MLK’s Method vs. Madness

Martin Luther King got a lot of mileage out of comparisons.

Urging churches and synagogues to act like headlights toward justice rather than taillights for public opinion, he compared them to cars.

Explaining his role in the civil rights movement, he compared himself to a drum major.

But he knew the march was slow when, regarding civil rights movements around the globe, he compared the “jet-like speed” of other countries to the “horse and buggy pace” of ours.

Nor was the irony—a comparison gone awry—lost on him in an era when TV ads implored us night after night to “See the USA in your Chevrolet!”

Contrasts, too. What is a contrast but an inverted comparison? To borrow one of King’s favorite words, contrasts can be irrefutable, as in his most quoted line that matches “color of their skin” against “content of their character.”

King once compared the American public to Rip Van Winkle. Don’t know about video, but audio reveals a hilarious stand-up comic.

Frequent reactions of the congregation—a church in Lima, Ohio—tell you he is mugging Rip’s yawning, snoring, startled awakening, head-scratching, and dropping jaw.

Catching King’s attention in literature’s first attempt at American mythology was the poster of King George on a tree as Rip enters the woods. It’s George Washington when he leaves.

Waiting for laughter to subside, he bellows as only he could: “Ol’ Rip slept through a revolution!” Congregation roars, cheers mixed with laughter. They were awake, and they had a guy who could awaken others to the injustices they faced.

Speaking comparatively, today’s America hit the snooze button. And yes, it was a landslide when you add the sleeping non-voters to the ones who took the knock-out pill.

But that’s a story already covered and debated. Time to consider method over madness.

First noticed it 15 years ago, and it all came back last month when the first question at the 5th Annual William Lloyd Garrison Lecture was preceded by a disclaimer: “not comparing them…”

The questioner then asked if the imminent round-ups and mass deportations might call for resistance similar to that provoked by the infamous Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson paused before answering: “It’s not the same but it’s parallel.”

She, author of We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance, then fully agreed with the premise and offered suggestions.

Her riveting, char-broiled speech seasoned with surprising comic relief had a lot to do with the Fugitive Slave Act, and the question prompted a discussion of today’s parallels impossible to miss.

But she, too, avoided the word “comparison.”

Spin the clock back to January 21, 2010. Supreme Court hands down Citizens United. Days later, then-Rep., now-Sen. Ed Markey calls it “the worst decision since Dred Scott.” For over a week, local civil rights leaders keep pouncing on him with loud indignation:

“Nothing can be compared to slavery!”

No one in the media or in political circles backs him up, other than to call it innocent overstatement and suggest he apologize.

Did they not know that Citizens United’s lawyers twisted the 13th Amendment granting citizenship to newly freed people into a case for granting effective citizenship to corporations?

The 13th Amendment was intended to, among other things, strike down Dred Scott, which directly ties it to Citizens United.

Adding to the irony, it’s the start of Black History Month, but no one thinks to seize this connection of present to past as a teachable moment.

Instead, they quash it, and we still have people fearful of making connections of what we live with today to the worst of what we’ve read of yesterday.

Comparisons are not equations. They are a method of thought just as are descriptions, satire, and cause/effect relationships. To avoid them is to limit our ability to think.

Case in point: All these years we’ve also refused comparisons of anything in the present to the Nazis.

Swastikas flying at MAGA rallies, followed by open admiration of Adolph Hitler these past few years has barely changed that. It should have changed as soon as 2015 with the ridicule of women and the handicapped, with the slurs and slander of Hispanics, with the demonization of the press, with the contempt for science, with absurd claims about crowd sizes, forest fires, windmills, hurricanes, with “very fine people.”

Last year we heard “poisoning the blood” and “They’re eating pets!” What are we waiting for? “Seig Heil”?

Makes me wonder if the implicit ban on comparisons paved the way for what may already be an equation.

Comparatively speaking, we cannot truly honor a drum major without the instruments necessary to play his tune.

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The Stone of Hope in Washington DC, inspiration by a line from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech: “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” The memorial opened to the public on August 22, 2011.
https://www.nps.gov/mlkm/index.htm

A detail of *The Embrace*, a memorial added to Boston Common two years ago honoring Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King.
https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/in-boston-the-embrace-honors-the-legacy-and-love-of-martin-luther-king-jr-and-coretta-scott-king_o

In This 11th Hour

Last night, just half a day before a cadre of billionaires takes over Washington DC, a friend I’ve known since we joined protests against LBJ and Nixon called to “observe the last day of the Republic.”

Quite an echo. Just a week earlier, a friend from the Ford and Carter years sent an email expressing a hope that “all of us who are out of reach of the fires can enjoy these final days of the USA’s version of the Weimar Republic.”

Within the reach of the California fires, those who have lost their homes and livelihoods are already listening to congressional Republicans putting conditions on disaster relief. That’s something that no one proposed when emergency relief was needed in Louisiana, Texas, North Carolina, or Florida, a fact which Republicans counter by simply insisting that it did. They falsely claimed last year that relief for North Carolina was delayed so that residents would leave, allowing the federal government to take over land. When that provoked right-wing militias to block FEMA workers from reaching residents in stricken areas, Fox News made sure that their audience thought the feds were ignoring them.

All by itself, regardless of who swears an oath on inauguration day, that tells us that the Republic born in 1776 is now dead.

If you think the difference in relief following natural disasters is too flimsy a measure here, or if you’re a bottom-liner who thinks money is all that matters, let me add this: California contributes $470 million more to the federal government than it receives from it. That’s about $150 million more than Louisiana, Texas, and North Carolina combined. Florida contributes about $209 million more than it receives, barely 45% of California’s federal contribution.*

But that’s how it is in a Republic not founded on numbers. Profit and loss does not appear in our Constitution, nor do cost-benefit tables to determine what canals and tunnels are dug, bridges and roads built, railroad track laid, and runways paved.

