Tiptoe through the Truth

Friends of mine worry that too much attention to the clown risks the rise and rule of his circus.

They send links to essays published by sources that fashion themselves as progressive, as far left as you can go on the political spectrum. Imagine a Bernie Sanders unwilling to side with a Joe Biden for the sake of having a White House willing to work with him or any other progressives at all–which is to say a Bernie Sanders null and void of any sense of practicality–and you get the idea.

They make insightful and necessary points, and in a perfect world I might join them. One of the most constructive of the writers my friends recommend may be trying to atone for a presidential candidacy that prevented an environmentalist from gaining the White House in 2000. That made it possible for the corporate wrecking ball of the Bush/Cheney Administration to deregulate us into economic collapse eight years later.

Yes, that would be Ralph Nader whose newsletter, “In the Public Interest,” is well worth a subscription. His June 21 is a fine example, especially with a whimsical headline that delivers his point with an all-caps jolt:

Are the Heedless Dems Giving Trumpty Dumpty a Path to Become America’s FÜHRER?*

Won’t expect any Democrats to ever forgive the guy who sank Al Gore 24 years ago, but they’d do well to take quiet heed in their campaigns this year: Less attention to Trump. While I wouldn’t drop the threat of authoritarian rule completely, I would make other issues more prominent, starting with reproductive rights. As for the economy, Yale prof, Rev. William Barber, a frequent guest on MSNBC whose book, White Poverty, Nader recommends at the end, would be an ideal advisor and member of the administration in its second term.

Of course, if Biden loses in November, none of this is possible, and we do get authoritarian rule, something to which Consortium News may be blind. Yes, it offers a full range of perspectives, much of which is nowhere else to be found, and yes, the late Daniel Ellsburg was among its founders. However, a recent entry takes Nader’s point and, rather than applying it to the future with advice, plunges it into the past for a wash in so-what, nothing-new cynicism. Despite its straightforward, provocative headline, the result is so far off the rails, one might wonder if it is deliberately blind:

Anti-Trump Anxiety Ignores History**

Progressive historian Howard Zinn said that American history has been sanitized not so much by lies, but by emphasis and omission. With most of its offerings, CN would make Zinn proud, and it is as well worth a subscription as Nader’s newsletter. But this piece could serve as a textbook example of what Zinn warned against. Today it is more recognizable as “spin” and “cherry-picking,” and there’s no denying the essayist has good points throughout. He could have gone so much further: Adams’ Sedition Act, Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, Lincoln’s violations of States’ Rights as if no greater good was served by the Civil War.

But what is his overall point? That we’ve been through this before, many times, so let’s not worry about it? It’s a well-worn stunt: Make a charge that others are doing something by doing it yourself. As if the distortion itself works as camouflage. In this case, he ignores history to charge liberals with ignoring history.

Most telling is his treatment of the Mueller Report. Instead of describing the report, he falls for and regurgitates AG Bill Barr’s whitewashed distortion of it. Nor is there any mention of the Trump Campaign’s insistence on weakening sanctions against Russia regarding Crimea, their only requested change in the Republican platform at the 2016 convention. Nor is there mention of the Helsinki Summit, or of Trump’s promise this month to gut all oil regulation in return for billion dollar campaign contributions from the industry. Government for sale has always been behind closed doors. Now it’s an open campaign pledge, and CN wants us to think that’s no big deal.

Nor is there any mention of the collaborative designs that Russia has had with multinational corporations that fund Republicans to drill, baby, drill the Arctic. Where did Rex Tillerson come from? Paul Manafort? Good luck finding those names in Consortium News.

You’ll have better luck finding Dorothy Thompson. No, not her name, but her picture with husband Sinclair Lewis. In the caption she is identified only as “his wife.” She was already an accomplished foreign correspondent when they met, and so she kept her last name. Most telling that the article, as sprawling with historical detail as it is, makes no mention of her. She was dispatched to Berlin to report on the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s and wrote harrowing reports of what she saw. In 1934, following an interview with Adolph Hitler, she became the first American journalist expelled from Germany when the flattery he expected proved scathing. Back in America, she and her husband were alarmed by the similarities, and the result was his rapidly written novel, It Can’t Happen Here.

By omitting her from the narrative, CN‘s writer can assess the ideology sardonically treated in the novel, while hiding the granular detail of similarity between the American and German populations. Only to have a layout editor put the hidden object out in plain sight!***

What’s different today? Why are journalists like Rachel Maddow and Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez freaking out? The CN writer actually acknowledges the reason early on when he mentions death threats. Of course, he makes them seem limited to the names of those in leading roles: prosecutors Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg, and Jack Smith: Justice Juan Merchan. But no, they are pervasive, coast-to-coast, aimed at election officials, teachers, health workers. In some places they target just about anyone who does not Sieg an American Heil.

Instead, from paragraph six through ten, he hides behind the same ridiculous canards we heard in January 2017: “There will be adults in the room.” And, “There are guardrails.” Makes one wonder if the writer ever heard of January 6 and is oblivious to Trump’s boastful promise to pardon all involved.

We “ignore history”? The suggestion that American democracy is not facing a lethal threat ignores reality. Can’t help but wonder if the writer was paid in rubles or if CN, in this case no better than one of those Russian troll farms, converts them into dollars or euros or pounds.

Certainly does appear that he was paid by the word.

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*https://mailchi.mp/nader/joe-biden-pushing-america-deeper-into-the-russianukrainian-war-zbrfbxve1a-139738?e=4b7f41370f

**https://consortiumnews.com/2024/06/20/anti-trump-anxiety-ignores-history/

Dorothy Thompson and her husband. Photo: Wikipedia via *Consortium News*.

***For more about Thompson:

American Journalist Dorothy Thompson Underestimates Hitler

Jack’s Apple-Cheddar Kick

Every now and then, heavy handed as I am, I break one of the yokes while preparing my standard breakfast of two eggs once over. Years ago, I started countering this by putting a small bowl on the counter, cracking the shells on it, and then pouring the egg into it. From there it went into a small frying pan with butter just starting to smoke.

