allow them to practice independently (S 45 and H 3580). The bills would allow APPs to see patients independently after only a year (2,000 hours) of working with a physician.

I have a host of reasons for my opposition. I will offer two here. First, training matters. Medical school is more rigorous and almost twice as long (4 years vs. 2 to 2.5 years) than APP training. But the most important difference is clinical experience. NPs need only complete 500 hours of clinical training to satisfy their national governing body. The PA national minimum standard is higher, at 2,000 hours, which are divided into multiple rotations in different medical specialties. At best, a PA doing an internal medicine rotation might get 8 weeks (about 300 hours) of IM training. An NP would likely get even fewer hours.

In contrast, physicians come from a tradition in which training was so grueling that it had to be scaled back. I finished my residency in the early 1990s before the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education put a work hours requirement in place. In those days, every other night call was allowed, which meant residents could work more than a hundred hours a week. In 2003, an 80 hours-a-week maximum was instituted. Even if we use a more conservative estimate of 60 hours a week for an IM resident, over a three-year residency internists begin practice with approximately 9,000 hours of clinical experience, 30 times as much as the best case for an APP. It is a deficit that is very difficult for an APP to make up.

It’s not only the hours, but the intensity of the training. Physician residency training is remarkable for its depth and breadth. In the first (intern) year, physicians are intimately involved in their patients’ care. We perform histories and physicals, order labs and imaging, and create differential diagnoses and treatment plans. As second- and third-year residents, we remain closely involved, but also supervise the interns. Experienced attending physicians make rounds mornings and sometimes evenings, do bedside teaching, and are available for advice, but the residents are entrusted with significant responsibility and are the patients’ primary doctors.

By the end of our residencies, we have managed a vast array of clinical problems in the office and the hospital, from the trivial to the life-threatening. An exhaustive residency is the best way to prevent knowledge gaps, which are a common source of medical errors. If a provider’s training is too short or too narrow, they may not be able to recognize a condition they have never seen.

Second, the primary argument for independent practice is that it will increase access for underserved patients. But these bills will not remedy that problem. In about half the states, APPs have independent practice authority, so there is a record to examine. But different lenses produce different conclusions. Nursing researchers have produced papers claiming that independent practice does increase patient access; unsurprisingly, data from American Medical Association refutes this, concluding that APPs tend to practice in the same areas as physicians.

Current state law allows APPs to work alone if the supervising physician is “readily available,” although that term is not defined. Specific requirements for supervising physicians’ distance (45 miles) and travel time (60 minutes) to APPs’ practice locations were eliminated in 2018. Many of these solo APPs are only lightly supervised. Eliminating supervision entirely is a step in the wrong direction. We need more collaboration with our APP colleagues, not less.

Given the demands of modern medical care, the likelihood that a private solo APP or even a small group APP practice could offer affordable care, generate acceptable revenue, and sustain bearable working conditions is low. Rural practice can be grueling and lonely, and the burnout rate is high.

The best option for APPs to offer this type of care is through a community health center like HopeHealth, where I have worked for the past 14 years. CHCs receive enhanced Medicaid reimbursement and can offer a sliding scale for uninsured patients. If they are like HopeHealth, they offer competitive salaries and benefits, strong leadership, and educational and social opportunities for all providers, physicians and APPs alike.

I urge the legislature to focus on incentivizing doctors and APPs to collaborate. APPs have rightly argued that not enough physicians are willing to work in rural areas. But there are still some of us who will. In SC, physicians can supervise up to six APPs, so a single willing physician could catalyze a large rural clinic, or several smaller ones. This model, in which the physician and APPs work together, sharing the burdens and rewards of caring for rural patients, is the best way forward.

A version of this column appeared in the August 20^th edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee. Dr. DeMarco’s opinions are his own and do not necessarily represent those of HopeHealth.

DeMarco: Greenwood vs Guthrie

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The Op-Ed Page

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. DeMarco sent this with the following apology: “This column is old and was written for July 4th so you may not want to run it. But it does describe the ongoing argument we are having about America’s history, such as in exhibits at the Smithsonian.” No need to apologize. The lack of timelines might be an appropriate concern for a newspaper, but I write here about such things as the Late Bronze Age Collapse. That was in the 12th century B.C. So no worries…]

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

I’m willing to admit I am as much a sucker for a sentimental tune as the next guy. Am I going to confess here before my tens and tens of faithful readers that Taylor Swift’s “Tim McGraw” makes me tear up every time I hear it? No comment.

But, as I ponder my most recent July 4^th celebration, I’m wondering why “God Bless The USA,” our now ubiquitous patriotic anthem, does not strike the right note for me. As I watch my fellow Americans swept up in its rousing chorus, I don’t go there with them.

I felt this acutely this year because on Sunday, July 6^th, our church’s praise band played “This Land is Your Land” and my heart did swell; that patriotic flush did seize me.

I’m not the first to compare these two different visions of America, and I’m disappointed that the songs are sometimes sung by one political party at the other. GBUSA is much more likely to be heard at a Republican event, TLIYL at a Democratic one. True to form, Jennifer Lopez sang TLIYL at Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration; Lee Greenwood, who wrote GBUSA, played it at Donald Trump’s in 2025. Trump has also featured it prominently at his rallies.

I’m off balance from the first line of GBUSA:

If tomorrow all the things were gone I’d worked for all my life
And I had to start again with just my children and my wife
I’d thank my lucky stars to be livin’ here today
‘Cause the flag still stands for freedom, and they can’t take that away

And I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free
And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me
And I’d gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land
God bless the USA

I’m trying to imagine what tragedy has befallen the protagonist in the song — bankruptcy, eviction, fire or flood? I’ve seen people in all those situations, and their responses are rarely, “At least I know I’m free.” Perhaps it’s because we often take that freedom for granted. But the much more common response, in addition to the grief for the loss, is gratitude for those who come to help.

The “men who died” also catches me. On July 4^th, we do celebrate a freedom from foreign enemies that was won in blood, almost exclusively by male soldiers, in the American Revolution and World War II. But, fortunately, since Vietnam, a war we now realize we didn’t have to fight, fewer than 6,000 service members have been killed in combat. We understand that the strength of our nation is in keeping the peace, and our Armed Forces are now approximately 17% female.

GBUSA is a song that is written to appeal to southern (“ain’t no doubt”), male veterans. I’m the first two of those. My father, the man I respect the most, is the third. He spent more than two decades in the Air Force. And as the song says, I am proud to be an American.

The song that expresses that pride more authentically for me is Woody Guthrie’s TLIYL. Guthrie the man is an interesting, complex human being. I don’t agree with everything he said or did. But the lodestar of his life seems to be an interest in the plight of the working man and an aversion to greed. Leaving Guthrie the person for another day, TLIYL takes a different approach to our nation’s greatness. Guthrie wrote the song in 1940 as a response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” which he found saccharine and out of touch with the bleak lives many poor families were living as the Great Depression dragged on. He originally titled the song, “God Blessed America for Me” to drive home the message that those blessings were for everyone, not just the privileged.

Greenwood conveys a pugnaciousness that is part of the American character: You will have to pry my freedom from my cold, dead hands. But that’s not most of American life. When is the last time as a civilian, you felt you had to stand up to a foreign invader who was threatening your freedom? Indeed, most of the concern about losing our freedom is currently being expressed from the left-about our own government’s actions.

What TLIYL captures so masterfully are the quotidian ideas that hold us together: the bounty and beauty of our landscape, our shared sense of purpose, the worthiness of every member of society.

In researching this piece, I learned that Guthrie wrote several other verses meant to skewer Berlin’s “God Bless America” that we no longer sing, one of which is:

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Perhaps on July 4^th we don’t want to be reminded that America is not yet the shining city on a hill that we hope it to be. But I would rather we sing that verse to remember our flaws and to provoke us to become the more perfect union that our founding document exhorts us to be.

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

A beautiful echo of The Slide

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As a reborn sports fan — well, baseball fan — I’m now making like a color commentator, thinking back to the time that so-and-so did a similar thing decades ago. OK, so I do that on all subjects. But now I’m doing it with sports, or A sport, which indicates it’s really become a part of me.

It happened last night. Did you see the Red Sox game last night? Well, you should have. If you missed it, you can read about it in The Boston Globe this morning. They based their main game story on this one play that sparked the memory for me.

(By the way, yes: You can actually read this story about something that happened last night in the actual paper this morning. Like in the legendary days of newspapers. This is one of the things I love about The Globe. It’s why, after ending my subscription recently under various pecuniary pressures, I signed back up almost immediately when they offered me another sweet deal, bless them. I can now return to watching the game before I go to bed at night, and reading excellent analysis of it at breakfast when I get up. What a fascinating modern age we live in.)

What happened is this: I had been watching the game some time before dinner, and things were looking good. I think the Sox were ahead of Cleveland something like 4-1. When my iPad informed me at the table that the score was now 7-7 in the eighth, I got right up and went back to the game. I saw an inning and a half of excellent baseball.

But the main thing was this one play in the bottom of the eighth. Not a homerun, but a true baseball play, the kind worth remembering.