Instead, our Constitution is an expression of democratic ideals. E Pluribus Unum. Investments go where they are needed, not where they are hoarded. We are–or were–united in a country where no one is above the law, where there’s a separation of powers, and a separation of church and state.

All of that is now lost. E Pluribus Us Versus Them. And if any of “them” can hide in an attic long enough to write a diary, a future generation may read it and wonder what their parents and grandparents did to stop it.

For all of Trump’s claims that he knew nothing of Project 2025, he is already putting it into effect. Half of his high-level appointments were involved in its formation. In accordance with its call, round-ups for mass deportation of immigrants will, say reports, begin in Chicago by the end of this week. Federal agencies that have countered climate change will be terminated. So, too, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency that tracks and issues warnings for, among other things, hurricanes.

Why not? Total control must be impossible for the oligarchy to resist. It has Fox News to convince the MAGA crowd that Democrats control the weather which they use as a weapon of mass destruction in red states. It has a Supreme Court to rule that the president is above the law. It has a political party now controlling both houses of congress that unanimously grovels on bended knee to a lawless president.

And today, for a symbolic act to drive the point home, it has at least seven governors who have ordered that Old Glory be raised from its long-honored tradition of half-staff tribute to the late Pres. Jimmy Carter. This is a violation of the US Flag Code.

“No one wants to see that,” said the oligarchs’ frontman–who, fittingly, is the first American president to have his name and image flown from supporters’ homes and motor vehicles on flags alongside Old Glory, sometimes embossed on it. A second violation of the Code.**

With all that, convincing an inattentive, memory-challenged public that an oligarchy will serve as a democracy must have been easy. Reminds me of the ease described by historians in their accounts of Berlin in March, 1933. And it is that ease which makes the end of the American Republic especially hard to take.

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*https://digg.com/finance/link/states-most-dependent-on-the-federal-government-ranked-59CWzbWb10

**https://us-flag.net/code/

Available on Amazon. As an advertisement (for the campaign or otherwise), this is yet a third violation of the US Flag Code.

https://qz.com/823873/trump-supporters-live-where-there-are-no-immigrants

Letters of Recommendation

When Tex asked me for a letter of recommendation, I could have told her that it was more of a favor to me than to her.

Enrolled in a community college as a consequence of financial limitations, she landed a scholarship while writing witty and insightful essays in my first semester composition class at Mass Bay CC. Always engaged, willing to answer and ask questions, she set her sights higher, and I told her that I would consider it an achievement of my own if I helped her get there.

“That’s because I remind you of yourself,” she smiled.

This was my 25th year teaching, so I kept a straight face effortlessly out of habit. I had heard a student say that once before, and it was true of a few others, so I could claim to have been prepared. But I wasn’t. And I was left to wonder how a young woman of Mexican and Korean descent in the business-as-usual turn of the last century could possibly remind this thoroughly white-boy from the times-they-are-a-changing Sixties of himself.

As luck would have it, she was applying to Boston College where, that very month, there was an exhibit of the Norwegian artist, Edvard Munch. Saving myself postage, I took the reference directly to the English Dept. rather than to the Admissions Office before going to the exhibit. A woman at the desk was taken by surprise, which caught the attention of the man in the office behind her.

“Oh, this goes to Admissions,” she said.

“Oh, of course, point me in that direction and I’ll take it,” I started to say.

He appeared at the open door and interrupted, “No, no, we’ll take it here.” Something in his voice told me he was onto my trick, but rather liked it. Neither of them asked why I would hand-deliver a letter of reference. Occurred to me that it would have more impact if I kept mum about being there to see Munch’s Scream. I pointed to the envelope as she put it in his hand:

“She’s as sharp as any student I’ve ever taught. A world of potential.”

Whether Tex needed the extra show of support is doubtful. That summer I received a note of thanks that told me she’d be at Boston College that fall.

That was my last year in the classroom. It was mid-way into my first year that I first had a student remind me of myself.

A black-haired kid of Mediterranean descent, David was far more plausible for the role, and in a way, he was my first real test of whether I would be willing to bend, if not break, institutional policy and procedure.

At the start of the second semester, the English Dept. at Bridgewater State College (now University) told us that our rosters were all full and that we were to admit no one whose name was not on our list. And so, at the start of day one, I stood before 25 freshman already seated, and I completed roll-call with their 25 names on my unalterable list. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him step slowly through the open door.

“Are you Mr. Garvey?”

“That’s what the police call me.”

“Can I join your class?”

“Well, it’s full, and, uh…” Even as I spoke, I hated what I was about to say. I hated myself for being about to say it, but he spared me the ordeal:

“I can’t stay in the class I’m in. Dry. Dull. The teacher is all by the book. Friends in the dorm tell me you like to argue and joke, that you talk about things that matter.”

How do you say no to that? I turned to the class: “Well, now that the course intro is out of the way, let’s get right to your first assignment…”

While the class laughed, I turned to the newcomer who still had a pleading look on his face: “Have a seat,” I said. “If I throw you out now, they’ll throw me out. Congratulations! I’m stuck with you.”

I was reminded of how much he reminded me of myself when he asked for a letter of reference for a transfer to the Vermont Law & Graduate School a few years later. At times, I wondered if I was copying the letters written for me by profs at Salem State.

No, he never claimed to remind me of myself, but his letters from Vermont were loaded with “you should be here” and “you’d fit right in” additions, especially connected to his work with a group that arranged debates and speeches of presidential and congressional candidates. Pictures he sent include him with Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Joe Biden, and a young mayor of Burlington named Bernie Sanders.

Connie was a student in what was frankly a “remedial” class, although colleges cannot use that word, and so it’s called “Developmental” or “Fundamental” or “Basic.”

