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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As with statistics, another numbers game, there’s always a way to favor any side of the debate.

Last Straw Ballroom

By now you may have heard that Trump’s fantasy ballroom is back in the news if only thanks to his ham-fisted changing of the subject when asked on Air Force One about his contradictory answers to questions about his war on Iran.

Occurred to me months ago when we were still grieving over the demolition of the White House’s East Wing, all of our objections were based on historical perception. Nothing wrong with that, and it should have been enough to point out that the White House is the people’s house, and the president but a tenant.

But what of architectural perception?

For that, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Randy Johnson of Natick, Mass., a senior partner in Resolution Architects who has done some consulting work here in the Lower Merrimack Valley, and a friend of mine since his nephew and my daughter hauled their families to each other’s college graduation parties down in the Hudson Valley back before the turn of the century. He also writes about local architecture for a newspaper in the section of Massachusetts known as Metro-West. When his editor preferred not to run this non-local piece, he asked my advice.

As soon as I began reading, I knew that it had to have circulation. By the time I finished, I decided that unless we could find a larger platform, I would offer to make it Mouth of the River‘s first “guest blog.” Back in the day when newspapers still had freelance budgets, this would have landed in a Sunday “Ideas” section as soon as an editor received it. To compensate for that, I’d just ask that if you know people who are into historic preservation, building design, or who simply appreciate handsome, functional architecture, please pass this on:

Last Straw Ballroom

by Randy Johnson

Knowing of the ornamentation now slathered on the walls and mantels of the Oval Office, I wasn’t surprised to see a lot gold in the renderings of the proposed White House ballroom.

Of course, that wrecking ball news immediately drowned in the media zone flooded by Epstein, Iran, Venezuela, Greenland, Minnesota, yet more Epstein, and even another architectural foray-sure-to-be-folly to defile the Kennedy Center.

Keeping track of President Trump’s ballroom project is a challenge, but an addition to the White House will get built. A legal objection has been raised by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, but obstacles like this have not stopped other questionable Trump activities. Construction will proceed as legality is sorted out. Work on the foundation has already begun. The train has left the station.

Trump has fired the entire U.S. Commission on Fine Arts, and loaded it with his appointees. Among the new members is the ballroom’s initial architect. Likewise, the National Capital Design Commission is staffed with a handful of loyalists. The project, officially called the “East Wing Modernization Project,” was presented to the NCDC by the new architect in January; the Commission seemed to reach a consensus that the design program makes sense. After all, a great country shouldn’t hold its official gatherings in a tent, with porta-potties for sanitary facilities.

The East Room was way too small for big events. The White House public-visitor reception process was characterized as confusing and undignified, definitely in need of improvement. All the commissioners thought these sensible reasons for something new, in the tradition of previous modifications to the White House. The project was characterized as fostering “diplomacy, celebration and unity,” with a “respect for collaboration and tradition.” No mention of grandiosity, or conveying the wrong message.

What’s on the table is huge: 89,000 sq. ft., of which 22,000 sq. ft. is the thousand-guest ballroom. Beneath the main floor is the kitchen, along with a spacious First Lady office suite. The movie theater will be reconstructed. The NCDC presentation did not discuss how supplies will be delivered; as with the bunker design, loading docks must be among the top secret security concerns.

None of the NCDC commissioners seemed to question the scale or validity of the program. All acknowledged the experience and competence of the new architect. Only one quibbled with the design, expressing concern about the overall size and cornice height, and asking if reduction to the footprint were possible given the reported foundation start. To provide some balance to the design’s relationship to the residence, the architect’s mitigation proposal is to add volume to West Wing, another step in turning the White House into an American Versailles. The hearing ended with the understanding of “more details to follow.” The project is not on the Commission’s February agenda. It is not on their website’s listing of “Major Projects.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/peopleandplaces/new-white-house-ballroom-renderings-released/vi-AA1NjoNz

The project is a perfect representation of where our nation is headed. You saw this first with the gaudy golden gee-gaws in the Oval Office, so it wasn’t surprising to see the amount of gold in the drawings of the ballroom’s interior. Even the dining chairs had a precious-metal look. The Trump style is heavy on gilding; it’s the mark of an imperial ruler. The design strives to create a suitable stage for our autocrat to impress his peers.

