Looking for Laszlo Toth

In the supermarket today, a woman stopped me to ask how the film currently playing at the Screening Room has been doing.

This is common, but today’s inquiry came with a serious tone and an expression of worry which made me think for a moment that she was asking about my hospital stay the previous week. I had to snap out of it:

“Fairly well, I’d say, considering that it’s three and a half hours.”

Make that 3:45, with the built-in 15-minute intermission. The Brutalist is the first film I’ve ever shown with an intermission in my 27 years as a projectionist.

“Glad to hear it!” Smiling, she tapped my shoulder and went on her way.

Maybe she was concerned that such a long film might put Newburyport’s cherished, quirky little cinema out of business, but it’s more likely she was relieved to hear that people were willing to absorb that long a tail of immigration and fleeing the Holocaust.

That much can be gleaned from the ads. But few realize that “brutalist” is an architectural term for a movement that reached America soon after World War II. The style is heavy on concrete blocks and the exposure of natural, raw materials with geometric shapes rather than any decorative design. Best known example in New England is Boston City Hall.

I had forgotten it, even though I always took visitors to see an invigorating and somehow charming example during the two years I lived in North Dakota. Just south of Bismarck on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River, Mary College (now the University of Mary) was a must-see. Tellingly, Mary’s website proudly describes the architecture–without the word “brutal.” As another former Bismarcker just wrote me, “I have fond memories of exploring Mary College. It always seemed as if it had been deserted.”

Yes, it’s inspiring while at the same time putting us in our place. So, too, is the film which seems to fly by more quickly than many two-hour flicks. An intoxicating soundtrack and score sure help. By the time the break arrives, it’s more like a 15-minute intrusion than intermission.

Reminds me of There Will Be Blood, in which the Daniel Day Lewis character is a composite of oil prospectors in Texas in the 19th Century, and Martin Eden, in which the title character is Jack London’s fictionalized version of himself.

Adrien Brody’s performance is as convincing as that of Day Lewis, and the character appears be a composite of two Hungarian architects from the Bauhaus School. “Laszlo Toth” surely owes his high temper to Erno Goldfinger who lived and worked in England after fleeing the Nazis in 1934. But the primary model is Marcel Breuer who fled to the USA in 1937 and whose buildings–many of them churches and synagogues–are easy to find in Pennsylvania where the film is set, as well as in Connecticut. He also designed, as I used to tell visitors to Bismarck, Mary College.

There’s been confusion about this. Is it a true story? Was there a Laszlo Toth? If you can accept “historical fiction” as a classification of books, then yes, this is history told as drama with dialogue filled in to make sense of what we know happened. From Shakespeare’s histories to Spike Lee’s Malcolm X and BlackKklansman, it’s a time-honored form. The Brutalist‘s architectural story is certainly true. What complicates such talk of this film is that, yes, there was a Laszlo Toth.

Unfortunately, Toth was the Hungarian geologist who, after declaring that he was Jesus Christ, vandalized The Pieta with one of his little hammers in 1972. He spent two years in an asylum before disappearing into obscurity. Is this a director’s inside joke, a brutal clash of art?

There’s a parallel for this. Remember Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino? Eastwood played a character named “Walter Kowalski,” same name as a celebrated wrestler in the 1950s-early-60s who went by “Killer Kowalski,” a favorite son of Detroit, same city where Torino is set.

And then there’s the sculptor Peter Wolf Toth, likely a cousin, possibly a nephew, also from Hungary, who landed in Akron, Ohio, before traveling to every American state and Canadian province to create the Trail of the Whispering Giants. When I tracked him down in Ontario in the mid-80s, with a very tall Iroquois just beginning to emerge from a tree trunk, he seemed leery of me for a good fifteen minutes before opening up.

In retrospect, I wonder if he thought I might ask about Laszlo. More than that, I wonder what he thinks of the name’s selection for this film. Then again, the woman in the supermarket never asked about the character’s identity.

What matters is that such stories, no matter how uncomfortable, be told. And that there be places to see and hear them.

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Annunciation Priory, University of Mary, Bismarck, ND
https://www.umary.edu/about/history/our-architecture

The Brutalist: Who Is the Real László Toth?

Peter Wolf Toth and His Trail of Whispering Giants

For the Love of the Games

Two weeks ago, Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy had a piece headlined “If elected King of Sports” which sounded like the ultimate fan’s wish-list. A long-time fan of Dan, I started to click toward the text until something slammed my brakes on.

Why not write my own and then see how close I come?

