Tipping Canoe

Though not in the least surprising to anyone paying attention, the tweet from Mar-an-Ego this weekend was shocking in the extreme.

Broadcast, print, and social media are buzzing with a question I never thought I’d hear in my lifetime: Has any president, while in office or later, called for “terminating” the US Constitution?

For two years many of us have asked if any president, prior to January, 2020, ever attempted to reverse the result of an American election. Here’s as close to the answer–for both–as I can come:

Yes, there is one.

Our tenth president, slaveholding Virginian John Tyler was elected to the Confederacy’s House of Representatives 16 years after he left the White House. Tyler had not been elected, but became president in 1841 when our ninth president, William Henry Harrison, died of pneumonia just one month after his inauguration.

Tyler was so unpopular that neither the Democrats nor the Whigs wanted him as a candidate in 1844.

Who knows what he did in the years leading up to the Civil War and secession, but I’d say that running for the House in the CS Congress was, in effect, a call for the termination of the US Constitution.

If you are wondering why I say “running for” rather than “serving in,” it’s because Tyler died of a stroke before he showed up in Richmond to take the seat.

Had he died in 1841 instead of the newly elected Harrison, another former president, John Quincy Adams, would have called it a stroke of luck. Adams had high hopes for Harrison as a native Virginian and military hero before settling in and representing Ohio in the US Senate. Adams was confident that Harrison could guide the South out of a slave economy, and he knew that Tyler would preserve it. The only president to serve in Congress after leaving the White House, Adams fought Southern gag orders and pushed for Emancipation for 17 years before dying at 81 on the House floor in 1848.

A one-term president defeated in his bid for re-election in 1824, Adams considered the death of Harrison and the swearing-in of Tyler as the most demoralizing time of his life.

The answer may be two.

However, if we add the one I have in mind, then we may have to consider Richard Nixon and possibly Herbert Hoover as well. As unlikeable as they were, and for all the harm that both did, there’s no reason to pin either with a “call to terminate” Constitutional law. At least not an open call.

Coincidentally, the one I have in mind was also a vice-president who ascended after a president’s death and was never elected on his own. Ironically, he and Tyler always bitterly opposed each other.

Pres. Andrew Johnson, a Tennessean who was on the 1864 ticket with Lincoln to appeal to voters in the border states, may never have called for a suspension of the Constitution, but as historian Brenda Wineapple tells us, he was…

“… a man with a fear of losing ground, with a need to be recognized, with an obsession to be right, and when seeking revenge on enemies—or perceived enemies—he had to humiliate, harass, and hound them. Heedless of consequences, he baited Congress and bullied men, believing his enemies were enemies of the people. It was a convenient illusion.”

In effect, all of the humiliation, harassment, and hounding, made the “radicals” of the time–i.e. senators and representatives who had pushed for Emancipation and were then pushing for the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments–fear that Johnson could subvert a premise of the US Constitution:

“But if this impeachment failed, given all the favorable circumstances, all the breaches of law, all the usurpation, the staunchest Radicals felt that no American President would ever be successfully impeached and convicted, and there would alas be no limit to presidential power.”

If what happened this weekend goes without consequence, that fear will be realized. Given all that has already gone free of consequence, perhaps it already has.

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A movie waiting to happen, with Tommy Lee Jones in the leading role:
https://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=mcafee&type=E210US1494G0&p=the+impeachers+wineapple+book

Not a movie waiting to happen, good riddance:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Tyler

William Henry Harrison as a general about 35 years before his election to the presidency. What made his reputation was a victory over the Sac & Fox tribe at a place named Tippecanoe. Hence, the campaign slogan in 1840: “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!”
https://drloihjournal.blogspot.com/2017/10/william-henry-harrison-governor-of.html

Ain’t Over Even When It’s Over

A friend tells me that he was recently on the phone with a relative who, while climbing a corporate ladder, was transferred to Charlestown, South Carolina.

Most memorable was a statement screamed into my friend’s ear. He wanted to convey the emotion he heard, but tried to muffle it so as not to attract the attention of other diners at Newburyport’s Park Lunch, as loud as the din in that place can be:

These people still think the war isn’t over! The Civil War! They call it the War of Northern–they say Nawthun–Aggression or War between the States! Whatever, they don’t know they lost!

Before his attempt to muffle himself expired, I tried to calm him down: “And we expect them to know that an election two years ago is over?”

“Yahhhhh!” he bellowed. That caught some attention from nearby, but it was easy to deflect in a sports bar.

“Damned Yankees!” I shouted just as loud.

The two of us then smiled and nodded in agreement with all those around us who had no idea what they were agreeing to. All of it went unquestioned likely because the Boston Red Sox just took two out of three games from the New York Yankees in a series that ended Sunday night. Had I been sitting at another table, I’d have made the assumption myself.

Reminds me of how geographically, culturally, psychologically, and politically telescopic the name “Yankee” is.

Most historians think the word evolved from Native American attempts to say “English” throughout the colonies, and was then applied to all European settlers, including the Dutch in what was first named New Amsterdam. This may be why, to this day, every American from any state is a Yankee overseas.

