While waiting for Hannibal Lecter to be named the next head of the Food and Drug Administration, I return my attention to Newburyport in hopes of having my lifelong faith in democracy and belief in reality restored.
First item I see is that the City Council might consider a $22,250 pay raise for the mayor, with an added increase of $2,100 for “annual expenses.”
I say let him have it. With that much dough, Sean Reardon can reimburse Newburyport what he has cost it.
Start with the $10K settlement for ripping down flyers placed by Citizens for Responsible Education on the library’s community bulletin board.
Must admit I’d have enjoyed doing that myself, but I’m as decrepit as the 2021 opponent Reardon implied was too old—stuck with the outdated notion that you counter speech you don’t like with speech of your own.
Now add another $12K for an investigation of the public library’s treatment of its volunteers and the head of its Archival Center.
Any competent executive would have inquired in-house, and an instigator or three would have been revealed. The matter would have been resolved with due process for both sides. Nothing would have gone public.
Reardon? He publicly dismissed the vols, in effect declaring, “guilty as soon as charged.”
By any honest measure, this was a coverup from the start. But perhaps our mayor was acting with all good intentions, hoping only to protect anyone on the payroll, naively assuming they were all blameless.
After the recent national election, I envy Reardon’s innocence. The glaring fact is that the accusations were beyond wild—and made against elderly people well-known as mild.
Hence, while making all vols appear guilty, Reardon inadvertently made all the librarians appear suspicious.
Finally, we—I’m among the petition’s signers—have an investigation.
City Council President Ed Cameron sat on it for months. He also single-handedly picked the investigator, free of public comment or discussion, perhaps emulating the mayor for any chance the job comes open.
Meanwhile, the mayor’s chief-of-staff, cited repeatedly by the defamed volunteers in pursuit of the investigation, has resigned to take a job in Western Mass.
But let’s not think for a moment that the resignation of a City Hall official, immediately followed by the long-delayed start of an investigation, and then the hastened, secretive choice of an investigator is anything but coincidence.
Recently, on the Local Pulse radio show, Reardon expressed doubt that anything significant would be revealed—echoing Cameron’s preemptive cop-out that “investigation” was “too strong a word.”
In his innocence, perhaps Reardon meant that the findings won’t cost the city anything.
No one expects that the volunteers will gain any monetary consolation, but given that the head of the Archival Center was forced out of a job, there’s still a chance of a settlement.
Moreover, considering the ages of all involved, Newburyport may yet get whacked by an age discrimination suit.
Still, those prices are no more knowable than the loss that looms if the council approves the mayor’s proposed waiver—partial but generous—of a developer’s water and sewer betterment fee to turn K-Mart into what one local wag has dubbed “Reardonville.”
So, let’s stick with the blunders already paid: $10K + $12K = $22K.
With the $22,250, Reardon can pay off his incompetence in as little time as it has taken him to run up the tab—and have enough left over for a bowl of chowder and a beer at Sea Level Oyster Bar.
Plus, he can campaign for re-election by boasting of the reimbursement in his campaign—as well as claim that he must be re-elected so he can continue making payments as gleefully as he keeps blundering.
And if young turks such as Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard are rejected in DC, they’ll fit right here in City Hall—as if his Machiavellian chief-of-staff never left.
But not Hannibal Lecter. He’s too old.
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Here I am at the foot of my driveway on Plum Island about to mail my contribution to the mainland for the Newburyport mayor’s blunder fund. Photo by Michael Boer (circa 2006): https://onewe.wordpress.com/
When the cold season rolls in, I start making a casserole I call “Feta Feta Feast” for two of its ingredients. My recipe also calls for fresh basil which, as I picked the leaves off stems last night, has raised a question.
The basil I like comes in those small, thin plastic containers that hang refrigerated in the produce section for three or four dollars apiece. (Please spare me the advice to grow my own. I have neither the patience nor the mind for it.) Last night I took more note of the long, thick, and necessarily curved stems than I have always tossed into the bushes out my window here on the wilds of Plum Island.
By no measure a good cook, I’ve been making a half dozen dishes over and over for at least 40 years, living alone as I do, and so I can make visitors think that I’m a gourmet chef. Even repeat visitors are so fooled so long as they show up just twice or thrice a year. In truth, I only know the few tricks I’ve repeatedly played since Ronald Reagan popularized jelly beans and Walter Mondale asked, “Where’s the beef?”
Call me an idiot savant who excels at something but is really stupid when it comes to all else–as helpless as the college freshman in his first apartment 56 years ago where his girlfriend threw a book of recipes at him and demanded he find something he could make. (Within weeks I became famous for my banana bread and kept making it until the time I tried rye flour. It made for a very good door stop.) Anyway, that’s why I fear asking a question that might be as laughingly obvious as the ones on social media that end with “asking for a friend.” No, I admit, this is for me:
Should I be saving these basil stems? And if so, how might I use them?
First positive answer to that will qualify for a generous portion of Feta Feta Feast if we can figure out when and where I can deliver it. I will be making it through March, so no hurry on that.*
And for those of you curious about the dish, here’s the recipe with parenthetical notations of my preferred brands and amounts:
Sweet Italian Sausage (from Tendercrop, about 2/3 lb crumbled–you may want to make this 50/50 with Chorizo, also available at Tendercrop)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil, enough for the skillet
Note: A vegetarian friend tells me that leaving out the sausage and increasing amounts of red pepper and feta cheese makes for a “mouth-watering” (her word) version.
Warning: Years ago, never mind how many, Tendercrop had run out of sweet Italian sausage before I arrived. Thought I’d experiment with ground turkey, first time I ever bought it. Was also the last time I ever bought it. Might go well with rye banana bread.