Northeastern University had–possibly still has–a full program of such courses it calls “Alternative Freshman Year” that it advertised heavily in Connecticut, NYC, and New Jersey hoping to catch the attention of upper class parents of teenagers who dogged it in high school and failed to get into Ivy League or other prestigious colleges.

With a last name that reappears throughout American history since colonial times, Connie was among a handful of these who realized that this was a second chance, and her contributions to the class and her essays were impressive from the start. You could call that a stunt of mine as an undergrad at Salem State. After a few weeks, I contrived to catch her in the corridor and resolved to not mince words:

“What the hell are you doing here?”

She was startled, and I realized she thought I meant in that corridor at that time: “You should be an actual freshman about to become an actual sophomore. Not just here, but at any college.”

“I applied to St. Lawrence, Ithaca, Vassar, but I wasn’t admitted. Couldn’t even get into UConn.”

“My daughter’s at Vassar. You’d have made great friends. Instead, you blew off high school, and now you have to listen to her fed-up-with-slackers dad!”

She shrugged and nodded her head.

“You can transfer.”

“Oh?”

“Well, you’ll have to wait till next fall, but get it started now. How you doing in your other classes?”

“Very well.”

“Well, keep doing well. And ask at least two teachers to write letters for you. I’ll be the third.”

Midway through the second semester, Connie was admitted to St. Lawrence. However, she worried about the transition so much that she sent me a letter that summer saying that she may be back at Northeastern in the fall. I wasted no time:

“Dear Connie: If I see you on campus this fall, I will break both your arms. Get yourself to St. Lawrence. If anyone can do well there, you can do well. Just get there!”

That letter might get me in jail 30 years later, but I believe it did as much or more to get her into St. Lawrence than did the letter of reference.

There were several other students over 25 years who reminded me of myself to various degrees. Tex, Dave, and Connie happen to be the ones who asked for letters of reference which gave me the odd sensation of writing about myself.

Or of living vicariously through them. Was my insistence that Connie move way up into New York’s Adirondacks a do-over for choosing my own near-to-home comfort of Salem State over the sight-unseen, uncertain adventure of moving to Pittsburgh where I had been accepted–in my junior year of high school–at Duquesne University?

But I’d be remiss not to mention Helen, an unrelenting live-wire if ever one electrified. Most in the class thought she was hilarious, but a few thought her more of a scourge than a scream and were afraid of her. Born and raised in Denmark, she spoke English without a trace of an accent, but retained a Northern European sensibility of not letting anything slide. If she heard anything that didn’t agree with her, she pounced, and I was often forced into the role of arbitrator.

Luckily, she always tended more toward the comic than toward any identifiable ideology, and so no one ever complained about her. One student, talking to me in private, referred to Helen as my “side-kick,” by which he meant (I hope) that I like to provoke and Helen often seconded the provocation.

When the class was over, she let me know she had a job awaiting her in Copenhagen, with a magazine no less, no reference from me needed. Knowing that, I dared tell her that she made me wish I was twenty years younger. Her answer left me speechless:

“That’s because I remind you of yourself,” she smiled.

I’d have put that in her reference if only she had requested one. And in those of Tex, Dave, and Connie had I dared.

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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/scream-painting-munch-moisture-light-cadmium-deteriorating

E Pluribus Whatever

Friends keep asking, and I keep answering that the 25-hour, 235-reader Moby-Dick Marathon went very well. Yes for many reasons, but only days later did my bell ring in one more that should be true of all public events, all readings, memorials, services, weddings, baptisms, trials, classes, assemblies:

Not once in the ten minutes I read or the 16 hours I listened did a cellphone intrude on us.

Forgive the vagueness of this days-later scene, but I’d rather not identify anyone or the place involved, nor offer any clues to that effect. I will say up front that it was not a self-help group of any kind.

About 30 people were present, evenly divided between men and women, most but not all of us taking turns addressing the group. Many, including me, were whimsical and comic, while others were poignant and personal, including a few describing the loss of children.

Maybe I should add that I may have been the youngest person present, no mean feat for a Truman baby. It was the first time I joined the monthly group, and only because New Year’s fell on a Wednesday did I have the day free. I regret that I may never be there again, and please keep that in mind when you hear this:

Prior to the start of presentations, our MC made a few introductory remarks, including the standard reminder to silence mobile devices. I chuckled at the reminder of how ringtones–and people actually taking calls in the theater while a film was on–drove me up a mandate when it spread like a pandemic among Screening Room audiences some ten years ago, but it hardly happens anymore. Everyone else, or so it seemed, reached for their phones and hit a button or two. Not me. I still do not own one.

Each of us spoke for five or ten minutes, and I believe it was while we were hearing the fifth speaker, that a ringtone came from a front corner of the room. The speaker continued while the tone sounded twice before a woman could get it out of a pocket, look at it, whisper a few words, and then put it away. The speaker never stopped, nor was anything said about the imposition before another speaker stepped to the mic.

May have been while the tenth or eleventh speaker was just starting that the same phone rang again. I clenched my teeth, but said nothing only because I was brand new to this group. Otherwise… Well, my parole officer may be reading this, so I better leave it unsaid. However, the fellow sitting next to me felt no such constraint:

Waving his hand at the speaker: “Excuse me! Excuse me!” And then pointing to the woman who, to my amazement, was answering the call: “Can you shut that thing off?” The whole room froze. He continued: “Or take the call outside.” She got up and left.

He then looked at the speaker: “I’m sorry. Can you start over again?”

The speaker did, and nothing else was said of the incident. It was if it never happened, except that in the transition to the next speaker, I put my hand on the fellow’s shoulder, and addressed him by name: “B—–, thank you for doing that! No one ever wants to do it, and no one will thank you even though most every one wants it done.”

With the next speaker ready to go, he simply nodded, and we both turned our attention to what we were there to hear. All was well until the speaker after that was mid-way into a moving account of personal loss, and the woman re-entered the room. Instead of going to her seat, she came right to our table and started explaining to my new friend (and ally in the futile war against technological imposition) why she “had to” take the call.

