From Oppenheimer to Vonnegut

Sitting outside the Screening Room before the afternoon showing of Oppenheimer, a fellow stops and asks the dunce-cap question:

“Is this movie any good?”

For years, I’ve made a point or either pretending that I do not hear it or launching into a litany of “best evers”–acting, plot, cinematography, dialogue, music, comedy, suspense, emotional impact, costumes, make-up, special effects, any and everything I can think of–until he or she gets the point.

The point being that, as an employee of the theater showing it, I’m going to recommend it no matter what my personal opinion is.

But I happen to know that this fellow is a scientist, and is actually asking if the film conveys actual science or glosses over it for the sake of fast-paced drama. Well, yes, Oppenheimer is very fast-paced, but with a running time of three-hours, nothing is glossed over.

So I tell him that, and then compare Oppenheimer, not to another film, but to a book, a dual biography: The Brothers Vonnegut: Science Fiction in the House of Magic (2015).

“Fiction”? That was Kurt. The scientist was his older brother, Bernard, whose star rose just as Oppenheimer’s was shot down at the end of the Truman years. Not developing any bombs but seeding clouds for the Department of Agriculture to make it rain in arid areas of the American west.

He and his colleagues at Cornell and at General Electric had some success. Time and Life and other national magazines covered them with hopeful stories. In a booming country with US highways just beginning to connect the coasts so you could “see the USA in your Chevrolet.” And just as pro baseball and football began singing “California, here I come,” it all seemed not just possible, but inevitable, a God-given right belted out by Dinah Shore.

How to make it rain? Bernard Vonnegut and his fellow scientists were knocked off their Cloud Nine when they realized that the Pentagon wanted an answer as much as the DoA. I’ll leave what happened next to Ginger Strand’s book–except to say that Bernard’s conflict serves as a sequel to the film, Oppenheimer.

From Cloud Nine to Slaughterhouse Five, he also served as a model for Billy Pilgrim and other conflicted characters in Kurt’s early fiction. Conceived in the 50s and 60s, those characters could just as well been modeled on J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Kurt himself got into the act when Bernard got him a job in the PR department at GE. It didn’t go well, but it did make for a memorable story in the Welcome to the Monkey House collection, “Deer in the Works.”

So, I answered the hideous question after all. Not only is the film very good, but there’s a fascinating sequel already waiting at a bookstore or library near you.

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/07/brothers-vonnegut-science-fiction-ginger-strand-review

Unwise Words to the Wise

Once upon a dine, the Port Tavern offered a chicken-curry dish that I not only ordered every time, but recommended to anyone dining with me.

Until one day when a waiter told us it was no longer on the menu. Asked why, he said the restaurant had “a new chef who doesn’t make it.”

The End.

Wait! What the knife and fork was that all about? A fair question from those whose appetites for food I may have whet only to serve up verbal linguine. Rather than describe my disappointment or recall what I had instead, I offer the vignette to pose a few questions:

Did I simply report something that happened, an easily verifiable fact? Or would you describe those few lines as “bad-mouthing” a local restaurant?

Answering this may not be easy for some. One the one hand, it did happen, so you can’t dismiss it as unfavorable opinion. On the other, it does tell of loss, so you can’t call it favorable.

How about the direct quote from the waiter? Have I violated his privacy? Should I report a result without a cause? Or should I include the cause but without quote or attribution? Maybe I could make the reader think there was a notice of the change on the menu:

After searching the menu twice, I took the hint from the new guy with the Greek name and ordered spinach pie instead…

Be that as it may, no one ever accused me of “bad-mouthing” Port Tavern, perhaps because I have continued to dine there with friends, as well as mention it to out-of-towners asking for recommendations in the lobby of the Screening Room conveniently right next door.
,
That was then.

In recent years, increasingly, we hear the word ” bad-mouth” applied, as an active, aggressive verb, to anything that the object of it would prefer to keep quiet. Truth and accuracy have nothing to do with it.

When reporters tell us that Russian jets have bombed Kiev, do we accuse them of “bad-mouthing” Russia? When a Kremlin official justifies the attack, do we expect reporters to ask permission to quote him?

The thought of either is preposterous. Why, then, do we hear the charge on local levels where they turn attention to problems that might be solved into disdain for those calling for attention in the first place?

Paving the way for the recent rise of bad-mouth the verb was–and still is–bashing the noun and verb.