Instructions:
Boil the fettuccine and put enough olive oil in the largest skillet you have to saute the last three items until the sausage is cooked. Put the flame at low-to-moderate.
Drain the fettuccine over a large coffee mug in the sink to keep that much water.
Plop the pasta into the skillet and stir, as much as you can, into the sausage & peppers.
Flatten what’s in the skillet and top it with the basil, feta cheese, and olives.
Pour in that cup of hot water from the pasta. Stir.
If the skillet is too full to stir, pour some olive oil into the bowl you used to boil the pasta, enough to cover the bottom, and then dump the whole thing in it and stir until the green and the red and the brown and the black and the white seem evenly distributed in the yellow of pasta.
Keep on a low flame until the liquid is gone. That’s when it is done.
If you have switched to a bowl, you’ll need to stay and stir, but I usually stay at the stove anyway, dipping Annarosa’s rosemary and sea-salt rolls into the liquid and wolfing down Ipswich Ale. I have another ale for dessert which, because I sat down after the meal to jot this off, is now overdue.
As my friend Walter likes to say, “Thirst is a dangerous thing.”
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*Sorry, but the prize has already been claimed and consumed by my next door neighbor.
Biggest loser of the November election has yet to be mentioned.
Not a candidate or referendum question or anything else on the ballot, but an ideal, a concept, an attitude. The founders never spelled it out, but it can be inferred over and again in the Declaration and in the Federalist Papers. Washington’s farewell address implied it, as did Eisenhower’s. Lincoln didn’t say it, but it’s in the spirit of his Gettysburg and inaugural addresses. FDR didn’t say it, but his New Deal put it in action. Not until 1961 did JFK declare it as soon as he took office:
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
Seems safe to say, following an election in which the price of eggs outweighed access to healthcare, that Kennedy’s rallying cry for citizenship is now officially null and void.
We’re all consumers now. And nothing more.
So many friends still wonder out loud how so many people could support the Republican candidate for president despite the felony convictions, the insults, the flagrant lies, the praise of dictators past and present, the cruelty, the crudity, the hints at threats of violence, and the incoherent speeches–including a weird admiration for Hannibal Lecter and a worrying envy of Adolph Hitler.
Y’all need a good slap across the face. The answer is glaringly obvious, but no one wants to say it. Well, at my age and with no risk of blowing a government appointment in the next four years, I’ll say it:
Over two-thirds of the American electorate want authoritarian rule. What can our country do for me?
Whoa, you may say, Trump gained barely 49% of the vote! Sorry, folks, but anyone who did not vote, as a protest or not, said, in effect, that they want government done for them. Ask not what I can do for my country… Trump gained 31% of eligible voters, edging Harris’ 29.8%. The landslide was non-voters, 38.1% of eligible adults. Add that to the vote gained by Trump, an open authoritarian who allies himself with authoritarians around the world, and, by any honest measure, it is a call for authoritarian rule.
Doesn’t matter if the non-voters consciously want it. The US Constitution describes in detail a participatory democracy, and an informed, educated citizenry for that participation. By definition, then, if you do not stay informed, if you do not participate, you forfeit self-rule and welcome, or at least allow, authoritarian rule.
If election day was an alarm, then Veterans Day a week later was its snooze button.
Social media was flush with tributes to veterans who risked their lives in wars they believed were necessary to protect democratic rule. I lost count of how many such posts I saw made by people who avoid politics as fiercely as they’d avoid a skunk, who refuse to see or hear or read any news.
You like irony? While all veterans who began their service after January 1973 did so as volunteers, many who today sing their praises dodge any and all implied commitment of “an educated citizenry.” The veterans they praise risked death for the USA, but they can’t even stay informed or participate in civic affairs–unless you count paying taxes, about which they bitterly complain and vote to get rid of, if they vote at all.
For all the disdain aimed at draft dodgers over the years, it is democracy dodgers who have let America fall to authoritarians.
Worse than they, and I’d say worse than those who voted for Republicans, were the progressives who refused to vote or voted throw-away-party due to the Biden-Harris Administration’s shady alliance with Netanyahu’s Israel. As Obama kept warning us, they “let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
A friend’s daughter, a teacher just two years out of college, said a few weeks before the election that she couldn’t wait for Harris to secure a win so that we could “start attacking her and Biden regarding Israel’s genocidal war.” That’s exactly how I felt and why I was compiling notes for at least one column I’d write before New Year’s. That’s doing the work, that’s participation. With Harris we had a chance if we kept working, participating, making our case known and keeping it in front of officials we could influence. What we can do for our country…
Instead, the purists who want it all done for them allowed the White House and Senate to fall to the party which gives us no chance. Learning nothing, they still want it done for them. Barely a week passed before I started receiving what I was dreading: Appeals to donate to a fund for something I do believe in from people who destroyed any chance of their–and our–success.
Donations? If the request was made in person, I’d throw a nickel at their feet and demand four cents change. Nor will I waste time with a column. Maybe four years from now, but until then it’s up to the purists to deal with the rot they have wrought.
Until then, I’m still asking what I can do for this country.
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Wondering what I can do next. Photo by Kim O’Rourke.
Yesterday I was dispatched up the Maine coast, another route that I once did every week but was rescheduled after the pandemic.
Most Fridays these days I’m sent out to Gloucester and Rockport at the tip of “Massachusetts’ other cape,” Cape Ann, then down along Boston’s North Shore on always clogged roads into always crowded places such as Salem and Marblehead. But the Maine run is thrown my way every couple months or so, and so when I heard last month that legendary Red Sox pitcher, Luis Tiant, passed away, I awaited my first chance for a pit stop at the Maine Diner where he feasted so frequently, they named a breakfast for him.