The exterior design is in keeping with the priorities of the administration. An executive order called “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again” dictates what any new federal building should look like. Bring back those columns and pediments, harkening to the good old days of ancient Rome and Athens. No room for other ideas that would compete with this vision. Building grandiose buildings is what Mussolini and other bullies did to further their agendas. Kudos to the American Institute of Architects for their opposition to MFABA, noting the “directive would replace thoughtful design processes with rigid requirements that will limit architectural choice.”

The ballroom facades mimic the adjacent Treasury Department building. The proposed main entrance has temple-like features, with ceremonial steps, columns and pediment, fitting for a place in which to pay homage to an autocrat, curry favors and make deals. Maybe the president is figuring that at $10,000 a plate, the scheme will gross $10 million for each chicken dinner. The ballroom might be Trump’s most lucrative deal.

In addition to the hollow, spiritless architectural vision, there’s the financing. The claim of “no taxpayer money” is fraudulent. Sure, private citizen billionaires have lined up to donate funds, getting both their name on a plaque and presidential access. But as any competent real estate developer knows, there’s the matter of ongoing operating costs, like heating the white elephant as it sits vacant 99% of the time. When Trump is gone, donors won’t be lining up to fund the power washing of all that marble.

Where’s DOGE when we need it?

Then there’s the mendacity. Beyond the financing myth, what about the promise of no demolition and a freestanding structure? Oops! It stings to think that one twisted mind can do so much damage to “the people’s house.”

What we need are forceful and respected voices to explain how this project runs counter to our national mythology. The design should put less emphasis on exclusiveness, power and opulence, and more on an image that speaks of our egalitarian roots, in keeping with the “People’s House” to which the East Wing is connected. The Trump brand will eventually fade away, but let’s not be left with a reminder of its shallow history in such a significant, prominent location.

The entities reviewing the East Wing Modernization design see it as a sensible response to the requirements of a functioning White House. But the key word is House. A project of this scale turns the property into more of an events center than the home of the president and family. For a president that primarily resides off-site, this shift is inconsequential.

For future presidential families, the shift in balance will be a loss. The program should ideally create a better residence, support the administrative needs of the executive branch, and establish the architecture for a dignified reception of the public and official visitors. The huge ballroom does not fit in. Do the big parties off site. Something will get built. If Trump gets his way, it will be a neo-classically correct reproduction of what he and his minions think Washington, D.C., buildings should look like.

If built, the best hope for a ballroom is adaptive re-use, like conversion to a 300 bed shelter for all the families
made homeless by the Trump Economy. When asked where they reside, the previously unhoused occupants could respond that they are staying at the Last Straw Ballroom.

Instead of that bleak future, the better approach is to stop construction and conduct a thoughtful re-evaluation of what is really best for our White House.

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Befitting a Witless Cult

Most reports will tell you that Special Counsel Jack Smith testified for five hours today.

Yes, the TV show disguised as a congressional committee meeting ran that long, but for just how many of those 300 minutes did Smith speak?

Very few, as the Republican members kept immediately interrupting his attempts to answer to recite their talking-point lines with performative anger and indignation for Fox Noise and for their own campaign videos to air this fall.

Democrats also unleashed a few speeches, but they let Smith give detailed answers to their questions–some of which were the very same asked by a Republican only to stop Smith before he could answer.

The trick is older than Machiavelli. Cast a complex question as if the answer is yes or no, and when the answer begins with anything but yes or no, pounce on it and interpret it as the answer you want–in this case, to imply wrong-doing–and repeat the premise of your question. Today, Republicans were repeating their own questions so they could repeat the whole process. All of it loud and bellicose.

This is why they had so many questions about Cassidy Hutchinson, the White House staffer who testified before the Jan. 6 investigative committee. She admitted that a single statement in her exhaustive testimony was second-hand. Forget all the first-hand testimony she gave, that was all they needed to label her a “liar.” Because Smith interviewed her, it was guilt by association. And who would change that verdict when, later, answering a Democrat who allowed for a thoughtful, thorough answer, Smith would reveal that Hutchinson’s testimony was not used in his charges?

Repetition may have been the biggest trick. As a trick constantly played by Trump every time he speaks or tweets, it is logical that his cult employs it. How many times did they decry the Jan. 6 Committee as “being appointed entirely by Nancy Pelosi” or for having no loyal Republicans on it? I don’t recall one Democrat objecting that Republicans themselves refused to participate. Do Democrats think that the American public remembers that? Or ever knew it?