Upfront I’ll admit that I am writing from the point of view of a television spectator. And that this is limited to the four sports I enjoy watching: Baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Nothing against dozens of other sports, but I see the Olympics too infrequently to have opinions of how they are played. And sports such as tennis and golf seem just fine as they are, perhaps because they are played one-on-one.

Furthermore, given that each sport has different rules on different levels, my calls for change are aimed at the pros: Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association, and the Women’s National Basketball Association. Glad to name them here at the start because my first decree is for all of them:

FOR ALL: No more trades in season. It is a conflict of interest to have the best players on teams falling out of playoff contention playing against teams they might join later in the season. Worse, it is a violation of the interests of fans of those teams, especially those holding tickets for seats near the end of a season, to have the players they want to see shuffled off to another city. From the first pitch on opening day–or from the opening game’s kickoff, tap-off, dropped puck–to the crowning of a champion at season’s end, no trades.

FOR the NHL: Leave it as is. Not just that, but use it as an example…

FOR the NBA & WNBA: Delay all foul calls on the defense until they get the ball or it goes out of bounds, as refs do in the NHL. The “continuation” call is a half-assed compromise implemented 20, 25 years ago to address a glaring wrong. Great! They got half, now get the rest and expand it: Give the offense the option to decline the foul and take the ball from out of bounds in the back-court with a full 24-second clock and all defenders confined to the front court. Those agonizing foul-shooting contests that now mar the end of most close games? The very phrase, “strategic foul,” is as much a violation of the game as it is of the English language. Good riddance!

FOR the NBA alone: Home teams must wear white, or a light yellow or powder blue if those are team colors. Visiting teams must wear team colors, orange or darker most prominently. No more black uniforms unless black is a team color.

FOR the NFL: You may have noticed that I also used football as a model for how basketball might be improved. That may help soften and sell my radical plan to make the NFL reasonable again. This could take awhile:

Restore the intentional grounding rule to what it was before the merger. When a quarterback moves a few yards to the right or left and then throws a ball into the twelfth row, that–according to definitions of English words and the common sense of any honest, intelligent person–is an intentionally incomplete pass. The defense made that happen and deserves the reward: Either the quarterback takes a chance with a pass or is sacked. If he throws it at a beer vendor or a beer-drinking fan, ten yards and loss of down.

No more pass interference calls for underthrown passes. Ever wonder how many are deliberately underthrown? The receiver simply turns around and slows down, and what else can the defender do? That’s not interference. That’s a bag job. You can’t reward teams for screwing up.

Restore the rules of kickoff to 20 years ago allow for the surprise and higher percentage on-side kick. Too obvious to explain.

Extend the 4th Quarter rather than have overtime. No more coin-flips. If the game is tied at the end of regulation, the team with the ball continues play from right where it is. However, this will not be sudden death. Instead, a team wins when it goes ahead by at least five points. One field goal will not be enough, but it will force the other team to follow a touchdown with a two-point conversion.

Alternative proposal. If we are to insist on a stop-and-restart at the end of regulation, then make overtimes sudden death with the first possession going to the team that attempted the most two-point and fourth-down conversions during the game. The most important thing is to do away with coin-flips. Rewarding risk is a sporting way to do it.

FOR MLB: I hasten to say that I fully approve recent rule changes such as the ghost-runner in extra innings and the pitch clock. I do it for the record because I know that my call for getting rid of the designated hitter–and restoring the ingenious managerial strategy that has been lost due to it–will label me a neo-Luddite. Okay, so it will never go away, but then why not apply the logic behind it to another strategic moment, especially in late innings of close games?

Make the intentional walk more costly. If we are to be spared the sight of pitchers at the plate, why should we see the bat taken out of the hands of our best hitters in crucial, tense moments of a close game? Like a football coach declining a foul, let a baseball manager decline ball four on a batter to keep him at the plate. Up until ball eight when he will be awarded second base, all runners advancing two bases. For the pitcher’s sake, any foul ball after two strikes will be a third strike, so there’s risk both ways.

Limit the foul balls. After two strikes, the fourth foul ball is strike three, batter out.

Call an error an error. Again, too obvious to explain. And this, of course, has nothing to do with how the game is played, but only how it is scored. Official scorers should be assigned by MLB to games in which their hometown teams or teams to which they have any connection are not playing. They will also determine…

The winning pitcher. No more should we have a starter pitch a gem into the late innings only to have a closer blow the lead and then steal the win when the team rallies back. The official scorer should designate which pitcher gets the win according to how well the pitchers did.