“Bashing” reared its empty head back in the 90s. Don’t know where it began, but it caught on everywhere all at once and across all walks of life. Democrats and Republicans alike have used it as an all-purpose shield. No matter what the criticism, no matter how well-founded, it can be dismissed as “bashing,” which implies that the problem is not the problem, the person calling attention to it is. Yes, the National Rifle Association would be proud.

More recently, the word hater, a noun, has widened the highway of narrow-minded thought, though every lane’s a breakdown lane. What makes it so jarring to people of my generation is that “hate” was always a word to avoid, as negative as it gets.

Notice, too, the parallel proliferation of love. For years, Madison Ave. has conditioned us to “love” certain cars, beers, cereals, laxatives, even insurance companies, and we always knew it was an exaggerated version of “like.” Now we hear political and sports commentators say they “love” or “don’t love” a candidate’s remark or a coach’s decision.

And we wonder why the emotional so often trumps the rational?

What makes “hater” yet more jarring is that this new usage is not limited to describe deep dislike and aversion, but anything less than enthusiastic approval. Once upon an attention span, you could say that you favored The Beatles over The Rolling Stones, and it was understood you still liked The Stones–or vice-versa.

Now it means you “hate” them, which may be a trivial matter regarding musical tastes, but has been a killer in a political system designed for consensus with primaries to winnow out extremists in favor of those with broader appeal. Anything less than 100% approval is all vice, no versa.

Result? Extremists win primaries, and some make it to Congress where they can condemn Jewish space lasers and ask the National Parks Service if it can change the tilt of the Earth’s axis to offset climate change. An entire political party can skip any commitment to a platform at its national convention and instead offer us a terse declaration that can be honestly summed up as Trump uber Alles!

Debasement of language is what George Orwell warned against in 1984 and what George Carlin harped on till the day he died in 2008. Orwell described Newspeak, a dumbed down language that made it impossible to think critically. Carlin traced the devolution of the WWI term shell-shock (“You can hear the bombs falling”) to today’s post-traumatic stress-disorder to illustrate how antiseptic words can numb us to urgent needs.

Where are they when we need them? Oh, say, can we read or hear them when we bemoan today’s “polarization” and “deep division”?

Might they tell us that the very language we use–badmouth, bash, hater, and more–polarizes us to the point that we see everything as all or nothing?

Politics? You can’t even regret out loud the absence of an item on a menu without some people thinking you want to burn the restaurant down.

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https://www.progressive-charlestown.com/2018/02/dumbing-down-america.html

A Day in My Life

I’m in a dentist’s chair. Been coming here near 30 years. Today, I skipped breakfast to arrive on time. Technician preps me, then leaves telling me the dentist will be right in. On the sound system, I realize I’m hearing the end of “Rocketman.” Over and over again and again Elton John trills, “And I think it’s going to be a long, long time…”

Elton is wrong. But even if he was right, the dentist and I have a good laugh. Until she tells me not to eat anything for at least three hours. Elton is right.

I’m at a gas pump. I’m out of town, so the station is new to me. I put the card in the slot as always. Soon, I see the screen, as always and as I expect, with the word “remove” and I pull the card. At the last second I notice that the screen said “Do not remove card” (my emphasis). Next comes “Authorization Failed” and then “See Cashier.” In 90 degree heat and hellish humidity, I look across half a football field’s worth of asphalt to the truck stop’s plaza’s center and say a word Paul Simon never heard in the Bible.

I get in the car and U-turn to another pump. I think I saw Curly do that in a Three Stooges movie.

I’m in a public library. Way out of town. This is one of five libraries where I stop while making my weekly deliveries to Western Mass. I have no cellphone, nor any other device with me. Even though I have the right password, I am blocked from logging into email by a screen asking me where to send a verification code.

This is new. After 20 years of the password being enough, now there’s a code. I have nothing with me to receive it. In effect, one cannot access Google or Yahoo mail–I have and have tried both–on a library’s computer unless he or she has some device that does access email.

If I had that, why would I be in the damned library to begin with?

I’m in a bagel shop. Two friends, a flautist and a guitarist, are playing for the first time with a bassoonist. As I enter, she’s playing the melody, the lead for Paul McCartney’s “Michelle.” As clear and precise as any instrument, any player, in any place I’ve ever heard.

I’m in heaven. Actually, I’m in The Bagel Mill in Peterborough, New Hampshire, which often hosts Grove Street, a trio that includes a cellist, but the cellist is away on a trip, and a bassoonist fills in. My flautist friend has put his flute aside to accompany her with bongos as the guitarist keeps the rhythm. Flute and bassoon will converse through several Celtic and folk tunes. I dab at tears of joy hearing music in my own repertoire played as if hearing them born again.