More than one Republican also cited a timeline to accuse Smith of “a rush to judgment” to “interfere with the election.” Not once did a Democrat mention that Biden’s Justice Dept., thanks to the selection of a cadaver as Attorney General, dragged its feet for two years for fear of being charged with “politicizing the department.” Even in the face of death threats to local poll workers. Silence here may be more understandable, as Democrats would be faulting the administration of one of their own. But their fear of being charged with politicizing” has led directly to their being charged with, yes, “politicizing.”

At one point, Smith answered the charge with this gem: “It’s not incumbent on a prosecutor to wait until someone gets killed.”

Other than these lapses, Democrats did quite well. Raskin was inspiring as always, Swalwell the most damning by pointing out that Republicans, “including members of this panel,” trash Trump in private but do his bidding in public. (Speaking of charges that went unanswered!) Moscowitz of Florida deserves an Oscar for comic relief, most hilariously his exchange with Raskin ending with an incisive if sarcastic, “You mean, like Gore in 2000?”

Perversely, Republican Nehls of Texas could be considered hilarious with his bonkers claim that the Capitol Police leadership was to blame for the riot–but that’s unwitting, befitting a witless cult. He announced that he would be the chair of a committee that would prove it, which is also a sick joke. Nor was there anything funny about such a remark being directed at four Capitol police officers, who had been slurred and/or beaten on Jan. 6., sitting right behind Smith in the front row. Apparently, yet another part of Trump’s rewrite (i.e. cover up) of the event will be to make the higher ups of the police force responsible for their “lack of preparedness” that day.

When the show was over, cameras caught those four officers standing at the door to shake hands with Smith. Nothing funny about what all five of those men endured for those five hours, but the sight recalled Moscowitz’s gleeful mention that he would be on Nehls’ committee when he introduced himself to Smith.

Smith never laughed. He never smiled. He never raised his voice. And over five hours, I doubt he spoke fifty minutes.

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/jan-6-cop-curses-at-republican-blaming-capitol-police-for-insurrection/vi-AA1ULzx4

A Call for Snap Elections

Tomorrow (Thursday) at 10:00 am Eastern, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith will testify before a Congressional committee that will air on CNN.

For the first time, the American public will hear the evidence that a Trump-appointed Florida judge blocked from view before the 2024 election.

Or, at least we’ll be able to hear it. By now it’s a safe bet that the MAGA crowd will denounce it as fake without hearing a single word much less a summary. Also that Fox and other propaganda outlets will omit what they cannot spin and emphasize the screeching denials of Republican committee members such as the rapid-fire-and-ramble-on Jim Jordan, and that the Republican Party will continue its goose-step to the Cult of Personality.

Will it make a difference?

Will more of us be calling for the 25th Amendment even though only the vice-president can invoke it? Seriously? J.D. Vance is a man willing to repeat the deranged claim that residents of Springfield, Ohio–his own constituents at the time–were eating cats and dogs.

That leaves Congress, a body in which the controlling party refuses to act. They get away with it, partly because most of the public pays only superficial attention at best. And partly because the public blames any and all failures of Congress on both parties. Not only that, but they ridicule the party that tries to tell them that action is possible–while rewarding the party that insists action is impossible.

Result? The firefighters are punished while the arsonists are rewarded. Just ask the police who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 against a violent mob that has been pardoned despite evidence, despite convictions, in some cases despite confessions–and is now being considered for financial compensation for their time in jail.

Finally occurs to me that the party controlling Congress really is “Republican in name only.” Pundits often note that they’re a far cry from the senators who told Nixon he had to resign. We should also note they are just as far from the senators and representatives who overrode Reagan’s veto of their attempt to sanction the Union of South Africa for Apartheid. Indeed, the current crew has unanimously signed on to Trump’s welcome mat for “persecuted white farmers” of South Africa who apparently now seek white supremacy here in another USA.

These are not Republicans. They are Cowards.

Can we make it from here to November with a president who threatens war with other countries, and orders military takeovers of American cities? Or is it states, first Minnesota, now Maine, next…? Can we make it with an anti-vax squad in charge of the National Institute for Health and another crank flank working to destroy the Dept. of Education from the inside? Can we make it with every environmental regulation since the creation of the EPA gutted? Ditto with labor laws and occupational safety? Ditto with the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe?