Now, anytime a yoke is broke, I kill the smoke and, no joke, turn Humpty Dumpty into omelet.

Often it depends on what’s in the fridge, and I can pretty much always count on feta cheese and Kalamata olives. It varies, but I do have a new favorite.

Years ago, 2008 to be exact, I wandered into Lou Mitchell’s legendary restaurant on an early morning soon after Amtrak landed me in downtown Chicago and just two years after it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. First time I was ever given a “donut hole” by a woman in 19th century kitchen garb greeting us at the door and picking them out of a wiry bucket with a pair of tongs.

Quite tasty, but we craved far more than donuts. At the very top of the menu, highlighted as a specialty, was their apple-cheddar omelet. As many apples as this New England veteran of four harvests has picked, I had never heard of nor thought possible an apple mixed with eggs. I had to have it.

Another pecularity: Though all other breakfast entries offered a wide choice of bread, the menu made clear that only anadama went with the apple-cheddar omelet. No substitutions. My addiction to rye toast yielded to my curiosity.

To say that the omelet–and the bread–did not disappoint would be at once a wild understatement and yet misleading. Tasting it all day while seeing the sites on one of the city’s architectural boat tours, it was tempting to break the rule of not going to the same place twice. For me it was just three days. So many restaurants, so little time!

Disappoinment began when I returned home, back then making delivery rounds four days a week and needing as many restaurants. Apple omelets were nowhere to be found, nor did it occur to me that I’d ever be able to make one myself.

A year or two passed before a new customer was put on my Wednesday route south of Boston and I happened by an enormous sign–Omelet Factory–over a modest, stand-alone white building in Pembroke, Mass. Already full, I made note and a week later I was seated with a menu listing 140 omelets. About halfway in, there it was, apple-cheddar.

“And what kind of toast would you like?”

“Anadama.”

The look on her face! “Sorry, we–“

“Rye! Dark rye and toast it twice. Burn it!”

For a few years, I was close to a weekly customer, and before long one of two waitresses would approach me and ask, “Apple-cheddar?”

“Yes, thanks!”

“With crispy rye?”

“Burn it!”

Then came a day when, after seating myself and waiting for a waitress to emerge from the kitchen, I noticed a brand new, very colorful menu on the vacant table next to me, and thought I’d peruse it. All entries had descriptions, and the Portuguese omelet sounded more than tempting. Maybe next time. I kept looking to see what it said of apple-cheddar, and to my horror saw that it was gone.

I spoke before the waitress could: “No more apple-cheddar???”

“We’ll make it for you.”

“It’s not listed.”

“No, we didn’t list it because it takes longer to make, so only those who know of it will order it.”

The other waitress, sensing what I was asking, wandered over, overheard, and added: “Only you will order it!”

First waitress, playing along: “We make it just for you!”

And they did for a few more years until the pandemic kept me home and, upon my return, I was no longer dispatched on the southern route. By this time, however, I had been making my own breakfasts every day for 18 months, and my culinary skills could not help but improve. Mostly because I had figured out that I could find recipes for just about anything on-line. After I tired of 18 straight mornings of potato pancakes with applesauce and sour cream, it finally occurred to me to punch apple-cheddar omelet into a search engine.

There’s a lot from which to choose, and nearly every strain of apple and type of cheese will appear in at least one. One recipe includes kale, which I’ll leave to anyone other than me to try. After a few dozen attempts with slight tweaks along the way, I am ready to offer a recipe and instructions of my own. So thrilled am I with the result, that I am compelled to replace the mundane label, “omelet,” with a name that describes the feeling and mood any diner is bound to enjoy after finishing one (which, by the way, I just did).

More than that, a name that pays tribute to where it all began 16 years ago at Lou Mitchell’s Restaurant located within a couple blocks of the eastern terminus of US Route 66, America’s most celebrated highway:

Jack’s Apple-Cheddar Kick (aka JACK)

(Serves one. Double all amounts for two, triple for three, etc.)

Start with two frying pans, preferably small, a small bowl, and a generous half-cup of your favorite cheddar, grated.
In one pan, melt butter in a moderate flame while slicing half of a honey-crisp apple on the side of a grater.
When the butter is melted, saute the sliced apple.
In the other pan, melt more butter full flame while beating two large eggs and a splash of milk in the small bowl.
Let the butter begin to smoke before pouring the egg into it. Take a moment to enjoy the sizzle. Keep the flame full until you have topped the egg with the sauteed apple and grated cheddar.
Turn flame to moderate-low and add garlic powder and grated black pepper to taste (I recommend generous amounts). No salt unless you’ve already taken a bite and think you need it.
Cover for a minute before folding. Cover for another minute before serving.

Goes very well with either anadama or rye toast.

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You can vary the strain of apple or type of cheese according to your preferences. Here’s one with brie that doesn’t pick an apple (see what I did there?):
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/applebrie-omelet-recipe-foodcom–353814114448161624/

Sign at top: “Selected No. 1 Breakfast & Lunch Place in America.” B&W sign: “We Do Our Own Quality Baking.” Sign on lampost: “Illinois – US 66,” giving it a claim referencing a nickname that first appeared in John Steinbeck’s *Grapes of Wrath*, “First stop on the Mother Road.”
https://www.tripadvisor.ie/Restaurant_Review-g35805-d427842-Reviews-Lou_Mitchell_s-Chicago_Illinois.html

Bistro-by-the-Sea. Drawing by Angela Anderson looking northwest from her window next door.

From Red Line to Deadline

When we refer to political arguments these days, we usually mean heated, teeth-grinding, wheel-spinning, mud-flying debates between what is alternately labelled left v. right, blue v. red, liberal v. conservative.