Here’s what happened:

There were 2 outs. The go-ahead run, Curaçaoan outfielder Ceddanne Rafaela, was on third. This was the Sox’s chance to go ahead and chalk up a win. But obviously a sacrifice fly wouldn’t bring in that run, with two outs. Alex Bregman, 31, steps up and hits with “the worst swing I took all night,” but pulls a grounder down the line. The Cleveland third-baseman has to lunge toward the line and snag it just as it’s getting by him, then somehow overcome his momentum to turn back for a long throw to first.

Meanwhile, Bregman is chugging. He knows he’s not exactly pinch-runner material at any time, and especially since his quad injury that put him out for a while in the last couple of months. Manager Alex Cora is quite frank with him about his lack of speed. But he knows the stakes, and he pushes with all he’s got, risking that quad.

And he makes it, and Rafaela goes home, and it’s 8-7. Before the inning ends, three more runs are scored, which might minimize the moment in your mind if you’re just looking at the final score. But those extra runs wouldn’t have come if Bregman had not beat out the throw to first. (Here’s video, although I couldn’t find an embed code.)

So of course, I immediately thought of The Slide — slowpoke 1st-baseman Sid Bream’s miraculous run home, just barely beating out Barry Bonds’ throw to the plate, in that instant winning the 1992 pennant for the Braves (you know, that team the MLB won’t let me watch any more). That night, Bream was a year older than Bregman is now.

OK, the stakes weren’t quite as high, but it felt a lot the same to me last night. And don’t dismiss it. It’s September, and that sprint to 1st kept the Sox a hair’s fraction behind the Yankees. They’re both 2.5 games from catching Toronto and leading the AL East (New York is a statistically behind Boston because while the Sox have won one more game, they’ve also lost one more; I don’t know what the Yankees have been doing instead of playing ball games). This is no time to be dropping one to Cleveland just because the usually infallible Garrett Crochet is having a bad night.

So that’s why Bregman ran so fast…

So much for the legendary hero of McNairy County

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The Wikipedia page for Adamsville, TN, features this pic of local boy Buford Pusser’s house.

It’s been so long since Buford Pusser was a household name that this didn’t make all that much of a splash, near as I could tell (maybe it was bigger on TV, which I don’t see). Fifty years ago, it would have been as big nationally as Alex Murdaugh’s crimes — maybe bigger.

Certainly bigger. Alex Murdaugh was a prominent small-town Southern lawyer who murdered his wife and son, among a host of less-shocking crimes. Pusser was a rural Southern sheriff who impressively wielded a big stick in fighting rampant crime in his county, to the point that the bad guys ambushed him and murdered his wife, and Hollywood made him a hero — several times, if you count the two sequels and the made-for-TV movie. Apparently, a TV series as well.

Pauline Mullins Pusser

And now, the authorities say Buford himself killed his wife. This at least has made The New York Times take notice. One wonders how Hollywood will react to the news.

Pauline Mullins Pusser was killed in 1967, and her husband died seven years later. There will be no killer to prosecute, but authorities are pursuing an indictment in the cause of “giving dignity and closure to Pauline and her family and ensuring that the truth is not buried with time.” A good call, I’d say. Called for in this case, if not in others.

“Walking Tall” was something of a national hit in 1973. The NYT cites Variety in saying that it “was made for about $500,000 and earned more than $40 million worldwide.” Not one of the top-grossing films of the year, but impressive nevertheless, given the tiny investment. It reminds me in that regard of “Billy Jack” a couple of years earlier.

It’s hard for me to recall accurately how big a hit is was nationally, because I was living at the time in small-town West Tennessee, where it was a sensation. Of course, my small town was nothing like McNairy County. Millington was just a few miles north of Memphis, and was the home of NAS Memphis (now known as Naval Support Activity Mid-South). I lived on the base. I was a sophomore at Memphis State, but I knew some of the high school kids on base, who attended the local public school. And they were absolutely nuts about “Walking Tall.” Kind of the way kids my age had been about “Billy Jack” in 1971.

This one girl who lived around the corner from us on the base was certainly impressed. I didn’t really know her and don’t recall her name, but I did fall into conversation with her one day in front of her house. I say “conversation,” but I think it was mostly her talking about how wonderful the movie was. So I asked her if she’d like to see it again. She said yes, and I took her to the Millington drive-in that night.

You can forget any sordid imaginings that may conjur — the college kid taking the high school girl to a drive-in. It just seemed a natural thing to do since she was so enthusiastic about the film, and the drive-in was where it was showing.

I sat on my side of the car and she sat way over on hers, with her eyes glued on the screen, rapt. I had felt a bit awkward thinking she might be nervous about this older (like two years, I guess) guy she hardly knew taking her to the drive-in, but that didn’t seem to be a problem. I was not in her thoughts. She was just digging Joe Don Baker up there and all the awesome things he was doing. I’m trying to remember whether her lips moved along with the dialog as she saw it, because it certainly seems likely given she was so fascinated and had seen it before.

I don’t remember interacting with her in any way after that night. There didn’t seem any ground for the establishment of even a platonic friendship. She was only interested in one thing, and it did not lie within my universe of interests.

No matter. I met my wife a couple of months later. The night we met we had a long talk about Jack Kerouac and On The Road. This was a good start, and things got better from there. Did I tell y’all about our big 50th-anniversary celebration with our children and grandchildren last year?

I wonder, though, whether that girl has heard this latest news. I hope she’s not too shaken by it.

Above, I sort of wondered idly how Hollywood would react. Of course, if there is ever a new movie, it won’t be in the same vein at all. It won’t inspire folks across the nation to idolize the ex-professional wrestler who becomes sheriff in a corrupt corner of the countryside and lets no one stop him while he addresses crime by whupping bad guys with his big stick. Or to idolize anyone else.

It will instead be painfully sad. I don’t think I want to see that flick, either…

Joe Don Baker as Pusser in ‘Walking Tall.’

The beauty of knowing where you are

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One nice thing about ebooks is that you can keep them always handy.

I don’t have a temporary relationship with books. I think public libraries are very wonderful things, essential community assets, but I don’t often borrow books from them. If I read a book, and enjoy it or learn something from it or both, I don’t want to give it back. I want to have it handy to refer to, always.

This has led to a good bit of bookshelf-building on my part, but also a gradual turn toward downloading some of my favorite books to my iPad, using the Kindle and iBooks apps. This way, I always have a few of my favorites with me, because that’s where my iPad stays. This enables me to indulge, in quiet moments, my great weakness — rereading books I love. It’s something I can do for five or ten minutes, then move on to something else. And I almost always gain something that I didn’t fully get before.

This morning, at breakfast, it was one I’ve mentioned before — Rose, by Martin Cruz Smith. I’ve praised it before, said some of the same things before, but I promise I’m making my way to a different point today. Above is one of the passages I read this morning. It’s a good reminder of why I’m so into this book. Of course, this has been a forte of Smith’s work ever since Gorky Park. As I’ve said before, of both him and Patrick O’Brian, they are “capable, to an extent I’ve never seen anywhere else, to take their readers to an alien place and time and make them feel like they are really there.”

That passage above helps me to connect closely to Blair with a certain fondness (despite his extremely off-putting personality), because while I lack his skills as a mining engineer and explorer, I have always loved maps myself — even when studying one involved pulling it out of the glove compartment, and then enduring the challenge of trying to fold it back properly when I was done. Now, of course, Google Maps and Google Earth are always right there, the apps ready for reference as I read a book, or serving as a constant guide on my car’s dashboard. Blair would have loved interactive maps.

Today, though, I’m really focusing on something about entirely familiar places rather than exotic ones — although places I wish I knew as well as I know 19th-century Wigan from Smith, and Port Mahon circa 1800 from O’Brian. This is inspired by a paragraph that appears a bit after the one posted above:

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That immediately brings to mind a place where I have have actually been: Wichita, KS, which is where I lived and worked before returning to South Carolina. It’s a city like Columbia in some superficially impressive ways. For instance, it’s located at, and sprawls across, the confluence of two rivers, the Arkansas and Little Arkansas (pronounce “ar-KANSAS,” not “arkansaw”). The place where the rivers came together to form one had been an important gathering point for pow-wows between Indian tribes before the whites arrived. A cultural center sits on the joining delta today. (I’ve witnessed a pow-wow there.)

Wichita is nothing like Wigan, except in this one respect: It is historically sharply divided, by class and culture, by the river at and below the confluence. The West side was like Smith’s miner side: When the city developed in the 19th century, that was where the stockyards, saloons and brothels waited eagerly to welcome exhausted, filthy cowboys who had driven their herds hundreds of miles to get them to the railhead. They had a lot of steam built up when they got there, and Wyatt Earp was among those lawmen trying to keep them in line until they left.

Across the river to the east were the respectable folk — the people who owned those stockyards, saloons and brothels — where they lived comfortable, proper lives with their families, insulated by the river from their rowdy source of income.

An ironic thing about that… we all know that newspaper editors are, or at least do their best to emulate, “liberal elites,” right? Just full of politically correct values. Well, one of the first things I learned about my fellow editors at that paper was that they all lived on the proper, safe, smug East side of the river, largely in a Shandon-like area called College Hill.