Coal is beautiful and clean if you subscribe to the Cult of Personality.

Will elections take place, or will we be under martial law? And if they are held, will a president who has already said he should have seized ballot boxes in 2020, and who keeps hinting at canceling elections try to rig it?

Sorry for so many questions, but I’m from the Eisenhower years, once immersed in beliefs such as “the greatest form of government in the world.” Our loss of any claim to peaceful transfers of power has already disabused me of the notion, but it raises a question that I have yet to hear:

Why is it impossible to rid ourselves of a leader so obviously dangerous and corrupt?

Canada and all European countries have a parliamentary procedure that allows for “snap elections”–also called a “confidence vote.” In 1980, in their haste to teach the liberal Pierre Trudeau (Justin’s dad) a lesson, Canadians elected one Joe Clark to be their prime minister. For far less damage and far fewer crimes than Trump, Clark was out of office in eleven months.

American journalists have the bad habit of calling these, “special elections.” That’s misleading, as there’s nothing “special” and something written into a Constitution.

For a moment, let’s put aside the parties, the personalities, and the cult of personality. Can we honestly continue to claim that we have the “best” form of government when we can be stuck with the mess we have for at least another year, if not three, if not indefinitely?

Go ahead and waste time calling for the 25th A. But please consider that there’s another Constitutional amendment for which this mess calls.

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https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/donald-trump-denies-white-house-asked-to-add-him-to-mount-rushmore-but-believes-its-a-good-idea/q8xupwfus

Jiggle the Handle

Sorry if I’m flying off the handle here, but Donald Trump has turned America into a toilet that will not flush.

In it, MAGA is a bowel movement the size of Texas. At times it is Texas.

Santa Rosa reminds me of her prediction before last year’s election that, if Trump won, he would turn the country into “a two-story outhouse.” The ultra-rich upstairs and the rest of us down below–with a few holes in the floor in between. What can I say? Great minds sink alike.

Some 30 years ago, I laughed out loud while reading a student paper about a trip he took with his family through Central America. In it, he mentioned “peons” and explained they were called that because “the rich people pee on them.” Today, I’m tempted to plagiarize him.

Are these analogies too crude for you? Sorry, but we’ve just had a week in which the president of the United States referred to a woman reporter as “piggy” and called at least three others “stupid;” to members of Congress as “garbage”; to a state governor as “retarded”; and to military veterans as “traitors” while tacking on calls for their execution.

We can’t keep pretending that this is a difference between left and right or between liberal and conservative. No, it is the imposition of the crude and stupid on American day to day life.

Would you find an analogy made by, say, George Will, the “Dean of Conservative Columnists,” more “respectful” of “those on the other side”? An ardent supporter of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, Will this week called Team Trump “this sickening moral slum of an administration.” Sounds like a two-story outhouse to me.

Trump himself has made the excremental comparison with AI generated videos that show him in an airplane throwing feces down on those who dare rally against him. That video now seems like a coming attraction that he and his ridiculous Fox Noise-Maker choice to head the Dept. of Defense made for the videos they show as often as they can of boats being bombed off the coast of Venezuela.

As Lawrence O’Donnell of MS NOW suggests, they want us to view their bombing operation as a video game. They are counting on the popularity of video games with their MAGA base, the bloodier the better. The more explosive, better yet. Deadly? That’s best of all. The one showing two helpless guys in the water clinging to a floating wreck? Uh, let’s leave that one out…

Says Will, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement.” Now that’s jiggling the handle.

With the term “moral slum,” Will captures an entire cabinet of head-nodders, there only to say yes while wearing fraudulent crosses and flags around their necks and on their lapels and heaping lavish praise on an autocrat posing as a president. Hans Christian Andersen’s Emperor Has No Clothes was closer to literal truth than Sec. of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s characteristically clumsy worship:

Thank you for letting us get up every day and have a purpose.

How is this not arrant bullshit?

I know full well I’m not winning friends by comparing America’s political world to an unflushed toilet–and the whole MAGA movement to what fills it. But this is not the time for ingratiation, much less popularity contests. My first and foremost goal when writing political or social commentary is to say what needs to be said. Things like this:

A country that bills itself as “land of the free” and “home of the brave” cannot live on the knees of “go with the flow.”