May have been ten years ago that I figured out that cellphoners have turned “emergency” into the biggest one-word joke in the history of language. So, of course it was “an emergency” involving a “doctor” and “couldn’t wait.” J—– simply said, “Well, then you shouldn’t have come here!” And she walked to her chair.

This time I was the one waving to the speaker: “I’m sorry, but can you go back to where you were looking out the window?” It wasn’t that far back, and I didn’t want to miss anything. He gladly complied, no doubt because he knew where the room’s attention had been redirected, and it wasn’t to, through, or at his window in a previous life.

There were no more interruptions, and the event soon ended as if there had never been any interruptions at all.

Next day I’m standing at a busy intersection in Melrose waiting for the walk sign.

Green comes on for the cars aside me, but none move. My mind is on something else–The Marathon? The spanakopita I’m about to have at the Iron Town Diner? The farce of the word “Emergency”? So I don’t look to see why the car doesn’t move. Five seconds pass before the second car sounds the horn. Just a bump, barely a beep, nothing that we would call “laying on,” and far short of blaring.

It works. First car finally starts, and a few get through the light before it turns red. During that time, a woman, perhaps my age, walks up to the corner and declares to me: “Some people have no patience!”

Nor did I have any patience: “What are you talking about? That driver sat here on green long enough to do his taxes. What’s the driver in the second car supposed to do? Offer to lick the envelope?”

Clearly, she was expecting immediate agreement, as she began with a stutter: “Wuh-wuh-wuh-well, there’s never any need for impatience. That’s my life’s motto!”

Irony was right on cue. We now had our walk sign, and she was crossing west while I was crossing north–not to mention that I had skipped breakfast and was ravenous for Iron Town. If not, I’d have asked if it ever occurred to her that the first driver was pre-occupied–most likely on a cellphone, perhaps texting–and that the second driver was actually doing the first a favor by letting him or her know that the light was now green. The second was certainly doing the third, fourth, fifth, etc. drivers a favor.

Instead, as we went our separate ways: “What your motto really says is ‘Let everything slide!'”

Next day, at the very beginning of NPR’s coverage of Jimmy Carter’s memorial in the Washington National Cathedral, a ringtone sounds.

“A reminder of modernity,” sighs the commentator.

Modernity. In the Washington National Cathedral and with all flags flying half-staff.

Can’t tell you just when or why or how it all went awry, but a Truman baby can tell you that it wasn’t always like this. Most of us may have been shy, but we’d support those willing to speak up for rules–written or understood–that call for the consideration of others.

Today, those who break rules, disturb the peace, and impose on others are to be tolerated. Those who complain or call attention to them are the ones to be criticized. “Let it slide” might as well replace E Pluribus Unum as our national motto.

We’d absolve the worst of thieves so long as they don’t thieve from us.

Or would you rather believe that a convicted felon becomes president of the United States thanks entirely to the high-financed schemes of a powerful few, and not at all to the day-to-day, carefree passivity of the let-it-slide many?

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Thanks to a friend from Rome for the screenshot. That’s 1:00 AM. And that’s Rome, *New York*.

Plum Island National Anthem

In 1979, there may have been a secession movement on this glorified sandbar where I live.

Must say “may” because I didn’t wash a’shore, as the natives like to say, until August, 1982. So I don’t know just what happened while I was still playing Prodigal Son on the other side of the Mississippi River. Of course, the difference between the table-top, land-locked landscape of Dakota Territory and the tidal, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t marshland and surf along the North Atlantic might convince anyone that there should be secession. How were the two places ever united to begin with?

One possible urge to secede is that, by 1979, many in Massachusetts were tired of the austere Gov. Michael Dukakis who urged them to follow his example and wear sweaters rather than turn up the heat. They voted him out, and voted in an even more austere Gov. Ed King who offered to have the state buy all private property on Plum Island and let it return to nature.

Only in retrospect can I connect this to a report in Time in 1977 that the much larger and actually real islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard wanted to leave Massachusetts and join Vermont. As always, all things north of Boston are, forgive the pun, drowned out by all things south. Cape Cod entices visitors from all across the country. Our equally charming, if smaller and less dramatic Ann, if lucky, gains notice only when they arrive as “Massachusetts’ other cape.”

Can’t be sure, mind you, about our islands drifting off. I was then in North Dakota where a governor was voted out of office because of the ridiculously chaotic design of a new license plate coughed up by a committee selected by him that– Well, the word “committee” says it all.

After one King term, Duke was returned to Beacon Hill royalty in 1983. By that time, Plum Islanders were in a merry Michelob mood with Ronald Reagan’s “You can have it all!” McMansions were built on the dunes overlooking the ocean. Homes that were one floor became two, those that were two became three. It was as if architecture had become a function of biology.

So, I heard no dissatisfaction, much less talk of secession when I moved in. But I did hear a song.

Thankfully, turntables still existed. Over and over again, my cousin and his friends, now my new friends, spun “The Plum Island National Anthem” on a 45 vinyl as scratchy as the green head flies before I first heard it. We sang along with gusto, and whenever someone asked if I happened to be the guy playing fife, I would change the subject and let the thought linger.

And linger it did, perhaps because no musician other than singer/songwriter Richard Johnson is identified on the jacket. No doubt my fellow local flautist Roger Ebacher, like me, was asked that question. Unlike me, he likely gave an immediate, straightforward answer, as he did when I emailed an hour or so ago:

I recall this song well, and did perform it live with Richard on at least one occasion. I was not in the recording session, however, and have no memory of who was on it.

Gotta love the “at least one occasion” part of that answer. Back then we all made a habit of scrambling our memories as if to fry them with whatever we could find in the fridge. A whole new meaning to “pot luck.”

