Putting the THE in THE Past

Not sure if this counts as “living in the past,” but I seem to be more and more in touch with my Salem State College (now University) friends the further I get from graduation.

In my case, I suppose the trend is more pronounced because I disappeared soon after the walk. First to Maine’s Canadian border for a few months, and then for a full Prodigal Son stint on the Dakota Prairie. Not just places where I knew no one, but where no one I knew would go.

That’s 53 years, so you’d think there’d be considerably less of us around. And you would be right. Come to think of it, that may well be why those of us still above ground are re-connecting.

Never gave this any thought until one who has been living on the West Coast several years, much of it in Southern California, wrote a blog reminiscing about a road we often took from Salem to Mt. Monadnock. His title: “the 114.”

He can keep it in lower-case all he wants, but I can’t help but chuckle at the use of the “the” in front of a route number. On the contemplative Pacific so long, he’s forgotten we don’t do that back here on the austere Atlantic.

My daughter, formerly of Southern Cal for most of her life, theorizes that in the early days, roads and trails all had Spanish names beginning with “El,” and so when the automobile and pavement arrived, the “El” went with the newly assigned numero. Sounds logical. Call it “Caught in Translation.”

Or, we could compare it to THE Ohio State University, a football and basketball powerhouse where everyone seems contractually obligated to not just use but emphasize the definite article as if it was the most significant of the four words in the name. (An OSU grad tells me it stems from an administrative feud with OU, but no one can figure out why.)

Be that as it may, all I can tell you is that, in 2012 on the front seat of an LAX shuttle bus with my daughter’s father-in-law, I went into a tirade about it, belting out “the” as often as possible as if it were a sledge-hammer. I had a fair portion of my daughter’s wedding party in stitches, as well as the guy behind the wheel who begged me to stop so he could drive.

Can’t recall their roads other than THE 5 and THE 405, so here’s a brief example prompted by my friend’s blog:

We took THE 114, Salem to Lawrence where we picked up either THE 110 or (more likely) THE 113 (or did we hasten the trip on THE 495?) to THE 119 in Groton and then on to THE Monadnock, a native word which means, “that which stands alone.” THE End!

Every Saturday of late I take THE 1A about 11 miles south to Ipswich where I join a No Kings rally, as they are called from coast to coast.

With the exception of my eight weekends in a Renaissance faire and little else, I’ve done this for most of the 17 months it has been held, joining about 130 folks each time. Among them, now and then, is another SSC classmate/activist and an SSC prof whose class, “Literature of Revolution,” I took in freshman year, spring semester, 1969.

The first was arrested with me at an anti-war demonstration 55 years ago and thrown into the same police wagon on THE Pennsylvania Avenue. The second, when she first saw me in Ipswich, smiled and exclaimed, “I can’t believe we’re doing this same shit!”

The first lives in Florida much of the year, but comes north in the summer to play cribbage with me. When I’m unavailable, she visits her kids and grandkids. The second, after having turned me, a Math major at the time, away from a cushy life as an accountant into this wreckage that I now am–THE fate that befalls most folks who pursue life in THE arts–says she is “proud” of me.

In recent weeks, yet another of my activist friends found me here on Plum Island. He enjoyed THE view so much that he surveyed my surroundings and has started work ridding them of a bittersweet vine threatening to kill, among other things, a pine tree.

Another activist, who volunteers in THE wildlife reserve in the summer, stops her white SUV if she sees me sitting out front, and call out hello. And a fellow from my German class looked me up and arrived on a hot day with two Italian subs. He was able to translate anything I said into German. For my part, I know only a dozen words auf Deutsch, but I used all twenty of them. “Danke for DER sub! Haben sie napkins?”

Two friends now married from THE Log, the student newspaper, passed through Newburyport and called from downtown where they treated me to lunch at THE Grog. I thought I was back in Bertini’s–or downstairs in Scarborough Fair.

And then there’s Chaz, a fellow flautist and former roommate, the only SSCer with whom I’ve been in touch all along, who arrives here twice or thrice a year. We listen to the same albums that we played over and over in our third-floor walk-up in the poor part of town, one of which is titled, “Living in THE Past.”

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Eggs Nostalgia

On the scale of misdemeanors, this has to be as harmless as it gets, but it’s still worth a word, perhaps a meal if you have the ingredients, and something to savor when you’ve had your fill.

Now that I sit to write of it, I’m surprised by how infrequently I see it. I’m in a supermarket at least once, often twice a week. I may not get much, but I take my time. That’s no doubt because, despite going in with a list, I keep an open eye and stop to consider items that catch it.

That makes me prone to change my mind about something I already have in my cart, which results in one of the very few temptations into petty evil that I have been able to resist all my life. In fact, and perhaps as atonement for many other petty crimes I do commit, I will take a box or jar or bag someone else has left with the bananas in a far corner of the store and return it myself to a shelf five aisles away.