Results are as worthless as the debates themselves, nor is there any lipstick to put on that pig. Truth is, all that wasted time might be better spent if we leftists, liberals, blue-staters, and progressive Democrats engaged instead with those who claim to be “done with” the two-party system and say they will vote for a third-party candidate or not vote at all.

There’s a continent of common ground, as I found out yesterday in this exchange in the world of social media, starting with a friend’s post:

Dear friends who rely on Fox News, just a friendly reminder that Fox paid out $750 million for misinformation and stated under oath that Fox is not a “news” provider, simply entertainment!

Actually it was $787.5 million Fox paid Dominion Voting Systems following the 2020 election, but what’s $37+ mil to an entertainment company funded by corporate sponsors and favorable to Republicans in Congress–at times in the White House–and on the Supreme Court to undo and prevent all attempts at regulation of those sponsors’ industries.

First comment came from a woman about my age:

Same is true of MSNBC.

Attached was a link to a blog about a suit filed by One America News Network (OANN) against MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow wherein the judge ruled that Maddow is known to present analysis that is by definition open to debate, and that MSNBC viewers know that they can weigh it. The link, especially with a contorted headline for the benefit of those who never read for details, equated that with the wholly made-up, fact-free accusations of Fox, OANN, Alex Jones, and other right-wing fountains of fear and paranoia.*

I interjected:

The difference is that OANN, like the Trump family and the Republican Party, *is* linked to the Kremlin, so (Maddow’s) connection may be inexact and/or hyperbolic, but it is in fact real. What Fox and others… have used in their courtroom defenses is a claim that they are primarily entertainment rather than news, which is why they settle out of court, paying heavy fines for making up stories out of whole cloth (such as “rigged voting machines”). What Maddow’s and MSNBC’s audience understands is that that we are listening to and considering analysis that may or may not be always a 100% right. Very much unlike FOX and OANN which is pretty much 100% bullshit.

She answered:

The “lesser evil” party is a figment of the imagination. For all the fear-mongering over having Trump as President, things rolled along pretty much as usual. But Fox and MSNBC don’t make much money if they can’t convince the country to split into two camps, so they may pull it off yet again. We should say no to both parties and find a way out of this never-ending mess we’re in.

Tempting to ask in which non-North American country she was living from 2017 through 2020. Maybe she knows some of the tourists who visited The Capitol on January 6, 2021. Whatever, the hint at a wish for a third party–though she did not use the term–seemed something to work with:

The swastikas and Confederate flags are not figments of imagination. They are real. The chuminess with dictators is not a figment of imagination. It is real. Repeal of Roe was not imagined, it happened. Tax cuts for the rich have been all the work of one party, as is protecting record corporate profits while the public blames “inflation” and punishes the other party despite it being the one that would put the brakes on it.

The Democrats are flawed, I’ll grant you that, but there’s the possibility of working within (the party)–as progressives as left as Bernie Sanders will attest. That’s the only way out of the “never-ending mess,” as you call it. Any hint of claiming “they’re all the same” to me is a admission of laziness, an unwillingness to look at the full picture, to pay any more than superficial attention to exactly who does exactly what.

That hit a nerve:

Hmmm…last time I checked, the current US administration is chummy with dictators, unless you don’t think el-Sisi and Mohammed bin Salman qualify for the title. And in the case of Putin, I think it’s criminal that our government is not trying to lead mediation to bring an end to all the Ukrainian deaths. Biden has not spoken to him AT ALL! How can we be ok with that?

Lazy me is constantly reading, trying to piece together what is happening in the world. (Without Fox or MSNBC—that to me is lazy!) I’m too old to do what I just did, which was to travel to DC to be part of the “red line” that Biden said he would enforce against the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and yet refuses to do. I was inspired by all the Gen Z young people there who know that the two parties are a lost cause. I hope I live to see their vision come true.

Her reference to a mass demonstration held just two weeks ago offers common ground, but first things first:

Quite a first paragraph there. It begins by slamming Biden for being “chummy” with dictators and ends by calling for negotiations with Putin. Do you even notice the contradiction? Yes, Biden has been photographed in meetings with a few unsavory heads of state, but that’s political necessity, and never was there any hint of the adoration and envy Trump has expressed for them. But, hey, if you’re intent on making everything simple, then, yes, a nickel is worth Fort Knox.

But it’s the last half of the paragraph that is most revealing. If the USA was invaded militarily, would you want us to fight back, or would you prefer a president who would try “to lead mediation to bring an end to all the… deaths.” Put another way: Does the name Neville Chamberlain ring a bell?

As for two parties: It’s what we have now, and it’s all we have to work with at least through November. I favor a 3rd, maybe a 4th party, but they cannot win or be at all viable until we adopt Ranked Choice Voting.**

She signed off:

Jack, have a good evening.

Just as well. There will be no Ranked Choice this November, at least not in the presidential race. And all effort must aim at November if Americans are to keep the White House free of authoritarian control and make Congress and the Supreme Court less susceptible to it.

My new friend–frenemy?–may not believe it, but it’s the only shot we have to see the “vision” of “all the Gen Z young people” she saw on the “Red Line” in DC come true.

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*https://greenwald.substack.com/p/a-court-ruled-rachel-maddows-viewers?

**Here’s the most recent of three columns I have devoted to the subject:
https://buskersdelight.home.blog/2023/03/15/ranked-choice-oscars/

https://www.newsweek.com/pro-palestinian-protesters-surround-white-house-red-line-banner-1910122

Quotations of Convict Trump

Back in the Sixties, there was a small faction of the anti-war movement that swore by a pocket-sized book with a solid, stop-sign-red cover stamped only with the undecorated yet still imposing small-font title:

Quotations of Chairman Mao.

They were on the fringe, to put it mildly, as most of us were of the opinion The Beatles expressed in “Revolution”:

But if you’re carrying pictures of Chairman Mao,
You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow

A college friend told me just two years ago that she still hasn’t forgiven John Lennon for writing that lyric, and, to be fair, some of Mao’s quotes were relevant to our cause to stop the American War on Vietnam. After all, who can argue with this:

In times of difficulty we must not lose sight of our achievements, must see the bright future and must pluck up our courage.