Takes people by surprise to hear that the Cuban defector-turned-All Star hurler enjoyed his retirement in Wells and Kennebunk, Maine, playing golf and wolfing down poached eggs on corned-beef hash with toast and a cup of bite-sized chunks of cantaloupe, pineapple, honey melon, and grapes up on US1.
The Maine Diner’s location makes it impossible for tourists to miss. Here, a state highway leaves US1 for the coast, taking you past the Rachel Carson State Park and Estuary out to Kennebunkport and the beach where Tiant may well have hung out with golfing partner George H.W. Bush, himself an acclaimed firstbaseman for Yale before giving up pastoral baseball for political hardball.
Don’t know how it was for young boys in other parts of New England, but in the gritty mill city of Lawrence, Mass., and the nearby sedate river town of Groveland where I often played ball with my cousin and his pals, Tiant was an idol before he came to the Red Sox. That he fled Castro’s revolution at great risk would have made him a celebrity in any line of work, and his joyous, ebullient personality, emboldened by a thick, black Fu Manchu, made him a favorite of ours no matter that he played for the Cleveland Indians.
Goofing off, we’d try to imitate his tilt-a-whirl delivery that had him facing secondbase longer than he faced the plate, but we never attempted it in games because it was impossible to control. There was nothing else like it. There was no one else like him, and the unforgettable photo of him from the chest up, soaping himself in the shower with his ever-present cigar between his lips was all that was needed to memorialize it.
Finally, I have savored his favorite breakfast. As I so often do (and as I mentioned in my last blog), I again ordered before looking at the menu. But look at the menu I did, wondering if other entrees were named for local celebrities. Certainly, “George’s Beef Jerky” or maybe something called “Anti-Broccoli” would be a side dish, but the name Bush was nowhere to be found. Instead, there was a sandwich named for network sports commentator Jim Nantz, a strawberry shortcake dessert called “Just the ‘Fax’ Ma’m” for pro golfer Brad Faxon, and lunches for former WEEI sports radio hosts Eddie Andleman and Dale Arnold.
That last pair may be an inside joke. Andleman and Arnold cohosted a mid-day show for a few years, “The A Team” it was called, and word has it that they wound up hating each other. The free-wheeling, snarky Andleman was dumped, and mild-mannered, meticulous Arnold survived for another ten or more years, but would never talk about it.
No one outside WEEI knows what happened, but this menu offers a strong hint. Andleman lunched on mac and cheese loaded with two quarter-pound frankfurters. Arnold preferred a lobster roll with melted butter on the side.
I checked the photos on the wall behind the counter directly in front of my seat. Arnold, Tiant, Bush Senior, Nantz, and others, including I bet the chefs at Maine Diner, were all smiling back at me, brandishing five irons. Maybe Andleman was still sitting here wolfing down hot dogs while the others strolled the fairways and greens.
The rest of the menu, unlike that of the New Hampshire joint where I dined the day before, was all straight-forward except for one entree: “She-Crab Chowder.” At first sight, my eyes rolled and my brain screamed, “For Chrissake!” But the description tells us that, rather than a crab’s preferred pronoun, the “She” is an ingredient’s natural abbreviation. This chowder offers “a hint” of sherry.
Can’t wait for my next trip up the Maine coast.
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Game Six of the 1975 World Series, considered by many sports connoisseurs as the greatest game and series in baseball history. Tiante had already won Game One, a shutout, and Game Four. But the Sox lost Two, Three, and Five to the Cincinnati Reds when a three-day monsoon drowned Boston, allowing the Sox to pitch Tiant in Game Six. The Sox won in extra innings on a nearly foul homerun by catcher Carlton Fisk, whose sideways skip toward firstbase is possibly the most shown, described, and imitated act in the history of sports. Here’s Tiant “showing his numbers” to Pete Rose. https://www.stadiumtalk.com/s/greatest-pitching-windups-82d538b044b94cd0
No, this is not the Maine Diner, but it was taken this year and is how I must have appeared, while reading about “The Eddie Andleman,” to the woman who served my “El Tiante” yesterday. Photo by Keith Sullivan, Newburyport Daily News.
Today I took my appetite into the center of Derry, N.H., to a diner where I had one lunch five years ago and to which I hoped to return.
Then came the pandemic, followed by a rescheduling of my employer’s routes. I’m rarely sent into New Hampshire anymore, and even at that, Derry is far from a strategic location for breakfast or lunch, too late for one, too early for the other.
But today was a fluke, straight up US 3 and down I-93 all the way to Plymouth, a quaint, small college town best known as the place where one of America’s greatest novelists died while in the company of one of America’s worst presidents.
To be fair, Franklin Pierce was a college buddy of Massachusetts boy Nathaniel Hawthorne, long before one’s Scarlet Letter and the other’s White House, and Hawthorne, knowing his end was near, craved another look at the White Mountains where his old friend kept out of public view.
As for Pierce, his accommodation of the slavocracy was so appalling that he returned to New England only to be shunned wherever he went, including his buddy’s funeral. Sixty years later, Robert Frost, who lived most of his life on a farm just south of Derry, penned a fond, epic ode to the state called “New Hampshire” that summed up Pierce with this:
She had one President (pronounce him Purse,
And make the most of it for better or worse.
He’s your one chance to score against the state).