Recently, I was pushing my cart down the aisle of paper towels, napkins, and toilet paper bulging from shelves on both sides. I was done shopping and was in the aisle only because it was empty and would quickly get me from the back of the store to the cash registers.

Ahead of me I spotted a blank space on one shelf about eye-high. How could I not look in? I hit the brakes. I was looking at a jar of salsa. Oh, the memories!

This Merrimack Valley boy from the Eisenhower years didn’t know what salsa was until he found his taste buds in a Mexican restaurant in downtown Minneapolis of all places. I was in my mid-twenties, and it took me another thirty years to discover it wasn’t just for snacks. That’s when I stopped at the Shawsheen Luncheonette in Andover for breakfast.

With a snug and most colorful interior, and with advice both whimsical and provoctive–The biggest danger to our future is apathy–served on small frames on the walls as food for thought, Shawsheen’s menu offers “Eggs Fiesta.”

Not the first time I ordered something just so I could say a name out loud. When it was “Beer-Battered Fish & Chips” at a Cambridge brew-pub long ago, I blasted those Bs like fists into a punching bag, and my embarrassed daughter hid under the table. But with fiesta, one can only smile.

Hash browns, topped with eggs as you like them (once-over for me), then topped with salsa, and toast (rye) on the side, it more than lived up to its name. Shawsheen became as frequent a stop as my ever-changing routes allowed, and I’d say I was there about once a month until about ten years ago. Always ordered before the menu arrived, but I’d take it to read for entertainment purposes only.

Maybe a year later, I wondered if I could try it at home. Hash-browns seem out of my culinary reach, but I guessed that the frozen potato patties might satisy as a substitute. They did. Eggs from a farm-stand always do, and I found a medium salsa, the same brand that I held in my hand in the scene that begins this flavorful story.

For a few years, it was what we would now call my “go-to” breakfast. Then came the Covid quarantine, and I indulged in labor-intensive potato pancakes. Since then, I’ve gone from lazy-boy cereal to sweet-tooth cantalope and cottage cheese to apple-cheddar omelets to Greek omelets to anything-about-to-expire-in-the-fridge omelets. Salsa was gone from the fridge and off my shopping list almost as soon as the toilet paper crisis left America in a mess.

Six years later, there it was surrounded by toilet paper in a space all its own. And then there it was in my hand. And then in my cart. Veered over to the aisle of cereal and returned the Cheerios, turned into the dairy section and found the frozen patties before going to check-out.

Eggs? No! Only at the farmstand.

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Confessions of Prof Pun King

Back in the 90s when everything wrong with the world was blamed on something called “political correctness,” I’d pick a day early every semester to rush with alarm into my college freshman classes about a minute late and ask my students:

“Did you hear what happened at the University of Minnesota?”

Immediately riveted, every one of them always stared at me in silence. I spoke as if out of breath: “The faculty has voted to ban the Bible from the university library!”

A collective gasp was nearly as loud as my voice. A few would utter things like “Not again!” Or, “Where does it end?” Or the full version of WTF with exclamation points that scraped the chalkboard.

I began walking back toward the door I had left open: “They can no longer accept that, for all the space given to St. Paul, there’s never any mention of Minneapolis.”

By the third time I pulled this stunt, I learned to close the door behind me so that the reaction would not disrupt other classes along the corridor. I didn’t need to lean into it to hear the mix of laughter and confusion with bait-and-switch rage.

In 2005, Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay team announced that they would be shortening their name, Devil Rays, to simply, Rays. I happened to read this in the Chicago Tribune as I left the windy city via Amtrak to return home.

Stopped in Cleveland where one of my Akron cousins retrieved me from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. With her were two friends, a couple I had never met. The husband proved a most affable fellow who could talk sports past sudden death overtimes, and when the two women went off to find a restroom in the Great Lakes Brew Pub, I mentioned the news from St. Petersburg.

As soon as I said the words “dropped the word ‘Devil’,” his smile dropped into an expression you might make when a doctor tells you, “It is not benign.” Verbatim, I recall only the opening curse: “Goddamn political correctness!” And then the damn dam burst.

I started to interrupt him. He did not know, as I did, that new owners were taking advantage of the one word, “Rays,” to serve as a double-entendre. This allowed them to use rays of the sun as a logo on new uniforms and merch while retaining a devil ray–or sting ray for that matter–logo for what MLB calls “alternative” or “throwback” unis. There is an outline patch of one on the shoulder of all their jerseys.

But I held my tongue. To this day I regret letting him go on and on with unwarranted nonsense, but my not-better angel got the better of me. I wanted to hear him out.