However, as you can guess, most were deal-breakers, such as:

All political power comes from the barrel of a gun.

A communist icon world renown, China’s dictator ruled with a cult of personality, much like we have seen develop here in the USA since 2015. His face appeared on posters everywhere, and he demanded and received complete loyalty from The Party, which, in turn, insisted on total obedience from the people who were supposed to believe all that Mao said, no matter how outrageous or ridiculous.

Sound familiar? Don’t let the differences fool you: Chaos has eroded America’s collective ability to think as thoroughly as conformity zapped China’s. The Chinese Communist insistence that individuals give themselves up for the whole is ying to the yang of Republican dogma that America has no right more sacred than that of individuals not to give a shit about other people.

And what other American politician has ever had his name fly on flags flown from homes, boats, pickup trucks? Or his face superimposed on American flags flown by people who foam at the mouth at the thought of an athlete kneeling in silence during the National Anthem?

Yes, they are opposing extremes, but both are extremes and, therefore, far removed from the balance sought by Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton and their coalition, the ideals expressed by students in Tiananmen Square, or the chance for safe and decent homes by the tired, poor, and hungry arriving at the Rio Grande.

Only difference that matters, only thing missing from the Republican attempt to clamp down on the American population as completely as the Communist vice-grip on China is a book akin to Quotations of Chairman Mao.

Therefore, I propose a slim, pocket-sized volume titled, Quotations of Convict Trump.

In keeping with his Golden Calf persona and Tower(s) of Babel empire, the cover would be not red, but gold. Since his followers and he himself now compare him to Jesus Christ, bookstores could place it in their “Religion” sections between his signed Bibles (right-side up) and (I’m not making this up) CHRISTRUMP: Persecution of a Man.* For an opening page:

I do very well with the evangelicals. I love the evangelicals. And I have more people saying they pray for me ― I can’t even believe it. They are so committed, and they are so believing. They say, ‘Sir, you’re going to be OK. I pray for you every night.’ I mean, everybody, almost ― I can’t say everybody, but almost everybody that sees me, they say it.

Marketing? Novelist Stephen King has already offered the most fitting blurb:

This is like listening to your senile uncle at the dinner table after he has that third drink.

Might even market it as “The Gospel According to Don.” The MAGA crowd will regard it on par with the Bible and the US Constitution. As with those two books, they won’t attempt to read it, but they’ll wave it in the air and insist that it justifies all of their paranoia, prejudice, and fear.

Liberals will buy it for laughs. How many of us are prone to buying “joke” presents for friends and relatives on holidays, birthdays, and reunions? What better joke for a fellow liberal could there be? And an ideal book to read aloud, delirium by delirium, to keep your liberal guests howling with laughter:

I don’t think science knows… When trees fall down after a short period of time, about 18 months, they become very dry. They become really like a matchstick … you know, there’s no more water pouring through and they become very, very — they just explode. They can explode.

Imagine the sales when governors of Florida and Texas and other deep red states call for its use as a science text in public high schools:

This is a tough hurricane. One of the wettest we’ve ever seen from the standpoint of water.

Or for economics texts that refute any and all “woke” environmentalism:

I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. I’ve studied it [sic] better than anybody I know. It’s [sic] very expensive. They’re made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none. But they’re manufactured — tremendous, if you’re into this, tremendous fumes, gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So [a] tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything — you talk about the “carbon footprint” — fumes are spewing into the air, right? Spewing. Whether it’s in China, Germany, it’s going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything, right?

Right!

And as anyone who has been at all awake these past nine years knows, his speeches and his texts could easily fill numerous pocket-sized books.** Any ten of us could pick a selection the length of Mao’s little red book without repeating a single gaslit line.

Except for one line from a rally in Nevada on June 9. This would be just right for the last page of any and every edition of Quotations from Convict Trump:

I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.

Maybe he confused his wife’s jacket for the teleprompter:

https://www.glamour.com/story/heres-the-latest-explanation-for-melania-trumps-infamous-i-really-dont-care-do-u-jacket

You know we have a world, right?

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*https://www.amazon.com/CHRISTRUMP-Persecution-Christopher-John-MOLLUSO/dp/B0D3WNKRTB

**One book or more might be devoted to full passages of incoherent dementia from his speeches and interviews. Any such book should have a different title, such as Riffs of Convict Trump or Unhinged & Unleashed. Or it might have a title that cautions the “woke” crowd against making any assumptions about the many people who believe, applaud, and cheer when they hear any of this. An instructive title such as, Don’t Forget to Respect Their Intelligence.

Here’s the one about Jaws and the Energizer Bunny just a week ago:

So I said, ‘Let me ask you a question, and [the guy who makes boats in South Carolina] said, ‘Nobody ever asked this question,’ and it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT —very smart. He goes, I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight? And you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery is now underwater and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’

By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, ‘Do you notice that, a lot of sharks?’ he asked. I watched some guys justifying it today. ‘Well, they weren’t really that angry. They bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were, they were not hungry, but they misunderstood what who she was.’ These people are crazy. He said there’s no problem with sharks. ‘They just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming now.’ It really got decimated and other people do a lot of shark attacks.

So I said, so there’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards or here, do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking? Water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking. Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? Because I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer. He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.” I said, ‘I think it’s a good question.’ I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water. But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted, I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark. So we’re going to end that.

And my favorite from a few years ago at a rally in Montana where he claimed that his rallies drew larger crowds than Elton John concerts:

I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record.

Because you know, look, I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records.

Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.

Right!

https://www.raptisrarebooks.com/product/mao-zhu-xi-yu-lu-quotations-from-chairman-mao-zedong-first-edition/

Jumping to Confusions

Behind a BMW this morning at a light,

I myself lit up at the sight

Of a decal, a bird aside the plate,

Erect as a blue-jay looking for its mate.