I’m lost in nostalgia for tunes I left behind long ago. Flute takes the lead in “The Butterfly,” an Irish classic, while bassoon plays a baseline. Through the song once, they hold the last note and begin anew with bassoon as the lead and flute embellishing in an upper octave. Again they hold the last note, and the two wind instruments reprise their original roles. The guitar holds it all together, like the wind on which the two butterflies flutter and flirt.

Joy puts her bassoon aside for a tambourine while Chaz launches into melodies he’s been playing for years with Eric. Riffing with swagger and force, he hits every note that’s there, adding possibility. Eric sets the stage, determines the frame, makes sense of all of it.

I clench my fist, close my eyes. Chaz then sets his flute aside for the bongos when Joy plays more Beatles. A most unforgettable “Places I Remember” in which she goes staccato for that baroque mid-section, and a hilarious “When I’m 64” to close the show.

An odd song for a room full of people pushing 74, but there were a few grandkids running around.

I’m back home, in bed, thinking. Next time I’ll start the day at the Bagel Mill. No three-hour delay for my apple crunch bagel with cream cheese. No ridiculous security for the sake of security. No hi-tech irritations or surprises.

Just music. Live, natural music.

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Sixteenth Note on the Text: What I have just described is a combination of two trios. I’ve heard talk of possibilities they may combine on occasion to play as a quintet. Or maybe I’m just making that up to push them in that direction. If they can stand a frontman to make inane jokes introducing every song and then stand back and play harmless, unobtrusive bass notes on a tenor recorder, I’ll move to Peterborough and make it a sextet:

Poster by Eric Blackmer who plays in two trios, Grove Street and Maple TreeO.

A publicity photo for Maple TreeO, also based in Peterborough, NH, with David Flemming on flute and Joy Riggs Flemming with her bassoon on either side of Eric

Both Sides of the Mouth*

Yes, Nao Trinidad was everything Newburyport’s tireless public servant Bob Cronin claims in his letter of thanks to all involved.

Especially satisfying for me were crowds flocking to the replica of a 500-year-old ship during the very week two other letters faulted me for clinging to the 1840s.

So much they don’t know. For instance, my blog includes 20 reviews in the past 24 months of books from the “New Releases” display in the Newburyport Public Library’s lobby.

Before that, I offered NPL eight links to start a website feature with “reviews of books, especially new or recent releases, written by patrons.”

On June 7th, 2021, came the then-assistant, now-acting director’s reply:

“Thank you for your suggestion and if we decide to highlight reviews from community members, we will advertise this option. I took a quick tour of your site and you’ve done a great job with the reviews!”

No room for patron reviews, but for at least three weeks NPL’s site did prominently display the harassment charges made by the NPL staff against eight volunteers.

Daily News readers saw it June 14. The volunteers’ response the next day was no more welcome on NPL’s site than patrons’ reviews of new books.

On June 27, I went to City Hall to inquire about the propriety of airing dirty laundry on a city-sponsored site.

One City Hall official agreed to meet with me, but while closing his office door behind us, said pointedly: “I don’t want to talk to you, but I’ll hear what you have to say.”

He saw nothing wrong with the NPL posting, so I focused on the charge that the volunteers “accept money” from patrons. Quoting the vols’ rebuttal that this “simply refers to taking a quarter for a Xerox copy,” I asked: “So that’s all it is?”

He nodded, “Yes.”

“So, even though you know it’s just pocket change, you see nothing wrong with their posting the insinuation on a city-sponsored website?”

He denied this made any insinuation.

“But it gives the impression of something much larger.”

“It’s money.”

“One cent is worth Fort Knox?”

He shrugged.

“You see nothing ethically wrong in this?”

His glare was indifferent. As he said up front, he didn’t want to talk to me.

Later that day, I described that look to a friend who replied: “If you want to see it again, come to Salisbury Town Hall.”

Three weeks later, I crossed the river to watch an entire Board of Selectmen look indifferently at citizens who spoke against their appointment of Samson Racioppi to the town’s Housing Board in 2018.

Prior to 2018, Racioppi had a well-documented history of promoting anti-gay and anti-Semitic groups, but no one else applied, and the board preferred not to know.

Now, however, Racioppi’s commitment to what ought to be called “Trump Uber Alles” is well-known:

He hired buses to bring people to the January 6 insurrection, organized protests in support of Wisconsin gun-boy Kyle Rittenhouse, and led the anti-gay parade in Boston in 2019.

Racioppi caught wind of the opposition and withdrew his application for renewal, but a few speakers, accompanied by loud applause, made sure that his would-be appeasers did not escape unstained.