Before it was over, I heard how the all-too-well-known-yet-never-specified “they” are once again spoiling everyone’s fun and excitement. “Why, our new minor league team was going to be the Akron Blast,” he said as if reacting to the cancellation of a fireworks display.

Akron is the home of Goodyear, a leader in the aerospace industry–and also the home of Astronaut Judith Resnik who perished in the Challenger disaster. My new friend wasn’t sure if it was the Resnik family, or neighbors looking to spare them further trauma, who prevailed on the team to find another name.

“So, instead, we are stuck with the ‘Aeros’.”*

Twenty years of teaching taught me how to absorb such complaints without flinching: “Did anyone propose calling them the ‘Akronauts’?”

He laughed at my use of the collective noun by which he and every resident of the city is called: “Now that’s interesting! I think I like that better than ‘Blast’.”

Nor did I flinch at that, but by this time I was afraid to tell him the true story of the Tampa Bay name change. No matter, as I was bailed out by the return of the two women. To this day I do not know if he knows that what he condemned as “political correctness” was a business decision.

Make of those two stories–one triggered deliberately, the other inadvertent–what you want. I offer them as cautionary tales against the immediate willingness to believe anything that reinforces our own prejudice, anything that appears to be more of what we already condemn as wrong. Most worrisome is the crock of vehemence that can boil over before a teaspoon of detail can be put in the mix.

Moreover, we should consider that those stories are from two and three decades ago. Before the internet, before texting, before social media and flash crowds. Today such claims are constant, and we get “threads,” or unlimited numbers of people reacting to the initial claim, many of them ignoring the previous reactions. Hence, any attempt to correct the initial claim will be effectively run-over and then left unnoticed, no matter how many are added.

If there’s any useful benefit from them–or what today is called a “takeaway”–it’s that the dynamic can be put in reverse to serve as a lesson. It’s called “punking.” All you need is a willingness to tell a momentary lie, watch the reaction, then set it straight. At least there’s a chance that anyone listening learns to resist temptations to jump to conclusions.

As for my Akronaut friend, I still regret not doing him that favor.

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*Before the 2014 season, the Aeros changed their name to the Akron RubberDucks, a nod to Akron’s claim to be the “Rubber Capital of the World,” a nickname–pun? double-entendre?–that my cousins and their friends drove for no end of Goodyear and Firestone mileage while they were in high school.

No longer contractually required to keep a straight face, Prof. Pun King laughs at pretty much everything.
Photo by Walt Thompson.

Red Meat Patriots

In these times that try our tempers, I thought I was doing everyone a favor by putting away the ax I so often grind and, instead, cracking jokes at the idiocies that dominate American news.

Right on cue, a few–a very few–Red Meat Patriots here on Plum Island publicly accused the Town of Newbury of trying to outlaw American flag displays over the 4th of July weekend.

Call it a joke that wrote itself. If this was a paying gig, I might send my Red Meat neighbors a royalty. And if they can get what I wrote onto the Fox News website as readily as they did their absurd claim, I’ll split Fox‘s payment 50/50.

Meanwhile, another cadre of Red Meaters hurled the same accusation against Provincetown out on the tip of Cape Cod–93 miles from us as the crow flies, 151 as the Jaguar drives.

These RMPs are everywhere. Also this weekend, another band in New York City accused Mayor Mamdani of “personally wrapping” one of NYC’s subways in the design of the Iranian flag. That brain-dead claim immediately went off the rails mostly because everyone in the city knew of the tribute to FIFA–48 subways each painted as the flag of one of the 48 nations competing for soccer’s World Cup.

And, speaking of jokes that write themselves, partly because it is impossible to picture one person, mayor or not, “personally wrapping” a train in anything. If anyone made a claim like that back in the Sixties, Donovan would have written a song about getting stoned in the dining car.

Very likely it was the same band of NYC RMPs who accused Mamdani of “coming to get” residents’ thermostats. During a brutal heat wave here on the east coast, that dud was bound to gain some traction before sober, adult, intelligent, rational, honest people started to speak up.

Thermostats! Now that’s a new one. In one of my first attempts to stop ax-grinding and start joke-cutting, I rattled off a list of things that RMPs have accused liberals of “coming to take away.”

Guns, of course, top the list, going all the way back to the Reagan years, and have been top priority of Red Meat people ever since–with Bibles soon to follow and maintaining a respectable second place.

In fact, it may have been the election of an environmentally-friendly President with a health-conscious First Lady that prompted RMPs to diversify their outrageous outrage.

Could be mistaken, but the “coming to take your fill-in-the-blank away” lunacy really accelerated in 2008: SUVs, S’mores, leaf-blowers, air conditioners, tan suits, “Merry Christmas,” and lately hamburgers, thermostats, and, of all things, the American flag itself.