Start times. One for the league itself: No more late afternoon starting times that make towering fly balls and 105-mph line drives impossible for outfielders to see in the glare of a low-hanging sun. These games are scheduled for the sake of a TV schedule, and as such, the start-time violates the integrity of the game. No more. All games start before 2:00 pm or after 7:00 pm local time. Games in domed stadiums are exempted, as they are for my last move…

Weather conditions. As is, the decision to start a game rests with the home team. After the first pitch, it rests with the umpiring crew. Result is that we are watching games played in monsoons for the sake of television contracts and sponsorships. Enough! I say put the decision to delay or postpone a game in the hands of the National Weather Service from four hours before the scheduled start.

Tropicana Field. Blow it up! Now! Put the Rays in Montreal, Nashville, San Antonio, Oakland, Buffalo, Havana, San Juan, the cornfields of Iowa, anywhere that has a vacant MLB-ready park.

Ejection of fans who reach for balls that are in play. Go heavy on the pre-game reminders and put some signage where this happens in the front rows. Just because they missed the ball doesn’t mean they did not attempt to interfere. Get them out, and set the example.

Credit Detroit Tiger pitcher Armando Galarraga with a perfect game, June 2, 2010. The umpire admits he blew the call and has made this case to overturn his own ruling. The batter called safe agonized over it because he knew he was beat–though, to his immense credit, he busted it down the first-base line. And replay makes it clear. In fact, it is the play that sealed the deal for including replay in calling games the very next year. Since a change in that one call would have no consequence in the game’s outcome, let replay change it.

For All: No more TV ads featuring players on the teams playing in that game. Another conflict of interest, and I might extend it to a ban on all ads featuring anyone from that league. In other words, you may see Mahomes-Kelce-Reid in ads during a college football game, but not during any pro game, even if the KC Chiefs aren’t in it. Put another way, with all the money poured by sponsors into Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge also poured by those same sponsors into MLB games, isn’t there an incentive for MLB to want their teams–the LA Dodgers and the NY Yankees–to advance to the World Series?

Put another way: Last fall when we heard the announcers and analysts all enthuse that “This is the World Series that everybody wanted!”, did you wonder just whom they had in mind with the word “everybody”?

Like my first rule-change to stop all in-season trades, this has to do with conflict of interest–not just the actual fact of doing it, but the potential to exploit it–or, what in legal terms, it is simply called “the appearance of conflict.”

Who knows? If we started doing it in sports, there’s an outside chance we might recognize it in, say, the Supreme Court or in Cabinet appointments.

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A defunct team, a defunct logo, and a not-quite-yet defunct fan of the Past as much as the Pats.

Call Me Chicken Quesadilla

I roll my eyes at people who complain about spending time in waiting rooms.

Whether at a doctor’s office or an auto shop, awaiting a late train or waiting out unexpected rain, I’m always grateful for the chance to be still, to look out a window, to read a book or magazine, one of which I’m always sure to bring, anything to escape the never-ending demands of my own commitments, if not the necessities of my very existence.

So it was last week when I went for an annual check-up with a specialist who tends to things I’d rather not mention. As my old college pal, Fort Myers, says, “At our age, it’s all about the plumbing!”

So early was it, that I had only coffee before getting dressed and grabbing the still-unopened February issue of Harper’s to take with. Breakfast could wait, I figured.

Dr. Small is a friendly fellow probably half my age who, like me, is a fan of Herman Melville, or at least of the hyper-thinking, kaleidoscopically-talking, bumptious narrator of Moby-Dick. He has attended the marathon reading in Provincetown much like the ones in New Bedford where I read. I wore my new “Call Me Ishmael” t-shirt to give him a laugh.

Dr. Small agreed that breakfast could wait. So, too, could my employment that afternoon and the next day if not also a third day. The word “procedure” was in the air. When I asked if that could wait a couple days, Ismael walked the plank and I was face-to-face with Ahab: “This is serious!”

And I knew it. My check-up had been scheduled for March, but I was noticing a change in color by mid-January. Darker and darker. Maybe that’s why I wore the t-shirt. Ishmael is full of double-entendres. A burgundy shirt might help hide what was about to happen.

About 90 minutes later, I’m in the waiting room of the hospital’s ER. Feeling beat up, though relieved I’d been cleaned out, I was content to sit for hours with my magazine. Guess my appetite had also been vacuumed, but I needed to call an employer expecting me to show up in just three hours, and there are times when cellphones ring out disengagement rather than the usual busy signal. I couldn’t leave a message. After a dozen tries, I called the folks expecting me the next day, and asked them to get through. They agreed, but I had no way of knowing if they were successful.