Wind? A winter’s worth of Nor’easters pound Salisbury’s sand with no more ferocity and force than that with which citizen-activist Monique Greilich slammed the board members’ “shameful” tolerance of Racioppi and their “cowardice” in not speaking up long ago.

Board members were visibly shocked when she informed the small but packed hall that Racioppi would’ve missed the deadline to reapply had not one member contacted him back in June.

Greilich’s masterstroke was to leave the one unnamed. All had been silent, making all complicit, and so her conclusion was as sweeping as damning: “Shame on all of you!”

Thus, a hatemonger was erased in Salisbury just as dirty laundry, after at least three embarrassing weeks, was deleted in Newburyport.

Problems solved? No, because those responsible for both still call the shots. Best we can do, as Greilich said when it was over, is:

“(B)e willing to stick your neck out, take the heat, and persevere.”

She could just as well have said that of Magellan’s trip around the world. Why else would we flock to celebrate his ship five centuries later right here in the Mouth of the Merrimack.

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*Readers, both casual and faithful, of “Mouth of the River” may recognize passages from at least three recent blogs. Originally, this was intended as a column in the Newburyport Daily News, and it has become the first column–of about 500–I have submitted to that paper in forty years that has been rejected. Editor says that the dialogue with the mayor’s chief of staff “feels like a personal beef” and cannot be substantiated. I offered it without the official’s name (which I have kept out of this version) and without direct quotes (which I have restored). Still no go. I still maintain that, in every version, nothing personal is said, that it is very specifically about a posting on a city-sponsored website that is itself unsubstantiated with any specifics. And anyway, there’s not much to substantiate about one and two word responses. As the official also said in that meeting, speaking of the volunteers, they are free to respond. As of now, so is he.

https://www.tideschart.com/United-States/Massachusetts/Essex-County/Plum-Island-Merrimack-River-Entrance/

A Note to Subscribers

All these forty years I’ve been writing columns for the Newburyport Daily News, one of the most, perhaps the most frequently asked question is, Have you ever been censored?

Happily, save for a handful of phrases that I have harmlessly softened at an editor’s request (always for the better I’d later realize), the answer has always been no.

Until now.

Here’s advance notice that tomorrow I will post a blog headlined “Both Sides of the Mouth.” You may recognize passages from at least three recent “Mouth of the River” blogs. Originally intended for the Daily News, it is now the first column–of about 500–the paper has rejected.

Editor says that the dialogue with the mayor’s chief of staff “feels like a personal beef” and cannot be substantiated. I countered that nothing personal is said, that it is very specifically about a posting on a city-sponsored website that is itself unsubstantiated with any specifics. And anyway, there’s not much to substantiate about one and two word responses.

Still, no go.

And so I intend to post it as a blog with hopes of circulating it on a Newburyport website or a local page on social media. That requires a link. As the chief-of-staff himself said of people smeared on a city site, they are free to respond. Well, so is he.

As consolation for those hoping for something brand new, here’s a response to “The Return,” a new short story by Joyce Carol Oates just published in the new (August) issue of Harper’s. Yes, it is indirectly related to the controversy hinted at above, more directly to two blogs I have written about “weeding,” now a term of art in libraries across the country, although the story, set in rural New Jersey, does not use the word:

Weeding Our Reading

When the widow in “The Return” (August), wonders what to do with her late husband’s books, I wonder if author Joyce Carol Oates knows her complaint is about a national trend in American libraries called “weeding.”

Says the widow: “Libraries no longer want such special collections, eighteenth and nineteenth-century first editions, classics of science….” As librarians from here in Massachusetts to the west coast have told me, the higher-ups are now using computer programs to show how often a book is checked-out. Books gathering too much dust get weeded; those in demand are available in multiple volumes.

Hence, today, in the Ipswich (Mass.) Public Library, you can count 82 books by Danielle Steele compared to four by Herman Melville, one of them a Modern Library of America edition. His other three MLA entries are not available in Ipswich but can be obtained on interlibrary loan. So much for browsing.

Oates’ widow goes on to say that a library would not accept “the complete works of Charles Darwin, his Life and Letters.” Harper’s readers may think that a part of her prolonged delusion. Not at all. In the past year, the Newburyport (Mass.) Public Library weeded two volumes of The Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier, published in 1895, no matter that Whittier lived barely ten miles from Newburyport and was a friend and sometimes ally of Newburyport native William Lloyd Garrison.