All of them but one, a guy named Tom Suchan. I liked Tom, naturally enough. He was a Catholic like me, and had four kids, as I soon would (my fourth was born there, my fifth not until we got here). And he lived as far West as possible while remaining in the city. Across the street from his house there was a wheat field, and nothing else visible beyond it for miles and miles of prairie.

The other editors gave him constant grief for being such an outcast, a wild man beyond the pale. Oh, they did it kiddingly, but I felt the jokes covered something of a real difference between him and them, one that reflected to his credit, in my book.

When I moved to Columbia in 1987, I immediately perceived a similar dynamic. When we had our daily editors’ meetings, I looked around at the dozen or so crowded around the table, and knew that most of them lived in Shandon (while I lived over here on the West side). But a starker difference was that all of them were alumni of USC (I had never encountered such a uniformity at a newspaper). Well, all but one. Tom Priddy (who ironically had almost the same job as Suchan, being over the photographers and artists at the paper) had gone to Clemson. No one ever let him forget — joshingly, of course — what a pariah that made him.

I don’t know where he lived while he was here. But the similarity in the situations was striking.

But there was an important difference. Although I know South Carolina overall so much better than I do Kansas, I can’t sum up the central narrative of Columbia nearly as well as I can that of Wichita. There, it was simple: Cows, the railroad, cowboys and the townspeople who lived off of them. It was hard to forget, with historical reminders such as that Indian cultural center, and the “Cowtown” attraction that was located, of course, on the western side.

I know lots of things about Columbia. By the way, when I use that name, I’m referring to the overall metro area, which is stunningly fragmented, legally and politically — two counties, about 10 separate municipalies, five school districts, and so forth. Wichita has one advantage over that. Despite the historic split, it’s all one city (except from some odd little conclaves similar to, say, Arcadia Lakes. It’s all in one county. And there’s one public school district (although my kids attended a parish school in the large, separate, Catholic system).

Consequently, it’s a community that finds it easier to get its act together. For instance, its riverfront areas were completely and beautifully developed long before I there. Progress has been made here, but it’s been fitful.

Of course, there’s that huge similarity in the Big Split between East and West. And I can give you all sorts of reasons why that alienation exists here. And it’s very long-standing. It has to do with why the first editor of The State was shot and killed by the lieutenant governor in broad daylight, in front of a cop, across Gervais Street from the State House in 1903 — and his lawyers got him office by obtaining a change of venue to across the river, where folks reckoned he had it coming.

But this post is already too long for me to elaborate. I know the division exists, and you know it exists. The difference is that I can’t explain it as simply and starkly as I can the split in Wichita. The causes are more complicated here on the Eastern Seaboard. There are things we know and could explain if we were willing to talk about them, and other things we have trouble fully wrapping our heads around.

I’d like to be able to do that. I’d like to be able to explain it — to myself, to my neighbors, and to outsiders — as clearly as I can explain Wichita (or at least, how it formed).

Can anyone recommend a book that treats this entire community in a way that makes that manageable? The author doesn’t have to be a Patrick O’Brian or a Martin Cruz Smith. Just someone who explains us and the place we live clearly, coherently, accessibly, and most of all accurately.

If y’all don’t know, I’ll check with friends at the libraries on both sides of the river. I don’t check out their books much, but I know what a valuable resource they are…

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It’s artificial, but is it actually intelligence?

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I understand, from what a couple of folks in my family have said, that Gamecocks are playing football today instead of yesterday. Don’t ask me why. Also, don’t ask me why they’re playing in Atlanta when the opponent is Virginia Tech. I don’t wish to know.

But yesterday, my wife told me that my mother — unlike me, a great sports fan — was planning to watch “the game.” She always watches the Gamecock’s games, so I Googled to see where and when that day’s game was being played.

The first thing I got was of course Google’s AI response, a service of which it seems inordinately proud. Here’s what it said:

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Uh… so how does that make sense? Read that mind-boggling bit in the middle: “…the current date is the past.”

How do you figure? In what universe is the date in which we are presently living (observe the date and time stamp at the top of the image) “in the past?”

Apparently, the universe where the algorithm lives.

A human with even moderate sense would have answered simply, “There is no game today.” If that person were a tiny bit smarter, he or she would possibly have added, “Yes, normally they would be playing today, but this time, they’re playing on a Sunday. Here’s why…” At which point it would tell me things I still don’t know yet.

Before we all bow down and start worshiping this new overlord, I appreciate that it takes the trouble to allow us to smirk at it now and then…

Here I go, dusting off my curmudgeon role…

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Yesterday, my iPad was dinging, so I glanced at the lock screen, and saw what you see above.

My reaction was trite. It was highly unoriginal. It was what the writers for a B movie would have written for Walter Brennan to say, or Lionel Barrymore, or maybe Ed Asner in his MTM show period (Lou Grant!). I showed it to my wife saying, “Really? That’s the most important thing going on in the world at this moment?” Yeah, it was a lame response, but I was off my game. It threw me to see these publications prioritizing this news so much: The Boston Globe, The Guardian, The Washington Post… even The New York Times! I guess those were the ones I saw because, well, I don’t have a People app to pump such notifications to me. But still. I felt like I was in yet another sequel to “Freaky Friday,” in which The Gray Lady switched places with, I dunno, Teen Beat.

After a few seconds mildly brooding over it, I forgot about it.

That was, until I saw today where someone I respect personally had tweeted about the news:

… and other people I respect just as much — see Mandy there? — responded in a similar vein. (You can see more of those responses below.)

Now, let me be perfectly clear, my fellow Americans… I do not want anyone to think for a minute that I show you this and say these things in order to criticize these smart people, or hold them up to any kind of ridicule. (Although “Never forget where I was” is what you say about the Kennedy assassination, or Pearl Harbor, if you were around for that. Come on, folks! Now back to what I meant to say…)

It’s rather the reverse. It kinda reminds me that lots of smart, analytical thinkers in this world are better-rounded human beings than I am.

Sometimes I worry about that. Not often, but sometimes. I wondered about it back during my days on the editorial board. All of my associate editors were smart people, and most of them were good at feeling and writing about things that moved so many millions of other humans, but tended to leave me cold. You know, like professional football and 21st-century pop singers (as I’ve previously explained, rock and roll died around 1993, when MTV abandoned its mission of showing music videos 24 hours a day).

For instance, when Princess Diana was killed and the commoners reacted in ways I found peculiar, I was entirely in agreement with Her Majesty the Queen: She kept her distance and did not publicly emote over the death of her former daughter-in-law. “Bloody well right,” I thought. “Her Majesty’s a pretty smart girl. She knows what she’s about.” But my man Tony Blair, exquisitely attuned to the Zeitgeist in his early days as PM, warned her she’d better change her mind or see the end of the monarchy. He was probably right — he usually was. But my gut reaction was with Elizabeth Regina.

But I was the editor of the editorial pages, and I had enough Blair in me to realize we should probably say something — and something far more empathetic than what I was thinking. So… who should write the editorial? It wasn’t going to be me. It had to be one of the people who knew how to “resonate” to the culture of the moment. But someone else on the board volunteered, and really got into the subject, just resonating like crazy. Which I knew I couldn’t do, and didn’t want to do.

Which probably made my colleague who undertood how people felt about the lady and could reflect it back to readers with complete sincerity a better person than I was. I dunno.

When I was younger, I could do that resonating thing. When I was younger, I was sometimes the one guy called upon to do it. At The Jackson Sun back in 1977, the paper’s editorial page editor, having no idea how to react to the death of Elvis (and John Lennon, three years later), came to me — and I was a news guy in those days, not an editorialist. So I knocked out those pieces, and felt honored to have the opportunity.

As you know, I still love pop culture. But I guess I’m picky about it.

I can’t work up excitement about a pop singer to whom I’ve never listened (seems like a sweet young woman, but I don’t even know her songs) and a man who plays a sport I generally ignore (but hey, how about them Red Sox?).

But just as Elizabeth was the queen, Elvis was the King. Even more so, in a way. One E was on the throne by birth and tradition; the other E was raised to that position by the will of the people of the world…

What does Google think email is FOR?

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Do any of y’all get these stupid things? I’m sure you do, if you have gmail. (Or maybe you’ve turned this function off in the settings. But rather than figure out how to do that myself, I prefer to complain about it in a post.)

They don’t really get in my way of doing what I need to do, so I just ignore them when they come up. But each time, for a split second, I wonder what Google is asking me to worry about.

Here’s the situation in which the item you see above popped up this morning: I saw something in the NYT that I thought might interest a prof over at USC with whom I was conversing about the same subject a few days ago. He found it interesting, and almost immediately responded. I started to send him that emoji I wrote about recently, to acknowledge his response and to to vaguely communicate something like, “Yeah, thought you’d like that!”

Anyway, once I started the reply process to do that, I got the above orange warning. Why? I mean, I’d already written to the guy once, which indicates that yes, I am intentionally communicating with him. (Can’t remember whether I got the warning on the first message.)