As for my student and his “peons,” I’ll take the blame for having taught him that sometimes you can deduce the meaning of a word simply by sound and/or context. But I’ll also take credit for coaching him to jiggle the handle which powers-that-be have on those who simply want to be.

As Bob Dylan might have quipped, we shouldn’t need a plumber to tell us which way the water flows.

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https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2017/05/03/heres-what-those-golden-taka-trump-toilets-mean/101214092/

Empathy a la Mode

Did you notice how immediately and severely Democrats were condemned for celebrating the assassination? Some condemned the entire Democratic Party.

It began with accusations made by MAGA officials, broadcast by right-wing media, and quickly spread by those who take accusations at face value.

This is what happens when people immerse themselves in social media. What’s missed is that, within an hour of the reports, statements of condemnation and of condolences were issued by numerous prominent Democrats, including G. Newsom, K. Harris, J. Schumer, H. Jefferies, the Obamas, the Clintons, and the Bidens.

In that list alone are two of several women demeaned by Charlie Kirk as “affirmative action hires” who “lacked the brain processing power” to hold positions they took from white people.

Compare the Democrats’ response to this week’s assassination to the aftermath of the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband when top Republicans, including Donald Trump, joked about it, adding innuendo that it was the result of a gay relationship gone awry.

One Republican voice, however, wasn’t joking when he called for “some amazing patriot” to bail Paul Pelosi’s attacker out of jail. The voice was that of Charlie Kirk.

Yes, there were a few fanatics who posted gleeful approval. But turning them into anything representing the Democratic Party would be laughable were we not talking about an assassination.

No doubt a few who celebrate live right here in Essex County. According to one of my misguided friend’s “logic,” all of us, therefore, must be “violent extremists… reveling in a man’s death.”

This is why Trump and the MAGA movement do all they can whenever they can to discredit the press. As people turn away from fact-checked news sources, they rely on social media and are susceptible to its theatrics as well as to appeals to emotions and fears.

This, in turn, is how demagogues such as Kirk rise to national acclaim. Articulate, energetic, and always open to questions, he turned prejudice into virtue just by smiling when he said things such as:

I can’t stand empathy. I think empathy is a made-up, New Age term that… does a lot of damage, but it is very effective when it comes to politics.

Turns out that “empathy,” from the Greek word for “feeling,” was commonly used in America a century ago, often in reference to immigrants arriving here to start life anew.

Having always steered clear of the New Age movement, I’m unaware of its lingo, but there was certainly a bump for the word in 2010 when Pres. Obama used it to describe Elena Kagan when nominating her to the Supreme Court.

Republican senators pounced with scorn and ridicule as if the word meant “anti-American.” Obama himself hastened to dilute it by insisting that Kagan would be strict in her adherence to the law.

Seven years later, the new Trump administration likely had this in mind when it proposed a revision of the “Give me your tired, your poor” proclamation on the Statue of Liberty to make it less, well, empathetic.

A year after that, Trump was grudgingly reluctant to lower flags in tribute to Senator and war-hero John McCain. Compare that to his immediate order to lower them for Kirk.

As I write, the MAGA crowd may not be using the word “empathy,” but they now condemn Democrats for not being empathetic enough.

Irony doubles when we consider that Kirk also proclaimed:

I think it’s worth it to have a cost; unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year. So that we can have our Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights.

Had he been given a day to live, which side would he have taken in the debate he always welcomed?

Would he acknowledge that his imminent death would be but the cost of freedom–as he would surely say of the three Denver high school students shot on the same day–and now in critical condition–should they die?

Or would he condemn his own shooting after allowing for others to be “unfortunately” shot?

Could call that the modern American version of “To be, or not to be,” except there would be none of Hamlet’s procrastination.

MAGA’s MO is to insist on whatever fits the moment. And this is the most detrimental consequence of immersion in social media:

There is no such thing as contradiction, there’s only Now.

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Photo from CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/02/politics/emma-lazarus-poem-statue-of-liberty/index.html

If Elected, I Will Not Serve

Sorry to disappoint so many well-wishers over these past 18 months, but I must withdraw my candidacy to be Newburyport’s mayor.

My write-in offer was good only if no competent candidate challenged the serial disaster known as Sean Reardon.

Really, if the city wants a smiley-faced showman for mayor, my 25 years experience in Renaissance festivals trumps–in both senses of the word–Reardon’s five years of ingratiating photo-ops.