To and from Plymouth, some 70 miles north of the state border, I starved myself until I could feel it–and finally feed it–in Mary Ann’s Diner. Derry is about 20 miles north of Massachusetts–in fact, straight north of my native Lawrence–but I offset that with a delivery east of Concord to Chichester, a general store that would seem more at home with “Pierce for President” signs than with the ones I spotted in its neighborhood.
You find those general stores in the nooks and crannies of all New England states–just as you find diners decked out to immerse you in the 1950s mostly at interstate highway interchanges, but a few in town centers.
I had forgotten that Mary Ann’s was among them, recalling only the generous comfort dish and blue-plate price. Friends and family think I have an inexhaustible photographic memory, and I do recall odd and impossible things such as tricks made at 45s which we believed was Lawrence’s own card game, or so we thought* played under trees or on porches, who won, who lost, who looked on, the songs that played on our transistor radios while we dealt and bid and talked trash.
I can describe many of my Little League baseball games, not just my own hits and errors, and not just highlights, but who was in the stands, who was playing on the other team, the color of their uniforms, things said by the managers and umpires. But it’s a selective memory, so I may not know who won, if I played thirdbase or centerfield, the name of the other team, or if it was one of the games with a certain girl from my class leaning on the rail along Bodwell St. to laugh and wave at me–which I hope was her way of cheering for me.
As I often do, I looked at the specials board and, without looking at a menu, ordered: “Loaded Shepherd’s Pie.”
Let me correct that: I ordered before looking at the menu which proved entertaining enough to make me forget my hunger while awaiting the meal–especially to the tune of Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Twist Again” playing overhead. Quite a clever creation, but the author missed one trick: Derry is the hometown of Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut to fly in space. Shouldn’t they tweak the spelling to name their pie for him?
Still, the pie lived up to the word “loaded” which represented the menu quite well. Omelets included “Kitchen Sink” and “Philly Steak Bomblet,” while for lunch you can have “Billy’s Big Boy Sandwich” or “Dominic’s Monstah Montecarlo.”
But emphasis is on time more than size. “Fave” breakfasts include “The Elvis Presley,” “The Sinatra,” and “The 50s Special,” while the list of lunchtime sandwiches looks like one for an Autorama in the Eisenhower years: Thunderbird, Bel Air, Little Red Corvette, Pink Cadillac, Mustang, Barracuda, ’57 Chevy, Falcon, and–amazingly–Edsel.
Also offered was “Surf City,” which may or not have played on the speakers overhead while I wolfed down the pie. Seems that all I heard was pre-Beatles, popular when I was in elementary school, what we now call bubble-gum music. Beach Boys, Four Tops, Rickie Nelson, Leslie Gore, and all kinds of falsetto hallyballoo that today makes me wonder why our parents didn’t just shoot us rather than telling us how bad it was.
Must admit that, as I left, the tune overhead made my knees wobble. Nostalgia never hit so hard as I froze before opening the door and racing in the rain toward the van across the street. “Easier Said Than Done,” like Alan Shepard’s trek beyond the atmosphere, was more likely in the Kennedy years, but it was still the same vibe we danced to at parties in each other’s homes.
One party was held at St. Augustine’s Elementary School–which went to 8th grade–by the nuns who perhaps wanted to see what we were up to. What they saw were all the boys standing and sitting on one side while all the girls kept to the other. Sister Bernadette, a young woman as I recall, though the habit makes it difficult to figure, listened to four or five songs before she had had enough. She charged in our direction and grabbed one of her favorites by the arm:
“Go over there and ask someone to dance!” she demanded.
“Ye-ye-ye-ye-yes!”
Not too many years ago, at a 50th class reunion, the girl-now-woman reminded me of that dance. The years have been quite good to her, and the joy on her face and in her voice was that of a school girl as she raised her hand: “And you picked me!”
Even then, I guess, I had an ear out for irony. Despite my stutter, we danced to “Easier Said Than Done.”
Don’t know how long it will be before I return, but I do not doubt, as the local bard put it, “that I should ever come back.” That “Big Bopper Burger” sounds pretty good.
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Turns out 45s came from Ireland with our grand- and great-grandparents. For those of you in other parts of the USA, it could be a variation on Euchre.
Turns out that, while Derry is where Mary Ann’s first opened in 1989, three others have opened in the nearby NH towns of Salem, Amherst, and Windham: https://www.maryannsdiner.com/
Most weeks I’m at the Screening Room only on Wednesdays, but I fill in when the owners need a break, as I did this past Sunday for two showings of a two-and-one-half hour film.
Ever since the new owners added weekday afternoons, I’ve been packing a lunch, and on Sunday it was my favorite: chicken curry salad to have in a sandwich and a large honey crisp apple.
Before I could put it in the fridge, I spotted a stylish, dark green handbag with a note on it: “Left last night.”
The bag was snapped closed, and we learned long ago that such things are almost always claimed the next day. Perhaps Saturday’s projectionist felt it best not to invade anyone’s privacy, and give the owner some time.
A morning and early afterrnoon later, I figured, was plenty of time for the owner to panic. I’d open the bag and rifle any purse or wallet for a name and phone number. But first, I put my own stuff away–only to find I forgot to pack the bread. Spooning the salad out of the plastic container was hardly appetizing.
Letting the green handbag sit until the matinee was on the screen, I prepared the lobby, popping corn, making coffee, and heating water for tea, and I arranged the old cigar box that serves as this quaint, quirky cinema’s cash register.
That done, I realized the day was just mild enough that I might sit out on State Street for some 15 minutes before patrons arrived. As always on warm days, that’s good incentive to show up early.