What we perceive as the problem with “red meat,” RMPs use to their advantage. Just as the metaphor intends, the very sight of it held outside the cage drives the lion into a rage. There need be no explanation, justification, nor condition. The lion won’t hear it, and to RMPs, it merely adds to the rage. Worst of all, the effect is immediate.

We use the word “demonize” to describe what Fox News and other right-wing outlets have done hour after hour, almost minute by minute, for 30 years to politicians, news sources, non-white countries, liberal legislation, and blue states. Bill Clinton called it “creating caricatures” so they can then “avoid any issue by attacking the caricature.”

Accurate and useful both are, but they don’t account for the immediate effect of the mere mention of a single name–Obama, Warren, The New York Times, NPR, Boston, Seattle, Somalia, Haiti, Affirmative Action, and lately a few non-specific words such as diversity and inclusion.

As soon as Fox viewers hear just one name, they will stop you with dismissal that allows for no further word. Pocahontas! DEI hire! Oh, that bastion of objectivity!

Red meat, at its core, is an excuse not to think–which makes it irresistible to those who do not want to think. It’s as if, instead of talking to a person, you are waving red meat in front of Pavlov’s dog.

Ahhh! Just joking.

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https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-three-stooges-in-civil-war-confederate-uniforms-holding-news-photo/515508472

Make America Dumb Again

Is it my imagination, or do many of the same people who refuse to hear any political talk also say we must learn from history?

And am I in the minority thinking that many historical subjects are so linked to the present that political consideration is unavoidable?

While I’ll be the first to admit that social media cannot be regarded as a college classroom any more than, say, someone’s dining room or patio, a baseball game or a Renaissance faire, it is a place where people frequently say–or unwittingly admit–that they do not want to “hear about” things.

“Hear about” is a euphemism for “know,” just as “woke” is a malphemism for “aware.” American history, after all, has a full chapter on a national movement that proudly called themselves the “Know-Nothings.” And you thought MAGA arrived on a de-escalator just eleven years ago?

If the very site–or page on a site–is dedicated to a historical or literary subject, then the objection might as well come from a sprinter wearing high-heeled shoes to a track meet.

So it was, on a page devoted to Moby-Dick, that someone compared Ahab to a certain political figure who is on our front page news daily and our TV screens nightly.

Predictably and understandably, several commenters objected to the injection of politics onto a page devoted to a literary work published 175 years ago. As a story set on the high seas, Moby-Dick first appeared to me as a college student 50 years ago as a non-political work. And then I read the scholarly essays written about it.

Most agree that Ahab is modeled on John Calhoun, the South Carolinian US Rep and Senator (also a cabinet member and VP), who was the Slavocracy’s most vociferous and volatile champion for three decades until his death in 1850, a year before Moby-Dick appeared in print. Melville had already painted a brief satirical sketch of him three books earlier near the end of Mardi, with a character named “Nulli,” as in nullification, a rebellious political move that Calhoun often threatened.

Add that to the harmony that Melville reports between characters white, black, yellow, red, and brown on board the Pequod–the name of a New England tribe nearly exterminated in colonial times–as well as in Typee, Omoo, Mardi, “Benito Cereno,” and perhaps others, and Moby-Dick is a forceful statement on race relations–a microcosm of the American macrospasm. What color was the whale?

There’s no question that the main theme of the book is what an obsession with revenge will do, not just to those who have it, but those who join the excitement. In 2024, we saw the first successful presidential campaign in American history openly motivated by revenge. We even saw a “Revenge Tour”–which might be the name of Melville’s book had Starbuck rather than Ishmael survived to tell the story.

If the foremost measure of literary worth is how well a work stands the test of time, then its relevance to our present-day lives–be it political, social, or anything else–should be more than welcome in our conversations about it. Those who are adverse to that, of course, have the right to leave the room or remain silent, just as most of us do when hearing things that do not interest us.

Regarding literature, the “no politics” comments are unwittingly revealing of those making them. And it is not flattering.

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Poster for the Moby-Dick Marathon, New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2020

The irony of this flag is so staggering that I’ll let it humiliate itself. Then again, I can’t help but ask if Custer might have flown it at Little Big Horn. At least they got the first N right.
https://smarthistory.org/nativism-immigration-and-the-know-nothing-party/

The Deal of the Art

Just what percentage of the American public refuses to hear any talk of politics?

Judging from all that we hear in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving and all of our religious holidays, most homes put an absolute ban on any mere mention of it.

For many, the aversion extends into history and literature, which is why we now have citizens’ groups forming to effect bans on school books they fear will make young students “uncomfortable.”

It’s as if the political adage of Keep It Simple Stupid has become an anti-political adage of Keep Ourselves Stupid. Or, to make it as simple as possible: Do Not Think.