Come back here, and it is just us in the North and Midwest who are Yankees in the suspicious South. To Mid-Westerners, the name is not for them, but just for New Yorkers and New Englanders, maybe New Jerseyans and Eastern Penners. Up in Northern New England, they embrace the name as their own, but in Southern New England, Yankees are a detestable baseball team with deplorable fans that we would not root for if they played Al Qaeda.

Even in New York City, many residents of its five burrows place “Yankees” specifically in the Bronx, a name not to be used for anyone or anything in Queens, home of a rival team named New York Mets–and certainly not Manhattan where the Giants played or Brooklyn where the Dodgers played before both teams moved west. No word on Staten Island’s preferred proper noun.

From the sound of it, many elderly fans in Brooklyn think the Dodgers are still there, dodging trolleys that aren’t there either. Like my friend’s relative in Charlestown, they prove that Yogi Berra was wrong. It ain’t over even when it’s over.

Both cases remind me of the chasm between what Americans like to know and what we need to know. Unless you are employed by one of the 30 major league teams, baseball has no direct impact on your life. What happens at the polls in November of every even-numbered year in all fifty states does, no matter how far you want to think you are removed from it–no matter how far above you think you are from it.

As it is, Republican nominees for the US Congress and for statewide offices all over the country have won primaries by declaring that the 2020 election was stolen, and will do what they can to undo that result–state by battleground state where, if they win this November, they will be the ones to certify electoral ballots in 2024. In effect, 2020 ain’t over any more than 1860. The Confederacy did rise again, flags and all.

But that warning will be heeded only by those who seek what they need to know.

Those content with only what they like to know may want to consider, at least, what the chant, “Yankees Suck!” actually means in the real world.

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Boston? No. Massachusetts? No. New England? No. The Carolinas? No.
Caracas, Venezuela.
http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/latinam/la01a.html

https://simple-movie.com/movie/yankee_doodle_dandy/

And That’s the Way It Was

Most often they do it with a photo of Walter Cronkite. Whether with photo or just by invoking his name, they’ll pose the question as a rhetorical lament:

Remember when reporters just read the news without telling us what to think?

One friend assessed the problem in more detail:

With the news being so sensationalized, I acknowledge the history and then turn it off and don’t actively follow it— I’ll pick up news throughout the day without searching for it: radio, friends, online etc…. I try not to delve down the news hole [because] nowadays nothing is news, it’s all biased commentary[.]

Please know that this is a conscientious, intelligent fellow, a music instructor who has given this semi-literate hack a few tips regarding sharps and flats, and who years ago effortlessly helped me craft my only musical composition, “Walking under the Influence.”

I’ll guess that when he says “acknowledge the history,” he means that he keeps himself aware of national and global events, which to me is the most important step. After all, if you don’t turn the ignition, Ford or Ferrari don’t matter, it ain’t going anywhere.

After that, we part company. Ample news is reported in print and on radio and television. Reported as news. Many people share my friend’s impression because they make no distinction between news reports and programs that did not exist in Cronkite’s day: Analysis that delves into history, traces cause/effect, suggests motivations, predicts things to come. Much of that is then subject to opinion which at times is nothing better than biased commentary.

NBC is news; MSNBC is analysis; PBS & CNN are both. I’ll leave the rest for others to “decide.” Newspapers label their editorial pages and their features, much like they do sports and arts sections, while reports fill other pages, starting with the front.*

Today’s confusion may be due to social media which mixes it all as one.

I’ve been practicing some degree of journalism for over 50 years, and what I’ve seen is a gradual tendency of the public to overlook the distinctions between news and editorial. Many consider it all editorial. Overlooking the distinctions between analysis and advocacy, they consider all of it biased.

This is why so many people today think that a comparison is an equation, and that an explanation is an excuse–both of which tendencies have prevented many of us from realizing just how fascistic the rise of the MAGA crowd has been.

The problem is both right and left. Just this week in the Newburyport Daily News, a reader implied that the editors endorsed a letter from a Trumper just by printing it. She went on to insist that letters be labelled as not representing the views of the editors. Maybe it’s my age, but I find it staggering that anyone could graduate from an American high school and not know the primary function of a newspaper’s letter-to-the-editor section.

For all of the misconceptions and all of the rhetorical laments that they raise, there is one common denominator. Call it lowest or highest or anywhere in between, I’d rather compare it–and may as well equate it–to all faulty ignitions, Ford or Ferrari. Two words:

Informed citizenry.

Jefferson used the term more than once: It was “at the heart of a dynamic democracy” as well as “the best defense against tyranny.” Madison cited it when he wrote “freedom of press” into our First Amendment. Ever since, with a few obvious, low-point exceptions, most presidents have respected and encouraged a free press.

When Lyndon Johnson told his aides after watching a live report from Vietnam, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America,” he wasn’t castigating the press, he was recognizing the role of the press in the design of self-government.

That’s the way was, and that’s the way it still is. No way around it: Not to pay attention, not to be informed, is to forfeit democracy.

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The moment that Walter Cronkite removed his glasses following his announcement of the death of John Kennedy is often cited as his only show of emotion during a newscast. A few years later, his reporting from Vietnam was among the reasons that Lyndon Johnson did not run for re-election in 1968.