Two hours or maybe a third of Harper’s later, I was on a gurney up and down the hall for a CAT scan. On the way back, rolling toward ER, I spotted people in the overflow seats out in the corridor. They had been empty when I left, so I was grateful for the early appointment until I remembered skipping breakfast. And I hear a woman’s voice calling my name, “There’s Jack! There’s Jack!” She was in the nearest seat and had a cellphone to her ear while waving frantically.

My arms weren’t doing frantic, nor was my voice doing loud, and the nurse, who knows me as “John” not “Jack,” turned the gurney through the doors closed to the public. I still do not know who the woman was, if she was looking for me or was there for her own problem.

Into a room I went where another nurse told me that things looked good, but I’d have to stay the night for the sake of seeing if they still look good in the morning. They also needed results of tests, the scan, I guess. I responded with one word: “food.” She laughed, handed me a menu, and showed me how to use the phone for room service.

Let me put the menu aside to tell you that all the tests came back in my favor. But they were still taking samples of my O-neg to be sure, and by mid-afternoon, Newburyport was hit by a serious ice storm. Dr. Small’s associate bounced into and around the room like a tennis ball while telling me I could be released, and feeling here and there asking, “Does this hurt?” “How about here?” And “Here?” No, no, and no.

But, he said bouncing back up and away, the storm would be too much for me in my weakened condition. Fine by me. I knew that PBS was airing a documentary on Wilmington, North Carolina, 1898 that night. You know, the kind of history that Republicans are erasing from public education. Might as well see it there. My only regret was taking another dubious chance with the dinner menu.

The menu, ah the menu, oh the goddamned menu!

Knowing that hospital food does not have a great reputation, on that first night I ordered meatloaf, figuring I was playing it safe. They can’t screw that up. Well, the side of green beans was good, but the rest of it was just heavy filler. The lemon meringue dessert was light filler, but the coffee was excellent.

Next morning, a ham-cheddar omelet was pretty good, while lunchtime’s grilled cheese seemed to disappear before it reached my taste buds. But the chocolate cookie dessert offered consolation, and the coffee as good as home. Dinner was so bland, I can’t recall what it was, but the green beans were good, and the chocolate cookie seemed a reward for finishing it.

Waking up after the ice storm, I decided to play safe with the same omelet. Good move! And only then did I notice on the menu that breakfast is served for all three meals. If I’m sent there again, I’ll have it for every meal because of what happened next.

A delay in paperwork they told me, but yes you will be going home. I looked at the sign on the wall: “Our goal is to always release you before 12 noon.” What was left in Harper’s wouldn’t get me past 9:30. Unless I wanted to re-read one environmental horror story after another. And I can never watch TV with any daylight in the windows. A psychological thing, I guess, very depressing.

After noon passed, I was resigned to another hospital lunch. Several nurses were at a loss to tell me the reason for the delay. Maybe Dr. Tennis Ball had bounced over the fence, down the hill, and into the Merrimack. Whatever, lunch was still their serve. Oh, why did I not backhand another omelet? Or volley ten sides of green beans?

For no reason I can recall, imagine, invent, or at this point even believe, I thought a chicken quesadilla would be a good idea. Maybe because the word itself appeared so exotic on an otherwise Father-Knows-Best, white-picket-fence menu. Neither of my parents nor any aunts and uncles would have recognized the word quesadilla, nor would I until a college spring-break took me to Tuscon.

Now I wonder if it’s the hospital’s idea of a joke. For me to ever order it again should be ruled attempted suicide. The stench of it should have been warning enough. How do any health workers let it get past them on the rolling tray from the cafeteria to any room? I held my nose, but the burned, metallic taste was worse than the barf. Where were the green beans when I needed them? I noted the sour cream and salsa on the tray and thought I could smother the taste with either. Neither worked, and after three horrific, self-punishing, self-torturing, death-defying swallows, I pushed it aside, tore open the chocolate chip cookie, shoved it in my mouth and sucked hard and long before chewing.