Way too early for the film were two women who walked in just after I took my chair. Noticing that I appeared to bounce back out of it, they apologized for getting me up.
Made me laugh: “I need the exercise,” as I always say, though at times grudgingly.
After buying tickets, they said they’d be back and asked for a suggestion for where to get coffee, telling me they were from out of town. When one asked if I wanted anything, I started to say no, but then thought of the chicken curry: “Yes, a single roll or piece of bread, anything for a sandwich.”
“A pita pocket?”
“Yes, that will do!”
They left, and as I retook the seat on the street, I thought of how difficult such a simple thing can be to find and called after them to forget it.
“No, no, we’ll see what we can do. By the way, I’m Christina, and this is Maureen.”
As always, I repeated the names and made eye-contact with each while doing so, a memory trick that has served me well over the years, adding only, “Jack.”
Half hour later, the lobby was crowded. When that happens and I’m making another batch of popcorn, I like to point out how difficult it is for a right-handed person to pour kernels and oil into the kettle of a machine designed for left-handed people. While giving that spiel, I spotted a package of eight brioche rolls on the counter.
Somehow I managed to pour the mix without spilling it while laughing out loud. Christina and Maureen had walked in without my noticing them. With no way of knowing why a package of rolls was on the counter, people must have thought I was laughing at my own rueful joke.
While they watched the film, I had the sandwich and learned that if I can’t get to Annarosa’s Bakery across the river, I can trust Sara Lee in Market Basket.
So good, I forgot the handbag and began drafting my first Daily News column in a month. Writer’s block? Stymied by the run-up to the election? Too much time in–and exhaustion from–two days at a renfaire every week since Labor Day? Two more at Salem’s witch trial reenactments every week past Halloween? Addiction to the baseball playoffs and the start of NFL football? Stunned by the result of the election? Getting old?
Maybe all of the above, so I turned to local issues and soon found myself repeating the word “lost” which, after a while, reminded me of my opportunity to dive into a stranger’s wallet.
Turned out she was no stranger. She and her husband are longtime patrons of the Screening Room, and I got to know them a bit ten-twelve years ago in a group that led the resistance to waterfront development.
Before I started rifling her rather thick purse, I couldn’t help but notice two Hershey bars buried in the bag. Lead me not into temptation… If I didn’t know her, I might suspect they were smuggled in, but we do sell them, and she and her husband are no strangers to our concession stand.
Ignoring a few larger, wrapped-up items, I went into the purse. After thumbing through her credit cards, medical cards, group and business memberships, I had his phone number.
To my surprise, he did not know the bag was missing. “Did you two get divorced?” I almost joked, but held my tongue. He said they lived nearby, and he’d walk over a bit later.
When the first show ended, I made sure to thank Christina and Maureen by name, deliberately calling them by each other’s name, a ruse to make people repeat their names and point to themselves, all with eye-contact, making them easier to remember for weeks to come.
I suggested they take the remaining seven rolls. “No, no, we have enough at home. Freeze ’em.” I offered the container of the remaining salad, “delicious, from Tendercrop, a local farmstand,” enough for a sandwich they could split with soup. “No, no, we’re all set!”
Then, Maureen asked, “What’s your name again?”
“Jack, like in the trunk of your car!” A trick for the memory of others. In this same lobby, I once told a woman who asked my name, “I’m in the trunk of every car,” and she guessed, “Beach Chair?”
“How useful!”
“Ya, if you need a lift, come back on a Wednesday! Popcorn’s on me!”
They disappeared down State Street just as the first customers arrived. Among them was a couple who announced they had just left a party where the Screening Room owners were in attendance. That may have led me to think they were of the same generation as my employers, and they both appeared youthful enough. So I asked for general admission and ripped two GA tickets.
“Don’t I get my senior discount?”
“Well, yes,” I said while lowering the price, “but it does work better if you say it ahead of time.”
He laughed, and I forced a laugh. He paid with a credit card, which really ought not to be allowed in movie theaters where everyone arrives at the same time and they take so much more time than cash. But I’m way outnumbered on that score, and never complain to a card user–unless you count the many times I loudly thank people for using cash within hearing of those who may be about to use cards.
He introduced himself, asked my first name, and went into the theater. Five minutes later with people still buying tickets, he reappeared, asked for a $2 bottle of water, and held out his VISA card. But deliver us from evil… “Please,” I thought to myself, as if praying, “don’t let this guy ever come here on Wednesdays.”
Soon after the start of the second show, the fellow I called arrived to claim his wife’s handbag. Before I could turn to get it, he asked a question that surprised me as much as anything I’ve ever been asked:
“Were there two chocolate bars in it?”
“Hunh? Well, yes.”
“Ah! We were looking for those after the movie started.”
He laughed at my dumbstruck amazement. Finally, “Let me get this straight: The two of you looked for and could not find two chocolate bars, but never noticed that the bag was missing?”
Laughing: “I guess so!”
“Even though she put the bars in the bag?” We’re all required to speak softly in this lobby while a film is in progress, but emphatic hand gestures surely amplified that last phrase.
He kept laughing.
Well, as I told him, I’ve done worse. Full pots of hot coffee put into the refrigerator. Opening a bottle of beer when I was intending to have orange juice first thing in the morning. Perhaps a few other doozies I’d rather not put in writing.
He left, and I resumed my attempt to find Newburyport in 700 words or less until the late show as over. When the credits rolled and patrons started filing out, I was looking into the hall and overheard a cheery voice behind me:
“Hey Jack, great to meet you! See you around!”
“Yes, you too,” I turned quickly and addressed him by name, adding, “I’m here on Wednesdays.”