*About front pages: If there was ever a journalistic equivalent of “sacred space,” it was the front page. Advertisements were a cardinal sin, and editorials appeared there only on very special occasions. Only exception I know of to the latter rule was the Manchester (NH) Union Leader, which daily ran hard-right editorials on its cover as early as Kennedy vs. Nixon if not before. For it, the paper had a national reputation as either “cranky and belligerent” or “eccentric and arch-conservative” depending on whom you were talking to. Gradually, ads began to appear around the edges of front pages, and now they are commonplace.

Mingya As It May

Yesterday I drove past a restaurant once a favorite of mine–from teenage dates in the Sixties to celebrations with my teenage daughter at the turn of the century–only to be reminded that it is now part of an East Coast chain.

Starting to reminisce of times there, I could not recall the name, but I did realize that I could put the question on social media when I got home.

The group devoted to the Merrimack Valley calls its page “Mingya Valley” using a common expression that, as kids, we always intended as an expression of surprise or excitement. So common, that it was usually blurted out spontaneously with no thought or intention at all.

What we–at least those of us on Tower Hill– didn’t know until well into adulthood was that it is an Italian expletive. Which makes us wonder to this day why so many Italian parents, including one of mine, never stopped us from saying it. Was it a shared, subversive, secret stab at all the Irish parents, including the other of mine, who outnumbered them?

Mingya as it may, the group is heavy with nostalgia. I typed the question to the page where it was soon approved and posted. Within minutes, three fellow Mingyans typed in the name which I immediately recognized: “Thompson’s.” I quickly thanked all three and considered the case closed.

Before long, I gained notice that there were more answers, which all proved to be the same answer even though the identical answer still appeared several times above those answers as well as above new answers–answers identical to all the other answers–that continued to appear below the answers I just answered.

None of this is intended as complaint. Far from it. Many of the answers added praise for the restaurant’s food generally and for its bread and pastries specifically, all of which cooked up mouth-watering memories of meals I enjoyed at Thompson’s, a name which now appears at least 30 times and counting in the comments section of my post.

One fellow said he worked there and that he knew it was Thompson’s until well into the Seventies. I delighted in the opportunity to let him know Thompson’s was Thompson’s for at least another quarter century before Thompson’s became something other than Thompson’s and is no longer Thompson’s no matter how much we miss Thompson’s.

And I enjoyed reading the memories of those who were little kids taken there by parents, and who would become adults returning the favor, with their own little kids along for Thompson’s then-(and-now-again)-heralded pecan rolls.

To conclude and to finish, I can report that there are now 48 people (and counting) telling me the name of the restaurant, and only one got it wrong. Oddly, that wrong answer is the 48th, appearing below the still-visible 47 correct answers–or the one correct answer that appears that many times.

One woman near the end of the list hedged her bet with “maybe Thompson’s,” and another fellow wrote, “The Star movie house around the corner, on Essex.” But Essex Street and downtown Lawrence are at least a mile away, making me think that he was answering the wrong post, much like someone writing a Christmas card to one friend and then putting in an envelope addressed to another. Been there, done that.

In addition to the comments, over 39 people (and counting) like or love the question and/or the answers and comments it drew. All hearts and thumbs up, no tears or frowns

Best of all, not a single argument ensued.

Mingya!

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No pics to be found, but you can own this matchbook for just $49.00: https://www.ebay.com/itm/333563561515?chn=ps

As it now is: https://locations.bertuccis.com/us/ma/north-andover/435-andover-street

The Ayer Mill which now houses a New Balance outlet factory. The clock tower is no doubt the foremost image of my native Lawrence, Mass., and is the masthead (or featured photo) of the Mingya Valley page. This photo is by Shaggy Shag on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/99008891781936122/

Critical Climate Theory

Last week, Seattle radio station KUOW reported that “climate science” is not taught in some of the Evergreen State’s middle and high schools.

My Seattleite correspondent complained to the station for “not calling it censorship, though that is what it is.”

When she informed me, I typed back a virtual shrug: “At least they are reporting that it isn’t taught.”

But Helen Highwater, true to her name, was having none of it:

Evidently, one tactic is to encourage science teachers to assign students to debate issues related to climate change–a pedagogy that is itself a form of disinformation since scientists are long past debating it.
Community political affiliation is an accurate predictor of how a school district will teach climate science. Level of education is the next best predictor. In Washington, 40% have college degrees. For kids in school now, about 60% will get all their climate science education in middle and high school.

Which is to say that they get none at all. Her concluding statement gave me pause:

The conflict gets more acknowledgment and attention than the crisis.

Isn’t that something we could say about COVID, about race, about voting rights, about gun violence, about economic injustice and disparity?

If that’s how it is in the reliably blue and evergreen state of Washington, imagine how it is in the rest of the country. To think that, in 1988, Seattle was such a global model for recycling and reduced emissions that public planners and engineers from all over the world went there to take a look.

Then-Mayor Charles Royer, who oversaw the efforts he initiated, served as an advisor to Michael Dukakis’ presidential campaign that year. Many who followed that campaign expected that he would have been Dukakis’ Secretary of Interior or the head of the EPA because of it.