Coffee helped, but I was shaken in a way that was beyond a bad taste. How can anything that horrible exist? On a menu? On a hospital menu? To take my mind off it, I picked up the magazine only to find that I had read the entire issue. My mind went full-tilt-boogie into free association: Chicken quesadilla in a magazine? Yet more pages of toxic waste? Or just a lettuce to the editor? As an ad? In an app? On a map? In a halftime rap? From a barroom tap? In a maple’s sap? Caught in a trap? Cut the crap! For an opening zap:

Call me Chicken Quesadilla. Meals ago, never mind how many, with little or no salsa in my purse or sour cream in my pocket, I set out to see the culinary part of the coop, leaving behind all mundane cares of green beans and concerns of chocolate cookies…

Couple hours later, about when I befriended a harpooneer named Omelet, I was finally told to get dressed and ready to go home. I looked at the clock. It was just over 25 hours since Dr. Tennis Ball said I could leave if not for a white whale smashing the Pequod outside. That’s just about the time required for the Moby-Dick marathon–which is to say, for the Pequod to sink. To the parking lot Nurse Starbuck rolled me in a wheelchair named The Rachel from where I made my way to my tugboat and am now snug at home.

Call me anything you want. Next time, I’ll bring a novel.

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Bartleby? Confidence Man? Pierre or the Ambiguities? Billy Budd? Benito Cereno? Yes!

All Over Now, Baby Red White & Blue

Kendrick Lamar is America’s newest version of A Complete Unknown.

So hilarious to hear so many fellow white people who have been in awe of what Bob Dylan did at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 now complain of what just happened at Superbowl 2025.

Or dismiss it as so many are doing. One post on social media used the tongue-in-cheek meme “Marked Safe From,” as he put it, “whatever message was supposedly delivered…” A response landed immediately: “That’s because you were the subject, not the student.” From bullshit to bullseye!

This includes white folks my age who recall when Dylan electrified the folk world in both senses of the word, and those younger who just learned the details in the current film. Makes me wonder if Lamar thought of the analogy before casting Samuel L. Jackson in the would-be-moderator’s role of Pete Seeger. Or if he may have hummed Strike another match and start anew/ It’s all over now, Baby Blue before choosing “TV Off” as his parting shot.

Say what you will about the Halftime Show, the most compelling message was already delivered by a commercial barely halfway into the first quarter.

But only if you felt as much as heard the National Anthem before kickoff. I can’t recall the melody ever before accompanied by a subtle, steady drum roll. The piano and voice may have been a liberating jazz, but those drums kept the tune grounded in America’s conflicted history.

New Orleanian Jon Baptiste’s rendition of the Anthem was as fitting a forerunner for Lamar as John the Baptist was for his cousin who would also claim all attention with an equally radical, if peace-making, message. Between the two was a football game that soon turned into a rout and commercials that ranged from hilarious to serious, and from whimsical to earnest.

Madison Avenue has made the broadcast its own celebration, much in the way that the Oscars serves Hollywood. Most ads that air during the protracted game–from all the pregame hype (Oscars’ red carpet) through the “Halftime Show” (O’s best song nominees) to the post-game ceremony (after parties)–are premieres. Lavish and sensational, some blunt, others sentimental, they are a heavy investment for our approval.

Eight million dollars a pop according to commentator Tom Brady, himself a co-star with Snoop Dog in a public service address against hate, near the start of the game. The text is not denunciation but illustration, a white and a black guy going at each other, airing out both sides. Then a pause before the final line, the first to include the pronoun “we” so it doesn’t matter who says it: I hate that we have to make a commercial about this.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve spent the day after the Super Bowl picking out highlights of the commercials. This year, however, I’m taken more by a theme that evolved like a passion play with the Anthem as the opening scene and halftime as the finale.

In between was a lengthy ad that had no voice over. We do hear LL Cool J’s song “Mama Said Knock You Out,” and will later learn that it was produced by Pfizer to highlight the company’s cancer research efforts.

A camera takes us through the open door of a hospital room and to the bed of a small boy who lies there hooked up to an IV and who knows what else. He looks out the window, and is determined. No more! He unhooks himself, gets up, gets into boxing trunks, goes to the sink, splashes water on his face, gets his boxing gloves on, and out the door and down the corridor he goes, throwing punches, shuffling his feet, dodging punches, leaning in.

Nurses, doctors, other patients, hospital staff and visitors applaud and cheer him on. Out the door he goes and down a main street lined with cheering crowds on both sides. Up some stairs he goes–yes, this is a play on Rocky–and onto a landing for the entrance to a public building, arms raised as he looks out toward public buildings waving American flags. A title finally comes onto the screen:

We Will Beat Cancer!

All well and good. Unanimous approval, as we’ve already joined the cheering, applauding, smiling crowd. But what happens if we add context, if we start connecting dots?