All a moot point, as the recent entry of one of the City Council’s most thoughtful, prepared, principled, and always-ready-to-take-a-stand members puts competence on the ballot.

Granted, it is worrisome that Jim McCauley will no longer be on the council–and just as disappointing that Connie Preston and Heath Granas will also be gone.

Those three have been the front line of public advocacy at council meetings chaired by someone who just cannot stop channeling Rip Van Winkle.

Other councilors have their moments but seem susceptible to Dead Cameron’s anesthesia. Some just sink back into silence while a few try to reconcile two sides of impossible disputes.

Afroz Khan seems to forget that she has already praised one side after praising the other, and then re-praises the first, after which she returns to the second and starts again.

She unleashes sentences longer than the freight trains that haul coal out of West Virginia, and appears oblivious to the several department heads, the library archivist, the entire clerks office, and several volunteers already run-down, mangled and bloody on Reardon’s tracks.

Then there’s Ben Harman who also came through for the library volunteers in key moments, but who rivals Khan with fine-people-on-both-sides attempts to defend the indefensible.

Days ago, when Mayor Reardon announced an initiative to “strengthen collaboration and transparency in Newburyport,” I had to ask if it was real or if it was satire.

Like hearing an arsonist call for an improved fire department. But Harman actually fell for it.

Did he forget the gag order that Reardon imposed on City Hall employees earlier this year, forbidding them from speaking to City Councilors (such as Harman) about city issues?

Did he forget the mayor’s efforts to avoid an investigation of the library, and then to discredit the report that an independent investigation finally produced?

Harman’s gullibility is the local equivalent to that of Maine’s US senator who voted not to impeach Trump because, she explained with a chuckle, “I think he learned his lesson.”

Congrats, Ben! You are now the Susan Collins of Newburyport!

Let’s hope that the new candidates for council seats understand that representative government calls for considering an entire menu rather than nodding their heads to whatever the mayor orders.

What the council needs most are members who can snap Rip Van Cameron out of his coma. His favorite phrases–”within our purview” and “stay in our lane”–are like snores to cover the anguished appeals and outcries of dozens of public servants, ranging from library volunteers to the City Clerk’s office.

They also range from heads of city departments to members of various boards, all of them either terminated or abandoning ship before Reardon can steer it into yet another iceberg of litigation.

Making that point in a letter urging the council to rid the city of a Human Resources director who thought her entire job description was to say “yes” to the mayor, former mayor Donna Holaday pointed to a City Hall that more resembles a shop of horrors, asking:

So how many more lawsuits will we have to face? Why are all the Department Heads leaving? D[epartment of] P[ublic] S[ervices], Finance, Clerk, Water, Police, Fire, Health ……Why is morale so poor? Isn’t that the role of HR?

Yes, those of you who recall my attacks on the former mayor regarding the waterfront a decade ago, may be amazed that I quote her now.

But that may be the ultimate measure of just how detrimental Sean Reardon’s tenure as mayor has been, which is why I ask would-be supporters to count me out of the race.

Please don’t make me the Ralph Nader of Newburyport.

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Does this look like mayoral material to you? Photo by Paul Shaughnessy, King Richard’s Faire, 2025.

Big Beautiful Bullshit

The name all by itself should have been enough to kill it.

George Orwell would have called it doubleplusgoodspeak, but if you are willing to accept a name such as “Big Beautiful Bill” as anything but an insult to public intelligence, you might have at least wondered why the Republican-led US House of Representatives scheduled the vote at 1:00 am.

They pretty much had to wait until it was past all kids’ bedtime on the Pacific Coast. If politics is analogous to entertainment, then what happened last night was XXX-rated.

Call it euphemism if you want, and put your American audience to sleep by the third syllable. Most euphemisms serve to soften. “Big Beautiful Bill” is outright deceit more in line with “pacification of villages” that, as Orwell showed, hid destruction and murder.

Better to describe it with a striking comparison. The Republican name for what passed by a single vote over a unanimous Democratic vote is a gold-plated doorknob on a porta potty.