Instead, we got Vice-President Dan Quayle who solved a dilemma faced by the elder George Bush–how to allow developers free reign on protected coastal lands–by simply changing the federal definition of the word “wetlands.”

The Right likes to call the Left “woke.” How a word for awareness, attention, and intelligence is a bad thing in 21st Century America is an essay, if not a book, all by itself–no matter how ugly they make the word sound. But “woke” is ironic, as the Left has yet to wake up to the fact of how much obstruction and distortion the Right has accomplished merely by language.

Back in the Eighties, Senator Patrick Moynihan of New York warned against “semantic infiltration.” If one side in an argument made up names and phrases that the public started using, they could then control–limit and distort–the argument.

From the Affordable Care Act to “Obamacare,” from reproductive rights to “abortion on demand,” from Estate Tax to “Death Tax,” from fair wages to “socialism,” from Michelle Obama’s call for nutrition in school lunch programs to “nanny state,” from honest history to “cancel culture,” from respect for others to “political correctness,” from gun control to “They’re coming to take your guns away!”

The examples could fill Seattle’s phone book, and the Right doesn’t need to win any of the debates. They need only prolong debate and sow doubt so that nothing can be done. And isn’t social media ideal for sowing doubt, and haven’t the Russians been generous with their seeds?

Martin Luther King had this obstruction in mind–“nullification and interposition” as he wrote in Birmingham’s jail–when he declared: “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

My friend Highwater nailed the method to that maddening stall: The conflict gets more acknowledgment and attention than the crisis.

I’m surprised that the right hasn’t contrived the term “Critical Climate Theory” (yet) to stop any teaching of climate change in America’s jet stream. Maybe they figure they don’t need it, or are saving it for a Donald card when they fear their children are being told that not everything in America is and always has been good and happy.

Why are the rest of us surprised at their refusal to act following school shootings when they prove over and again that they don’t want no education?

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https://mei.nus.edu.sg/think_in/covid-19-and-climate-change-asias-policy-choices-in-the-age-of-crisis/

In an earlier blog on this same semantic theme, I wrote that claims for a “comfort zone” are now “white privilege.” While I was writing this blog, the Washington Post proved it:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/12/06/tennessee-teacher-fired-critical-race-theory/

A Tale of Two Faces

A year before America’s Golden Calf descended the escalator and smashed the tabloids, this headline appeared on the front page of Newburyport Daily News:

“Caleb Cushing tops list of important residents.”

To commemorate the Port’s 250th anniversary, “local historians” had chosen Newburyport’s “most accomplished and most colorful public figure.” Anyone who had read Cushing’s biography, Broken Glass: Caleb Cushing and the Shattering of the Union, may have wondered if the choice was an outright repudiation of native son William Lloyd Garrison—whose advocacy of human rights, we must remember, threatened what at the time were regarded as property rights.

If that was the city’s low-point–our “alternative facts” moment as I think of it–then the Annual William Lloyd Garrison Lecture, which began via Zoom just last year, may yet atone for that civic sin.

Initiated as an observance of the city’s most famous citizen–or infamous to some both in his day and, apparently, now–on the anniversary of his birth, the second takes place this Friday (Dec. 10) at the Old South Presbyterian Church. (And Zoom is still an option, see link below.)

On a website to prepare for it, various folks contributed essays answering the questions “Why Here?” and “Why Now?” regarding the need for re-confirming the legacy of the publisher and editorial writer of The Liberator, the leading voice of the Abolitionist cause for over three decades before the Civil War finally did abolish slavery.

After three writers clearly and convincingly covered Now, I offered one entirely devoted to Here. Knowing that no “local historians” involved would want to be reminded of the designation of Cushing as the Port’s number one guy, I began by reminding them of it.

As another nagging gadfly liked to say, here’s the rest of the story:

Why Here? Why Newburyport?

… Cushing’s foremost commitment was to Northern businesses in the triangular slave trade, of which he was part. Unavoidably, that led him to defend the “rights” of slaveholders to protect their “property.” A close friend and political ally of Jefferson Davis, Cushing supported the Slavocracy for years before the war, and maintained secret correspondence with Davis during it.

That violated Lincoln’s wartime order, which, oh by the way, was an act of treason.

Before long, a letter (“Cushing a poor choice”) from one Jay Harris detailed the Mayor/Governor/Mass. Supreme Court Justice/U.S. Rep./U.S. Attorney General’s decades-long “staunch support for the rights of slaveholders.”

In a guest column following that, I called it akin to picking Neville Chamberlain rather than Winston Churchill as Britain’s most “accomplished” prime minister because he served more years in parliament, held more offices.

My headline, “Garrison 51, Cushing 1,” referred to two recent histories of the era: Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson (2008), by David S. Reynolds, and Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877 (2013), by Brenda Wineapple. The two books combine for 51 references to Garrison, including five that extend several pages. Cushing’s name appears once.

That might suggest what national historians think of our local choice.

Curiously, the Custom House’s curator and director were the only two living historians quoted in the initial report, one of whom defended Cushing as an advocate of “popular sovereignty,” apparently unaware that the term was a euphemism for “states’ rights,” itself a euphemism at the time for the Slavocracy.