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Look closely and you may notice that all of the mechanisms holding and leading to the kettle (that round thing) will be on the right of anyone working through the doors on the backside. Use your right hand, and you need an unnatural contortion, but your left hand has a clear path. Photos (both of them) by longtime and faithful Screening Room patron Bob Watts.
When most Americans outside of Georgia first heard of Gov. Carter in 1976, I was hitchhiking up and down the West Coast, a vagabond taking odd jobs for a few days here and there, staying in YMCAs and in dorms of colleges out of session. In Seattle, jamming with a couple guitarists on the docks of Puget Sound, I gained a lead for a job as a music therapist at a state hospital in Northern California.
Next day I started south, by thumb. Or by all ten fingers, as I often played my tenor recorder–the easiest for an on-coming driver to see–while awaiting rides. Many drivers would say that they did not “usually stop,” but since “you’re a musician,” they felt “it’s okay.”
All of this is in a chapter in my book, Pay the Piper! Here’s an excerpt that describes meeting the Carters, including what led to it and an odd sequel two days later:
Some rides came from other musicians, one of whom steered me into Salem, Oregon. Hearing my story made him think that I would fit Salem’s music scene with so many hoot nights and jam sessions in downtown bars. And he knew that his wife wouldn’t mind putting me up for a night, having listened for weeks to her urgings that he should take a part-time job in her day-care center. They needed males to work with the older boys, especially outdoors with the improving weather.
So there it was: A job, a place to stay at least one night, and musical connections all before I arrived. Why go to Eureka when Eureka comes to you?
Next day I moved into a third-floor room in the YMCA on Court. St. with a view of the state capitol one way and the very center of downtown the other, just a few doors down from the Court Jester and a couple blocks away from Boone’s Treasury, the most frequent scenes for hoots and jams.
When I think back on my busking life, this two-month stay may have been its biggest missed opportunity. Like most small cities in the Pacific Northwest, Salem boasted a clean and carefully landscaped downtown with flowers and shades of green so rich in the Willamette (pronounced to sound like: Don’t damn it!) Valley. That notorious Northwest rainfall comes mostly in mere mists easily avoided under the trees that line most streets. But I simply never thought to busk…
Unless we leave out that part of the definition that includes tips, because it is certainly a spontaneous outdoor musical performance in public that I propose to two guitarists in the Court Jester one May afternoon.
This is 1976, one of those rare years—along with 2008—when presidential nominations in both parties will not be locked up way ahead of time, and when states other than New Hampshire, Iowa, and a few populous early birds have any real say in the matter. With three Democrats still contending, Oregon’s primary looms large. Each day The Oregonian runs a side-bar with the times and locations of appearances by Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, Idaho Senator Frank Church, and California Dreamer Jerry Brown. Though they have one of our largest states geographically, about 90% of Oregonians live in the 150-mile corridor from Portland on the north past Eugene on the south, all connected by I-5 as well as the Willamette.
That day, following a session, we are just finishing sandwiches and a pitcher of beer when the radio newscaster announces an appearance by Carter at a local school.
“Is that far from here?” I ask.
They guessed 20 or 30 blocks north.
“Let’s go, “ I say
“Whaddaya wanna hear him for?”
Apparently, the idea that Carter might be the next president of the country doesn’t much matter to my new friends. Secession is, after all, a recurring topic of consideration in the Beaver State, but none of that is what I have in mind.
“Not to hear him. For him to hear us.”
They look at me as if I’ve started speaking Norwegian. I try again:
“We set up in front of the steps to the school before he gets there, and—“
They turn to order another pitcher. I put money on the table as I leave for a long walk north.
When I arrive, no more than three-dozen folks are milling about. When I take the tenor out of my shoulder bag and fit the three pieces together, a fellow in a suit and shades with a wire leading to one ear walks by, pausing to look me over. After I empty the bag by taking out the soprano and tucking it into my belt, he walks away, his eye on everyone as they arrive.
The crowd grows quickly, and I’m playing almost unnoticed until I hear a shout: “He’s playing ‘Dixie’!”
Well, it is the former governor of a southern state I’m hoping to entertain, and the radio and television crews, just arriving, take the shout as a cue. Within seconds microphones are thrust toward me. On a boom dropping as if from the sky, one is bouncing back and forth as the person holding it is jostled in the gathering crowd. Eyes wide, I rather enjoy dodging its erratic movement toward my face and begin bobbing to avoid it, eyes flaring as if to taunt it.
When I pause, I tell a reporter scribbling in a notebook that it’s my “Muhammad Ali version of Dixie.” Without any hint of noticing the irony, she dutifully writes it down, and I launch into “Camptown Races” as a car with the candidate pulls up and all microphones and cameras leave me.
Before I make the second pass of “somebody bet on the bay,” a tall, elegant, handsome woman is standing directly before me, offering her hand, and saying something I find completely incomprehensible. I stop, “Sorry, I didn’t hear—”
“Ahhm Missuhs Jimmahhy Cahhtahh.”
So transfixed by her voice I shake hands without noticing the man now standing next to her until he pipes up, pointing to the tenor:
“Ah gotta get me one of those!”
All the editorial cartoons to come during his four years in the White House will hardly exaggerate his smile, but I am still able to see that the couple has brought back all those mics and cameras. Reflexively I take the soprano from my belt and offer it to him.
He throws his head back: “No, no! Thank you, but no,” he laughs, waving his hands and moves toward the podium placed at the top of the school’s front steps. I breathe a sigh of relief that needs no microphone, and smile into the cameras.