And yet it still gives me an orange alert. That makes no sense.

Also, what does it mean by “outside your organization?” What organization? I’m a guy sitting here in his home office — which is so disordered that I promise the merest glance would assure you that there is nothing you would call “organization” in this vicinity.

Is it referrring to ADCO, for whom I do some writing and editing? I don’t think so. This was not on my entirely separate ADCO email address, which I keep running at the same time in a different browser. This was within my bradwarthen.com domain — that’s the ending of my address (although it’s really a Gmail account). Well, that’s hilarious! Aside from Bryan Caskey, who kindly watched over the blog while I was in Thailand a decade ago, and a couple of people who’ve helped me with technical stuff over the years, there is no one else on the planet who has ever had an email address ending in bradwarthen.com. To my knowledge, anyway. So, what — it’s going to give me a warning whenever I write to anyone else?

I remember getting something like this warning back when I worked at the paper. It seemed weird to me then, too, although I was working in a building with 500 or so people with addresses ending in thestate.com. I suppose there was someone in the building who used email to communicate only internally, but I can’t imagine who it would be. Obviously not news people. Like me, their job (at least, the reporters’ job) was to communicate with people out there. If they only wrote to their colleages in the building, they were not doing that job. Circulation people had to respond to readers. The finance people had vendors to deal with (I’m guessing). The ad account executives needed to be in touch with advertisers — although maybe they weren’t in this period (which could be a good alternative explanation for why the newspaper business collapsed).

I mean, come on! You need to talk to somebody 20 feet from you, walk over and talk. Or yell from your desk. Email is for instantaneous communication around the globe! And if it’s something confidential, hand it over on paper or a flash drive — or ask the Chief of Control if you can borrow the Cone of Silence for a few minutes.

I suppose there are large organizations in the world where such a warning might be appropriate. Say, the CIA. Or parts of Google, where thousands spend their days dealing with proprietary code. But they’d be few. How many businesses don’t need to communicate with customers?

Does Google just do this in keeping with the same CYA logic that causes sellers of packaged goods to include warnings such as: YO! THIS BOX CONTAINS NOTHING BUT RAT POISON! DON’T EAT IT! You know, to please their attorneys?

Maybe y’all can see the reason these distracting little alerts are necessary, or even slightly advisable, for gmail users in general. If so, please share the explanation…

All the Way with LBJ

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Here’s another movie that should have been on somebody’s list of the best since the turn of the century. I had forgotten about it, then ran across it on HBO and watched it again last night. I was more impressed this time than the first time.

It’s “All the Way,” starring Bryan Cranston as Lyndon Baines Johnson. It covers his first year as president, from the moment JFK was pronounced dead in the hospital in Dallas to LBJ’s stunning victory over Barry Goldwater.

It was technically amazing. Cranston’s embodiment of Johnson, aided by remarkable makeup, made me feel constantly that I was watching and hearing the original man. If anything, Melissa Leo was even more impressive as Lady Bird, although she didn’t have nearly as much screen time.

Also noteworthy: Bradley Whitford as HHH, Stephen Root as J. Edgar Hoover, and Aisha Hinds as Fannie Lou Hamer. Towering above those was Frank Langella’s deft, nuanced portrayal of Senator Richard Russell. (I was less impressed with the portrayals of MLK and, in a bit part, our own Strom Thurmond. Sadly, I’ve yet to see any actor come close to recreating the power of Dr. King’s presence.)

Beyond the technical stuff, since I was out of the country during that year, I learned a lot watching it. Sure, I knew about (or learned later about) the events that were portrayed — the extraordinary exertions to pass the Civil Rights Act, the destruction of the Democratic Party’s Solid South, the deaths of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and much more — I hadn’t fully had the sense that they all happened in that year, when Johnson was trying to establish his legitimacy in the office while also winning an election. With hindsight, I’ve tended to think Goldwater was easy to beat. But not from LBJ’s perspective, with all those other things going on.

I enjoyed “Breaking Bad,” but maybe the best thing about it was that it gave Cranston the celebrity to do something like this. It was made in 2016, and it’s amazing to me that it didn’t make more of a splash (as in, the kind that gets you on a “Top 100” list.) Perhaps because it’s wasn’t available to anyone but subscribers.

If you have access to Max, or whatever you call HBO, watch this right away…

The thing that didn’t happen Sunday night at USC

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‘The umbrella guy: Were these images a cause, or an effect, of the panic?

We were having a family birthday party for one of my kids Sunday night when I got a call from my brother in Greenville. He called to make sure that we knew we shouldn’t venture near the USC campus. There was apparently an “active shooter” situation, and the campus was locked down.

I saw that one person at our party seemed to be about to leave, so I asked my brother to hold on a moment, and I made an immediate announcement to the entire household about the news, suggesting that no one head in that direction. I was very much in a mode that was a sort of cross between “Now hear this!” and “General Quarters!”

But everyone already knew. My wife informed me that everyone had been talking about it at the table. I had missed it competely, which is a frequent occurrence with the state of my hearing.

Anyway, by that time the folks in charge on campus were already stepping down the alert, and within minutes they had given the “all clear.” Not because the “shooter” had been arrested or otherwise eliminated, but because he hadn’t existed.

There were some reported minor injuries, however — people who got hurt in the stampede of students trying to evacuate the area.

He was a creation of the remarkable new technology that we enjoy in the 21st century. No, not AI. You didn’t need that to produce this panic.

I’m talking about such quaint things as Al Gore’s Internet, smartphones with ever-improving cameras, social media, and the resulting ability of practically everyone on the planet to pass information to everyone else on the planet, whether it’s true or not.

Which is all stuff I have enjoyed greatly over the last couple of decades. But I’ve also pointed out how this combination of items is destroying our country, and other countries devoted to liberal democracy. But enough politics; back to the subject.

Of course, this causes people to scoff at the old newspaper guy wishing for the good ole days. Well, let me tell you about the good old days. Over the last day, I was thinking about how this would have unfolded, say, 25 years ago.

Basically, it would not have unfolded. It wouldn’t have happened. Of course, it didn’t happen, but something else did happen — a campus full of thousands of kids, not to mention their folks back home, were scared out of their wits. And some of them got hurt (but not seriously, apparently) in the rush to the exits.

Of course, I thought of this first from the perspective of a newspaperman. Back when such things as daily newspapers existed and thrived, news happened all through the 24 hours, but it only got published once. Back then, when the word of possible shootings went out, reporters would have rushed to the campus, the way they did Sunday night, and reported what they found. And for an hour or so, the whole news structure would be in high gear to meet the challenge. But then, about an hour later, everyone would know it was a load of nothing, and calm down. There might be a story about how everyone got excited and worried for a time, but there would at no time be a story delivered to actual readers crying out about havoc on the campus.

But I’m not fully imagining what would have happened. The thing is, there wouldn’t have even have been a story about the big scare. Why? Because there would have been no scare, for a number of reasons.

First, the images of a harmless-looking guy ambling along carrying an umbrella would not have existed. If you’re young — very young — it might be hard to imagine that. But you see, a mere quarter-century ago, people didn’t photograph everything they saw around them. I was one of the few people who might have done such a thing, because starting in my own college days, I got into 35mm photography in a big way. But I didn’t shoot a tenth of the images I now shoot every day, for the simple reason that film — and the chemicals I needed to develop it and make prints from it — cost money. It also cost a lot of time. Even if you were one of those civilians who dropped off their rolls at the drugstore, it still cost you some time. And unless you went to one of those one-hour places, you wouldn’t be seeing your prints for some days.

But let’s suppose that, being the camera geek I was, I did shoot such images, and somehow made the finished image appear instantly (remember that not even Polaroids were instantaneous, and the quality was awful). And suppose I also had the poor judgment to decide I wanted urgently to share this image, and my wild imaginings, with the world. How would I have done that — physically, technically? And how many people would I have reached? I assure you I had a much greater chance than most of you to get my picture into print, but I’d have to wait some hours before the presses rolled. And after they rolled, there’d be a further wait of hours (usually) before readers beheld it.

And by that time, we would have known for some hours that the pictures showed nothing that needed to be shared with anybody. They would be worthless, and of no interest.

There is value in having time to think, time to assess, time to recognize the truth before something is shouted to the world.

But we’ve lost that precious resource, and I don’t see any way of getting it back again. So in light of the existence of these new technologies, how on Earth are we going to stop driving each other stark, raving mad?

[Editor’s note: After I wrote the above, reporting on this incident has shifted more in the direction of a deliberate hoax, part of a pattern across the country, with less emphasis on innocent mistake. That significantly reduces the role that social media played, but it doesn’t eliminated it, because it doesn’t change the dynamics of the way current technology cause panic to metastasize, far ahead of the ability of reasonable investigation to catch up. (Although authorities did an excellent job of sorting it out as quickly as possible.) Without the technology, there might have been a panic on campus, but not across the country, as occurred in this case. This explanation raises other questions — if the cause of the panic was a couple of false phone calls, what role did the photos of the guy with the umbrella play? Was that just already-panicked students shooting pics of everything they saw and sending them out? I don’t know. In any case, they played a significant role in the widespread stress, based on what I was hearing from various folks following the incident.]