If you want euphemism, you’ll hear it from every news source–left, center, right–reporting on the bill:

Big Beautiful Billions will be cut from Medicare, Medicaid, Family Assistance, Farm Assistance, Veterans Benefits, Environmental Protection, Weather Services, Park Services, Worker Safety, Consumer Protection…

The disoperative word there is “cut.” What? Does the money disappear? No. The honest word there would be “re-allocate.” Much of what the rich now pay in taxes, already made ridiculously far short of their fair-share by Pres. You-can-have-it-all Reagan, will be re-allocated back to them. The real “cuts” will be tax breaks for the richest of the rich–whose businesses will also benefit from the weakening and termination of laws to protect consumers, workers, and the environment. Bill, Baby, Bill!

No time to list every target in the Republican Party’s bid to turn the US Treasury into an ATM machine for their donors, so rather than list the targets you’ve heard of because they will effect you and your neighbors’ wallet–even as the cost of eggs remains high–there’s one very Big but not at all Beautiful provision that needs more attention.

From Newsweek:

A provision “hidden” in the sweeping budget bill that passed the U.S. House on Thursday seeks to limit the ability of courts—including the U.S. Supreme Court—from enforcing their orders…

The provision “would make most existing injunctions—in antitrust cases, police reform cases, school desegregation cases, and others—unenforceable,” Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, told Newsweek. “It serves no purpose but to weaken the power of the federal courts.”

So much for three branches of a democracy. Checks and balances? Yes for the checks for Republican campaigns, but the balances are for suckers and losers, you know, like habeas corpus and a ban on emoluments, a word that the Republican president ridiculed at length–with mocking, high-pitched, pronunciations–in his 2020 and 2024 stump speeches.

Don’t know about the 1,000-page BBB, but “emoluments” appears with terms such as “checks and balances,” “the judicial Power of the United States,” and “habeas corpus” in a single, much-shorter, and completely honest document.

That would be the United States Constitution, which emphasizes each one of those provisions that the BBB disdains, and that our Republican president ridicules.

No wonder he added all those gold-plated ornaments to the oval office.

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Possibly the most egregious example of a name intended to hide–or deny, or deceive–was intended for the nuclear-powered attack submarine commissioned by the US Navy in the early years of the Reagan Administration. The Navy wanted to name it the USS Corpus Christi, but the Catholic Church went, well, ballistic. Since the ship would be based in the Gulf Coast Texas city of that name, the Navy added “City of…” to the front of the name, and the objections died down.
https://nara.getarchive.net/media/the-nuclear-powered-attack-submarine-uss-city-of-corpus-christi-ssn-705-approaches-9285b4

Oh Director! My Director!

I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach.

I feel like all of us at King Richard’s Faire have been kicked in the gut, but I don’t want to assume anything, so I’ll speak for myself.

If you haven’t heard, Kitsy Olson has been dismissed. You might say, well, it is new ownership, and so they have the right, and they should call the shots. I wonder if they know what they are shooting.

Of course they have the right to dismiss and replace any current directors. Perhaps the new owners are a young, energetic cadre, all of them artistically inclined, and one wants the position of Entertainment Director. This is understandable, even admirable, and unquestionably legal, but none of those makes it right.

What’s right is that King Richard’s Faire has been wildly and increasingly successful in the 24 seasons I’ve been part of it. In recent years we have had the town of Carver running school buses as shuttles from the high school parking lot a mile up 58 during the last four or five weekends. We’ve had the Carver police at times begging–or was it ordering?–us to declare the faire sold out to prevent more cars from coming our way.

What’s right is that we have gained glowing reviews from print and broadcast media outlets all over New England. We have countless patrons who treasure the faire as part of their lives, who attend nearly every weekend year after year, some of them every day. With many, some of us are now on a first-name basis. Couples get married here and return to celebrate their anniversaries. Relatives of our patrons plan trips here in the fall so that they can join their families at King Richard’s.

What’s right is that the entertainment–in its variety, its energy, its timing and positioning around the realm, its offerings of surprise, amazement, and hilarity, always hilarity–has done this. Let me be quick to praise the merchants all over the realm and the gamers in their vibrant, if sometimes muddy lane. All of them have played an equal role, and they do it by their own natural knack for entertaining. Even our security guards make people laugh. Everyone from the royal court to the 14-year-old kid in chain mail carrying the banner for Joker’s Press at the end of each faire day’s parade is part of what keeps bringing patrons through the gate.