I was lucky to catch the “Anthem” before it had run its course and was pretty much out of mind by the time Duke ran for president in 1988 touting the “Massachusetts Miracle.” Can’t recall hearing it or hearing of it for at least 35 years.

Until today. A friend was “cleaning stuff out,” which is what we elderly folk say when we come within sight of life’s checkered flag. When he found it buried in a box, he immediately thought of his friend on Plum Island, and this morning he put it in my hands. I damn near fainted.

You can hear the song and read the lyrics with links in the caption for the photo below. The only lyrics now out of date are about having to truck our water in from town and not flushing when the water table is down. In a massive project that made the summer of 2007 one that only the houseflies fully enjoyed, the island was ripped up for the installation of water and sewer hook-ups.

As for the 45’s jacket, it says across the top, “Plum Island Records proudly presents the…” The banner under the fly reads, “Greenheadus Rex.” The six objects the bug holds are: a few arrows, an olive branch, a man yelling and waving his arms (likely the late, legendary Harry O, PI’s “unofficial mayor”), a can of beer just cracked open, a loud transistor radio, and, as if to make Jimmy Buffett feel right at home, a shaker of salt.

Buffett would be right at home here. This anthem was an ideal rallying cry to bring us together at home barbecues and at the old Beachcoma (that’s an accent, not a typo), now called the Rip Tide Cafe. But “Margaritaville” is the vibe once the party starts.

To conclude and to finish, I must note that nothing in the song declares independence. The word “National” appears only in the title, barely a hint. Perhaps the song on the B-side, also by Richard “Stonefingers” Johnson, tells us whether or not there was an actual secession movement.

Let’s see here: Hmmm, title is “Why Should I Marry?” Doesn’t sound like a call for independence to me. Like everything else on this now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t sandbar, sounds like just another yes-or-no question with answers that hem and haw and last forever.

Let’s give a listen:

Why should I marry,
When there are bridges, high windows, and rooftops to jump from?
Why should I marry,
When I can drive my car off a cliff?

Yes, like the “Anthem,” quite a scream, and it goes in that vein. And it could be construed as a declaration of independence. As morbid as the joke might be, it is in the course of human events.

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THE PLUM ISLAND NATIONAL ANTHEM

Come all ye Newburyporters,
and listen to my song
If you’ve a short attention span I shall
not make it long

I am a Plum Islander; Plum Island is my home
When green head flies fill the skies,
no man walks alone

CHORUS: To me way, hey Plum Island, the only home for me
Sinking as the sun sets into Atlantic Sea.

We cannot drink the water here;
we truck it in from town
We cannot flush our toilets when
the water table’s down

We cannot drink the water, so all we drink is beer
And when the tides are running high
the roads all disappear!

CHORUS: To me way, hey Plum Island, the only home for me
Sinking as the sun sets into Atlantic Sea.

In my front yard there’s naught but sand where once I had a lawn
And my whole house sits on the beach
now that the dunes are gone

And on that beach in summer time,
a horde of tourists lie
And when you hear the screams you know
it’s lunchtime for the flies

CHORUS: To me way, hey Plum Island, the only home for me
Sinking as the sun sets into Atlantic Sea.

Someday Plum Island we shall make
an independent nation
Protected by our green head flies,
flying in formation

And when the storms are raging,
and snow is coming down
thank God we’ve got a bar out here
since we can’t get to town.

CHORUS: To me way, hey Plum Island, the only home for me
Sinking as the sun sets into Atlantic Sea.

FINALE: To me way, hey Plum Island, the only home for me
Sinking as the sun sets into At-Lan-tic Sea.

“Why Should I Marry?”

Can’t find the lyrics, but both male and female voices are clear enough. And I bet the clarinetist had a ton of fun!

Carole Anne Ouellette

Carole Anne Ouellette, 74, passed away on December 16, 2024, at the Care One home here in Beverly. She was born in Beverly Hospital, Nov. 23, 1950, the cherished daughter of the late Leo and Carolyn (Fielder) Ouellette.

Ms. Ouellette graduated from Salem State College in 1972 with a Bachelor’s degree in business administration. While there, she played on the women’s tennis team, participated in theater, and took up pottery which she continued for many years.

In 1980, she graduated from the Suffolk University Sawyer School of Business with a Master’s in accounting and finance while starting her career with U.S. Bank & Trust in Boston. She would later work for various firms on the North Shore

Ms. Ouellette’s professional success may be measured by the trips it allowed an avid traveler. With her husband, the late John Yammerino of South Dakota, Ms. Ouellette traveled extensively through Europe, the US and Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean, once driving from Scotland to the southern tip of mainland Greece on a 6-week tour.

She loved to entertain in homes she kept bright and colorful. Through the 80s it was a condo she and John remodeled in Salem. After that, it was an apartment that John built atop the Ouellette family home on Foster Drive. She continued to live there after John passed away in 2011 until a few years ago when her illness made it impossible for her to care for herself.

She had several musician friends and asked them to play along with John. Live music was the pulse of her many gatherings, whether indoor, around the pool, or at a summer home John built on Kezar Lake in Maine.

Ms. Ouellette studied recipes and took pleasure in watching friends and family enjoy her creations, which were always anticipated and enjoyed at potlucks she attended. In her own home, food and drink were often served on and in pottery she made. And a few walls were graced with her paintings from her Salem State days.

“Carole had an exceptionally beautiful voice. She loved to sing and was much taken by the music of Laura Nyro, Ann Murray, and especially Joni Mitchell,” says Charlie Beaulieu who became her frequent companion in the first week of freshman year at Salem State. “She was a true and faithful friend.”

“Whatever Carole did, she did it exceptionally well,” adds her closest friend, Emily Cousens, who also knew her since college. “Whether it be studying, working, cooking, hosting a party, singing, traveling, playing tennis, being a sister and friend, caring for her aging parents… she was the embodiment of carpe diem, and lived each day to its fullest.”