Aren’t ALL dreams stress dreams?

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In some dreams, I’m trying to put out the paper on outdated technology like this, and strugglng to log into systems I used 40 years ago.

I have this vague memory from the psychology classes I took in college that Freud (or someone) described dreams as being about “wish fulfillment?”

Googling just now, I find that my memory was a bit off, but not entirely. And he explained, apparently, that sometimes your dreams had to be interpreted (I suppose by a guy with a couch) for us to see how they involved such satisfaciton. But explaining all that is not my point in this post, so I’m not going to break it down further. I’m just interested in asking this question: Do any dreams involve wish fulfillment?

Do yours ever involve that? I’ve read of people being disturbed because they are awakened from dreams that were so pleasant they hated for them to end. Well, good for them. I don’t have those, at least not in a long time.

Oh, occasionally I have one that might fulfill some people’s wishes, but I generally find something in them to worry about. I wrote about one of those back here.

But mostly, they’re just about stress. They’re not nightmares, not the kind of things where you wake up in a sweat and are afraid to go back to sleep. I occasionally had one of those when I was very young, but that was decades ago. No, these are just stressful, in a way that exceeds the stress levels of everyday life, but not by much. Mostly, they’re just irritating, something I could do without (as least I think so — perhaps they serve some purpose that eludes me, lacking the Freudian “interpretation”).

I’ve touched on this topic before, but I return to it now because I was particularly irritated last night, but it’s hard to describe why — beyond the fact that they woke me up repeatedly, and when I went back to sleep, I’d return to the same stupid dream (which didn’t have much plot, beyond having constant trouble performing a particularly silly task). That was unusual, and frankly I think it was drug-related. I’ve got a cold, and trying stave off chest congestion, I took something we had bought in Amsterdam when I had mild COVID during our Europe trip last year, because we couldn’t find the more familiar guaifenesin.

I’m not taking that again, at least not at night.

But that still leaves all those other, “normal,” every-night stress dreams.

So what am I talking about here? Well, there are several categories, most of them themes that I’ve visited many times:

One huge category involve riffing on the common dream that you’re in college, and it’s time for the final exam, and you’ve never been to the class, and you don’t dare ask anyone, so late in the game, where the class is. For me, these seem to be only a slight exaggeration of my first couple of years in college. But I hear almost everyone who’s been to college has them. And there are variations, such as: I’m at a conference that my work sent me to, and it’s the last night before i fly home, and it occurs to me that while I have socialized with the other attendees in the evenings, I haven’t been to a single work session.
This may occur more than any other sort — so often that I think my lack of imagination regarding regarding plot is worse than Hollywood’s. These are newspaper dreams, which is understandable. But I haven’t had a newspaper job in 16 years. I’m aware of that in the dream, but the plot twist is that I’ve been asked to come back (frequently to the most stressful paper I ever worked at, in Wichita) and do stuff I used to do. Specifically, I’ve been asked to work late nights or weekends, which means I’m entirely responsible for everything that happens. And things don’t go well. I get way behind on reading all the copy; baffling technical problems arise, etc. Routine stuff, but it’s all happening on the night I’m in charge, and I’ve still got to get the paper out, as always. Anyway, I know exactly where all this comes from; I just don’t know why I’m still having them.
Variations on details of those previous categories. For instance, it’s often the night before I have to return home from a trip, and my hotel room is unbelievably strewn with enough clothes to fill the Belk men’s department, and most are dirty, and I can’t figure out how to pack them. Or speaking of technical problems, some dreams are about nothing else: I need to look up something simple, that would be easy in waking life, but I can’t get to the right page on any device. Which is weird, because all my life I’ve loved technology, and helped my coworkers learn it. Knowing that makes it even more frustrating….

That last word might be more apropos than “stress.” I should refer to a lot of them as “frustration dreams.” But that doesn’t describe all of them, so I’ll stick to “stress” as a catchall.

I’m not looking for diagnosis, advice or a cure. I can live with these things; I’d just rather not.

And I’m wondering: Does everybody have these, all the time? If you have satisfying dreams about wonderful things, cheer me up by telling me about them. No, don’t. I might start having “envy” dreams…

100 best of the century? Let’s cut that down to a Top Five

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The New York Times tried to sneak a “best movies list” by me last month, and almost got away with it — until “The Daily” hipped me to it a few days ago on the NYT Audio app.

They billed it rather grandly as “THE 100 BEST MOVIES OF THE 21st CENTURY.”

Seems they’re pushing things a bit, don’t you think? I mean this century just got started, right? This is 2025, not 2100, or even 2099. Don’t ya think Hollywood might slip in one or two good flicks sometime over the next 75 years? I certainly hope so.

But humans are impatient. Anyway, some of us might not be around in 2099 (maybe even you, or that old guy over there). So they just went ahead.

I would not have been tempted to do that. I mean, if this first 25-year period had contained a 1939, or even a 1967 — a year that just put all others to shame — I would have. But while there a few good pictures here and there, you have to lower your standards a good bit to come up with. It hasn’t been what you’d call a creatively inspired period. It’s not just with regard to movies; look at all the sad pop music since about 1993. The recent films are a bit more inspired than that, but not by much.

A top 25 would have been more doable without lowering your aim. I’m stretching the point by going full Nick Hornby — get it down to five! But you’ll see from my Honorable Mentions list that I could easily have settled on 25.

Especially if I’d seen all the pictures.

A big disclaimer: In this quarter-century of COVID, streaming to big HD screens at home, and ridiculous ticket prices, I don’t go to a lot of movies — whereas in the last century, I made a point of seeing everything that might have made such a list. Not anymore. Here are a few that are on this NYT list that I very much wanted to see, and hope to see soon — provided they come to one of my streaming services and I don’t have to pay extra. (Actually, a couple of those have done that, and I started to watch but lost interest for the moment. I’ll probably try again, though.) Here they are:

“Parasite” This tops practically any list you see — if compiled by people who saw it, of course. So I need to make the effort.
“Get Out” I love Key and Peele, and people went wild over Jordan Peele directorial debut, but I haven’t seen it yet. I haven’t tried hard partly because it seems to kinda fit in a horror-movie slot, and I mostly don’t like those, but there’s more going on than that. Has to be, given who’s involved.
“Y tu mamá también“ I’ve wanted to see that, but it has a sort of sexploitation vibe that makes me feel like it’s not quite the thing, especially with that disturbing title. But hey, it’s in Spanish! So that’s good, right? It’s educational — brush up a bit on my vocabulary!
“Lost in Translation” Bill Murray! How have I missed it?
“Whiplash” The one about the young drummer with the nightmare teacher.

There are others like that. For, instance, I watched a few minutes of both “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “The Zone of Interest.” I didn’t get far with either. I was tired, late at night, and didn’t have the energy for “Everything.” On the other, I just didn’t feel up to dealing with such moral horror mixed with the banality that so often comes up in dealing with Nazis. I need to try again on both.

OK, here’s my Top Five:

“The Departed” No question here. I go back and forth on whether “Goodfellas” or “Mean Streets” is Scorcese’s best ever, but there’s no question that this one is his best of the new century.
“Almost Famous” Lots of fun, extremely engaging, very polished, and a fantastic evocation of an era. Definitely the best thing Cameron Crowe’s ever done. And the cast! Kate Hudson and Patrick Fugit were the soul of it, but look at the performances of Frances McDormand, Billy Crudup and the intriguing Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs! And let’s not forget (I won’t), this was the first time I ever saw Zooey Deschanel…
“The Lives of Others” The best German film I’ve seen this century, even as good at “Downfall” was. All you libertarians on the left and right who think government is such a big, intrusive meanie need to watch this. (Of course, we could get there ourselves, with another year or two of Trump.)
“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” So good, and so hard to compare to anything else. What category do you put it in? Well, you don’t.
“Little Miss Sunshine” I’d heard this was good, but was blown away beyond expectation when I saw it. What a cast! Another great job by Alan Arkin, of course, but you can say the same for Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear, plus the little girl at the center of it, pursuing her dream. This was the first time I ever saw Paul Dano, and he made a great impression.