Just two colors, maroon to match the car,

And a white outline to see from afar,

“How clever!” I marvelled at the world.

When a wind in the leaves casting shadows did start,

The outline fell apart,

So I strained to see what was now holding sway.

White, what little there was, was now a pale gray.

A bird, most likely a gull, dropped a load from the sky

That had looked like the dropper itself to my eye.

“How ironic!” I mused at the world.

When the light turned green, the shaped shifted once more,

And my next view proved frustratingly poor.

I was sure that the car, free of shit,

Had been hit.

Just a touch, very slight,

Or it bumped another Beemer wearing white.

“How mundane,” I muttered at the world.

Turning off the shaded street, it now rolled in sunlight.

Nothing at all was there to see

Where bird, poop, and bump did be.

Just the dark, rich red,

As if just bled,

It wore from hood to taillight.

“How worldly!” I laughed at myself.

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Photo by Keith Sullivan, Newburyport Daily News.

A Puzzle Best Left Unsolved

Weeks ago, I learned that a friend here in Newburyport, in a previous life, worked for 3M.

Whenever I’ve mentioned 3M in conversation, I’ve almost always learned that the listener does not know what the three Ms are, so let me fill in those who may yet be wondering: Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing.

In truth, it’s been at least twenty, maybe thirty, possibly forty years since I’ve mentioned my own former employer in any conversation. It was a summer job, barely ten weeks if that, while I made ends meet during my stint as a graduate student at South Dakota State University.

While my Newburyport friend was based in St. Paul, in sales or some such, the expanding company needed a new warehouse. To avoid the taxes of a state in which the Democratic Party still calls itself the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, 3M bought land just 16 miles over the border in Business Uber Alles South Dakota.

Location was just a third of the reason. With a name like 3M, shouldn’t we expect two more? Yes, and here they are: The place was immediately off an interstate interchange, and Brookings is a college town offering an ample labor pool.

I was there at ground level. Or, more exactly, at floor level. When I joined, the building was up, and perhaps half full. But a space larger than a basketball court lay vacant in the center except for piles of metal rods to assemble scaffolding that warehouses use as shelves as high as three- and four-story ceilings.

They hired a team of eight. The other seven, all male, were undergrads, carefree and goofy, except for one who had the demeanor you’d expect of a person showing up for a new job. As a graduate assistant, I taught freshman classes and had already formed a habit of gauging on day one who would be a good student and who would be a challenging headache based on eye-contact and clarity of speech. One out of seven was about the going rate.

As luck would have it, we were instructed to form pairs. The placement of vertical scaffolding required a pair of hands down low and another up high. With verticals in place, each of us would shoulder an end of a beam and climb ladders that distance apart to place the horizontals into the verticals. Should note here that these beams, though ten or twelve feet long, were light enough that the ladders never seemed hazardous.

Before I could turn to Jerry, the non-goofy, no-Excedrin-needed guy, he turned to me, and we donned our hard hats and thick gloves and went to work. The others did the same. For a while, the supervisor circled us, offered some pointers, and reminded us of the sequence of going up or going side to side.

Before long he was gone, and moments later, one by one, or rather two-by-two, the six goofies were seated on a pile of metal beams, yukking it up and joking around. At times, a pair would fit another level into place. This, I soon realized, was to provide places where, upon spotting a supervisor, they could look busy on a moment’s notice. Jerry didn’t seem to notice, and I figured it wasn’t difficult or dirty work, and anyway, what else would I do?

Jerry and I kept at it, and the others milled around until the supervisor came into view at a distant corner. Suddenly they were all back to the stacks they had started and getting to the second level quick enough to give the impression that each pair was working equally, that Jerry and I just happened to be putting the finishing touches on the first completed section, a truly collaborative effort all around.

Supervisor satisfied, and gone, the goofies were back on their seats. When we descended from the top level, Jerry motioned that he wanted us to get back on the ladders and fit the top shelves of a section the others had started. Why not? By the time the supervisor rolled around, we were once again high up while the others, after a long desultory rest, were starting other sections.

After a few rounds of this, I finally called over to Jerry, who looked up with his broad Germanic grin. With a glance below: “Doesn’t that bother you?”

His grin widened, which might have been maddening in itself if not for his answer: “No. What else are we going to do here? You wouldn’t rather be just sitting there, would you?”

Me: “Ah, no, not at all.”

Jerry: “It’s not a bad job, and it’s going smoothly.”

Me: “Well, yes, but still-“

Jerry, with an impossibly wide smile: “Why would I be one of them when I can be one of us?”

In retrospect, I wonder why I didn’t fall from the ladder when he said that. As it was, I nodded, “Ya, you’re right,” and I looked down and banged my mallet into the end of a beam, sinking it into the opening of a cross beam.

Next day, we were a team, such as it was, of six. By week’s end we were four, and the last two goofies were gone by week three. Whether they quit or management put them on other jobs where they could be watched, I never knew.

As Jerry would say, it didn’t matter what they did or where they went. As a result, he and I spent 40 hours a week right through August filling the basketball court. I, and no doubt he, returned to classes in September with enough in the bank to get us through two more semesters.

Never saw him except for crossing paths on campus three or four times. Always the smile and with an added laugh, which proved infectious. Can’t help but wonder if that laugh was because he and I got the best of the deal–if it was his way of ribbing me: See! I told you so!

But I never stopped to ask. To me, he was a puzzle best left unsolved.

As I told my friend here in Newburyport who triggered the memory, that one line from Jerry, an undergraduate co-worker on a summer job–the only hard-hat job I ever held–was as educationally valuable as anything else I ever heard in or out of any classroom.

Why would I be one of them when I can be one of us?

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No idea where this is, but that’s the right height, and the scaffolding looks looks the same. Ominously enough, the photo is uncredited on a website that explains the rules and regulations of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration.

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Imagine picking up a book of American history and finding one of our presidents and all that happened during his term omitted.