What if you recall, just one touchdown and kickoff ago, the video that played during the National Anthem? What if you recall the camera’s pan to someone saluting our flag with ramrod posture and a stern expression who just days earlier signed an executive order to stop all funding for medical research?

Oh, have I upset you? A moment ago were you entirely with me in smiling approval of the boy’s recovery and determination? But now I’ve played a dirty trick and made you uncomfortable?

That’s what Kendrick Lamar did with the Halftime Show. Argue whether it was entertainment or not, art or not, “appropriate” (whatever that crap, cop-out of a word is) or not, it was a litmus test. To those willing to listen, he could not have been any more American, any more red, white, and blue.

To the rest, he is now a complete unknown.

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https://www.newsminimalist.com/articles/ll-cool-js-hit-song-features-in-pfizers-super-bowl-ad-promoting-cancer-research-f695f0c4

Lollipops & Rainbows

A day before The Townie posted my essay on weeding, the removal of old books from local libraries, the local daily ran a front-page story on the “success” of the Newburyport Public Library’s new volunteer program.

“New” because the volunteer program was suspended in the summer of 2023 by Mayor Sean Reardon. “New” because the new gig was crafted by the newly appointed Head Librarian Kevin Bourque. Also “new” because none of volunteers at the time are with the new crop. Considering that all of them were retirees, you could say that they, too, were weeded.

Nor could any of them rejoin the renewal. That would be awkward in light of the petition to the City Council that they and a few supporters, including me, signed calling for an investigation into the manner of their dismissal. The petition was successful, although the delay in choosing an investigator allowed a City Hall official who played a key role time to find a municipal position and new home in Western Massachusetts.

Coincidence? Maybe. But is it also coincidence that the local paper heralds nothing but success just as the investigation is drawing to a close in February? Here’s a sentence that appears midway in the 850-word report:

After collecting feedback from staff as well as former volunteers, Bourque crafted a new program and policy that was approved last May by the board of directors as well as library staff.

The phrase “from staff as well as volunteers” is no doubt true because he did listen to anyone who walked through his open door at times he set, including me. And a few of the dismissed vols told me that they have spoken to him. However, in the context of this all-lollipops report, those six words create a rainbow impression that they approve of all that has happened, and that all is forgiven and forgotten.

Another item in the report appears as a glaring contradiction to anyone who has followed the NPL saga, but would go unnoticed by casual readers. A reason for dismissal was that vols were doing staff work, a breach of the union contract.

That was then. Now, Bourque openly reveals that the new vols are doing nothing but reshelving books in the stacks. How is that task not among the various items in a librarian’s job description? Call it a clear case of “Which is it?”

But that’s a rhetorical question. Starting with Reardon’s suspension, this has been a shell game to disguise the removal of people well-acquainted with local history who actually knew how to research and could help patrons find things.

Reasons given for the dismissal begin with “bullying” and “harassment,” but no one who knows any of the elderly, professional, and highly competent dismissed vols believes that for a moment. Which may be why no incident or quote was ever specified despite numerous requests for them over these past 18 months.

My own speculation is that many young people expect a raise of inflection and or a giggle at the end of every spoken sentence, as well as smiley face or heart or huggy emojis after written ones. Normal talk, people my post-menopausal age often find, sounds angry to them. A matter-of-fact question is not heard but felt as assault and battery.

To nail down a breach of the union contract, charges against the dismissed vols included money. We were told in the daily paper that they took money from patrons. In the most extreme case of a public institution “airing dirty laundry” that I’ve ever seen, the NPL website posted it prominently for five weeks. The intended impression was to make the dismissed vols appear to be exploiting their role. The truth is that some patrons gave them coins for the photocopier because the vols were familiar with machines those patrons had never used.

So much for the veracity of NPL staff. Added to all of that, Bourque’s recent, unwitting admission regarding shelving seems like old news.

What’s new is the claim, or at least the impression, that the dismissed vols had a say in Bourque’s redesigned volunteer program. It should not take John Kerry to come here and tell us of the consequence of not answering false claims. And some of us still wonder if Kamala Harris missed the Swiftboat by never answering the repeated charge that she advocated sex-change operations for penitentiary inmates.

Don’t mean to tax your patience with yet another critique of a public library, but false information and insinuations that go unanswered stick. For that I reason, I write this not out of choice, but of obligation.