Honorable Mention, in no particular order:

“Superbad” Excellent, often too-true, story about high school boys. Don’t watch it with your parents, though.
“Moneyball” This was almost in the Top Five, but got squeezed. It’s the best sports movie yet, though. Favorite scene? When Billy’s sitting around with his staff deciding what players to go after, and nobody wants to go for Billy’s plan. They all seemed very real. Also, another great performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman.
“No Country for Old Men” Not a favorite, but I was super impressed by Javier Bardem, as perhaps the creepiest killer I’ve ever seen on film.
“Borat” I laughed way harder at “The Dictator,” but this was the one that broke new ground. At the same time, a lot of things I didn’t like about it.
“Spotlight” Excellent newspaper movie. Who knows whether we’ll ever see another, except as a “period” story.
“Gravity” Excellent space movie. Not as great as “Apollo 13” or “The Right Stuff,” but good enough for this century. I like the contrast between the feminism (female astronaut), and the old school ultimate-hero role of her male crewmate.
“Gladiator” Love it. Watched it lots of times. Great story, well told. But a bit too far from historical realism.
“Michael Clayton” Saw this years ago and was impressed, but don’t remember the details for why.
“Minority Report” Great promise as a premise, largely fulfilled.
“The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” I’m not a huge Tolkien fan (he’s good, but perhaps I read this too late in life to become a devotee the way some kids do), but I thought this did a good job with the admittedly rich content.
“Melancholia” A real oddball of a film, in tone as well as concept. How would you live if the Earth was about to be wiped out, and you knew exactly when?
“O Brother, Where Art Thou?” A lot of creative fun with a great cast and excellent dialogue, ranging from Holly Hunter’s persistent mispronunciation of “bona fide” to the KKK guy saying “They ain’t even old-timey!” Best acting: Stephen Root as the blind radio station manager, who pays the boys to sing into a can.
“A Serious Man” I remember being very impressed by this. But it’s been awhile, and I forget the details. Might have to watch it again.
“Wall-E” Another brilliant work of animation.
“Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” I was a bit shocked to see this on the list, but hey, it was funny. I didn’t realize that the first time I saw it, because I hadn’t yet learned to appreciate Will Ferrell. Later, it was hilarious.
“Memento” Yeah, the backwards story. I definitely need to see that again, and not just to see “Trinity” from “The Matrix” again. I’m watching a show on Britbox in which Guy Pearce brilliantly portrays Kim Philby, and I want to go back and see all his stuff.
“The Hurt Locker” Speaking of Guy Pearce, who throws the audience a major curveball at the beginning… A great depiction of a man addicted to danger that most of us would want to avoid. Best performance? David Morse as the disturbingly enthusiastic colonel. Of course, he’s always great.
“Ocean’s 11” Way, way better than the Rat Pack original. Best evocation of cool: George Clooney, fresh out of prison, riding up the escalator in Vegas in his new duds.

Missing. I compiled my lists from the ones the NYT published (the main one from movie people, and a second one from readers). But there were some that did not appear on those lists, and should have. Not that they were all great, but they were better than quite a few that did make the lists. Here are a few that come to mind… oh, dang! I can’t find where I put my notes on that. OK, off the top of my head:

“Minions” I don’t care at all for its predecessors in the series, or the sequel. But this origin story may be the funniest, most engaging animated movie I’ve ever seen.
“Zero Dark Thirty” How can you have “Hurt Locker” and not this?
“High Fidelity” The film based on the novel that got me started on “Top Five” lists! I hated that they moved it from London to Chicago, but it worked, brilliantly! Since our wonderful country is falling apart anyway, maybe Congress should pass a law forbidding anyone from compiling any kind of “best of” list and leaving this out.
“Shanghai Noon” The best by Jackie Chan. Owen Wilson, too. If you don’t love it, your “winging it” privileges should be revoked.
“Unbreakable” Best superhero movie ever, largely because it never mentions superheroes. The ordinary protagonist just slowly realizes there’s something exceptional about him.
“Black Hawk Down” The “Saving Private Ryan” of the new century, which does a good job of relating recent history.
“A Knight’s Tale” Just a lot of pure fun. Best bits: When a medieval scene suddenly breaks out with a modern pop song.
“The Bourne Identity” A lot of people praise the novel. I’ve read it, and this was way better.
“American Splendor” Just to throw in something relatively obscure, and to celebrate Paul Giamatti.
“Runaway Jury” Possibly the best of the John Grisham flicks. Alas, one of the last really good performances by John Cusack. (He was OK in “Love and Mercy,” but Paul Dano was better.) Why doesn’t he get better roles?

OK, I’ll stop. I cheated a bit. After typing the first two, I started glancing over lists of movies by year to pad out my list. I only got as far as 2003.

So maybe my whole premise was wrong. Perhaps it is time to do a “Best 100 of the Century” list.

I’ve gotta stop now before I go back and start amending my Top Five list, after being reminded of the missing films. I’ve spent enough time on this.

We need more Christian art like THIS

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Or perhaps I should say Judeo-Christian. The Christian faith is built on the faith of the rabbi named Jesus, who continued to teach values already clearly and repeatedly set out in the Old Testament:

“You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”
Exodus 23:9 (ESV)

You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Deuteronomy 10:19

“You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
Leviticus 19:34 (ESV)

‘Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.’ Then all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’
Deuteronomy 27:19 (NIV)

You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the aliens who reside among you and have begotten children among you. They shall be to you as citizens of Israel; with you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel.
Ezekiel 47:22

Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.
Zechariah 7:9-10

And here’s one from the New, just as an example:

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
Matthew 25:35

There are a number of other such commands, admonitions and illustrations of the idea in scripture, but you get the idea. That is, you certainly should have gotten the idea by now.

Anyway, this all came to mind when I saw this in The New York Times late last week:

St. Patrick’s Cathedral to Unveil Mural Celebrating City’s Immigrants

That’s supposed to be a free link. Let me know if it doesn’t work for you. And either way, here’s how it starts:

At a time when immigration is a bitterly divisive issue, with the Trump administration ramping up arrests and deportations, St. Patrick’s Cathedral will unveil a huge mural next month depicting the arrival of immigrants to New York City in the 19th century and the present.

“It’s a celebration of a city that has been built by immigrants and where immigrants have been welcomed,” Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, who is also the archbishop of New York, said in an interview in his official residence adjoining St. Patrick’s. The first major art commission in the cathedral since bronze doors were installed at the Fifth Avenue entrance in 1949, it will be dedicated during a mass on Sept. 21.

Roughly 21 feet tall, the mural, of 12 large panels, was painted by the Brooklyn-based artist Adam Cvijanovic (pronounced svee-YAHN-o-vitch), who titled it (with a slight word adjustment) after a song popularized by Elvis Costello, “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding.” Along with immigration, he depicted a historic event dear to the cardinal’s heart: the Holy Apparition at Knock, in which 15 people in the Irish village of that name in 1879 reported seeing the Virgin Mary, two saints and the Lamb of God, a symbol of Jesus Christ, in a vision that lasted for about two hours on a wall of the parish church.

Oh, wait! Cvijanovic? Obviously one a them foreigners, right? Well, not exactly. It’s worse, to many who would object: He was born in Cambridge, Mass. His mom’s people have been here since the 17th century. But hey, his dad is Serbian (and an associate of that Bauhaus dude Gropius!), so make what you can of that…

Back to the topic…

The artist was chosen for his realistic style. “The rest of them were a little too Picasso-like,” Dolan told the NYT. “I wanted something that people could look at and see the Holy Apparition at Knock, and not that you’d have to be on LSD to figure it out.”

Amen to that, too.

The work celebrates the Irish, of course — such as cops who saved people on 9/11 — but the cardinal with the Gaelic name wanted a lot more than that, and he got it. And of course, the many immigrants still trying to come here despite this administration’s efforts to close our nation’s welcoming arms are represented along with those from previous generations.

This mural is a sort of farewell gesture from Dolan, who you may recall, has addressed this topic before:

A week before his birthday, he had strongly criticized an assertion by Vice President JD Vance that the Roman Catholic bishops were in favor of immigration because the church profited from resettlement funds. He called it “inaccurate,” “scurrilous” and “very nasty.” In fact, he said, the church loses money “hand over fist” in caring for immigrants.

After that incident, the artist was worried that the archdiocese might want to back off from the topic a bit. But “the opposite happened,” he told the NYT. “They said, ‘We want to go right ahead.”

Good. Because it’s hard to imagine a more powerful and relevant way to express what the faith is about.

Nothing against old-style art, much of which I very much appreciate. In the article, the artist mentions Caravaggio. I like his work very much. We have a huge print of this masterpiece hanging prominently in a hall at my own parish. I also like some modern work, such as Henry Ossawa Tanner’s The Annunciation.

But maybe we’re overdue for a new approach. I have a very strong impression that we don’t necessarily need a lot more depictions of this or that event described in the Bible. People have seen those, and know the stories. Maybe we don’t need another Adoration of the Magi right now. What I believe we do need is more art that helps people get what our faith is actually about.

This is a wonderful step in that direction.

Present-day immigrants depicted with a native of Italy who became the first American saint — Mother Cabrini.

Looking at the ‘good side’ of my college transcript

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My big finish in the summer of ’75…

You don’t want to see certain portions of my college transcript. Or rather, I don’t want you to see them.

I had what you might call a very slow start in higher education. When I left Hawaii to travel all the way to Columbia to attend USC, I thought I was ready, and had everything I needed. I was thinking about that in recent days as I heard from folks with young kids enduring the herculean mess of moving them into their dorms for this fall semester. My parents, who in any case were back in West Honolulu, didn’t have to help me move enough stuff to furnish a small house (which seems to be the fashion today) into the Honeycombs. I just had the three things I had brought with me on the plane: my Dad’s old overseas bag, my tabletop stereo and a box full of record albums.