But the Port has far more historians that have written books, held events, served as sources for numerous media reports. Because the 2014 choice was made in their name, they are implicated whether they want to be or not. To date, their silence has been deafening. What say they now?

Moreover, before Newburyport looks to Garrison to stem today’s Confederate tide, shouldn’t we be accountable for our own unwitting, inattentive role in it?

Until then, in a new age when Confederate flags appear not just in the streets of DC, but on porches and on bumpers right here in the Merrimack Valley, Cushing remains Newburyport’s foremost citizen.

What say we?

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Links to all three articles cited above can be found by typing their headlines into the search engine at: https://www.newburyportnews.com/

https://annualwilliamlloydgarrisonlecture.wordpress.com/

Here, Garrison is across the street from and facing the front door of Newburyport City Hall. The inscription is the most frequently quoted excerpt from his many anti-slavery editorials.
Photo courtesy of the Newburyport Daily News.

Angel of the Boardwalk

Nine years ago, I wrote a column for the Daily News teasingly headlined: “You may be downsized, but I’m dinosaured.”

Fittingly, I wrote it on the concession counter of the Screening Room while a film entertained a full house. No need for me to be in the booth waiting for cues to change reels with the newly installed hi-tech equipment.

That was the point: I had gone from projectionist to button-pusher.

Soon after it appeared in print, I received this:

Dear Jack: I knew one day I would read your article about the loss of film projectionists. I have a real darkroom in my house that I have not used for several years, and I do miss it. I always felt as if I was creating art when I worked there.
Now just a button and a few clicks and an image is created.
I share your loss, but what will you do now? Are you the button pusher still? Annie and I still go to the Screening Room but we always liked having a different film each week. I hope to still find you in the booth and behind the counter. I look forward to those few exchanges we have.
Let me know what’s going on.
All the best, Pat
And P.S. I did so enjoy those lollipops. 🙂

Lollipops aside, Pat Bashford and Ann Kemp saw every film we played–showing up in Ann’s 1959 Morris Minor convertible, top down weather permitting–until Ann passed away at 77 in 2014. Both were active in an assortment of community groups ranging from books to horticulture, from the Firehouse to the Unitarian Church.

Ann was always friendly but a bit reserved as befits a native Brit, while Pat was prone to jokes and ever-ready banter. A native Ohioan, she was known for the ever-present twinkle in her eye.

In retrospect, Ann may have seemed reserved only in comparison to Pat. Who wouldn’t?

Pat usually greeted me with a wise-crack about my last newspaper column. When I was critical of the mayor, she offered herself as a reference for a job in City Hall. When I attacked the Newburyport Board of Health, she was less optimistic: “Well, there goes your plan to open a restaurant!”

A faithful reader, she was always encouraging: “I read all the columns almost immediately… You should, you know, gather these bright sparkles and put them in a book.” On occasion, she called me “a bullshitter,” a term of endearment among people of Irish descent.

Her obituary appeared in Newburyport just this weekend following her passing at the home of her son in Western Massachusetts two weeks ago, and it illustrates how and how often she offered such support:

Throughout her life, Pat closely befriended many women, who found in her a steadfast source of strength and joie de vivre, and an exemplar of wisdom, fair-mindedness, and independence. She forged these friendships wherever she lived, and more than a few were with former students. Most of her friendships lasted until the end of her life, stretching back fifty, sixty, and even seventy years in some cases. Her unforced enthusiasm for others was remarkable. So many of Pat’s friends will miss her nearly as much as her sons will. Even those who met or knew Pat only briefly were touched by her kindness, perception, and sparkle.

Pat’s lifelong passions were the visual arts, which, as we sometimes forget, includes theater. When she lived in Reading for some 25 years, she performed, directed, and designed sets for area theater groups. Her performance in Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth won the 1987 New England Theater Conference Best Actress award.

The obituary is full of surprises if only because Newburyport knew her for just the last two decades of a nine-decade life. By that time, photography was foremost in her efforts and attention as she offered exhibits and mini-books with titles such as Courting Nature’s Bliss and The Life of Water.

Indeed, it was the water surrounding Plum Island that drew Pat and her camera to move here. In her own words: “Water sustains us, surrounds us, soothes us, feeds us and works small miracles with our emotions — calming us, thrilling us, frightening us.”

For all that, the photo of hers that has most intrigued me–and was coincidentally chosen to accompany the obituary (link below)–is of a Plum Island dune between the waters of the ocean and the estuary. Many times have I started and stopped along that walk at Parking Lot Three to find the exact spot and recreate for my own eyes Pat’s “Boardwalk Angel.”

When I told her, she was amused: “That would make it ‘Boardwalk Devil’.”

Her last years in Newburyport were not easy. Numerous friends–some half her age, if that–would take her places, but she missed the close companionship of Ann. And along with octogenarian and nonagenarian aches and pains, she took an occasional fall:

Dear Jack, what a delight to see you today and am so sorry I couldn’t stay to visit.
Congratulations on becoming a grandpa. I hope your visit will be just what you desire.
I loved reading your columns. I didn’t get the [newspaper] all of the fall for I was in a rehab center for 7 weeks (!) and then had home PT and OT and a nurse for another 6 weeks. The fall disappeared; I missed half a year all because I don’t know my left foot from my right. But I start out patient therapy next week and hope soon to put the walker in mothballs and me on the road again…
Come by again when you get back and let’s have a chat. I miss talking with you..