I had a rather jolting encounter with it back when I was still teaching in the late 90s. When New Hampshire College, then just a modest business school with a single building in a Portsmouth industrial park, assigned a new class called “Business in American Literature,” the dean asked me to design and teach it.

Apparently my reputation for improvisation–student evaluations credited me with bringing things to life–overrode my socialist tendencies, and so there I was, explaining to prospective students that, no, it will not be about Lee Iacocca, Norman Vincent Peale, and the NYC real-estate guy whose (ghosted) The Art of the Deal had been number one on best-seller charts just a decade earlier.

No, I answered, this will be Mark Twain’s Gilded Age, Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt, a few stories from Kurt Vonnegut’s Welcome to the Monkey House. Many of them groaned, but Ben Franklin’s “Poor Richard” proved a perfect appetizer for the substantial meal. In particular, Melville’s “Bartleby” proved cathartic for several adult students in the night class. “That’s my office!” exclaimed one while others nodded knowingly.

Skepticism soon gave way to a hunger to learn more, and a good time appeared to be being had by all, including me, until we got to, of all things, The Wizard of Oz.

Though already impressed by stories of ruinous droughts and storms in the American plains, a few did not want to know that this lovable, colorful children’s story was based on the dominant political debate in the 1890s: Would American currency be based on the silver or gold standard?

My sing-song version of “follow the yellow brick road” quickly won most of them over. And, in keeping with the vernacular of the class, I closed the deal with a reminder that Dorothy wears silver shoes in the book (ruby was preferable for one of the first technicolor films made four decades later).

This is what would eventually lead to Teddy Roosevelt’s “Big Stick” crackdown on monopolies, or the wicked witches, with labor cast as Dorothy’s companions: Farmers as the Scarecrow, factory workers as the Tin Man, anyone fearful for their livelihoods as the Cowardly Lion.

For students who seemed resistant to the ideas of political relevance, it was easy to compare it to animated films made for children and to children’s theater. There are always lines of dialogue, sometimes gestures, or even cameo characters that are over the heads of children but aimed at the adults who accompany them. Call it a reward for being a good parent.

Eventually, however, one married couple well into their thirties in the night class wanted none of it. Before I could get to Toto being the only one able to apply common sense–akin to the young boy in The Emperor’s New Clothes–one practically shouted, “It’s a children’s story, and that’s all we want to know about it!”

The attitude stunned me, not because of what was said, but where. Took a few seconds for me to process this, and I have no doubt that today my answer, if reported to a dean, would get me fired as insulting. I thought of it only as obvious and direct: “This isn’t a nursing home. This is a college classroom. You should know all you can about it.”

That was the last class those two attended. Student reviews of the class at semester’s end were as good as I ever received. But the writing of evaluations in years to come was on the wall, and I found myself chafing in department meetings that emphasized students’ “comfort zones,” and urged us to “meet them where they are.”

Finally came the meeting where I could no longer hold it in, and I asked the dean with about a dozen other adjunct instructors at the round table: “Is this a college or a nursing home?”

Rather than waiting to be “not renewed,” I showed myself out back in 2002. And I still wonder, if such history is being erased in higher education, why are we so surprised when a younger generation appears indifferent to larger national and global issues?

And if politics are dodged in day-to-day life, why are we offended when elections offer us no choice that we deem worthy of our trust?

Or shocked when the personification of self-interest, reducing every possible subject to the simplest terms used with mind-numbing repetition--biggest, most beautiful, hottest, perfect, great again–wins the White House and turns it into his own personal brokerage firm?

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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/129548926751487102/

Flag Daze on Plum Island

Just when I recover from laughing at those gullible enough to believe that Democrats are coming to take away their hamburgers, along come those led to believe that we lefties are threatening to take away their American flags.

Is there anything too lunatic for consumers of Fox News and other foam-at-the-mouth television and hate-radio shows to fall for?

This time, it’s a few of my neighbors, so I’ll try my hardest to tell this with a straight face:

When the folks in Newbury Town Hall issued a reminder to Plum Islanders to keep restricted areas clear for piping plovers, they no doubt thought it harmless.

As they noted, they were prompted by the 4th of July weekend coming up just a week later–the milestone 250th no less–and so they wanted to insure we kept the restriction in mind.

Most of us nodded in agreement. There’s neither effort nor expense in avoiding them just as we have done for at least as long as my 44 years here.

Some Islanders, however, subscribe to Fox News.

Newbury has a fair share. If you’ve driven onto Central St., you’ve likely seen, across from the post office, one of the crude, childish cartoon-signs that some MAGA-type displays to ridicule Democrats while unconsciously making an ass of himself.