Speaking of The Gate, though I cannot claim to speak for others who work the faire, I can claim a unique view on the effect it has on patrons. As some of you know, I spend up to 90 minutes before closing each day outside the gate, facing patrons when they leave. The smiles I see, the laughter I hear, the dancing I pipe for, the praise of that day at the faire directed toward me are closer to unanimous than any reasonable person would think possible. “Come back next year,” I’ll begin to say. “Oh, we’ll be back,” they keep saying, sometimes adding “next week” or “next month.”

Only complaints are mostly the cries of toddlers who want to turn around and go back in.

Thanks to its riches of entertainment, the faire cannot be more successful than it already is, and you cannot name anyone who should receive more credit for that than Kitsy Olson.

Apparently, or at least to date, there has been no reopening of the position or any invitation to re-apply. My guess is that she was given the well-worn, null-and-void-of-any-and-all-thought, bureaucrapspeak, “We are going in a different direction.”

To go in any other direction from where this Entertainment Director has brought us–since before my audition in 1999–will be a wrong turn.

Unless there are appeals from more than one of us–perhaps less seething than I cannot help but be–this will be a done deal. Perhaps it already is, but even at that, don’t we owe it to Kitsy to make it known–right now–to the new powers-that-be what she has done for this faire?

If it was worth their buying, what do they think made it worth the price they paid?

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From the website of Stanislaus State University where she teaches in the Drama Dept.https://www.csustan.edu/people/ms-kitsy-olson

With No Effort Whatsoever

Glad to report that I’m finally back to the daily walk that proved so beneficial last fall during the annual athletic event diguised as a Renaissance faire.

Must admit, I have a ton–well, maybe up to 70 pounds, whatever I can get off–of catching up to do after months of, um, inattention, but I’m already packed to leave pretty soon for the gym.

Yes, today is in the 80s, too hot to endure the unshaded road into the Reserve. Another advantage is that those treadmills have dashboards with readings for calories, distance, time, and pace that seem to motivate me more than looking at the license plates of passing cars and adding up the numerals as if they were cribbage hands. There’s also those sidebars that reduce the weight on my otherwise hopelessly abused feet.

On Monday, it was overcast with a most comfortable breeze off the marsh, and so I took my water-bottle to that bench where I like to sit for as long as I walk either way. It’s a 2.25 mile roundtrip, the same as I’m now walking in the gym where it takes about 50 minutes–and where I work up much more of a sweat because I’m not sitting down for 45 minutes in the middle of it.

I’m no speedster in the gym, clocking averages between 2.3 and 2.6, but I’m at my slowest on the road. So slow, that an elderly couple across the road went past me about a Canadian football field (with both its 30-yard endzones) away from the bench ahead of us and scored a touchdown before I reached mid-field–or the 55 yard line as our northern neighbors call it.

Though my fingers were crossed that they’d pass the bench, I watched them cross over and take seats when I was still more than a Canadian endzone away. Oh, how I missed a treadmill’s sidebars!

But I arrived and saw that they were at one end, something that I always do so that other strollers or bicyclists will feel welcome to sit down without asking. Of course, I did ask, as all who have ever joined me on that bench have always done.

In their greetings, I thought I detected a German accent. “Guten tag!” I hailed, and then to their invitation to the bench: “Danke schoene!”

For a moment they gave me blank looks until the woman responded, “That’s German. We’re from Sweden.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said, “Welcome to America!” But then I did it again, adding, “Willkommen!”

Two more blank looks, but they were grinning as he said, “That’s still German.”

We had a nice chat about the similarities of climate, which led me to believe they must be from the south of the Scandanavian Peninsula, and of climate change–a reminder that while languages may not cross borders with much ease, weather patterns cross them with no effort whatsoever.

After they continued their walk, I recalled my two-weeks in Hamburg, Germany, 45 years ago when I learned that everyone in Western Europe is at least bi-lingual, often tri-lingual, and that English is almost always the second language. In Hamburg, I met teenagers who spoke English with far more of a vocabulary than many teenagers back here. With that in mind, I laughed out loud at my absurd and all-too-American idea that anything I thought close would do.

The couple didn’t go much further before turning around. As they approached, I was determined to offer a farewell in unmistakable English. “Enjoy your vacation” came to mind, immediately followed by remembering that Europeans don’t use the word vacation. They call it holiday.

Well, now, which is it that my new friends would prefer to hear from their would-be Yankee host?

“Enjoy the rest of your stay here in America,” I called out.

They smiled and sounded quite pleased. “Enjoy your charming island,” she said to his nodding agreement.

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