Two days later I hitch to Portland, ostensibly looking for a job but with the recorders slung over my shoulder should I hear of a jam in a bar or catch one in a downtown corner. In the short distance from the exit ramp to the center of the city, I spot what looks like a concert in a city park and walk in while a country singer on guitar finishes a song. As soon as I join the back of the crowd, he introduces Missuhs Jimmahhy Cahhtahh.
She gives a ringing—and entirely comprehensible—speech ending with an introduction for her husband. As he takes the stage, I notice the two expressionless men—recognizing one—stage left and right, both staring at me. I have never stood so still, and Carter is no brief speaker.
They are at my sides as soon as he thanks us for coming. They open my pack and look over and through all five pieces of wood. That might end it, but they go through my wallet and find the unlikely combination of an expired Massachusetts driver’s license and a South Dakota student ID for someone “looking for work,” as I tell them, on the West Coast.
“You look for work by attending political rallies?”
“I was on my way downtown. When I heard Waylon Jennings was here, I came over.” I ad-lib the advance notice to make them think my motive is something other than “following him around.”
They exchange a glance. “That was Jerry Jeff Walker.”
That mistake keeps me in their custody for what seems like hours more, although the whole scene is perhaps 15 minutes. With the warning that if they see me one more time I’ll be in custody well into November, they let me go.
Never one to say that politicians are “all the same,” I now make sure that I can tell the entertainers apart. As for the Carters, they defied the myth of “all the same” on every level.
What other couple left the White House–or State House, or Congress–and served four decades thereafter as global humanitarians? And does anyone doubt that they are hoping to hear from us in November?
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Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter hold hands as they work with other volunteers on site during the first day of the weeklong Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project, their 35th work project with Habitat for Humanity, in Mishawaka, Indiana, in 2018. PHOTO: Robert Franklin via https://www.wxii12.com/article/photos-jimmy-and-rosalynn-carter/45878337#
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter during the 1976 presidential campaign Getty Images
Call it a variety show, the offering of a booming, hyper-active child of The Ed Sullivan Show and The Smothers Brothers.
With a title like Once Upon an Attention Span, there’s bound to be nostalgia reaching back into the color, such as it was, of the Father Knows Best years followed by the content, such as it still is, of the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements.
Made sure to include one piece each from both Salem State and South Dakota State. Penned–actually type-writed–in 1974 and 1982, I consider them my valedictorian addresses. I wasn’t chosen to deliver one at either school, but if I had been…
For nostalgia mixed with whimsy, there’s “Dulcet Desserts” with a few accounts of my Forrest Gump-like knack for chance encounters–as well as vignettes from the Renaissance festival, the Screening Room, the Moby-Dick Marathon Reading, and spur-of-the-moment (made possible by social media) small-town demonstrations in Newburyport and Ipswich.
Also, “From the Orchard,” a few memories of my life as an apple-picker in the mid-80s when I picked a few harvests, followed by “Repasts from the Road,” one of the lengthiest entrees on the book’s menu about several cross-country trips with my daughter in her pre-teen years, ending with the toast at her wedding and her own trip into motherhood–with the comic relief of my own transition into grandfatherhood.
Perhaps the only longer entree, “Living in the Pasta” asks for a closer look at various highlights of American history, and “New World Crunch” adds analysis of the Electoral College, Ranked Choice Voting, and Russian trolling. Other entrees, such as “Coffee on the Rocks,” review films and books that remain relevant for the foreseeable future.
Never thought that memories of the Trump years might be a selling point for a book, but if you or someone you know needs reminders, Once Upon an Attention Span includes them. Given that this election will be neither decided nor secured until the day of certification in January, this might even be a reason to to consider my new book as a Christmas gift.
Kidding aside, it is a full menu of selected columns and blogs, so there may be sections that appeal to some readers at different times of day, or appeal to some more than others. There’s certainly no need for chronological order.
But if you’d like to order, PM me or send an email to the edress in the corner of the bottom photo of the book’s back cover. I’m happy to take orders with prices that cover all shipping and tax:
Once Upon an Attention Span — $20.00
Order it with either of my previous books–Pay the Piper! or Keep Newburyport Weird–and I’ll send both for $32. Order all three, and they will be yours for $40.
In Newburyport, Once Upon an Attention Span is available at the Screening Room and at Jabberwocky Bookshop. For anyone anywhere, it is available at:
At the Renaissance faire last weekend, I strolled though Canterbury Kitchen’s picnic benches piping jigs and reels, always good for a few tips.
Gained two right away, and then saw a form rise from a bench out on the perimeter. Was but a silhouette against the late afternoon sun, an arm rising and a finger pointing at me. The voice was that of a woman and quite loud: “Mass Bay Community College!”
Not drunk but under a slight influence, she rose, continuing to point and thrust that finger, pronouncing me “the greatest English teacher ever,” or something like that. Can’t say I recognized her, but her voice and the gleam in her eye rang a bell. She went on and on telling everyone seated that I was the reason she stopped being a wayward teen and became a nurse. That’s when I recalled her from at least 22 years ago.
Embarrasing, but nice, and from an open wallet held up for her by a friend she found $6 to stuff in my tip-mug. Had there been $66, or more, I believe she would have given it all. Fellow about my age at a nearby table was chuckling. Told him I didn’t know if I should play another jig or give a grammar lesson. That quip landed a $5 tip.
Two days later, a funny thing happened to me on the way to Salem for rehearsals of the witch trial re-enactments through the first week of November. Since the annual, long-running Cry Innocent is “immersive theater,” there are breaks in the play where the actors, in character, field questions from the audience which requires us to know about the era.