Who knows who pounced on the inclusion of the word “flag” in the examples of things not to display in sand where plovers may nest? Straight to Fox News the town’s memo went, and before long Fox’s website, catering to a national audience, appeared with an alarming headline:

“Massachusetts homeowners stunned after town warns July 4 flags threaten endangered birds”

For maximum manipulation on social media, this is textbook. The headline is one of just two ingredients required for the desired effect. Since Massachusetts is long known as the bluest state, put the demonized name in it.

Not only does the name raise rightwing indignation, but you have now brought the controversy inland. Could happen anywhere.

And who are the people most likely to fall for a hint of perceived infringement on property rights? Residents? No. Citizens? No. Taxpayers? Often, but not this time. Homeowners? Bingo!

Moreover, while the town’s reminder mentioned “flags,” the headline turns it into “July 4 flags,” which implies that Old Glory itself is the target of the anti-American attack.

Second ingredient is the featured photo: Show an American flag on a pole in front of a cottage high upon a dune. Next to the flagpole is a wooden rendition of another flag with a 250th inscription suggesting that this homeowner is more than passively patriotic.

Also in the foreground is a mailbox. That would tell a thinking person that we are looking at the house from the street side, and therefore nowhere near any restricted area. So, too, would the unseen details of the accompanying article despite its paranoid, fear-mongering slant.

This is classic Fox News, their well-worn formula for deceit and incitement. Something on steroids out of nothing on tranquilizers, but Fox knows that most people will read only the headline, see the picture, glance at the caption, and assume the worst about those they have demonized without ever looking at the full article.

In the text, very few people are voicing any concern. One is a case of “he said, she said” with no evidence that he ever said what she said he said. As anyone who has dealt with these people knows, the mere, matter-of-fact mention of a fine or prison term for breaking a law is considered a threat. So, yeah, he most likely did say what she then twisted into something else.

That’s all it takes to fool the Fox viewer into thinking that “they are coming to take away your ______.”

If there’s a third ingredient to the scam, it’s the long-established belief that those of us who publicly oppose them are all rich elitists ready to hoard all those flags, burgers, Bibles, SUVs, S’mores, leaf-blowers, air conditioners, and guns we would deny others.

Guess they were onto me. I was already looking for a pair of American flags to fly from the roof of my Maserati.

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https://www.foxnews.com/media/massachusetts-homeowners-stunned-town-warns-july-4-flags-threaten-endangered-birds?

Patriotism off the Grill

You may celebrate or bemoan our nation’s 250th birthday as you feel fit, but I will observe it as I have every 4th of July since 2009 by treating myself and college friends to molassoburgers torched off my Plum Island grill.

Admittedly, my annual gatherings do not compare to the Tea Party or Battle of Bunker Hill, but we have wolfed down these Caribbean-laced burgers with grave risk to ourselves.

Oh, the ingredients are safe enough, adding soy sauce, grated Vidalia, and Montreal steak seasoning. Never any cheese, but the taste will blend nicely with your favorite barbeque sauce.

No, my guests risk nothing when they dine at my table. Not unless they forget to leave their cellphones at home or in their cars, and I hear a ringtone. That’s when I do my Mount St. Helens immountaination, and fireworks become redundant.

The risk to eating burgers here in the UST, as you all know, is that Democrats are determined to outlaw beef and take away our burgers. And a Democrat was in the White House for 12 of the 17 years since I’ve been flipping my culinary creation. These are times that try burger-buffs’ souls.

Must be that, as we all keep hearing, they’re spending all their time taking away guns and air-conditioners, and burgers are next. I wouldn’t know because I’ve never had a gun or air-conditioner, but the hysterical warnings date way back, so they must be true.

That aside, you may have noticed the word “observe” rather than “celebrate” to express my attitude toward the milestone anniversary.

Once upon an attention span, I celebrated America despite my awareness of some national flaws. Even in my anti-war protesting youth, we saw progress: Civil Rights acts, Title IX, withdrawal from Vietnam, Roe v. Wade, the EPA, Affirmative Action, the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In my twenties I travelled in 49 states, and still intend to see Hawai’i as soon as I learn to swim. Lived in six of them, including three state capitals. American literature, history, and geography were my majors and minors, undergrad and grad. “All three form one subject,” as I told my own students for another 20 years.

For the Bicentennial I was at the re-enactment at Concord’s “rude bridge.” Back then it was all celebration, and a Republican president was cheered by a New England crowd who would never vote for him as if to agree, yes, “our long national nightmare is over.”

The historic Colonial Inn that evening teemed with good cheer. Even the debates such as I had with a Republican contingent from Connecticut were all laughs. Next day when the editor of the long-gone Salem Gazette read my report, he asked if I was a reporter or a stand-up comic.