The widow concludes: “The local library is always downsizing, selling books, it’s shocking to me to see the books they sell, priced at a dollar in a bin like something at Walmart.”

As crude as the word is, “weeding” is a euphemism for dumbing down. Republican governors do it with legislation. All public libraries need is an algorithm.

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We call this one “Jack at the Mailbox,” taken at the end of my driveway, March 2006. Photo by Michael Boer: https://www.flickr.com/photos/onewe/albums

Idiot Detection Systems

When Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker told Northwestern University’s graduating class, “If you want to be successful in this world, you have to develop your own idiot detection system,” he offered examples but no red flags.

Examples so rich the Class of 2023 may have heard the melody of Bob Dylan’s “Idiot Wind” as the soundtrack and ended each one by singing the last line, “a wonder you still know how to breathe.”

Obvious looney tune quotes from conmen such as Donald Trump and George Santos made them laugh out loud, and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s warning of “gazpacho police” may have sent a tidal wave across Lake Michigan. Still, a list of signs would be in order.

Such was the reaction of Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi following her report of that section of Pritzker’s commencement address that went viral:

I think we could all do with a bit more of a comprehensive guide, don’t you? So I’ve helpfully put together the beginnings of one. Behold, five golden rules for spotting an idiot.

For me, the operative word in that is “beginnings.”

Mahdawi’s five-point list (see link below) emphasizes boasting, whereas Pritzker emphasized cruelty. Most fascinating is her mention of people who boast of not reading books. For years, yes decades, I’ve taken in for granted that few people ever read books and have heard no one ever bother to boast of it. However, I have increasingly heard–over these past eight years especially and specifically, people boast of not reading (or watching or “following”) the news.

That would top my list which emphasizes laziness, but I’ll offer it as an addendum to Mahdawi’s point and add five more:

6) Anyone who says that they will not watch a film with subtitles (the visually impaired excepted), though I admit that’s not so much a sign as an open admission;

7) Anyone who pops into a cinema and asks, “Is this film any good?” What I want to answer: “Get a dunce cap, why dontcha?” What I answer: “Greatest film ever made! Cinematography the best since Galileo! Acting the best since Shakespeare! Dialogue the best since Hemingway!” and on and on in that vein until the light bulb goes on;

8) Anyone who condemns Congress without specifying or distinguishing members and parties, who says “They’re all the same.” We hear that declaration a lot less of this lately, for obvious reasons, but it is implied in the generalized condemnations of “Congress,” often conveyed in the pronoun “they”;

9) Anyone who wants to avoid controversy by saying “There’s a lot we don’t know” when there’s already enough that we do know. If this isn’t an excuse for laziness, then it’s an excuse for complacency, or, worst of all, cowardice;

10) Anyone who habitually uses the word “appropriate.” This takes people by surprise when I mention it. Which, in turn, often takes me by surprise because I’ve been harping on and writing about it a full forty years since I first heard it so often in the administrative ranks of higher education.

Then in politics. In 1985, when then-New Hampshire Governor John Sununu dismissed the “linkage” between the construction of a nuclear plant on the coast and the storage of nuclear waste some 80 miles inland as “inappropriate,” I knew I’d never trust anyone who used the word again unless they specified what they meant. And unless they didn’t mind my interrupting to ask every time.

That didn’t go over well in department meetings, no matter how liberal you think colleges and universities may be. To the Aproprios, the word was–and still is–as much an all-purpose ticket to slide as it was to Sununu forty years ago. Gone were the complex realities of necessity, relevance, and ethics. In was the simple efficiency and smug presumptuousness of “appropriate.” When the Aproprios started to outnumber Educators in the administrative ranks in the ’90s, my days were short-numbered.

Readers of this blog, or of my columns, may be thinking right now, “Oh, no! Here he goes again!” But what better sign, what better red flag is there for idiocy than a reliance on words that have no specific meaning? If you start asking for specifics, you’ll soon see it for yourself.

Of course, questions themselves aren’t always welcome these days, now, are they? My hunch is that this is what Pritzker was getting at in his commencement address and what Mahdawi, in her uniquely satirical way, aimed to re-inforce.

Only question I have is: Which is the more sure sign of idiocy: Refusing to answer questions? Or the failure to ask them in the first place?

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/23/how-to-spot-idiots-jb-pritzker-northwestern-speech?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1

Pritzker on the campaign trail in Chicago: https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-met-barack-obama-jb-pritzker-20181031-story.html

https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-idiot-wind-lyrics

Put Yourself on a Roll

Friends who take a week-long vacation in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts every summer are always sure to send me news of Arrowhead, Herman Melville’s home that is now open for tours offered by the Berkshire Historical Society.