But at 17, I wasn’t as self-sufficient as I thought. For instance (just to keep it simple) I initially thought one of the best things about being off at college was that nobody made me get up in the morning to go to class. Turns out that was one of the worst things for a guy like me, since the people who ran the classes still expected me to show up, and would hold me accountable when they handed out grades. Who knew? Nobody told me. The only thing I remember from my freshman orientation was when the guide taught us guys what it would take to make the ball atop the Maxcy monument spin. Some of you older guys no doubt know the answer, but they probably don’t teach that anymore at orientation. If they did, they’d get canceled.

Enough about USC, which I only attended for that one wreck of a semester. I want to reflect on Memphis State, or at least on the more positive aspects of my time there. This came up because I’ve been thinking lately about taking advantage of the senior deal on tuition to take a course or two at USC, and the Gamecocks want a transcript. Turns out that you can’t order a transcript from Memphis State anymore. You have to get it from a place called “the University of Memphis.” But I sent off for one a couple of days ago, and had it back in my email almost immediately.

It contained good news and bad news. The bad news was the lingering effect of the mess I’d made in Columbia. That was because I had crammed my schedule that one semester at USC with honors and upper-level courses, but (thank goodness) had taken them on a “credit/no credit” basis. The deal was that a “no-credit” didn’t count against my GPA. But out on the Tennessee frontier they’d never heard tell of such a thing, so Memphis State carried them as Fs, until I finally spoke to the right people and got it fixed. That gave me a chance to climb out of the hole.

But just a chance. Unfortunately, my climbing those first couple of years in Memphis was not what you’d call spectacular. Lots of Cs, and a couple of times worse than that. I was still, by habit, a slacker.

Dang. I promised in my headline to show you the good side, and I’m still dwelling on what went before. Well, here we go: the good bits…

Then I met my wife. That first semester that we were dating, I picked up one of her habits. She called it “studying.” I had heard of it — I even knew some people who did it — but I had never seen it as a needful thing back in high school, and had not changed my ways. But she did it like it was a normal thing, and since I was hanging out with her so much, I just fell into the same habit. I didn’t turn into a grind or anything, I just studied some.

The results were rather remarkable. I do recommend it to young people, if they can find the time. (And I should say that none of my grandchildren should ever emulate the shameful record of their grandfather earlier in his academic career.)

It took me awhile to get the hang of it, and the occasional C still cropped up in the first couple of semesters. But my last spring semester, and the crammed summer schedule I took on that last summer so I could graduate in August, showed the kind of work I should have been doing in Columbia back in 1971. You can see the part covering the summer above.

Sorry about that one B. My whole time since I had declared a journalism major I had been avoiding the two required editing courses taught by one L. Dupre Long. Mr. Long was the adviser to the lab newspaper The Statesman, which he ran with an iron fist. I never went near The Statesman until I was required to when I took those two courses under him. I had my existence over on the independent, relatively anarchic student paper, The Helmsman. We ran a student-drawn comic strip with a character named “El Depraved,” who was sort of a villain, or at least an object of ridicule. For some reason, this led at one point to my being invited to visit the office of the department chair, who gave me a stern talking-to, but probably not as stern as Leon (as Mr. Long’s friends called him) would have liked.

I took them both over the two summer terms, which were much shorter than regular semesters, thereby diminishing my suffering.

Anyway, the grading in the editing classes was highly subjective, and Leon just wasn’t going to give me an A in that first course. On the second one, he relented. But instead of posting it on the door of his office, he gave me the news in a face-to-face meeting that seemed to last hours, and it was mostly about how I was full of potential but too much a slacker to show it, and I sat there in agony because I knew that had once been true, but I also knew my work in his class could not be faulted, so I sat there nodding and thinking “Alright already! Just tell me the grade!”

Finally he came out with it, and it was an A, as you can see. That was the last grade I learned about before graduation, and it pulled my cumulative GPA to exactly 3.0. I walked out with the first B average I’d had in my entire college career, and in those days (before the grade inflation of the 21st century), that was enough to graduate cum laude.

But the programs for graduation had already been printed, so I never had any proof of it I could show to anyone until now. So I’m glad I got this transcript, because there it is.

Similarly, I had never declared a second major in history. But sometime toward the end of that last spring semester, I realized I had taken so many history electives that I was only six hours away from meeting the requirements of such a major. So I crammed two of them into the summer, one of them in the three-week mini session before the two summer sessions, which turned out to be one of my favorite courses ever. (“US SO IN HST TO 1865” on the transcript refers to “U.S. Social and Intellectual History to 1865.”)

I like to tell people that I majored in history, because let’s face it — journalism isn’t an academic subject. It’s a trade for literate people to engage in. You learn it working in a newsroom, not sitting in a classroom. And I want to seem at least somewhat educated. So I tell people I also majored in history, but I always explain that they would probably find no written proof of that anywhere.

I always say that because to me, one of the most amazing news stories you ever see — and you see it quite often — is about idiots who brag to the world, for instance, that they were Marines and received commendations for valor in the last war — when some aspect of that, or all of it, is a lie. And of course, the first reporter who checks it out discovers that and tells the whole world. It has always astounded me that anyone would be stupid enough to think he could get away with something like that. I would never do anything like that — not only because it’s wrong, but because I would expect to get caught.

But now, I don’t have to attach asterisks when I tell people about my history major, or my at-the-buzzer 3.0. Which is nice. I know neither is a major achievement, but I see them as better than nothing. Having done nothing at one point in my youth, I know.

This is great. I should have sent off for this transcript years ago…

Listen up! ‘Pant’ is what a dog does. We wear ‘pants.’

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Really, my headline pretty much says what I mean to say. But of course, I’ll elaborate a bit.

The above ad was in an email I received this morning from The Boston Globe. And I’ve had it with these. I’ve been seeing such ads for a decade or two now, and I’ve reached the end of my tolerance.

First, do any of you refer to what you’re wearing between your waist and ankles “a pant?” Or has a friend asked, “Hey, what do you think of my new pant?”

No, you don’t. And no, no one has (I hope).

This is exclusively something that comes out of the clothing industry, or perhaps the advertisers who tout clothing for that trade. It’s not anything any of us out here who wear the things say, near as I can tell.

We call them “pants.” And Italians say i pantaloni. Plural. Speakers of Spanish say los pantalones. Again, plural. OK, so the Dutch for some reason use the singular form (de broek). Fortunately, when I was in Amsterdam, everyone refused to speak Dutch to me, so I was spared the pain of hearing people say such a thing in real life. Maybe they do it because of the influence the textile industry once had on the country.

As for the industry, I suppose they say it because to them, a pair of pants is a singular product more than something they wear. It’s one item, and if they used a plural term it might confuse their accountants.

But I don’t know, and I don’t care, why they do it. I just want this to stop. Now. Before somebody starts wearing “an underpant” beneath the aforementioned….

Amazon occasionally does the same…

Older than the Pontiff himself

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Who says ya gotta be old to be the Pope?

I mentioned that Paul DeMarco had inspired me to reflect on his latest post with a separate post of my own — or “perhaps more than one.”

This will be the second, more tangential, such post.

Paul shared this brief anecdote:

In another bookstore mentioned above, the name of which I shall not reveal, I was speaking to the owner about the new pope. The owner is a bit older than I and said, “I‘ve always thought of popes as very old men… but I just realized… I’m older than the pope!”

This caused me to check Wikipedia, and find out that I am indeed older than Pope Leo XIV. Not by a lot — we would have been in school at the same time; I was just a couple of years ahead. So obviously popes are not “very old men.” Of course, I realized long ago that this was the case. It was fairly obvious when the startlingly young Pope John Paul II came along. He was only 58, and obviously in his prime. I had just turned 25 when he took the chair of Peter, but you didn’t have to be older than he to perceive his youth to be exceptional.

But then Benedict and Frances were obviously up there, with Benedict retiring at 85, and Frances dying at 88. So at 69, Leo stands out a bit, but not the way John Paul did.

And like the man in the bookstore, I find it slightly jolting on a personal level to suddenly be older than the pope. But not as much as when I realized, back in September 2023, that I was older than three of my grandparents had lived to be. That was when I was the same age as Pope Leo.

And not as much as the moment in 1994, when David Beasley was meeting with the editorial board to seek our support in his bid for the governor’s office, and one of our members (technically an emeritus member, I suppose you’d call him) brought up the candidate’s extreme youth. I realized in that moment that he was only about 37 (I say “about” because I don’t recall the date of the interview). I was 40, and in that moment I was quite shocked that someone younger than I was seeking such an elevated office. The presumptuous puppy! That was a bit of a personal landmark.

That experience was repeated when Barack Obama came along. I mean, a young governor was one thing, but president of the United States? Come on. For reference: Obama moved to Hawaii about the time I was graduating from high school — but he didn’t graduate (from the posh Punahou across town from my public school) until eight years later. (That didn’t keep me from backing him for the Democratic nomination in 2008, although I went with the far more experienced John McCain in the general.)

Life can be described in many ways, but one way would be as a process of constantly modifying one’s sense of time. So having a pope roughly, but not quite, my age is not the surprise it might once have been. Governor, president, pope… there seems to be a pattern here, and I’m getting used to it.