Ms. Ouellette leaves behind her brother Philip Ouellette of Beverly, and several cousins. Services are 11:00 AM Friday, January 10 at the Campbell Funeral Home, 525 Cabot St., Beverly.

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Plum Island, 2013. Photo by Michael Boer.

Dec. 25 + 12 = Jan. 6

Here I am, as I am every year between Christmas and New Years’ Day, about to start writing greeting cards and wrapping presents.

Operative word there is “about.” This allows for the detour I’ve just taken to write what you now read, much like I made the same detour yesterday and the day before. If you ever wondered why or how I write so much, now you know: Procrastination.

This began a few years ago, never mind how many, while procrastinating during the week before Dec. 25. Finally occurred to me that I had an out: The “mas” in Christmas means twelve days, enough to include and commemorate the arrival of the Magi. Why, it’s even in the title of the most preposterous song of the season offering gifts that would fill Noah’s Ark, which may well be where it was written.

And so I shelved the project until after the 25th and have done so each year since. This year I’ve been struck by something else. Like the name of the 12th day itself, call it an epiphany.

Call it coincidence or irony, calendars don’t care about the separation of church and state any more than a hurricane about state borders. I doubt anyone four years ago was thinking of Christmas when they stormed the nation’s Capitol twelve days later. And I know for certain that bear spray is not frankincense, and the battering rams were not made of gold.

Nor did anyone else connect the political violence of that one day to the serene significance of the date on the Christian calendar. Because presidential elections are just once every four years, there was no reason to note the connection these past three.

Nor is anyone noting it this year except for me and possibly other lifers on the USS Procrastination. Likely, few mind that their presents and cards might arrive on a day that will soon become an American holiday to celebrate the anniversary of insurrection. The overthow of governments is celebrated all across the globe, so why would the USA be any different. July 4 already serves as one such day, and as the self-proclaimed “greatest country on Earth,” America deserves two.

Plus, as a holy day on the Christian calendar, Jan. 6 can easily be finessed by an accommodating Supreme Court into a decision to strike down the wall of separation. Call it American Epiphany.

We know that the MAGA movement wants a theocracy. We know that they often refer to Trump as sent by God, at times as an American messiah. We know that fundamentalists have dictated the appointment of at least three Supreme Court justices who made it possible to strike down Roe v Wade. And we know that the president as of Jan. 20 will have no regard for the Constitution except to invoke the name, no regard for the flag except to wave it, no regard for the Bible except to sell it, no regard for government except to profit from it, and no regard for police who were killed or injured by the riot he incited except to act like they don’t exist.

They’ll compare it to the tearing down of the Iron Curtain when they rip down the Wall of Separation of Church and State, and they’ll laugh at anyone who calls it “Merry Crimemas.”

With Biden still in office, it won’t happen next month. But the felon-elect says he will pardon all of his fellow felons and followers who stormed the Capitol on day one, 14 days later. His campaign rallies began with a recording of them–the “J6 Choir”–singing the national anthem, as do his gatherings at Mar-a-Lago. Stands to reason that he will want to commemorate the date.

Inevitably, someone will tip him off that it is also the 12th day of Christmas. By summer he’ll ask for a bill he can sign a bill to make the day a civic holiday that “acknowledges” the Christian “values” that “guided” those who had the “courage” to challenge the “tyranny” of Democrats. It’ll pass because Republicans are too cowardly to state the obvious, and if a challenge goes to the Supreme Court, the 6-3 decision will be so sweeping that it will allow Christian displays, texts, and teaching in American public schools.

Call it coincidence or irony that I, too, observe Jan. 6. To use the polite phrase, I may be a lapsed Catholic, but I’ve cherished my annual Christmas mailing all my adult life. In recent years, I’ve considered Jan. 6 a deadline as good as any. Now, I want no part of it.

Time to get off the USS Procrastination. I’ll have no problem getting Christmas Valentines in the mail on time.

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Yanked off social media, I cannot locate it. While trying, however, I found a report from Arkansas of MAGA-Christmas displays being vandalized. In the report, one of the homeowners calls vandalism “discrimination” against conservatives:
https://www.thv11.com/article/news/maga-christmas-light-display-in-northwest-arkansas-vandalized/91-9232f645-7cf4-497e-97aa-dc808de96749

History Will Be Kind

By now you have likely heard that former president Jimmy Carter has passed away at the age of 100.

By pure coincidence, I was writing about him just minutes before I heard. Not a tribute or a piece of history or a biographical sketch of a brief scene in my own memoirs. I’ve already done all of those, some more than once.

This time I was defending him.

A riveting piece by columnist/humorist Charlie Pierce, lately of Esquire, lists all the presidents of his lifetime–mine too, had he added Eisenhower–and, allowing for faults in each, portrays their strength of character as a contrast to the “empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness” about to take office. (The full piece appears below).

Wish I wrote it, but there’s an error at the start. Carter never used the word “malaise,” nor did he dwell on the mood he briefly described at the start of his “Crisis of Confidence” address, summer 1979. It was a brief intro to how we restart the country. Solar and electric energy had more to do with it than “malaise,” a word that Republicans stamped on it to paint Carter as a gloom and doom hindrance to American progress–and, oh by the way, to keep attention off the solar/electric content. And, yes, let’s admit that the ill-advised title made it easy for them.

It’s a common mistake that gained so much immediate currency that most everyone seems to believe it . That would include the makers of the award-winning 2016 film 20th Century Women. In it, two brief clips of the speech are combined as if one. First we hear of hard times, and then farewell. That film, good as it otherwise was, may well have inspired what Bill Barr did to the Mueller Report.