Pick your omit: No Jefferson and Louisiana Purchase. No Polk and Mexican War. No FDR and New Deal.

Or pick up a dictionary and imagine all words beginning with one of the 26 letters left out. Cancel L. Suppress S. X X. Bleep U.

How about a map of North America with no Great Lakes? Just five oddly shaped, unexplained blank spots.

Imagine one of those and you might approximate the sensation that shook me in the Newbury Public Library when the young woman at the desk responded to my inquiry by turning to her laptop:

“Let me see if this library carries books by that author.”*

Had I been hit by a bullet I could not have been more stunned. She looked up in alarm when I voiced a spontaneous reaction:

“This is an American public library! ‘That author‘ is Herman Melville. Herman Melville! Unless he has suddenly become very popular and is flying off the shelves, how can he not be here, not a single book?”

She turned back to her laptop and hurriedly repeated the same answer. Verbatim.

Something made me take a few backward steps, and I waved a hand back toward her: “No, no, forget it, I’m sorry.” And I quickly reeled out the door.

That something, in retrospect, had to be the realization that we now have people graduating from American colleges with degrees in Library Science who do not recognize the names of writers whose books helped shape American ideals and values.

Yes, I have already noticed and written of “weeding” in public libraries. Columns in the local paper last summer and the summer before both drew considerable responses from library patrons who had also noticed the trend. One told me it had happened in the periodical section where scholarly magazines are also giving way to fan ‘zines and pop culture. Another informs me of the weeding of classical music from the CD collection at the Jones Public Library in Amherst, Mass.

In the past year, I’ve visited eight public libraries I drive by in the course of a week and taken counts in the shelves. The number of volumes for classic authors such as Melville, Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, and even John Steinbeck have hovered in the two to six range. East and west of Steinbeck, those of Danielle Steel and Jacqueline Susann range from the sixties well into the eighties every time.

All the while, I have swallowed hard and held my tongue at endless kudos posted on social media for many public libraries that display and encourage the circulation of books, mostly contemporary, being banned in schools in Florida and other parts of the country. Glad they do it, but isn’t weeding just as much a dumbing down?

Librarians at two stops tell me weeding is a national trend. Friends around the state in Lowell, Northampton (where it is called “deaccessioning”), and Wareham have noticed it, as have others as far away as Santa Rosa and Seattle on the west coast. Last summer, in Harper’s August issue, Joyce Carol Oates described weeding without using the word in “The Return,” a short story set in New Jersey.

According to one librarian, computer programs now tell librarians how much a book circulates each month. Those that gather dust and once were dusted are now tossed with no regard for who wrote them, much less than for any obscure places they might have in American history.

“Obscure places”? Melville’s Moby-Dick may retain prominence, especially with a recent US president so eerily comparable to a captain bent on revenge and willing to take his ship down with him.

But how many Americans know that his previous book, White-Jacket, was an expose of the US Navy that led to many reforms, including a ban on the practice of flogging?

Or that Redburn, the one before that, offers a first hand look at waves of immigrants boarding a ship in Liverpool and making the trans-Atlantic passage to America?

More to the point, how many might find such books? All of them—by Cather, Lewis, Steinbeck, and the rest—reveal people and places that may be historically obscure but which are endlessly relevant.

That’s why we call it literature.

Today, the logic, both practical and legal, of Melville’s comprehensive analysis of flogging could strengthen any case made for the regulation of automatic weapons.

Likewise, his account of desperate immigrants hoping for a new life may help nail a convincing, pro-active plank into the platform offered by the Democratic National Convention this summer.

I can say it “may” because I sent a summary to a delegate from my district who says she has forwarded it to the rest of the Massachusetts delegation.

Good to know, as there’s little chance of finding it on the shelves of what’s left of America’s public libraries.

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*When I related this story to a friend over pints of Guinness, he stopped me here and insisted, “That is a canned response!” I realized right away that it was the identical Let-me-see-if… line that we always hear from customer service reps in person, on the phone, and on those on-line chats that utility and other companies have on their websites. Just fill in the blanks: this library and that author. I also knew what she said next, and told him so: “And I’m about to prove you right!”

First reason always given for weeding is that more shelf space is needed. This pic was taken about a year ago at the Newburyport Public Library, a year after my first newspaper column on the subject. But it could just as easily have been taken in Newbury, Rowley, Topsfield, Methuen and elsewhere, including Ipswich where entire rows were empty last fall. Still could, although since then, many of those blank spaces now contain a book on display, propped up on a small stand, facing out and angled to eye-level. These are the books shown by algorithms to be most popular. As one approving librarian puts it: “Less is more.” Photo by Ann O’Nimmis.

No Matter Our Past Cross-Purpose

By far the loudest and longest cheers and applause of the day erupted with calls for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, and a two-state solution.

US Rep. Jim McGovern was the first to make the call, and Massachusetts US senators Ed Markey and Liz Warren both amplified it in barn-burning speeches.

Warren ramped it up: “Netanyahu cannot bomb his way to peace!” Riding the roar of the crowd, she raised her voice yet more: “Donald Trump & Benjamin Netanyahu cannot be anywhere near leadership positions!”

Massachusetts Democrats called it a state convention, but with a single nomination to make and one unopposed candidate to choose, it was a rally.

Coincidentally, it was a rally on the same Saturday that saw many Pride rallies and parades across the nation, and those folks were well-represented on Worcester’s DCN stage, first by Democratic Party Chair Steven Kerrigan, later by Gov. Maura Healy, and my guess is by others, but why would I keep count? Diversity, equity, and inclusion were emphasized by all speakers regardless of preference.

My employers back in Newburyport marched in a Pride parade and were joined by, of all people, my landlords for a “The Screening Room” contingent bearing a rainbow flag. They and a few other mutual friends all posed for smiling photos. Conspicuous in his absence was the old geezer who has projected films there since 1998.