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Photo from *The Townie*, an on-line “public square for the passionate voices of Greater Newburyport.” Here’s a link to another *Townie* essay critical of NPL–this one about the “cultural homogenization and the sidelining of local knowledge” since Reardon’s banishment of the Archival Center’s volunteers.
https://www.townienbpt.com/education/2024/11/12/the-newburyport-public-library-can-do-more-to-promote-our-communitys-diverse-past

A Return to Manifest Destiny

Anyone have William McKinley on a bingo card for the Inaugural Address?

When I closed my eyes and listened not for content but sound, it was easy to think I was hearing a defective robot reading endless instructions for day-to-day life in a penitentiary. Blame that on my country’s transformation from democracy to oligarchy and the realization that everything I grew up believing about America is no longer true.

Crime does pay. Might does make right. Public offices are openly for sale. Threats and menace are free speech. Ethics are for suckers. One man is above the law. And we continue to stand at attention and put hands over hearts while singing an anthem that, if honest, would end with “the land of the gullible and the home of the indifferent.”

The impenitent felon’s cement-mixer drone nearly put me to sleep as I lamented the loss, but the name McKinley hit my ears like an explosion of a steamship’s over-worked boiler while afloat in Havana Harbor.

Ask historians about our 25th president, and they’ll immediately tell you that he oversaw America’s transformation into an imperial power in 1898. His declaration of war on Spain began with our invasion of Cuba and was quickly followed by a take-over of the Philippines and the annexation of Hawai’i. Some will add that he claimed to be torn by the decision and, alone on his way to bed one night, knelt on the floor and prayed for guidance. God, McKinley announced the next day, told him to send in the troops.*

Trump omits such details, telling us only that McKinley “was a great businessman” who “made this country a lot of money.” Nor does he mention that McKinley needed a pretext to invade Cuba and start his war. Just last month, in a blog headlined by a more recent American pretext for war, “Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club,” I happened to quote the slogan that cites McKinley’s pretext: “Remember the Maine!”

I recall the cry from history textbooks when I was but a schoolboy. Little did I know that it was truncated from the full slogan at the time: “Remember the Maine and to Hell with Spain!” The text told us that the Spaniards blew up the USS Maine, but years later I would read historians who say that the cause was never determined. Given all evidence and circumstances, they figure, it’s more likely that the boiler blew up on its own, or that it was an inside job calculated to raise American public support for war.

When you’re done laughing at Trump’s claims regarding the Panama Canal, put them into historical context. In addition to McKinley”s “Remember,” we have Pres. Polk’s false claim of “American blood on American Soil” to start the Mexican War, LBJ’s fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident to send American troops into Vietnam, and W’s imagined “weapons of mass destruction.” If Trump wants America to re-take the Panama Canal, all he needs is what those four had: a pretext.

And just like that, his inaugural address nailed one: “China is running the Canal!”

He could have invoked–and before long he will invoke–the Monroe Doctrine. Connected to his insistence that we must “take back” the Panama Canal, this is no longer a joke. Nor is the seemingly superficial change of the name Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America.” Interesting how we never heard any talk of the Canal or the Gulf or Greenland or Canada until after the election, unless they also happen to be four brand names of eggs.

Except for the resurrection of McKinley, none of this was a surprise at the inauguration. In a speech that could have been titled “Manifest Destiny Redux,” however, he surprised everyone by calling for a restoration of the name “McKinley” to Mt. Denali in Alaska. That’s the centuries-old Koyukon tribe’s name meaning “tall one” for North America’s highest peak. Given the time and the occasion, and considering the general purpose of an inaugural address, it may have sounded like a minor line item in a long wish-list.

Many Americans are still laughing at what sound like geographical fantasies, and it is easy to joke about renaming or re-classifying a body of water or a tract of land for no cartographical, geographical, or geological reason. I can still hear my father laughing at Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy’s bid to have Lake Champlain declared the sixth Great Lake, no matter that Dad died in 1999.

We laugh at our own peril. No matter what Rand McNally does with its atlases or what the United Nations does with its maps, a mere presidential order gives Republican governors and state legislatures a pretext to decide which textbooks and atlases can be used in public schools and which cannot. That, in turn, puts limits on what may be taught.

Add to that his white-nationalist claims also made by the MAGA crowd, that school children are now taught to “be ashamed” of their country and that white children are made to “feel guilty.” That will determine what those limits are.

Names are not on bingo cards, but they do appear in history texts and on maps. Might be a good idea to stop laughing at them and start learning what we would rather not repeat.