As you can tell, I had dropped in unannounced, a whirlwind of last minute visits before getting on a plane to meet my new grandson in Los Angeles. But Pat welcomed that. And she also warned off a visit when it might be a problem for you:

Dear Jack, If you feel like coming out in this icky weather, I am home this afternoon. I’ll even make you a cup o’ tea!
If you don’t wish to slog out, I’ll be here another day. Haven’t given up the ghost yet.😊
Love, Pat
P.S. The door is open, just walk in and up the stairs.

As I recall, that was the visit for which I brought her a collection of eight or nine Tootsie Pops–a dozen would not tolerate the elastic band I used to make it appear as a bouquet–which she so enjoyed at the Screening Room, two per film.

“Love Pat.” Who couldn’t?

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Lot 3 Boardwalk Angel: https://sites.google.com/site/travelswithpat/

“Pat acquired her first camera as a teenager soon after World War II, a gift from her father that she owned all her life.” From: https://www.hampshirecremation.com/post/patricia-ann-bashford-1929-2021?
And from a friend in Seattle who knows far more about photography than I: “I don’t know a lot about Rolleiflex cameras like the one shown in Pat’s hand, but they were highly prized. Several of Imogen Cunningham’s and Vivian Maier’s self-portraits show similar twin-reflex Rolleis (often backwards since shot in a mirror).”

Ann Kemp: https://obituaries.newburyportnews.com/obituary/ann-kemp-772762221

Portrait by Marilu Norden, most of whose work is of the American Southwest (which may explain the earrings): https://marilunorden.com/paintings/

A Tale of One City

In the new film, Belfast, there’s a fire and brimstone Protestant minister who describes a fork in the road. One way is “straight and narrow” and leads to the Lord and grace and everlasting life in Heaven. The other is “a long and winding road” to Satan and depravity and eternal damnation in Hell.

Makes me wonder if the Beatles enjoyed a devilish inside joke with the title of their most heartfelt lament “that leads to your door” on their own way out the door.

Just as heartfelt, Kenneth Branagh’s ode to his hometown is as much celebration as lament. Unlike the Beatles’ metaphorical “Road,” however, his title is both real and specific. Perhaps he gave the minister that line as a jest from the port of Belfast across rival Liverpool’s bow.

About when the Beatles were howling “Get Back” from a London rooftop, Branagh was a nine-year-old growing up in Belfast. Before he lets us in to his past, he pans Belfast as it is today in full color–a visual treat of public art, architecture, modern transport, vibrant people. Then again, the sign saying “Hotel Titanic” may have been a bit much.

Switch to black-and-white, and, as seen through Buddy’s nine-year-old eyes, the film’s story opens with a blast of The Troubles–Catholic vs. Protestant violence, a religious conflict that more accurately would have been seen as a class conflict.

How long has it gone on? While writing his epic Irish novel, Trinity (21 weeks on the NYT best-seller list in 1976), Leon Uris was on a commercial flight to the capital of Northern Ireland when he heard this over the plane’s intercom:

We are beginning our descent into Belfast. Please set your watches back 300 years.

Canadian folk-singer Stan Rogers thought that an understatement. In concert, he introduced his protest song, “The House of Orange,” with the quip, I’d say 600 years is long enough to hold a grudge.

Though violence lurks in the film’s margins to its end, Belfast zooms in on the loves, labors, and loss of a family hoping to keep themselves together despite economic and cultural pressures. Buddy’s puppy-love with a brainy classmate is so innocent that it comes as a surprise to learn that she is Catholic when they say “Cheerio” in their final scene together–and sets up a timely laugh when his father tells him that she could be “a vegan anti-Christian” and still “she and her people are welcome in our home.”

Buddy’s mother is a tour de force, and his grandparents are both fonts of wisdom and comic relief. Among them is Judi Dench whose facial expressions leave us with the most lasting impressions.

Not sure how it looks to anyone born after the advent of color-televison circa 1960, but the black-and-white cinematography puts this Boomer right back into the era, reinforced by newscasts of the moon landing that we notice and overhear. When the family goes to the cinema to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the color from that cinema’s screen clashes so loudly with the b&w of that cinema’s audience, that this cinema’s audience gave an audible gasp. May be the most ingenious sight-gag I’ve ever seen.

Screening Room audiences are nearly unanimous in their praise for Belfast. One criticism, also made of Spencer, is that it should have subtitles. At one point, grandpa tells a story about his accent and no one understanding him. I thought the whole audience (29, big these COVID days) was going to rise up and say, “No shit!” Those two words were kept under my breath.

When Belfast ended, I was left wondering what I had in common with anyone in the film. I knew I liked it, but why? A friend, born about when Branagh first appeared on a London stage, didn’t warm to it right away either, but sounded as though she was talking herself into it when she talked me into it:

(T)he story does have its moments. I definitely empathize with the family’s pains in moving away from their homeland, and I appreciate the nostalgia Branagh has for his old neighborhood. Maybe the movie’s simplicity is even forgivable, since it’s focused on the kid’s experience… It’s got a great tone, some good music, some lovely grandparents.