Today they tell me that Arrowhead now offers “Musing with Melville” for anyone wanting to sit and write at his desk with the window that looks out at Mount Greylock 17 miles to the north.

Thanks for the notice, but at $300 per hour, I’ll continue to write while looking out my own window over a very flat Plum Island Sound here on Massachusett’s Atlantic Coast rather than at the majesty of it’s highest peak by its New York border.

However, I was fascinated by something else they mentioned, and took more time considering its possibilities: For just $10.99 at a nearby deli, you can pick “The Melville” from the sandwich list: Tuna with Swiss cheese, tomato & onion on sourdough.*

Seems an easy choice for how to spend three bills: One hour at his desk, or 27 sandwiches with his name?

Of course, Melville would have tuna, if only because there’s no whale to be had on today’s “Save the Whales” market. And I bet the tuna is not albacore, but yellow fin, because the first rule of food and drink is: The darker, the better.

When at the Thanksgiving table, do you choose the always moist dark meat or the relatively dry white meat? Is your rice brown or white? Now that corn is in season, will you insist on bright bumblebee or settle for pale canary? If you are particular about coffee, do you prefer dark or light roasts? If about beer, do you enjoy light or amber? Dark or milk chocolate? White or wheat bread? Or rye?

So many preferences got me to thinking: If you had a sandwich named for you, what would it be?**

Call me rosemary ham with sharp, aged cheddar, a Calimari tomato, and ranch dressing on pumpernickel as dark as there is. Dark rye is fine, but pumpernickel makes for good conversation. I have yet to have lunch with anyone who did not enjoy the story of how the word came to be:

For it we can thank Napoleon. When he went on that ill-fated campaign to conquer Russia, he camped outside a Saxon town where he took a liking to a local bakery. One very dark bread may have been the reason he had his army linger there a few days. Be that as it may, he sent his officers into the town to get it.

We overlook that Napoleon was Corsican, really more Italian than French, hence his black hair and darker complexion. His officers, of fairer skin and fairer tastes, thought that their general was indulging in crudeness for this bread, and did not want to admit to the German baker that a French general would want such a thing.

So they made a point of telling him that the bread was for Napoleon’s horse, Nicole. In French, bread is pan, and for is pour, and so the German ear heard pan pour Nicole. Adopting that phrase to name his bread auf Deutsch, the baker coined pumpernickel.

I tell the story now as an example of how to craft a sandwich named for you into something you can craft conversation around. In addition to European history, I can parlay the rosemary into mention of a realtive who avoids it eleven months out of the year because it reminds him of Christmas. Calamari tomatoes are a recent discovery for me, and the first that I ever liked putting into omelets. Ranch dressing I like to say is a tribute to my years in the Dakotas, which it really isn’t, but it starts a good story if anyone should say, “Oh yeah? What’s it like out there?”

Last night when I began typing ideas for this, a friend now living in Western Pennsylvania rang my phone wanting to know if I knew anything about Hunter Biden vacationing years ago on Plum Island. That interested me about as much as would Spam and Velveeta with Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread, so I ignored the question, and spoke excitedly:

“M———, if a friend of yours opened a delicatessen and wanted to name a sandwich for you, what would it be?”

I’d have been thankful if it just made her forget about Hunter Laptopper, but she dug right in with relish. Well, not relish relish, but as if she was starved and about to chow down on grilled chicken and mozarella topped with tomato and basil on sourdough.

Not sure what she would have to say about any of those items, but the word “grilled” could well serve an historian and genealogist who does a lot of writing, which she is, and therefore asks a lot of questions.

Another friend, answering the identical question, didn’t hesitate: “It would have to be roast beef from a cow still mooing.” She mentioned mayo as if she’d turn the jar upside down rather than bother with a knife, as well as “lettuce with a crunch,” presumably to drown out the poor cow’s mooing, and a heirloom tomato all on the sesame-seeded, crusty white rolls crafted by the legendary Virgilio’s Bakery in Gloucester. Now that’s loaded with conversational possibilities, as well as argument from the well-done crowd.

So there you have the first three items– “The Garvey,” “The Mel” (preferring her nickname), and “The Annie” (preferring her first name)–on the sandwich board at the Cold-Cuts-R-Us Deli. My travelling friends have not yet responded to my invitation to add theirs, which makes me worry that their Melvilles may have turned into Moby-Dicks and sunk them.