On that day, we were schooled by each other with our own chosen projects, about 15 minutes apiece. One was all about hysteria created by itself and how it spread, playing on suspicion, turning people against each other. The presentation was based on Arthur Miller’s 1953 play, The Crucible, a parallel commentary on the red-scare and McCarthyism that gripped the USA soon after World War II.
That’s what I listened to just an hour after hearing, in my car, an NPR report that schools, churches, and hospitals are now under protection of the National Guard in Springfield, Ohio.
At the Screening Room last night, an elderly woman asked what the ticket cost. Obviously a senior, and someone I thought I recognized as one of our regular patrons, I quoted the senior discount.
“Ten dollars,” she cried, “that’s way too much!”
Not sure if it was resolve on my part or the fact that I was beyond surprise that kept me silent.
“I thought it was four dollars,” she finally said.
Now I struggled to keep a straight face, but I couldn’t resist some comic relief: “That was back when Jimmy Carter was president.”
She laughed and was quite pleasant in response: “Oh, I’ve been coming here all this time! I guess I just never noticed the increase.”
What I thought: “Lady, whether you know it or not, you have experienced a neurological event recently and should get checked out.”
What I said: “Most patrons here tell us how low the prices are compared to the cineplexes.”
When the film ended, she waited for me to descend from the booth to apologize for the earlier exchange, telling me what a good film it was she just saw, what good films we always have here. I felt this nagging urge to tell her to get a neurological test, but just could not bring myself to do it. Instead, I assured her that no apology was necessary, and that we hope to keep showing provocative and inspiring films.
She danced, smiling, out the door. I longed for a stiff drink.
The film she saw was War Game. Set on January 6, 2025, it imagines, according to the blurb, “a nation-wide insurrection in which members of the US military defect to support the losing Presidential candidate.”
Hardly a flick to send you home smiling and dancing. Everyone else left looking like they also were in need of stiff drinks, though they all told me the film was riveting, enlightening, convincing.
Yes, I nodded in agreement on all three points, and off they went to think it over. What I didn’t say is what I now think over: War Game never mentions, never ever hints that the very real-life possibility of a MAGA insurrection–the very real-life reason the film was made–already has the tacit support of one of America’s two major political parties.
I don’t know if I should play another jig, write another opinion column, or drown myself in drink until this is all over.
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This pic is at least ten years old. Who took it? My daughter? Nancy Cushman? Paul Shaughnessy?
Far more attention must be paid to a line Republicans are using to discredit Kamala Harris.
True, we hear and see it often enough in conversations and on social media posts. But that’s simply repetition to reinforce a point, a repetition geared to hide a non-existent foundation for that point. This is why the Republican presidential candidate makes the charge in his rallies–and made it in the debate–without ever mentioning the cause of the effect that Republicans want us to accept.
In the debate, it sounded like this:
She’s had four years to do all the things she says she’s going to do. Why didn’t she do it then?
Downtown yesterday, overheard:
If it was Trump in the White House, they’d be whining about why he never got anything done!
On social media:
I’m not going (in) the direction of someone who isn’t fixing the issues while they are IN OFFICE with the POWER to FIX the issues right NOW!!! They have had close to 4 years….
I’ll estimate that the latter two quotes are from people in their 40s, maybe 50s, although the all-caps emphasis on “right NOW” might suggest someone younger. Was civics erased as a subject in American elementary and high schools that long ago? Have we already raised two, maybe three generations of Americans who are completely unaware of the relationship between the three branches of government.
Or do some people just fall for this because it is so simple? Legislation is complex, demands attention, demands an attention span. And it is hard to grasp compared to the superficial ease of seeing prices go up and blaming the guy in charge, oblivious to any complications such as war, a pandemic, corporate price-gouging, diminished crops due to climate change.
Just how unaware or gullible can the American public be? Well, back in May, a New York Times/Siena poll revealed that 17% of us blame Biden for the overturn of Roe v. Wade because he was president at the time of the Mitch McConnell-stacked Supreme Court’s decision.
We might wonder what percentage of the American public is aware that a Republican-controlled House of Representatives has blocked much of what the Biden-Harris Administration attempted to do. This is most of what Harris is now offering–and what she could accomplish if the Democrats pick up a few House seats and hold the Senate.
The claim’s implied effect without a cause also ignores how much the current administration has achieved regarding infrastructure, job creation, and higher wages. Republicans making the claim want us to ignore how they themselves show up for the photo-ops when factories open or a bridge is about to be built or repaired after they themselves voted against the funding that made it possible.
In the debate, Harris reminded us of the bi-partisan immigration bill that satisfied almost all Republican demands–moreso than it did progressive Democrats–that would have passed if not for phone calls from her opponent instructing Republicans to kill the bill. Chaos is more useful as a campaign issue, what’s right be damned.
When you hear any version of “Why didn’t she do it already,” you are listening to someone who either pays no attention or who expects you to pay no attention.
Of the three quotes above, the last two are from people who have been fooled, people who have forgotten the most basic lessons in American civics–if they ever knew them. The first quote is from someone who is out to fool you, and with control of the House or Senate, Republicans will continue to play this game even if Harris is elected.
Only solution is to start emphasizing the Democratic candidates for the House and Senate. Both Harris and Tim Walz need to be making more appearances with them, which means campaigning in states that are not considered battleground, such as Texas where Colin Allred has a shot at unseating Ted Cruz if the national party put more effort into it.
Wherever they campaign, winning the Senate and House should be as prominent an issue as restoring Roe v. Wade. Why, a good 17% of the American public might wake up to the reality of cause-and-effect relationships if those two issues were mentioned together.
Mouth of the River 