Only because I was among the seven delegates sent to Worcester by the town of Newbury where we joined over 2,000 others.

Planning on the breakfast hosted by Sen. Warren and the AFL-CIO, I arrived as soon as the doors opened in hopes of mingling with people from around the state for as long as I could. A fellow with an “Azorean Maritime Heritage Society” t-shirt, turned out to be an annual reader in the Portuguese version of the Moby-Dick marathon in New Bedford.

Three women from Mansfield and Foxboro were amused by my endorsement of the almond croissants at White’s Bakery, but their talk of the previous day’s news proved they were more concerned with counts than with calories. Their listing of a few of the 34 lit a bulb, and I spilled out the light:

The reason that individual counts are never mentioned is that none of his supporters claim he’s innocent of anything, just that he’s immune.

One replied immediately:

Right! That he’s above the law without using the phrase ‘above the law”-

Another:

Or admitting to it!

The third:

That’s why it’s no exaggeration when we say democracy is on the ballot.

Me:

But I still want to know if those croissants are legal!

Well, you have to lighten up now and then to keep things moving. The person I hoped to run into more than any other was Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll, former mayor of Salem. Wanted so much to ask her if she recalled a 2007 incident when a Salem busker got into a feud with the city police. She never involved herself personally, but did assign an assistant, one Jason Silva, to solve the issue amicably. He did what he could, but I’m pretty well convinced that the real solution came with phone calls from the ACLU to Salem City Hall. All I wanted to do yesterday was see the expression on her face when I told her I was that busker.

Instead, I turned around from getting a refill from the tank of coffee and came face to face with a former mayor of Newburyport. She gave me a huge smile and a hello as happy as a trip to Hawaii. Couldn’t have been more off-guard than if I had been suddenly face-to-face with Barack Obama. Couldn’t help but smile back and exchange the hello, before letting her and the folks with her, including a few faces I recognized, know that I was representing the town of Newbury after so many years of a tagline in the local paper that says I’m a resident of “Plum Island,” so that people would think I was a resident of Newburyport.

They liked the joke, and she resumed laughing. I walked away quite relieved and with a nagging feeling of guilt. From 2013 through 2017, I wrote at least a dozen columns savaging Mayor Donna Holaday. One began by declaring that Newburyport didn’t have a mayor, but a broker. She could have brokered my nose when I turned from the coffee tank, and I’d have deserved it. Instead, a warm smile, a huge greeting, and so I felt like a snake. Still do.

But life goes on, and our common purpose, no matter our past cross-purpose, was a focus on November. While an end to Netanyahu’s war on Gaza gained the loudest cheers, unions and jobs drew the most attention.

Chrissy Lynch of the AFL-CIO emphasied labor’s “big tent, but shared values.” Boasting of Biden’s best-ever record of job creation, “union jobs to rebuild the middle class,” and lowest unemployment rate in over 50 years, she noted how Republicans always harp on false choices such as taxing the rich or having corporate profits “trickle down.” She applied that to affordable housing and infrastructure. “America is not an either-or place,” she proclaimed to a rolling applause. “Corporate profits,” she insisted, “are the real reason for inflation.”

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu reinforced Lynch’s endorsement by telling us that every one of Biden’s cabinet secretaries, the First Lady, and Biden himself have visited Boston to plan for improvements in infrastructure, health, and education.

Education was another recurring theme. Especially the Republicans’ “2025 Report” which several speakers attacked as a “dangerous” descent back into the Dark Ages. Most representative was Worcester Mayor Joe Petty’s description of it an erasure of history for the purpose of repeating it. McGovern, Markey, and Warren nailed it just as forcefully.

After dancing onto the stage, State Treasurer Deb Goldberg pledged to fight corporations on the issue of climate change and their treatment of workers. As if answering Lynch’s “false choice” claim, Goldberg noted that there are many well-paying union jobs to be had in the field of clean energy.

Overall, one-liners from each speaker captured both the purpose and attitude of the event:

McGovern, after a roaring laugh when he described the futility of working with “MAGA morons”: “We don’t govern to win, we win to govern.” And, “We stand for something. Trump stands for nothing.”

Healy: “Republicans have anger, hatred, fear, and alternate reality. We have the truth.”

Attorney General Andrea Campbell making a case that empathy, while all-important, is useless without action: “This is the time to get political.”

Markey, citing the wrecking ball character of the Trump Administration, and the convicted felon’s pitch to oil companies that he will wipe out all regulations for billion dollar donations: “If he wins, he won’t appoint a cabinet, but a cartel.”

Later: “They say ‘Drill, Baby, Drill!’ but we say, ‘Plug in, Baby, Plug in.'” Then he added mention of his Green New Deal co-sponsored by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose name drew a huge cheer: “We have an American climate corps of 20,000 young people… We don’t agonize, we organize.”

And for a parting shot: “Donald Trump has 34 problems and being rich ain’t one of them.”

Because she’s up for re-election, Warren closed the show, beginning with an acknowledgment of Trump’s two “signature accomplishments” as president: “An extremist Supreme Court to repeal Roe v. Wade and tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.” Laughter turned to cheers when she added: “And you sent me to tax the rich!”

She repeated and re-enforced all of the above themes. One that she added, both when she addressed us during breakfast in the morning and in the last hurrah, was a call for statehood for the District of Columbia. Each time it was bare mention, but well-worth noting since it hasn’t been mentioned since before the pandemic. Even then it was deep down the Dems’ wish-list, but if Democrats hold the senate and flip the house for Biden, it may have a shot.

She also joined all other speakers in calling the November presidential election a choice between “the most union-friendly president in our history versus the most divisive and dangerous.”

She neglected to add the third choice of the guy who says he has a dead worm in his brain. Or is it a worm in his dead brain? None of the speakers mentioned him. Just as well, the constant references to “the convicted felon” provided as much humor as we needed to keep things moving.