To stay afloat, I am taking suggestions on-line in the comments section–or, as we call it in the real world, over the counter. In time, with apologies to another famous Berkshire resident, I hope to be able to boast that you can have anyone you want at this oh-so personal restaurant.

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*Everyone has likely seen these. Within my rounds, I can recommend the Maine Diner’s “El Tiante,” named for the legendary Red Sox pitcher of the ’60s and ’70s, corned beef hash with poached eggs and a side of fruit. And the Early Bird in Plaistow, N.H., reaches back to the 50s with the “James Dean,” Hollywood’s rebel without a cause, biscuits with gravy and sausage.

For later in the day, Wild Willie’s “Annie Oakley” up in York, Maine, a burger with blue cheese–Yes please! Here in Newburyport, the Port Tavern’s “Tom Brady,” a burger with avacado–No! Just no!

But my all-time favorite was on the beverage menu at the Great Lakes Brewery when I visited Cleveland in 2008: “Eliot Ness IPA.” Now that’s gloating at its finest, and the brew lives up to it!

**The word itself is from the Earl of Sandwich who, in the 18th Century, was the first person to put corned beef between two slices of bread. Turns out that his obsessive gambling was the mother of his invention:

https://allthatsinteresting.com/john-montagu

Worth More Than Admission

Not much I can add to the unanimous praise for Past Lives that Screening Room patrons have already posted on social media, but I can relay one unlike any I’ve ever heard from one woman who saw it last night.

And to that I’ll add a “don’t be late” for the sake of an opening act unlike any I’ve ever seen.

Regret to say that it plays just one more day, today (Thursday, July 20) at 4:30 and 7:00 pm, after which Oppenheimer will take us out of a world that never ends into one that could end at any time.

Last night in the last minute rush before our last show, I overcharged a woman’s credit card by $20. That’s the difference between the Screening Room’s general admission and senior passbooks, so it wasn’t that noticable. Plus, it was showtime and we were both hustling. Didn’t realize it until after the film started, so I withdrew a $20 bill to hand her as she left.

She and her friend were the only two in the audience who, bless them, sat through the end credits, so she was easy to catch. But when I approached and held out the bill, she said:

“Keep it. That film is worth twenty extra dollars.”

I thought she was joking, but she was choking up as she kept refusing to take it. And so into the theater’s general maintenance fund or an Oscar College Fund it has gone. Let me hasten to add that I do intend to resist any temptation to do this again.

A review? As much as I might like to try, nothing I could conjure up would endorse Past Lives better than that.

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A Muse I Hope I Amused

Hoping for something both local and personal to mark the 40^th anniversary of the Daily News’ “As I See It” column, my wish was granted in the shadow of William Lloyd Garrison’s statue across from City Hall last month.

And I regret it.

News of the passing of Sarah Bodge was as hard to register as her age, 87, was hard to believe, even by those who knew her. And they are many.

For years, and right into early June just three weeks before passing, Sarah served at various local assisted living facilities. Years ago, she helped establish the Salisbury Senior Center’s food pantry.

On this side of the Merrimack, Sarah established BodySense, a most popular beauty shop downtown, in 1973, and ran it until the mid-80s. According to current owner Lisa Gianakakis, Sara remained helpful through the years, “a lovely, most considerate woman.”

Meanwhile, Sara volunteered her service on many of the Port’s civic boards.

In her prime, she was an acrobatic dancer who graced the stages of venues such as NYC’s Apollo, and ever since contributed her artistic vision to arts organizations that perform here in the Port.

I knew her as a long-time, frequent patron of the Screening Room, and without her ever knowing it, I turned her into something else.

Though “As I See It” is now 40—with the venerable Stuart Deane and I the only remaining members of the original cast—I never posted on social media until about ten years ago.

That coincides with the rise of the Tea Party that quickly combined the ugly undercurrents of white nationalism in the Republican Party which soon propelled a crude but charismatic huckster to power in 2016.

And which to this day presents a clear and present danger to this country—most immediately to Black and Jewish people each and every day.

Out of self-assigned necessity, I, a white guy, began writing about race.

At the time, I knew few Black folk. After living seven years in the Dakotas, I’m more familiar with Native Americans than with African-Americans.

And so it was that Sarah Bodge became my muse.

Writers do this all the time. Writing teachers coach students to think of someone whose opinion they value and who knows more than you about the subject. Not someone close who thinks alike, but at some distance they sometimes talk to.

A simple thumbs up would let me know I put enough emphasis in the right places. Her comments filled in what I missed but could file away for next time.

Hoped I’d see her at the reading of Frederick Douglass’ “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech, but she passed four days before.