Ah, the music! Throughout the film, we hear Van Morrison, a native of Belfast, a city that reappears in color after Dame Dench gives us her last look and a dedication is made. All of which makes me realize that, just as the title says, it’s not the boy who is the main character, but the city.

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Playing now through Thursday, Dec. 9 at the Newburyport Screening Room. Check for times: https://www.newburyportmovies.com/

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/leon-uris/trinity/

Rip Van Rides Again

After a 20-month layoff, I knew my memory might need some refreshing. Many places would be no trouble since I had delivered to them hundreds of times over twenty years. But what of the once-a-year holiday specials and the connecting routes less travelled?

Having grown up in the Age of Rand McNally, I kept street atlases of five New England states in the company van. Three were well-worn by about 2004, after which I consulted them only when we added a new customer.

That was about when we added one in Rhode Island, and one of my employers came to me with a print-out of step-by-step directions to it. You know, one that begins by telling you which way to turn out your driveway. Maybe it’s because I live on an island with just a single road to the mainland, but these things drive me up a bridge abutment. To reach anyplace you can name on the North American continent, I’m given three instructions to get to a bridge I can see out my living room window. Give me a clutch!

Such had to be the look on my face when he, with all good intention, handed me that drivel. He laughed, but he never made the mistake again. Anyway, the blank back-sides did come in handy as scrap paper when I had lunch later on in Cafe Assisi, so all’s well that ends with eggplant parmesan.

On my second day back since the COVID shutdown, I was dispatched to a new drop, as we call them in shipping and receiving. An address that I vaguely recalled as in an industrial park I knew reasonably well. Wanting to be sure, I started reaching for my maps not long after I drove off, but they were nowhere to be found.

Well, I was in need of coffee, and I had no trouble remembering where I’d find a Starbucks–two, in fact–conveniently just off the interstate before I reached that park. Why not look at the invoice and give them a call?

After some fumbling attempts on the company cellphone, the call went through. Because I’m one of the few remaining Americans who neither has, nor wants, nor will ever shackle myself with a cellphone, it took a while to recall how to call.

A cheery “Hello, this is…” was in my ear after an obligatory minute of phone-menu limbo, and the receptionist was delighted to learn who I was. Who wouldn’t be when you’re about to roll 500 pounds of chocolate and fudge into their offices?

When I mentioned directions, she asked, “Do you have GPS?”

Brand new just before COVID put the brakes on everything, the van probably does have it, but being too proud of my McNally nature to admit I’m unfit for this Age of Alexa, I simply said no.

She then conferred with a woman sitting nearby. From their voices, I’d say both were mid-20s, and it was clear that the second had pulled a map onto her screen and was describing it to the first who repeated it to me. So I heard it all twice. I appreciated their kind effort, but this doesn’t register visually for a McNallian–until I heard a street-name, twice, that triggered my memory. So I thought I’d make it easy:

“Yes,” I cut in, “I know that exit. The one with the rotary, right?”

“That’s it!”

“Okay! Just tell me if I go north or south of the interstate. That’s all I need.”

“Um, north?”

Right. Alexans don’t do north, south, east, or west, but my McNallian memory offered further detail: Stressing a word that now qualifies as bi-geolingual, I asked: “Do I go toward downtown Woburn or toward Wilmington?”

As soon as I heard the one-name answer, I preempted the step-by-step Alexan litany that she was already starting: “Thank you! Thank you both! I’ll recognize it from there. See you in a bit.”

And I did recognize the turn to the industrial park, which isn’t that large, so an extra turn around the block due to one wrong guess didn’t delay me more than a minute. As an unintended benefit, the call may have been the reason a couple young guys were standing out on the loading dock. For all I know, I was their excuse to have a cigarette break, but that’s fine by me. They come in quite handy when you’re rolling into a place with 500 pounds of cargo.

Rip Van Winkle may have been baffled after his 20-year snooze, so I shouldn’t worry over twenty months of sleeping in. Such tricks as calling ahead–even when I know damn well exactly where I’m going–will make this easy.

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I’d use the word mini-van to describe these low-to-the-ground Ford Transits, but that word is for something else quite different.

On the very first day I drove it, a Mendon policeman stopped me on a back road, probably doing 45 past signs saying 30. He seemed forgiving, no doubt because he had watched me go by in the larger vans on that same road many times.

No, he wouldn’t remember me, but words like “fudge” and “chocolate” have a way of sticking in the memory no matter the size of the vehicle carrying it. As surely as being asked every day, more than once, if you are “giving away free samples.” But I could tell he didn’t pull me over to ask for buttercrunch or coconut cream.

“Sorry, I got carried away,” I began. (Always begin with Sorry, and always keep talking until they interrupt.) Quickly, I told him it was so much easier to handle than the full-size cargo vans I had been driving for some twelve years, that it felt like a sports van.

He lit up with a smile when I used–coined?–that term, and interrupted to let me know he was issuing just a warning. Since then, I have waved to him as I go by, but never hit the horn. That would be pressing my luck as well as the horn.