When she asked us if we recalled how “every week was infrastructure week during the convicted felon’s four years in office,” she held up her a hand to each side and mimicked soundless yakking. Laughter was nearly as loud as the cheers for ending the war on Gaza.

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Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll displays a shirt for a Worcester High basketball team, lined up behind her, who just won a state championship. Gov. Maura Healy spins a ball on a fingertip. Both women played on their college teams. Photo: *Boston Herald*.

No idea who took this, but the Screening Room owners are Ben (with the rainbow placard) and Becca (leaning in from the top right) Fundis and their son Oscar in the middle. My neighbors to whom I give all the money that the Fundises give me are Michael (with the shades in the back) and Angela (kneeling with a sign in the front). The woman with the Milk sign I think is named Mimi, whom I’ve seen at the Screening Room over the years. That’s likely true of the other two, but I can’t tell from this photo.

Fool Me Twice

In the laundromat today, the back of a shirt worn by a fellow loading a washer caught my eye. At the top, in large letters, I read “Stop…”

Couldn’t see the object of that most demanding verb, but I thought I knew. Younger I would likely have confronted him, but futility appeals not to Older Me or to My preoccupied state of mind on laundry day, if not every day.

All I craved was to transfer my laundry from washer into a dryer so I could set up shop with Lenovo and a Costa Rican roast at the coffee shop next door. Maybe I’d write about the idiocy of the “Stop the Steal” movement, especially now that a Supreme Court justice is flying its flags. Or maybe I’d put it in my 2S2BW file–Too Stupid To Bother With.

In the coffee-shop, I went right to a recent blog awaiting its turn to appear on social media. My first film review in a couple of months with the headline, “Better Not to Dwell on It.” Couldn’t help but laugh out loud at how well that fit the laundromat scene I just described. In fact, I paused for a moment thinking I might find another headline and save it–only to realize that, in so doing, I would be dwelling on it.

So, onto the feed it went just above another post as arresting to my eye as the word “Stop” in the laundromat. Actually it was a re-post of a meme showing a smiling young woman, an Olympian, holding a medal she had won. The text began with a newspaper headline:

Wife of a Bears’ lineman wins bronze medal today in Rio Olympics.

Below that, the person who posted the meme added:

You spelled ‘3-time Olympian Corey Cogdell-Unrein wins second bronze medal today in Rio Olympics’ wrong.

Yes, having delved into sarcasm myself, I’m a sucker for it. At first, I was fooled and all in favor of the correction. Why should anyone’s identity depend on a relationship to someone else? But then I noticed the identity of the original poster at the top of the meme, just above the woman’s smile and medal and the text I just quoted:

The Chicago Tribune. How else could a headline or caption say “Bears” and let readers assume it is Chicago’s NFL team?

Quickly, in hopes of leaving the first comment (and perhaps convincing my friend to delete the post before it spread), I typed the Olympian’s name into a search engine. It was all I needed. Here’s the comment I left:

The newspaper is in Chicago. The Olympian is from Alaska. Her husband plays for a team based in Chicago. The editor needs a “hook” (i.e. a connection) between the bronze medal and the readers (residents of Chicago & northern Illinois) or the story doesn’t even run–as it did not in, say, Boston, Baltimore, Philly, etc. The husband is the hook. Hence, the headline.

I might have added that this is why right-wingers laugh at us. The meme is a triumph of political correctness over practicality and natural tendency. If this were a national publication, then, yes, the headline would be sexist and offensive–not to mention that it would get an F in any journalism class for naming “Bears” without “Chicago” in front of it. As is, the meme makes us (liberals) look petty and uninformed.

Done with the lesson in Journalism 101, I swilled down the Costa Rican, shut down the Lenovo, and returned to get my laundry. Before re-entering Village Washtub, I spotted the “Stop” shirt, stood still for a long sigh, looked at the sky, rolled my eyes, exhaled, and said under my breath, “No, don’t do it!”

Even at that, I didn’t know if I’d do it or not or even what it was I would or would not do. Nor will I ever find out. As I entered, the fellow walked toward the door, left to right until directly in front of me, but then turned the other way, giving me full view of his back. His shirt read: “Stop Making Sense.”

Well, how can I argue with a fellow fan of the Talking Heads? How can I object to the title of their legendary 1984 concert film re-released last year when I watched it every night I projected it? Like faulting a newspaper for making a local reference in a headline, it wouldn’t make sense.

Or is not making sense what I am now supposed to start?

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Corey Cogdell-Unrein and her medals for Trap Shooting. Photo courtesy of Athlon Outdoors. https://alaskasportshall.org/inductee/corey-cogdell/

Better Not to Dwell on It

You can’t take your eyes of Coup de Chance no matter how unsettling the story is, and like many Woody Allen films, it is that.

As one of my students said of American Beauty, a 1999 sensation, Coup is “a couple hours of watching people do things you wish they wouldn’t do.”

Actually, it’s just over an hour and a half. What may make it seem longer is that, before it ends, there are at least three moments when you think it will end.

What makes it seem shorter has to be the rapid pace of an energetic cast–not one of them known to American audiences–working with a crisp script, and a sizzling jazz soundtrack well established during opening credits. Many in Screening Room audiences sit through the end credits to hear it full tilt.

If that’s not enough, plot twists still surprise you no matter how much you expect them from Allen.

Yes, it is in French, and I have a theory that Allen wanted a film in subtitles for a very specific reason. Something in it I’ve never seen before, but I can’t say what or even where that is for fear of spoiling the effect.

Coup reminded me most of his 2005 film, Match Point, in part because both are about infidelity, but more because both films illustrate a frequently cited enigmatic quote from “The Mat-Maker” chapter in Moby-Dick:

Chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events.

As Allen himself told an interviewer: “You’re very dependent on chance and luck in life, more than you think.”

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Held over at the Screening Room: Thurs 5/23, 7:00 pm; Fri & Sat 24 & 25, 4:30 pm; and Wed & Thurs 29 & 30, 7:00 pm.