And obviously, Pope Leo is not a “very old man,” even though he’s the age of the oldest of those three grandparents who did not live to be as old as I was when I wrote this. One’s own perception of human longevity is not the only thing that changes over time. Those three grandparents passed away in the 1950s, ’60s, and 1971. We lost my last grandparent in 1985, when she was 95. My father was three weeks short of 93 when he died in 2021. My mother is still very strong, physically and mentally, at 94. So it’s hard for me to think of myself — or the pontiff — as “very old” yet.

Today, we’re remembering my father-in-law, whose 102nd birthday this would have been, if we hadn’t lost him at 86. God bless you, Mr. Phelan, and thank you so much for all the ways you blessed us in your long life….

All Good Books: the best-named business in town

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On the previous post, Paul DeMarco mentions All Good Books in Five Points. I wish to elaborate on that topic a bit.

My relationship with that store began before it existed. Several years back, my daughter gave my wife and me some gift cards to Odd Bird Books, which existed in the tiny Arcade Mall downtown. When we heard it was about to close, and we still hadn’t used our gift cards, we made a point of visiting that shop for the first and last time.

We picked up several books that day. I believe one of them was the third book in Edmund Morris’ trilogy, Colonel Roosevelt. But the main thing I remember about that visit was how very impressed I was by what was being offered in that diminutive space.

The shop was only about the size of my home office — maybe smaller. So there were not that many books. But the place possessed a virtue I’d never encountered in any bookstore, whether independent or chain — more or less every single book was one that I would like to read, if my life should last so long. It was like Ben Adams, the proprietor, had been asked to collect every book he wanted to have with him on the proverbial desert island — and he happened to have excellent taste.

In other words, all good books. No junk at all. There wasn’t room.

So when Ben teamed up with Clint and Jenna Wallace to open a new store, naturally it bore that name (although they didn’t get it from me — see the Hemingway quote in the picture below).

And it lives up to that name. Of course, since it’s bigger and there are many more books, they’re not all books that I particularly want to read. But we should consider that I’m not the only reader in the world (or even here in Columbia), and different strokes and all that.

Still, I’m deeply impressed by the selections. And if I happen to want something that’s not on the shelves (an astoundingly high percentage of what I seek is on the shelves), the folks behind the counter will quickly get it for me. And I’d certainly rather do that than order it from Amazon.

Oh, and there’s always coffee and other refreshments. And you may think this is odd to mention (you’ll understand if you’ve spent huge amounts of time in bookstores), but a very nice restroom. That’s essential, don’t you know.

I hope to see you at All Good Books sometime. It’s located at 734 Harden St. Now that Yesterday’s is gone, it’s my one motivation to visit Five Points.

DeMarco: Why Independent Bookstores Shouldn’t Go the Way of Blockbuster

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The Op-Ed Page

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

One could argue that independent bookstores are a luxury. You can summon books to your doorstep with a few clicks, sometimes the same day. Or, if you have an E-reader, in seconds. So why do bookstores continue to survive?

As Blockbuster faded in the 2000s, I worried that bookstores might suffer the same fate. But here they are still, and they seem to be making a resurgence. According to the American Booksellers Association, more that 200 new indie bookstores opened in 2024. We are seeing a similar renaissance locally. Since 2023, three new bookstores have opened in the Pee Dee – Jack’s Books in Florence, Foxes Tales in Marion, and Our Next Chapter in Conway. It’s worth considering why.

First, I think, are the owners. Their identities are palpable within the walls. You feel as if you are walking into an extension of their homes. I can tell you the name of the owners of almost every independent bookstore that I have frequented more than once: Gwen at Foxes Tales, Jack (Ok, that’s a gimme), Wendy and her daughter Olivia at Litchfield Books, and Clint at All Good Books in Columbia. I fondly remember Rhett and Betty Jackson who founded the Happy Bookseller in Columbia which closed in 2008. And I look forward to meeting Bob and Lisa Martire at Our Next Chapter, whom I called for this column.

Second is the product itself. There is just something about books: their personalities on a shelf, their weight in your hands, the curve of the pages, the smell of the bindings. We connect with books in a different way from the way we do with VHS tapes or DVDs. Is an E-reader more economical and practical? Undoubtedly. But after a day full of screens, can you find repose and escape in another screen? Many of us cannot.

Third is the community bookstores create. If you are new in town, where would you go to meet people? Church used to be the answer, but less so now, particularly for young people. Bars and clubs, of course. If I were young, I would head to the local coffee shop first, and the bookstore next. Shopping for books is different from shopping for groceries. You don’t always have a plan, and you aren’t focused on getting home to cook dinner. People relax in a bookstore; their minds are open. Children peruse, curious and wide-eyed.

In the past month I have had the following conversations in a bookstore: As I was entering Litchfield Books, a woman I had never met engaged me in a five-minute conversation after I bent down to greet her dog. Inside, I had a long chat with Wendy and Olivia about books, bookstore dogs, bookstore swag (I love a good bookstore T-shirt and baseball cap) and the possibility of adding a coffee bar (I voted a loud “Yes!” to coffee). In another bookstore mentioned above, the name of which I shall not reveal, I was speaking to the owner about the new pope. The owner is a bit older than I and said, “I‘ve always thought of popes as very old men… but I just realized… I’m older than the pope!”

I met a new bookstore friend recently during a trip with my wife, Debbie, to Decatur, Georgia, for a wedding. Debbie is a nurse but could have been a librarian. She was always ready with a fun, age-appropriate bedtime story for me to read to our children. That was precious time, with a little head against each shoulder.

When she saw that the wedding venue was near a children’s bookshop called Little Shop of Stories, we knew we had to visit. Which brings us to the last reason why we can’t let bookstores go. Every one has a vibe, an ambience, much like a restaurant. At Little Shop, soft Saturday afternoon sunlight flooded though the glass façade into a welcoming space that was filled with perhaps a dozen patrons milling and talking. A father and daughter sat in a chair as he read to her.

When it came time to pay, the young woman at the counter mistakenly input my transaction as a credit rather than a charge. When I discovered the error on Monday, I called and spoke with my new friend, Heather, at Little Shop, who straightened it out. She was lovely; she was kind; we laughed. It was the best customer service call I suspect I will ever have. A few days later, a care package arrived with a Little Shop mug, a tote bag, and a half dozen books.

Take that, Amazon! Yes, you will pay slightly more at an independent bookstore. But we have already made this bargain with coffee shops. We understand that we are paying too much for the liquid in the cup. But that’s not all we are buying. We are renting a small portion of the shop, that favorite table where we like to sit. We are maintaining a relationship with the shop owner (Hi Liz at Groundout and Mel at Bear Bar) or our favorite barista that would end if the shop closed.

We have a choice. We can pay the minimum and have the lonely convenience of books at our doorstep or on our screen. Or we can choose a better way. We can support a small business that provides livelihoods for its staff and weaves a beautiful thread into the fabric of a neighborhood. Find an independent bookstore, and you’ve found a place that cares about its future.

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

Your Open Thread for Monday, August 4, 2026

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I hope the Boston Globe won’t mind my using this. I’m trying to create more Globe subscribles.

Remember when I published one of these — or earlier on, a Virtual Front Page — pretty much every day? If you do, you’re showing your age, because it’s been awhile.

But here’s one for today, anyway…

Yankee beaches — Since a lot of y’all are probably at the beach, and bemoaning the fact that there’s not enough room to walk, be glad you’re not up north. It’s getting ridiculous up there with the tent cities being set up everywhere. See the picture above. My daughter who was in Rhode Island last week said she saw a lot of that on Block Island. Why am I sharing this? Because I enjoy news that makes S.C. look good. We don’t get enough of that.
You are contaminated — This is a tad depressing — talking about how such things as plastics permeate our bodies and those of all living things on the planet. But it’s a moment of nostalgia for me. I remember the old days when we worried more about old-fashioned pollution than climate change, which sometimes seems like the only ecological problem young folks know about.
Your choices for governor — How bad can they get? Well, Nancy Mace just made her campaign official, so… Not bad enough for ya? Well, consider that Ralph Norman has also raised his absurdly unqualified hand. I was glad to see that Pam Evette was running, because it lets us know she’s still among the living — our Gov Lite is so invisible that I tend to think of her as the Ghost Who Walks. I don’t know Josh Kimbrell, but that alone would dismiss him from my consideration. The only Republican running with anything like credible credentials is Alan Wilson. But that still puts the GOP one viable candidate ahead of Democrats. Perhaps things will improve. Perhaps not.
Joy in Beantown — This is the thing that most motivated me to post an Open Thread. I wanted to say something before the moment passed. The weekend just past was a great one at Fenway. The Red Sox are now ahead of the Yankees in the AL East, and only 3 games behind the leading Blue Jays. And I’m digging it, whether you are or not.
This isn’t the same Democratic Party as Trump’s first term — I posted this just to react to the headline by saying, “Yeah, crushing defeat can do things to you.” I probably won’t read the rest of the story. Y’all can tell me if there are any surprises. I haven’t seen anything in politics to surprise me since last year. I suppose I could have said what I’ve already said frequently in recent months: “Ya think?”

Thank the Lord for this brief respite