Since 2009, I’ve had a column every Presidents’ Day, including upbeat features on those we overlook: Monroe, Quincy Adams, Van Buren, and “A tiff for Taft.” A few years ago, I spent considerable time and effort pestering the Boston Red Sox and WEEI to air the National Anthem before games, which they now do.

For all that, please consider that I have not just celebrated patriotism but participated in it all of my life before faulting me for, as the expression goes, taking a knee on this one.

But I will observe it. In fact, I’m already observing it.

After the cage fight desecration of the White House, I stopped using “USA” and began referring to this country as “UST.” Yes, I know it was removed from the Kennedy Center, but the stain and stench are still there.

As are the vain and vulgar prospects of a $250 bill, an arch, an addition to Mt. Rushmore, and numerous bridges, tunnels, and other places stained with the foul name itself.

Not as a liberal, not as a Massachusetts boy, not as someone involved in the arts, but simply as one who pays attention, how can I possibly celebrate the national transition from USA to UST?

No, nay, never! But my friends and I will enjoy the molassoburgers while cracking jokes about people who believe that Democrats are coming to take them away.

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Shoebox, Plum Island, Mass., site of the annual Mplassoburger Bash since 2009. Painting by Angela Anderson.

Keeping a City Vibrant

As did many other readers of The Townie, a local, online platform, I reveled in the upbeat catalog of Newburyport’s treasures and attractions offered last week by one John Stephen Kelley.*

Reminds me why I washed ashore here in 1982 after a Prodigal Son stint on the other side of the Mississippi. By birth a Lawrence boy, my paternal grandparents were born in Newburyport, and all of their grandparents settled here with an early wave of Irish immigrants. Prominent family names on the trunk of my genealogical tree include Creeden, Kelleher, and Page. Not sure which one lived in the gray house next to Leary’s liquor store, as I knew her only as “Aunt Alice” when my grandmother took me on visits.

During seven years out west, I picked up a taste for busking. In the late-70s, many American cities were re-vitalizing downtowns with historic preservation. I’d never make a living at it, but having done well as a flautist in Denver’s Larimer Square, all I wanted was to live in or near a small city, preferably historic with a pedestrian mall, a square, wide side-walks, benches. One or two days a week was all I needed.

Could say that Newburyport played for me as much as I for it. Surrounding bricks serve as well as Colorado’s Red Rocks as a sound-system. Guitarist John Tavano soon told me that when the wind was right, I could be heard on the Boardwalk. Not bad for someone who never used an amplifier. Yet more: sharp acoustics don’t just project sound, but allow the musician to go easier on the instrument which then allows for more clarity, both in precision and style.

For a wind-musician it also means the ability to play more than half an hour without being taken out of there in an ambulance.

Surprisingly, I had the city to myself for a few years before the harper showed up. We soon coordinated our schedules. He-turned-she graced downtown with music both original and Celtic from about 1988 until passing away two years ago. In the meantime, however, numerous street-performers–jugglers and magicians as well as musicians–have entertained in downtown Newburyport. As we said of Larimer Square in Denver, we are vibrant!

A few more quirky, independent, and locally engaging treasures I’ll add to Kelly’s recent celebration of the city:

Dyno Records all this year is celebrating its 50th anniversary just a couple doors down from The Grog now in its 55th year. Turn right and just up State is the Screening Room now in its 44th. Turn left and you’ll find the Tannery with Jabberwocky Bookshop in its 54th, Cafe Chococoa, and numerous arts studios. Along with performances and exhibits at the Firehouse, the Maritime Museum, the Museum of Old Newbury, Maudsley Park, and elsewhere, all have served as essential contributors to the city’s more than generous arts scene.

For full disclosure, I’ve been a projectionist at the Screening Room since 1998. For a busker, a day-job has to be a night-job. And for fuller disclosure for what’s next, I’ve been writing guest columns in the Daily News since 1983.

Essential to the life of any city is its newspaper, and the Daily News is to be credited for including As I See It on its opinion page. If we consider the feature by itself, it is much like The Townie except not limited to local topics. Out of necessity, an opinion page is obligated to point out things wrong or about to go wrong in the locality and make it open to honest debate. Both forums do this, and it is yet another blessing for Newburyport that there are two forums that make the debate open to any citizen wanting to join.

This brings me to the one and only unfortunate response to Kelley’s otherwise widely praised piece. From none other than the mayor who was intending to praise it, but who, in his characteristically clumsy way, revealed an intent to disparage his critics as well.

Soon after The Townie published it, Mayor Reardon’s post on Facebook read: “Finally, a piece worth reading in the Townie.” Within a couple of hours, someone must have told him he sounded like a long-lost son of Donald Trump, and he removed the word “finally,” but the screenshot and the insinuation aimed at all of us who have contributed to the forum remain.