In Marshfield, a policeman pulled up aside me while I was stopped in a parking lot consulting a map. The cafe where I liked to consult maps over falafel wraps was itself wrapped by a chain-link fence and yellow tape, and when a police cruiser suddenly appeared right next to me with its window sliding down and the cop leaning over for a talk… Well, let’s just say your mind can go awry when that happens.

Did he think I had done whatever had done in the building, that this was a classic case of “returning to the scene of the crime”? I didn’t wait for him to speak:

“Sorry! Dispatch told me to get here ASAP, and I guess I didn’t.”

He started laughing. That’s an even better time to stop. No, I hadn’t screeched in too fast or failed to use a signal. He just wanted a photograph.

By this time, I was already used to it. Cars pull up beside me on the interstates for as long as it takes for passengers to snap the pics they want. Other cars race by with people laughing, pointing, giving thumbs up. People are photographing it when I return from a delivery. If I’m there, they’ll ask permission.

More than once, some guy or gal will be squatting by the van’s side, adjusting lenses for some desired angle, then shifting for another, readjusting, and so on. Quietly, I’ll stop and stand behind them with the two-wheeler until they stand up–and are startled by my presence. As dryly as I can, I always speak first:

“Are you finished?”

Some will start to apologize, so you quickly laugh it off. Thankfully, most get the joke, so you crack another:

“May I go now?”

What they want, of course, is the sign my employers put on it. Two of them are volunteer fire-fighters, one a former ambulance driver, and they may have thought it an inside joke for their fellow first-responders. They even put a backward “chocolate” between the headlights. Wonder if the only reason it doesn’t have a siren and a bubble gum light is because they figured I might use them.

Also wonder if it occurred to them that it would be I, not they, who would absorb all the laughter their shiny new object would cause.

Whatever the case, “Emergency Fudge Response Vehicle” now challenges the fish shack in Rockport out on the tip of Cape Ann–Massachusetts’ other cape–as the most photographed object in the state.

For artists with their canvases, the shack is known as “Motif #1.” That would make the van “Motif #2,” but it moves too fast to be painted. And you better believe I’ll keep pedal to the metal to keep it that way because the term number two has a most unfortunate other meaning.

Kinda like mini-van.

Painted on Downtown Walls

Been years since I travelled overland west of the Mississippi.

In 2003 I delivered a car to Los Angeles, Amtraked to Seattle, took a leisurely ride with a friend in his van to Minneapolis/St. Paul (including Wyoming’s matter-of-factly-named “Oh My God Highway”), and got back on the train to Poughkeepsie where my car was waiting to take me home.

In 2005, I made it to Louisville, and in 2008 to Chicago. Both of those included weekend stays in Akron with family, and from there who could resist a short trek north to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland?

Those trips are like postscripts to numerous cross-country drives in the ’90s and late-’80s. Before that, during my Prodigal Son years starting all the way back in the Ford Administration, I was able to spend days, sometimes months at a time, in one place. Long enough to receive mail in the capitals of three states–Colorado, North Dakota, and Oregon–though some of it would be forwarded to Brookings, South Dakota, where I lived on three different occasions during those seven years.

In retrospect, Brookings served me as a retreat. Each time I left one of those capitals, I landed back in that modest college town. As unlike as college towns and full-sized cities may be, I noticed something in common that took me by surprise.

Before I get to it, notice that every other place named above is a city. As small as Bismarck to as large as LA, from the rust of Northeast Ohio to the lush Pacific Northwest, from staid St. Paul to raucous Lou’ville. They all have that same thing I never noticed until I moved to Denver and, out of necessity, became a street-musician. As someone working outdoors, moving from place to place downtown, I was bound to notice:

Wall murals.

More specifically, the murals often included a scene of musicians jamming in a park, at a block party, or on an outdoor stage. What made me take note was the ethnic make-up: The guitarists and fiddlers might be anyone, but–apart from Native Americans in groups of their own–the drummers were always Black and Hispanic while the wind players were always Asian and White.

As I say, this was a previous lifetime, and perhaps things have changed. There’s nothing racist about the images, as a good time was being had by all. And all were clearly enjoying each other’s company (and accompaniment) in each one I ever saw.

Moreover, I myself was an example. A white flautist who frequently played with an African-American drummer who wore robes and bright colors that may not have been noticeable in Havana or Kinshasa, but which I’m sure increased our take in Denver’s historic Larimer Square. Not only that, but I saw it in other cities in both planned events and spontaneous gatherings–both in the murals and in the actual events and gatherings: Black and brown percussion; white and yellow wind.

We all know or know of so many exceptions to that rule that it is hardly a rule at all, perhaps something peculiar to those of us who play in streets and parks, who form impromptu gatherings. Perhaps the murals that have been painted on downtown buildings since the Carter-into-Reagan years have desegregated urban music as depicted on downtown walls.

That was when most of my jam sessions included Native Americans on drums and guitars. Since then, at King Richard’s Faire, I’ve jammed with numerous white drummers; an Ecuadorian piper occasionally joined me in downtown Salem; and it was an African-American flautist (half my age, I might add) who taught me how to play Mozart’s “Turkish March.”

Next time I trek past the Mississippi, or past the Hudson, I’ll be looking to see if the muralists have caught up to us.

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