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*The second thing historians will say of McKinley is that he was assassinated in the first months of his second term. Shot at a Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, by a self-proclaimed anarchist, he was rushed to a hospital. He gradually improved for a week, but took a sudden, severe turn and died on the eighth day of gangrene caused by a bullet that the doctors had missed. In a building back at the Exposition directly across the street from where the shooting occurred was an exposition of a new x-ray machine far more powerful than any at the hospital. Had they brought McKinley there, that machine would have saved his life.

On Sept. 14, 1901, Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in and immediately became the first president to have Secret Service protection.

The Assassination of the US President William McKinley, Buffalo (NY) 1901, Achille Beltrame, 1901
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-william-mckinley-is-shot

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/10-interesting-facts-about-mount-denali.html

Painting entitled ‘American Progress’, by John Gast, depicting ‘Manifest Destiny’ (the religious belief that the United States should expand from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean in the name of God). In 1872 artist John Gast painted a popular scene of people moving west that captured the view of Americans at the time. Called ‘Spirit of the Frontier’ and widely distributed as an engraving portrayed settlers moving west, guided and protected by a goddess-like figure and aided by technology (railways, telegraphs), driving Native Americans and bison into obscurity. It is also important to note that angel is bringing the ‘light’ as witnessed on the eastern side of the painting as she travels towards the ‘darkened’ west.’ USA.

Why Not a Panama Hat?

Like many friends, I had resolved not to watch.

But over the weekend, friends started calling long distance, as they do on momentous days. From the assassination of John Lennon to 9/11 to the passing of Jimmy Carter, we have consoled each other over the years, and we do it now. By the time the clock struck midnight, I noticed a thread running through the conversations which prompted a blog headlined, “In This 11th Hour.”

That, in turn, reminded me that I am, after all, a newspaper columnist, and so I tuned in to the inauguration out of obligation, or at least a sense of it. Since I finished and posted “11th Hour” at the end of the literal eleventh hour, I waited a mere ten minutes for the swearing in. Those ten minutes have proved a fitting metaphor for the regurgitation of grievances, lies, and hate that followed, as all I could see was one thing:

Melania’s hat.

The hat atop her dark-blue outfit and her ramrod posture all seemed of a piece. In views from above, with her hands down by her side, she reminded me of my father’s floor-lamp, although darkness rather than light emanated from her face where the bulb would be. Concealing her eyes from any direct view, the wide-brimmed object’s crown appeared so slight that Melania at times looked like a serving tray for her much taller son, Barron, standing aside her. Numerous friends on social media wondered if the brim was to keep her husband’s obligatory kiss from reaching her face, but I wouldn’t dream of mentioning anything so personal.

Can’t decide if that hat is a haberdasher’s version of Musk’s Cybertruck or speculation of what Eva Braun might wear if she only lived another 80 years. Back in the 50s and 60s, there was a TV quiz-show called What’s My Line? I swear, if she was on it in that outfit, I’d guess assassin. Melania never once took it off her head, not even when she was named and waved to a cheering crowd.

And so I was already lost in dark thought when the dark Mad Hatter himself got stuck in dark time. All mandates for DEI are now DOA, nor will there be any mandates for electric cars. Climate change? What change? What climate? It’s all “Drill, baby, drill!” into the looming Dark Ages. When he mentioned the canal, I lost track of his cargo, his ship’s manifest, his passengers’ destiny, and turned my attention back to Melania:

Why was it not a Panama hat?

But she wore rich threads, and the camera panned plenty more of it in the Capitol rotunda. With the MAGA rabble in their mad red hats kept out, and the MAGA privileged in their jewels welcomed inside–due to cold, so we’re told–it appeared that they were all in what was once called “their Sunday best.”

With a maudlin rendition of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a few over-the-top benedictions that came close to ordaining Trump’s recrudescence as the Second Coming, countless mentions of God by everyone who spoke, and an adoring mood that stampeded the border into worship, the inauguration that took place yesterday was not so much a ceremony of state as a religious observance.

Separation of Church and State? What State?

Turns out I misunderstood Melania’s hat, and missed the white collar until an old SSC friend posted that she was “rockin’ the Amish pastor look.” More to the point, he adding something that begs the question of how the MAGA crowd–whether in, out, or at home–would have reacted had Barack Obama or Kamala Harris done it:

While taking the oath, the oaf never put his hand on the Bible on the serving tray held by the floor-lamp that stood beside him.

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/melanias-big-hat-plays-starring-234702916.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

Anyone who thinks commentary on what one wears is off-limits is welcome to tell me just what the limits are for one who wears this.

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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