That would include thoughtful analysis by folks with expertise in water quality, education, infrastructure, and development, including both present and former councilors debating both sides of controversies. Does Reardon not know that debate is the lifeblood of self-rule? Or does he think that “self” means himself, never to be questioned?

Count me with Kelley and all others who sing Newburyport’s praises. The city has been more than good to me.

But count me in opposition to anyone who thinks that smiling for photo-ops is all that’s needed to add to that beauty while tying tourniquets around those hoping to protect and enhance it.

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*https://www.townienbpt.com/general/2026/06/19/appreciate-everyday-life-in-newburyport

Playing the Numbers Game

As soon as I heard him say that his friend had sixteen twelve-string guitars, I put the 0 on the end of 16 for 160 and added two more 16s, aka 32, and had the sum of 192 strings.

I could have given that answer in less time than it takes to multiply the 6 by 2 and carry the one, etcetera, all on paper. And in far less time than I’d have needed to do it the familiar way in my head, carrying numbers and trying to keep the columns straight below the drawn line.

Had he said the 16 instruments were worth an average of $743 apiece, I’d have found a pen and paper and done it the usual way.

Now and then we hear complaints about what is called “new math,” or “common core,” new ways of teaching math, simple arithmetic really, in elementary schools. Naturally, we have a tendency to ask and perhaps object: What’s wrong with the “old” way?

Often, the issue devolves into a debate to decide which is better, and as seems unavoidable these days, it becomes a standoff between two sides unwilling to budge. For the most part, parents who want education left as they themselves experienced it, and young teachers convinced that “new” methods represent the future.

This is all for naught because the mistake is thinking that it is a debate at all.

Done on paper, the new way appears to have more steps and take more time, while t he old way is obviously quicker and seemingly simpler, even with the carry-overs. This is why opponents of the “new” math always never use numbers with more than two-digits in the pictures, memes, and videos they post on social media. The small numbers allow them to exaggerate the amount of work involved–and add several curved arrows making it appear hopelessly convoluted and confusing.

Use larger numbers, and the difference becomes slight while the confusion disappears. Here’s an example using just one three-digit number:

Old: Underneath 543 x 4, you write 2, carry 1, write 7, carry 1, write 21. Result: 2,172

New: Underneath 543 x 4, you write 2000, then 160, then 12, after which you add the three numbers. Result: 2,172

Common Core: Change to 550 x 4 for 2200, then subtract 7 x 4 (28) for 2,172.

In what is called “new,” you can see the extra step: “Old” is straight multiplication of a three-digit number; “new” is three multiplications turned into one addition. No question but that “old” is more efficient if you have paper and something with which to write.

Now, try doing that in your head the first way, and the carry-overs blur your process, forcing you to stop and restart. The second will give you the answer with relative ease, at least for numbers that aren’t too long. Depends on one’s ability to remember. Multiplications and divisions of three, four, or even five digit numbers by any single digit should not be difficult. Beyond that, I’m sure that I, too, would rely on the old method–even if it meant waiting until I parked my car, finished the dishes, or got out of the shower.

Problem in this debate, which at times waxes indignant and sarcastic, is how misleading the labels “new” and “old” are. Are we unthinkingly turning this into yet another front of what we call “the culture wars”? If we are to be honest, it is the same math, as the identical results prove. Explain both, and I bet more school children–and adults–would find both easier to grasp.

Numerous other tricks anyone can play in the numbers game are loosely called “common core.” This is best understood as rounding out the numbers for the process, and then restoring the rough edge at the end. Or you can break a number into single-digit denominators for two or three simple calculations easily combined, instead of one that is difficult.

Can you divide 6,795 by 45 in your head? No, neither than I, not until I break 45 into 9 and 5. Now it becomes easy to divide by 9, making it 755, then by 5 for 151. And I can tell you that in half the time it took to type that sentence.

Can you multiply 131 by 18? Maybe in time with considerable effort and concentration. Why not 131 by 20? Now you just put a 0 after 131 and double it for 2,620. Then you simply subtract two 131s, aka 262, from 2,620. Shouldn’t take long to figure 2,358 out of that.

Many numbers–those high prime numbers, will defy the tricks. If the division above was 6,795 by 47, or the multiplication was 131 by 181, I’d find a pen and paper. I recall using a ladder to pick the apples at the top of MacIntosh trees, but I stayed on the ground to pick the branches within my reach. No one in the harvest thought we should either always or never use a ladder.

We all agree that mathematics, unlike other educational subjects including most sciences, is always exact. The expression which holds that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is true for many other things. But the math in that adage stops at the word “sum,” which cannot be altered, improvised, or changed in any way.

Ways of reaching a sum, however, are many. What is happening in elementary school math classes should not be a debate or a one-way-only showdown. Each way offers a useful option to fit an occasion.

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