Unlike my commentaries on events in far-flung places, I’d be writing about an event we both attended. The test was welcome, but like all tests, it makes one nervous.

Would she agree with me that the single line capturing what Douglass faced in 1852 is what we face today:

Where everything is plain, there is nothing to be argued.

Maybe that’s why I never heard Sarah argue, or express any impatience, much less anger. Even now I can’t picture her without a smile on her face.

Her quiet responses were enough to let me know where she stood—that if I wasn’t on the right track, I was at least headed in the right general direction.

Perhaps I should let it go at that. Better that she be remembered as her many friends knew her, and as her daughter describes her: “my adorable, kooky, formidable mama.”

Still, I can’t help but be rueful thinking that the person for whom I write is no more.

Then again, a muse is inspiration. Sarah’s reached me long before she hit “like” or added a comment. It came long before I hit “send”—in this case before I left the shadow of Garrison’s statue.

Writers do this all the time. It’s as we see it.

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Sarah Bodge. Photo by Tracie Ballard, Charlotte, No. Carolina, May 2016
https://www.gofundme.com/f/donate-to-support-sarah-bodges-favorite-cause

Democracy by Default

Across the Merrimack from Newburyport in the northeast corner of Massachusetts is one more town before you cross into New Hampshire. Known mostly as a beach resort with a honky-tonk playland on the North Atlantic, Salisbury’s year-round population is barely 5,000.

Size, however, does not matter to the MAGA crowd whose organizers in the recent years have strategically run for local elected offices and sought appointed positions on commissions and boards.

Salisbury must have seemed ripe for MAGA inroads thanks to one bizarre auto body shop on a main drag that features large political signs targeting such Democrats as “Joe and the Ho.” To be fair, many Salisbury residents have complained about owner Rob Roy’s signs only to run headlong into the First Amendment, which the MAGA crowd interprets as the right to be crude and stupid.

Salisbury’s town officials were neither when they appointed Samson Racioppi to the town’s Housing Authority in 2018. But they were careless, if only because no one else applied for the post. Prior to 2018, Racioppi had a well-documented history of promoting anti-gay and anti-Semitic groups.

Since then, he has hired buses to bring people to the January 6 insurrection, oranized protests in support of Wisconsin gun-boy Kyle Rittenhouse, and organized the anti-gay parade in Boston in 2019. More recently, he ran for a seat as a state rep, but Massachusetts Republicans are not so Trump Uber Alles as they are most elsewhere in America, and so Racioppi was defeated in the primary, receiving just 112 votes of 2000 cast.

Another verdict will be cast on Racioppi tonight when Salisbury’s selectmen decide whether to renew his membership on the Housing Board. Difference is that this time they know of his affiliation with several right-wing hate groups.

Anybody paying any attention knows, as it has been reported on the front page of the Boston Globe as well as detailed by the New England chapter of a group called Confronting White Supremacy. He also made Newsweek, while hatemonger Roy had to settle for the Boston affiliate of CBS. Word is circulating that the Globe intends to cover tomorrow’s Board of selectmen meeting, but I have not been able to verify that. I do know that a Newburyport Daily News reporter and at least one of the paper’s guest columnists will be there.

No doubt Racioppi will be there on his best behavior. My friends in Salisbury tell me that the recent law school graduate knows how to carry himself and play the role of Mr. Polite & All-Smiles. And he’ll be sure to show up without close friends such as Diana Ploss whose campaign for governor he helped last year. Ploss, for those who never noticed her fringe existence, is a known anti-Semite who featured a ” Minister of Hate” in her live Facebook feeds. Charmingly, she indicated July dates as ” Jew-lie.”

As he told one reporter, “We’re looking at it as if it’s a war, right?” When asked if he would participate in another January 6, he enthused,” Of course I would do it again.”

By sundown tonight, Salisbury town officials will decide whether this man will continue to hold a civic position. Says my friend, “This is not about politics. This is about right and wrong. This is about decency. This is about gay people and Jewish people feeling comfortable in their own community and knowing their elected officials have their backs.”

This evening I hope to see and eventually report that the Salisbury Board of Selectmen repudiate people who associate with anti-Semites, engage in the intimidation of minorities, and, oh by the way, aid and abet attempts to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Looking ahead–because the MAGA crowd will persist in this in all corners of this state as much as every other–the Board might also consider a resolution to investigate applicants for official boards before making appointments.

If you want to see democracy at work–or possibly destroyed–the meeting is open to the public, Salisbury Town Hall, this evening (July 17) @ 7:00.

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