History will be more than kind to Carter. There’s every reason to believe it’ll sound more like my modest attempts to pay tribute:

For Him to Hear US

Post Presidents Day

Jimmy, We Hardly Knew Ye

https://www.newburyportnews.com/columns/garveys-view-for-a-sunday-school-president/article_ecc3015d-0bd8-50da-a760-b25a77c2a60a.html

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Below is Charles Pierce’s column which comes to me without a headline. There is one more change I’d make. Yes, Richard Nixon resigned in a nightmare of scandal, but in this context, Pierce might have added something positive, as he did for LBJ. Nixon’s 1970 State of the Union includes one of the most impassioned calls for the environment on record. And it announced the EPA.

Otherwise, may God deliver me from plagiarism:

In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, “And we shall overcome.” I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh’s madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing ‘Amazing Grace’ in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.

And now there is this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons, who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Here he is, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.

The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides.

We have never had such a cheap counterfeit of a soon-to-be-president as will shortly occupy the office. We have never had a person so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.

Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don’t have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.

Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn’t he a funny man? Watch the assembled morons cheer.

This is the only story now.

Charles Pierce

We’ve Got the Verdict

When I saw the question, I scrolled down to the comments thinking I would surely find the answer.

Is it spelled gray or grey?

I’ve long thought the two were interchangeable, like flutist and flautist, but without the change in pronunciation. I was never sure, and even now my spellcheck has underlined grey and flautist in red. And there it is again!

The answer came quickly. They are both correct, but Americans commonly write gray while Canadians, Brits, Down Underers, and others prefer grey. Simple and harmless enough, and I’m grateful to know the reason even though it won’t increase my income, make me lose weight, regain my lost youth, sharpen my chess game, facilitate my musicianship, improve my German, teach me Italian, gain me Irish citizenship, or enable me to make lasagna or spinach pies.

But the mud hit within the first five comments: “Well, we have a Supreme Court justice who can’t define the word woman.”

Next: “And six others who think one man is above the law.”

Like tennis, it then went back and forth several times, completely divorced from life’s persistent question of gray vs. grey. One wag tried to break the spell by noting that the thread was now “blue vs. gray.” Buy that guy a beer! On me! Too bad, though, that historical humor was lost on the trollers, and the volley continued.

Eventually, one earnest fellow said what many were likely thinking:

Why must a simple, honest inquiry, the answer to which I’m sure many are not sure of, turn into political back & forth garbage with each side trying to antagonize & humiliate the other? Take your childish arguments elsewhere!

Since I create enough on-line controversies of my own and often confront friends when I think they go awry, I had already resolved to stay out of this. But this fellow was singing my song, not just on-line but in public. So I jumped in:

Good question, and I share the sentiment of wanting to keep things in context. That said, it has appeared to me that it is always started by one side. That, then, puts the other side in the position of responding or letting it slide. And many on that other side believe that if you don’t respond, it sticks.

If I may interrupt myself: That has always been the first reason political junkies give for Democrat John Kerry’s loss to George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election. He did not respond to the “Swiftboat” attack ads. And it is now among the top reasons offered for Kamala Harris’ loss in November regarding relentless ads aired during sports broadcasts painting her as obsessed with sex-change operations for lifers in penitentiaries. She never countered that the policy was in place during Trump’s administration.

Now, as I was saying:

Someone then looks or listens in, and it appears that both sides deserve equal blame. Maybe both sides deserve some blame for carrying on or for the way they carry on, but if you look at who instigates this childishness (your word), I think you’ll find one side far more culpable than the other.

While writing this, I wasn’t thinking of social media, but of a Renaissance Faire where I’ve performed as a strolling flautist (or flutist) since 1499. At the end of each day I’m standing, playing, and bantering with people as they leave. Lot of jokes to leave ’em leaving laughing.

Most successful by far was, “Farewell, and thank you so much for spending your money– Oooops! Ah, ah, ah, I mean your day, your day with us! Your day, I meant to say!” Laughter loud and unanimous from all within hearing–until an uptight higher up at the faire heard it, thought it a criticism, and had it banned it from my repertoire.

That was about eight years ago, after which my best line has been “Come back next year! We’re going to put Galileo on trial!” Not as uproarious as the money joke, but it allowed me to go on, like a boxer throwing one-twos instead of a single haymaker.

Holding up my pipe: “Did you know Galileo’s father was a flutist? Or a flautist? A flautist or a flutist?”

Laughter always pauses as smiles await the punchline and someone asks: “What’s the difference?”

“Flutist or flautist? Flau or flu? Achoooo! One is a telescope with holes,” I offer while holding one end of mine to one eye and pointing the other at the sky. “That’s what gave G Junior the idea when he was a little kid grasping for daddy’s tools of trade,” pointing it directly at the face of anyone nearby.

To those in a hurry, a simple but loud final jab: “Bring some fruit, we’ve got the verdict!”

To those with whining kids: “Ya, I’d be screaming, too, if someone dragged me out of the Renaissance and took me back into the 21st Century.” Sometimes the kid stopped crying and looked back in wonder as I played a few notes.

Say all of this loud enough at the end of a day, and it’s as if laughter rides the waves of the crowd as it exits.

After the year we were shuttered due to the plague, we re-opened in 1521. In these past four seasons, I’ve heard something that didn’t exist previously. Not many, but enough to be noticed would call back: “Put Biden on trial!” and “Try Kah-Mah-Lah,” and a few more in that vein.

Not once was the name Trump or that of any other Republican imposed.

We need to make this distinction. And we need to point it out when others don’t make it. This is not at all to say that the Democrats are perfect. Far from it, and their fear of offending each other keeps them far from it. As does the straitjacket they force upon humor and spontaneity. Worst of all, their pathetic attempts at moderation in the face of outright crimes such as Israel’s war on Gaza keeps them farther from it yet.

Yet they are open to dialogue, which the other side is not. The other side has done all it can for over 40 years to gut Social Security while Democrats have protected it. Ditto the environment. Ditto civil rights. Any failure to make this distinction reinforces the superficial view that “they are all the same” which leads many to wallow in cynicism and dismiss “them” or “Congress” as “all the same.” The resulting damage makes me wonder if it is done out of carelessness or if it is deliberate–calculated along with so much else to undermine Americans’ faith in anything regarding self-governance.

Arguably the most American drama ever written, Death of a Salesman insists that “Attention must be paid.” To do that, distinctions must be made.

Including my own. Am I a gray flutist or a grey flautist? The color may be interchangeable, but the noun depends on how much I get paid.

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*Galileo explains his findings to two cardinals*. Painting by Jean-León Huens (1921-1982).

Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club

Reactions to the convicted-felon-elect’s noise about annexing Canada, claiming Panama, and buying Greenland have been surprisingly few. Most have been humorous, as if it’s all a joke.

My daughter and son-in-law, my employers, my next door neighbors, and the kids of my college and high school friends are all of a generation that can afford a laugh. And all their kids, two of them grand to me, are too young to get such a joke–much less the implied menace if taken literally.

My reaction features a flashback, a scene some 25 years ago at this very table. Here I sat with two college friends, both former roommates, and my daughter, then a Vassar undergrad. Bill, rest his soul, was wearing a shirt he had since the days when we marched on Washington and Boston, and sat-in at Salem State, with an emblem on the pocket:

When Rachel inevitably asked “What’s that?” both Bill and and I waved our hands at her, “No, no! You don’t want to know!”*

But Buddy knew better, and insisted, “Yes, you should know.” Bill and I relented, and Buddy gave her a valuable history lesson, one that anyone our age will recall, though there has always been bitter disagreement about the details. Briefly put for younger readers, the Gulf of Tonkin is where, according to Pres. Lyndon Johnson, North Vietnam forces attacked an American ship. This became the premise for the deployment of American troops in Vietnam.

Bill and I started adding details and historical comparisons. The Gulf of Tonkin was to us what W’s “weapons of mass destruction” would soon become to Rachel’s generation. A hoax.

America’s tradition of contrived scenes to generate enthusiasm for a war reaches as far back as 1847 when Pres. James Polk decried “American blood on American soil” to gain support for a war on Mexico. Truth is that he sent troops into disputed territory who shot first, provoking a response. Some American–or rather a luckless Irish immigrant pressed into service straight from the docks in New York and Baltimore–was bound to get hit.

The fraud was so transparent that a young officer fresh out of West Point would call it “that wicked war” in his memoirs years later. U.S. Grant realized the land-grab for what it was while he was there, and he regretted being too timid to raise that serious an objection at the start of his career. To this day, it is the only American war that does not have a single monument, memorial, or plaque in Washington DC.

Fifty years later, “Remember the Maine!” served as a battle-cry to justify Pres. William McKinley’s attack on Cuba. The USS Maine exploded in Havana’s harbor for reasons no one knew at the time, but which in time appeared more and more to be the result of a malfunction. McKinley supporters and expansionists such as Teddy Roosevelt didn’t wait for time. They jumped to the conclusion for which they longed. Before long, the slogan was expanded to “Remember the Maine and to Hell with Spain!” And American military action was expanded to the Philippines.

Some historians make the case that FDR deliberately let our guard down in the South Pacific figuring that Japan would bomb some small outpost, say Guam or the Marshall Islands. Just enough to serve as a pretext to retaliate. Not settling for low-hanging fruit, the Japanese blitzed the big kahuna of Hawaii, and Pearl Harbor was far more than mere pretext. If those historians are correct, then FDR’s strategy was that of Polk and McKinley–and later of LBJ and W. Bush–provoke confrontation, use it as a pretext, coin a slogan to rally support. By wiping out Pearl Harbor and killing 2,400 Americans, the Japanese handed FDR his pretext and guaranteed American support. The call, “A Day of Infamy,” though true, was redundant.

Whether or not FDR should be included, this picture forms the background for the geographical juggling act we’ve been treated to of late. Laugh at your own peril.

Canadian officials dismissed it as “tough guy talk” the way that Melania dismissed the convicted-sex-offender-elect’s boasts of P-grabbing as nothing more than “locker room talk.” An invasion of Canada is so hard to imagine that they may be able to laugh it off.

As for Greenland and Panama, however, the designs are not so far-fetched. Greenland is quite apart from Denmark to which it belongs, and it extends into the Arctic which is what American and Russian oil companies prize.

https://time.com/5653894/trump-greenland-history/

Panama? The Canal once belonged to the USA. We built it, and there’s a photo of Teddy Roosevelt operating a steam shovel to prove it.

https://panamaadvisoryinternationalgroup.com/blog/president-theodore-roosevelt-visits-panama-nov-14-1906/

All that’s needed is a pretext to take. The convict-elect calls them both necessary for national security. Oh, how far America has come! Seventy years ago, Pres. Eisenhower was successful giving that reason for building interstate highways on which jets can find a runway on any 25-mile stretch. Will it work to claim a giant melting iceberg? Or a canal that no longer operates at full capacity year-round because climate change has lowered the levels of lake water needed for the higher locks?

For military action, it’ll take something more, a direct threat that will fool enough of us to think it’ll be worth putting several thousand young men and women in harm’s way.

On that night long ago, I suspect Rachel got more than she bargained for, but I saw that she was wide-eyed through it all. And I do believe she’ll recall it when some odd, surprising news is reported from Central America or the Arctic Circle made to sound like a threat to the USA.

If only more of us were so prepared.

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*I always thought the emblem was a joke someone had made up and put on clothing for the hell of it. That’s what Bill thought when he spotted the shirt in a thrift store. Turns out we were right about the joke, but wrong about the joker: Someone in the Navy on one of the American ships in the Tonkin Gulf coined the name, and it quickly stuck. That sailor or another designed the patch, and many wore it: