E Pluribus Duo

Just home from an hour-plus-long protest called on Facebook last night. Over 300 people, maybe 400, quite big for Newburyport on about 18-hour notice.

A clear majority of cars going by had windows down and thumbs up with honking horns in support. Just two SUVs offered flipped birds & f-bombs. It was a very loud hour and perhaps 15 minutes.

As in Boston and elsewhere, they–more about that preferred pronoun below–blocked High St., N-port’s main drag and always busy on weekends, for 19 minutes, 20 seconds, a reference to the 19th Amendment ratified in 1920, women’s suffrage.

Since the organizers had a permit and city support, police blocked and re-routed traffic on one side, but cars had to stop on the other. Drivers & passengers in at least the first two cars, killed their engines, got out, and joined the demonstration.

They drew cheers so long and loud that you might have wondered if Ruth Bader Ginsburg had descended from heaven upon hearing one of the several chants:

Ruth sent us!

Rev. Rebecca Bryan of the First Religious Society Unitarian Universalist Church, and Paula Esty of the PEG Center for Art and Activism based in her downtown gallery, briefly addressed the crowd, emphasizing that there would be more actions in the coming months, most importantly aimed at getting out the vote in this year’s primaries and in November.

Several women led chants that at times were in call and response across the street:

Whose bodies? Our bodies!

What does democracy look like? This is what democracy looks like!

Most were accompanied by Kristine Malpica, Executive Director of Imagine Studios in Amesbury, who drummed a bongo so suited to the mood and intent of the gathering that some folks were bouncing to her rhythm even when she paused.

While I make no pretense of objectivity and my pro-choice leanings are well-known to readers of the Newburyport Daily News, I still honor the journalistic tenet not to wear it on my sleeve at a public event on the chance that I may write about it. Though they all want the Red Sox to win, local reporters in the press box at Fenway Park never cheer out loud.

That’s why I say “they” instead of “we.” It’s also why I never joined in the chants and declined to hold a sign–though many extras were made available, and I was asked if I wanted one.

I did have an odd encounter–or non-encounter–with a young woman who was strolling by with her dog behind the gathering on the Bartlet Mall side. An old man needing a break, I spotted a bench in the shade facing away from the street, and so I may have been the only one there who noticed her.

With her big smile and behind her stylish shades, she was pumping the V-sign in the air as she chanted along with the crowd. Not a peace sign, but a victory sign. Not the crowd’s chant, but her own:

We won!

Apparently she walked over to scan the demonstration, get an idea of how many were there, because she returned no more than 15 minutes later before I was back on my feet.

This time I kept my eyes on her, shades off, hoping to catch hers. I wasn’t going to initiate anything, but I hoped she would. If she did, I would have asked her name and told her immediately that I wrote for a newspaper and anything she said would be on the record.

No such luck. But I came close, as she spotted me and did a double-take. Her smile was gone and her chant was paused. I grinned as if to say, “Make my day!” But she didn’t take the bait, and I lost yet another chance to ask just who is meant when they say “we.”

This morning was very reassuring. Good to be reminded that Newburyport is a place where religious beliefs are not forced on us and that most folks here want it to stay that way.

Polls show that this is true across the country regarding reproductive rights. What we face, however, is a Constitution so “vaguely written,” as most agree, that it has been finessed to allow for minority rule. That includes the grossly disproportionate composition of the Senate, the Electoral College, and the process for Supreme Court appointments.

Add the filibuster, and a stylish young lass walking a dog can ridicule a few hundred citizens as they peaceably assemble for a redress of grievances by claiming, with one-hundred percent accuracy: “We won!”

But who is that “we”? And just what have they won?

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Several friends are changing their profile pics these past few days. Several show coat-hangers and as many are stills from *The Handmaid’s Tale.* This is posted by Ellen in Las Vegas. Linda in Santa Rosa posted no graphic but made a compelling point after I worried that the word “abortion” was used too much and should be replaced as often as practical by “reproductive rights,” as a matter of emphasis. She replied that the whole “narrative needs to be changed.” Instead of emphasizing the procedure, emphasize the “right of all children to be wanted.” That could be said of kids already being raised by moms unable to afford or risk another birth.

This syndicated cartoon could serve as a summary of what Bryan and Esty had to say.

To Grieve, or to Galvanize?

Like the assassination of John Lennon, the fall of Roe v. Wade has occasioned long distance phone calls to and from friends who have known each other these past fifty years.

Like many others posting on social media as I write, they express anger, frustration, and despair. Fort Myers, who shared a ride in a DC police wagon with me during an antiwar demonstration in 1971, answered my call with this:

Shoot me! Just shoot me and don’t miss!

Should have reminded her that she’s a grandparent. As grandparents, we have no choice but to remain optimistic.

Whether you’re a grandparent concerned about a baby’s future or a high-schooler suddenly alarmed about your own, there is good reason to be optimistic.

Today’s decision can galvanize most Americans from here to November to vote en masse. All Democrats, every level, state as well as federal.

No Republicans, not even the few who might say they are on our side and have cast a few votes to prove it.

Why? Because if, after the election, there are more Rs than Ds in either House or Senate, all committees will be chaired by Republicans who will shut down all attempts to restore reproductive rights–as well as voting rights, as well as restrictions on assault rifles, as well as clean air & water regulations, as well as labor rights and occupational safety, as well as consumer rights, as well as most all else we care about.

On the other hand, if Democrats keep the US House and gain US Senate seats, all of that gets done. This is also how it works in every state, including Nebraska with its single legislative body.

Most of the federal bills have already passed the House but are stuck in the Senate due to the filibuster–an arcane, anti-Constitutional procedure designed as an effective gag order on slavery before the Civil War.

Given a few more Senate seats this November, Democrats will kill the filibuster as their first order of business.

To get there, they will need massive turnouts at rallies, at town hall meetings, and especially at voting booths in primary and general elections.

We also need to watch our language. Shows of support tend to snowball, as we saw in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd. Demonstrations grew in size as they spread across the country. Many of us were predicting a “Blue Wave” in November. Until…

Defund the Police!

Yes, I’m aware of the good intent and careful details, but for most of the American public, it was just three words–a call for anarchy that Republicans pounced on. They still use it, just as they used the word “malaise” against all Democrats long after Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan.

Forty years later, Republicans could not save their whack-job grifter in the Oval Office, but that ill-advised slogan let them actually gain House seats and keep the Senate filibuster-proof.

Here’s hoping the lesson isn’t lost on us. The more we use the phrase “reproductive rights,” and the less we say “abortion,” the better we will do.

The more we say, as commentators on Boston Public Radio keep doing, that women have “enjoyed the right to an abortion,” the more we might as well, as Beatle John put it, “be carrying pictures of Chairman Mao.”

As I write, a social media post offers another solution:

We need 13 justices!

Given enough success in November, Democrats may have the numbers for the impeachment of Clarence Thomas based on the 1/6 investigation–and possibly of Brett Kavanaugh based on evidence withheld during his confirmation.

Another glaring reason to change the Supreme Court: Just yesterday, it struck down New York State’s modest gun control regulations. Hence, the present SC is telling states, no, you can’t control guns, but yes, you can control women’s bodies.

Whether or not any change is in the cards remains to be seen. All we can do is make sure all the cards are on the table come November.

Another post asks simply:

So what do we do now?

Well, Fort Myers tells me that she and her daughters and her granddaughter are on their way to a pride rally set for this weekend.

My hunch is that it will be as much a rally for reproductive rights, all of it snowballing into November.

And another, from a Newburyporter, just as I’m about to close:

Tomorrow, 10:00 AM!
Gather with us to make our voices heard. We have had ENOUGH!
The right to make our own healthcare decisions and have bodily autonomy will not be relinquished to the political arm of the Federalist Society, aka the 1950’s redux Supreme Court.
Essex County Superior Courthouse at the Bartlet Mall
145 High St, Newburyport, MA 01950

Call it E Pluribus Unum.

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During the Civil War, U.S. Army regulations set forth that an infantry unit would carry two flags. These included a national colors, meaning the Stars & Stripes, and a regimental colors, also referred to as a federal standard. This second flag, when issued by the federal government, displayed a federal eagle with a shield upon its breast, bearing the typical arrows and olive branches gripped in its talons, set upon a dark blue ground, with an arch of stars above.
https://jeffbridgman.com/inventory/index.php?page=out&id=2535

A Whip with a Whip

When Amesbury High School invited suggestions for its new mascot and a name for its sports teams, I didn’t hesitate to offer two:

The Buggies. The Cartwrights.

Amesbury, after all, calls itself “Carriagetown” based on it history of manufacturing the most comfortable mode of overland transportation before trains and cars literally ran them off the road.

The Traps? In Amesbury City Hall’s auditorium, an 1909 Canopy Beach Wagon sits at he back of the stage, a style popularized by the Oscar Hammerstein song “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.”

The Surreys? Well, there is one on the city’s official seal:

Giving it more thought and a bit of research on the website of the Amesbury Carriage Museum (link below), I have a third suggestion.

Those who held the reins and drove the horses were formerly called “Coachmen.” That, of course, would never do for a reason that, whether we like it or not, is too obvious to state. Furthermore, the more inclusive “Coachpeople” would be as ridiculous on a football jersey as a dunce-cap in place of a helmet.

However, there was a slang term for them that referred to what carriage drivers held in their hands. That item gained attention in the 1991 film, Other People’s Money, thanks to a single striking mention delivered by actor Danny DeVito in the role of a Wall Street raider. So striking that it is used to this day as a metaphor both in jest and in serious warnings and complaints.

The item is the buggy whip. The slang name that I propose for high school teams across the Merrimack:

The Amesbury Whips.

Not only does it refer to Amesbury’s history, it serves as a double entendre, standing for both the instrument and the person using it. For a triple entendre, the word “whip” is often a verb for what the best teams do to their opponents. For a quadruple entendre, it is a public official responsible for party discipline in a legislature.

Another advantage to the name–also true of Buggies and Cartwrights–is that it would be as unique to Amesbury as many minor league baseball team names are to their cities: The Akron RubberDucks, the Albuquerque Isotopes, the Amarillo Sod Poodles, the Augusta Green Jackets, going, going, going on and on.

The logo could be either the whip by itself, which would command and hold attention, or the driver holding it–a whip with a whip–which would add color and detail. Or just a hand holding the whip, which would do both.

Another name referring to those who drove carriages is “teamster.” But history has man-handled this name down to us, and its association with unions is too much baggage for a high school carriage to carry.

Speaking of baggage, Amesbury’s need for a new name is necessitated by the city’s decision to drop “Indians” as many school and professional teams have done in recent years.

Most notably the pro baseball team in Cleveland went just this year from “Indians” to “Guardians.” A strong case can be made for Amesbury to follow that lead.

Recent mass shootings in schools make it a safe bet that armed guardians will be stationed in more and more American elementary and high schools from coast to coast. School guardians may already be at the top of the list of expanding fields of employment.

Many team names are chosen to represent an occupation that defines a city: Seattle Mariners, Milwaukee Brewers, Pittsburgh Steelers, Green Bay Packers–even San Diego Padres and San Francisco 49ers might qualify. Why not school teams named for occupations within schools?

There’s no question that student athletes would never want to be called Teachers, Counsellors, or Principals, but this new presence–“a good guy with a gun”–may have some appeal.

Call it a choice between a city’s history and a school’s present: Whips or Guardians?

Based on any educator’s hope for the future, I’d crack the Whips.

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A 1909 Canopy Beach Wagon: https://amesburycarriagemuseum.org/news/2017/3/8/about-the-carriage-at-amesbury-city-hall

Reaping What Others Sow

Understatement may enhance works of art, but in journalism it is dereliction of duty.

While we can applaud the January 6th hearings and their many revelations to date, and while the use of video and live testimony has been artfully crafted, the House members are understating one crucial point.

So, too, nearly every pundit I have heard on cable news and NPR. With the exceptions of Katy Tur of MSNBC and Margery Egan of Boston Public Radio, all of them keep reminding us that Trump was sowing doubt about the election “as early as” the spring of 2020 for months ahead of the election, and that he kept repeating the groundless claims into November.

Well, yes, and thanks for the video clips to prove it. Problem is that he was doing it in the spring of 2016, months ahead of his Electoral College victory over a candidate who gained nearly three million more votes.

Like most everyone else, with the exception of filmmaker Michael Moore, Trump did not expect to win in 2016. His goal was to entice and titillate (adding to his Apprentice following), incite and insinuate, sow doubt, stoke anger, and then cash in by starting a cable TV station catering to what would come to be known as the MAGA crowd.

He’d likely have named it as he did Trump Airlines, Trump Tower, Trump University, Trump Steaks: TrumpTV. Much of it would have been Fox-styled talk shows that would keep demonizing Democrats and moderate Republicans, all aimed at satisfying Fox’s foam-at-the-mouth audience.

To steal and expand that audience would have been shows that appeal to the apolitical folks who never bothered to vote until Trump took the political stage: Extreme sports, wrestling (with a lot of folding chairs slammed over heads), monster trucks and cars, demolition derbies, “reality” shows, tours of mansions and estates owned by the ultra-rich, gambling and casino life, soft-porn such as Girls Gone Wild, and a series based on his book, The Art of the Deal.

If that sounds like I’m piling on, let me remind you that, before he came down the escalator, Trump was involved in all of the above.

All of that flim-flam and fraud are lost if the House Committee and the media keep reinforcing the notion that the run-up to January 6 began in the spring of 2020 rather than the spring of 2016.

Also lost are the identical claims of Republican candidates in Florida and Georgia during the 2018 midterms, each of whom won thanks to the purging of voter rolls in both states since the 2010 Census. Georgia and Florida were already doing what many other Republican controlled states are doing now.

Their advance claims of rigged elections were right from the Trump playbook of 2016, something that the January 6 Committee allows to go unnoticed by citing the spring of 2020 as the time when the “seeds of doubt” were first sown.

For that matter, the claim of rigged elections came from a most successful playbook used by an Austrian immigrant in Germany ninety years ago, but no one wants to talk about that. If we did talk about it, we’d quickly realize the advantage that Team Trump has had over all who have opposed them since 2016:

Democrats have to prove things. Trumpublicans need only create doubt, chaos, confusion. This is why Tucker Carlson phrases much of what he says as questions. He doesn’t report, he doesn’t have to. He insinuates. A pre-disposed audience takes it from there.

Which brings us right back to the problem of understatement. The same pundits who fret that the public may not be paying due attention are themselves afraid or are unwilling to offer the context that would command that attention.

The first seeds were not sown in the spring of 2020, nor did the harvest end on January 6, 2021. Doubt is being sown as we speak, and the harvests loom large in November this year and in 2024.

To talk and think about this as having a beginning, middle, and end that fit into a period no longer that that between conception and birth is to ignore what has already been born–and is still being conceived.

For all of its good work, the January 6th Committee’s understatement, reinforced by the media, is doing more harm than good.

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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/humor–350366045987740499/

An Oscar for Imagination

If you are looking for “something completely different,” a phrase used by a few Screening Room patrons last night, there’s a new, quirky British “dramedy,” to borrow Rotten Tomatoes’ portmanteau, now playing at independent art houses near and far from you.

Using a phrase associated with Monty Python is a good start to describe Brian and Charles, but other comments I heard proved as true:

They thought of everything!
So sweet, I didn’t want it to end!
I was laughing and crying all through it!

For an idea of the film’s vibe, it may help to know that both The Turtles’ “Happy Together” and Fairport Convention’s “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” serve as soundtracks for transitional scenes–all before Charles, in his robotic voice, raps a summary of what becomes of him when the film and the credits end.

Add to that scenes from the Welsh countryside, and the cinematography is as much a treat as all you hear.

Characters? There are many comparable films, from Rainman to CODA, but it may be more to the point to think of this as Straw Dogs with hope in lieu of cynicism, or The Shape of Water with far more humor. It’s also a nice follow-up for those of us who recently enjoyed The Duke.

Brian and Charles echoes many stories with characters put together in workshops that come to life. Consider them as a spectrum with Frankenstein and Pinocchio on opposite ends, and Charles would split the difference while reminding anyone of my generation of Tommy Smothers.

Brian, an eccentric inventor, could easily be in Monty Python’s troupe. A recluse when we meet him who can barely talk to Hazel no matter how longingly they eye each other, he comes to life as much as Charles when the pressure is on.

At Charles’ invitation, Hazel helps Brian by echoing his own advice: Use your imagination. His rebirth is realized following a horrifying scene that resonates in a time and place where a candidate for president can openly mock a man with multiple sclerosis and still win the election.

That comparison comes in the form of the town bully, his bullish wife, and their two pit-bull teenage daughters. And so we have a story of peril added to an understated love story that makes Brian and Charles as satisfying a “sweet” story as I can recall.

All while being out-loud hilarious. The climactic scene has many surprises which I’d rather leave as surprises, except for one to whet your appetite: Brian’s “super shover.” Yes, it saves the day–along with Charles shooting Brian’s “cabbage cannon”–but it’s in Hazel’s way when they want to embrace.

The image? Well, let’s just say they thought of everything.

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Nothing but Nuts

Following Thursday night’s loss in the NBA Finals and the end of their Jekyll & Hyde season, the Boston Celtics have announced that they will change their name before the opening of the 2022-23 season this fall.

Fans will have a say, although the team may narrow the choice to two names that most represent their style of play before asking for a Boston Globe poll:

The Boston Bricklayers — For no end of clanking three-point attempts.

The Boston Bakers — For no end of turnovers.

Team President Layon Mortar says that they are awaiting their own poll from around the region to consider possibilities such as Mass Bay Masons, New England No-Looks, and Atlantic Air-Balls, but the decision will need to be made by the end of this month to allow time for designs of a new logo, uniforms, stationary, and PR material.

The road uniforms will remain green, as will the trim on the home unis, the paint on the Garden floor, point guard Marcus Smart’s hair, and all printed or posted backdrops for signage and advertisements.

“We thought about taking the media’s nickname for us, ‘Gang Green,'” admits Mortar, “but the smell of the double-entendre was much too strong in our last two games.”

“A brick or a turnover logo will be easy to draw,” says Public Relations Director Pat Isserie, “and turnovers will offer a variety of colors with apple, apricot, raspberry.”

Logos will not appear on the team uniforms. “We’re confident our players will put enough bricks and turnovers onto the court without having to wear them,” Mortar says.

Isserie adds that, if they go with “Bakers,” artificial scents of pastry “like right out of the oven” will be put into the Garden’s ventilation system for all home games. Asked if that was legal, Isserie said the suggestion came from the owner of a chain of cineplexes that do this with the smell of popcorn–none of which is popped in chain theaters, in case you didn’t know.

Protests against the move are already being organized in South Boston and in Irish-American enclaves across the state.

“We won’t stand for this political correctness!” declared Harpo McLoud, a self-described life-long fan and a regular at watch parties held in the parking lot of Patty O’Furniture in the Seaport.

Asked what the change had to do with politics, McLoud yelled, “They’re taking away our fun!” Asked who “they” are, McLoud shook his fist, “Them!”

But elsewhere the change appears welcome, including by other NBA team owners and the league office.

“That leprechaun has to be the ugliest logo in all of sports,” sighed NBA Commissioner Buzz R. Beater. “If we can get the rest of the team to dye their hair green, no one will miss it.”

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Boston – May 15: Boston Celtics guard Marcus Smart (36) howls as his three pointer gave the Celtics a 97-75 lead during the fourth quarter. The Boston Celtics host the Milwaukee Bucks in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semi-finals between the Celtics and Bucks on May 15, 2022 at TD Garden in Boston. (Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

A Bill to Kill a Bill

Is it a miracle of language or a finesse of politics that a single statement can be both true and false at the same time?

That it can simultaneously be both hopeful and cynical? Hilarious and deadly?

Congress is about to pass gun safety legislation.

“Bipartisan,” both Democrats and Republicans boast, and even the self-styled Grim Reaper, Mitch McConnell, who prides himself on killing bills passed by Democrats in the US House–over 400 as he once bragged to reporters–has expressed support.

Why shouldn’t he? The bill does not include raising the age for the purchase of a gun from 18 to 21, nor does it ban military assault rifles. The bill is so watered-down from what gun-safety activists have been seeking that, if it was a bourbon-sour, a ten-year-old could wolf down three and still drive home unimpaired.

Democrats admit that it falls far short of what is needed, but call it a “first step.” Oh, it’s a first step all right. Right into a hole where the Republicans will keep them from here to November. While barely making a dent in the gun-fetish climate Republican donors pay to preserve, the bill will allow all Republicans to claim, “Look, we did something about gun violence, we compromised, we’re bipartisan.”

In political parlance, this bill will take mass shootings “off the table” for the mid-term elections. Even the Republicans who vote against it will take credit for it, just as they did for Obamacare a decade ago, and for the relief packages at the start of the pandemic.

Some liberal pundits add that, if–or when–we have mass shootings after this passes, it will enable Republicans to revert to the argument that gun-safety measures do not work. At first, I thought that claim so transparently absurd that no one could possibly fall for it. Then, as so often happens, come repeated slaps in the face: Reminders of so many Americans falling for no end of nonsense and lies since the Golden Calf rode down the escalator into a paid and orchestrated audience.

No wonder Sen. McConnell has endorsed the bill. The reason that he has killed so many Democratic House bills is not because he thinks they will not work, but because he fears they will work and become popular and then impossible to overturn. That’s why Obamacare was so watered down and why attempts to reform campaign financing go nowhere. It’s also why McConnell robbed Obama of a Supreme Court appointment and hustled one for Trump.

He figures that the pending gun bill cannot work in any meaningful way. More than that, it denies measures that would work. If the public pays only surface attention to headlines, slogans, photo-ops, and memes, he will be right. Thanks to that same surface attention, gun violence will disappear as an issue as Republicans run out the electoral clock with repeated charges regarding inflation and the price of gas. No matter that those problems are caused by price-gouging of oil companies under cover of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Democrats are caught not so much between a rock and a hard place as in the middle of an optical illusion. If they vote for the bill, they play right into Republican hands and risk losing any chance of passing anything meaningful in the foreseeable future. If they vote against, they risk alienating many of their own supporters who, like the MAGA crowd, see only headlines, slogans, photo-ops, and memes.

Sometimes I think we need a modern day Paul Revere to charge across the American landscape and wake people up. And no, it is not lost on me that when he took that ride in 1775, he awakened a few along his route to Lexington who then fired rifles into the air. Those reports spread the alarm far beyond his voice, awakening others who mounted horses and rode off in all directions. All of it planned and mapped out ahead of time–an early example of the “well-regulated” militias that would be codified into law by the Second Amendment in 1791.

Is it a miracle of language or a finesse of politics that a law intended for regulation is now used to deny all attempts at regulation?

Be that as it may, if Revere rode today, the Republicans would yell “fake news,” and the Democrats would tell him to return to Boston and gain bipartisan support before re-crossing the Charles.

If you just laughed, then you know how all of this can be hilarious and deadly at the same time.

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Cartoon by Nick Anderson of the Houston Chronicle, Jan. 31, 2013. I found it in this most insightful and informative blog: https://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-second-amendment-is-not-absolute.html

All in the Wash

Laundry day. Always a Monday or Tuesday after breakfast, which for me is often just before noon.

The timing is to put me in the newly named Plum Island Coffee, right next to the formerly named Village Washtub, during the dry-cycle so I can forget about personal enemy number one, Time, and write. Maybe another installment of my haphazard memoirs, or yet another rant and rave against a world gone wild, or a slaphappy observation of human foibles. If the coffee is strong enough, possibly all three at once.

You may wonder: What about the wash cycle?

That’s so much shorter that I don’t mind the half-hour delay of my post-breakfast coffee. In bad weather, I’ll sit in the Tub where I can see the toss and tumble of my clothes, towels, and bedding. As I have for years, I can sometimes see why washing machines so delighted Zippy the Pinhead Clown. Cartoonist Bill Griffith was onto something–or at least onto me. I’d have never admitted that during all the years I followed Zippy, but now that I’m past 70, I’ll say anything.

On days like this, I cross the street and stroll about the length of a football field–American, without the end-zones–to Newburyport’s boardwalk along the Merrimack River, nicely lined with benches, most of them under the shade of trees.

Most were occupied when I arrived, except for a line of seven that were curiously empty. I turned right toward the first one, took a seat, and as soon as I looked up toward the river, I saw why:

Docked right there was a sparkling white 125-foot luxury yacht, a Westport Rennegade (sic). Before I could laugh at my bad luck, an elderly couple started to take a seat at the next bench. He was still on his feet before she got back up and said, “No, not here, there’s no view.”

Eventually, three women, 50ish, took a bench on one side of me, and when the bench on the other side was vacated, three more 50/60ish women took it. I was beginning to like my odds, but I settled for the enjoyment of hearing them talk: Both conversations were about the former president claiming fraud to raise a quarter of a million dollars for a legal-defense fund that never existed. Like the proverbial cherry on top, a 30/40ish woman walking by told her friend of her admiration for Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) who spelled out the scam for a national audience. Finally, something that sticks!

Sitting across from the boat’s back end, I looked out toward the mouth of the river–until movement on the yacht caught my eye. Something like a crane atop the vessel was lowering into the water a speedboat that had been packed away somewhere. The crane moved slowly but steadily, silently, and few people held ropes to keep the back of the smaller boat from hitting the dock.

Did I say smaller? It could carry at least six people. And did I say (sic)? A teenager might call it sick. The yacht “sleeps ten overnight.” According to the website, these babies can be had for a mere $118,000. Not for sale, but for lease. Not for a year or a season, but for a single week. Well, it does come with a crew of four, and there is that sports boat if you get bored with cruising at 22 knots, or just about the legal speed limit in residential neighborhoods. I couldn’t find a sale price, but I bet it would require more than one extra N.

Many people of all ages walked by, half of them with dogs, some stopping to admire the boat, as many paying no attention, and a few grumbling about “conspicuous consumption,” as one overheard phrase put it. As if on cue, two people carrying bags brimming with groceries emerged from the parking lot nearby and brought them to the dock into waiting arms that carried them into the boat’s cabin. They went back to the lot and returned with four more, this time handing off to boaters or crew who came up onto the walk, who then brought them to the dock where more sets of hands picked them up to finish the trek. Meanwhile, four more bags came from the lot and were put into this bag brigade.

Never occurred to me to count, but at least 30 full-sized bags, all marked “Market Basket,” went on board, followed by several bunches of flowers and about six black bags that I’m fairly certain are used by New England Wine & Spirits. Since the local Market Basket sells no beer or wine, seems likely that it is liquor, and anyway, my guess is that the people on this boat are not holding an AA convention.

A gray-haired woman probably wasn’t referring to food and booze when she asked me if I was going to hitchhike a ride. I did so much hitchhiking in my twenties that, if you put it all together, I probably walked backwards the length of Nebraska–where a lot of that walking happened. I told her what every hitchhiker knew back then: It’s relatively easy for a couple. She laughed out loud and kept walking. When she came back the other way, as most all do on the boardwalk, I spoke first: “You changed your mind!” She laughed again.

Writing this account in PIC, fueled by a Costa Rican light roast, I’m on a seat lined up with a space between two buildings across the street with a narrow view of, yes, Rennegade out of Fort Lauderdale–though I suppose those leasing it could be from anywhere, even Nebraska considering that a crew does all the navigating.

Hearing a familiar voice behind me, I yell “Hello Bruce!” over my shoulder and wait for him to take a chair. I need not offer it since he owns the place and it is his chair. Hell, the chair I’m in is his chair. He asks what I’m up to. Pretty sure he misses the days, from about 2013 to 2017, when I kept throwing bricks through windows of City Hall, even though he was in City Hall at the time and still is.

Motioning to my screen and then out the window, I tell him about the boat and the opposing views: In this case, a $700-at-least tab at the local supermarket and who knows how much else pumped into the local economy, especially restaurants, versus seven park benches with blocked views.

He looks out, smiles, and says something to the effect of how we need to consider these things with balance. I promise to do the best I can.

And so, as I tell him, I report about local revenues and blocked views. About conspicuous consumption and a price of gas that makes a normal sized motorboat spend upwards of $70 to circumnavigate Plum Island thanks to price-gouging corporations while a president takes the blame.

I do not tell him that I eavesdropped the news today, oh boy!

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This pic is from Westport’s website. The “sports boat” (my term) can de discerned to the right of the American flag, it’s outboard motor facing the camera.
https://www.yachtcharterfleet.com/luxury-charter-yacht-50845/rennegade.htm

To Look or Not to Look

Aside from the high stakes for America’s immediate and long-term future, I’m tuning into the hearings for an entirely self-indulgent reason:

Fond memories of the Watergate hearings in my youth.

Whether we call it the Committee to Investigate January 6th or the Committee to Investigate a Normal Tourist Day, I’m resolved to see all the footage, hear all the witnesses, and consider all conclusions drawn by members of the committee and by media pundits.

Well, yes, there are some I will rule out: anyone who buys the “normal tourist day” or “minor dust-up” or “legitimate political discourse” explanations; anyone who believes the guy who says his supporters went to the Capitol “filled with love,” and anyone who says the Capitol Police “waved the crowd in.”

Don’t know what makes that “logic” possible. Did America experience a surge in lobotomies these past six years?

Back in the Seventies, there were no hair-brained rationalizations for Watergate. No one suggested that the “plumbers,” as the burglars were called, were really locksmiths there to fix a deadbolt and keep Democratic Party records safe.

Or that the 18-minute gap in the White House tape was made when “Alice’s Restaurant” had to be erased to avoid copyright infringement–though that didn’t stop Arlo Guthrie, prompted by Chip Carter, Jimmy’s son, from using that yarn to introduce the song in future concerts.

There was, however, an artistic preview of this month’s hearings. And we must acknowledge that climate change has a much closer connection to an assault on democracy than did Thanksgiving Day trash thrown onto a bank of the Housatonic River.

Last year a film titled Don’t Look Up was a national sensation. Did the filmmakers know that a national political party this year would adopt “Don’t Watch It” as a defiant slogan?

Cast as a US president, Meryl Streep rallied her supporters with “Keep your head down and look straight ahead!” That could well be the programming order for Fox Noise to run Tucker Carlson without commercials while every real news outlet airs the hearings.

Fox is afraid that curious viewers might channel surf and get caught in the prime-time wave. Curiosity is not something I would attribute to a Fox viewer, but I guess they were taking no chances.

Willful ignorance is a recurring theme in American history. Not long after independence, Southern congressmen in both the US House and Senate imposed gag orders to prevent any discussion of slavery. By the 1850s, white supremacists added Catholic and Jewish immigrants to their targets, giving rise to the Know Nothings, a nickname they embraced.

To this day, many still refuse to believe that Ronald Reagan was involved in the Iran-Contra guns-for-hostages exchange despite all evidence to the contrary. Or that he dismantled a healthy middle class economy with sweeping deregulation that sent most US manufacturing overseas.

Since the pandemic, the resistance to vaccines, mask-mandates, and closures has turned town and city hall meetings across the country into angry shouting matches with threats of violence. The man whose refusal to act cost hundreds of thousands of lives is still hailed as a hero while Dr. Anthony Fauci is compared to Adolph Hitler. Maybe they should drink Clorox.

As American writer and biochemist Isaac Asimov observed in 1980:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

In Don’t Look Up, we get a long look at a man in Streep’s rally who turns around and, gasp!, looks up. In that moment, American history went from “the British are coming” to that man’s “the comet is coming!”

Are there any curious folks in the MAGA crowd who might turn around and start yelling, “The facts are coming”? If all of this goes nowhere, if the findings are ignored and a gullible public favors Republicans in November, will anyone be willing to call it what it is and warn us, “Fascism is coming”?

Or are we still clinging to the belief that nothing today can be compared to the 1930s? That–despite Jan.6, despite Charlottesville, despite Helsinki, despite the Russian connections outlined in the Mueller Report, despite the “perfect phone call,” despite the upside-down Bible, despite “alternative facts,” despite a convention of Republican officials and Fox News hosts held in the dictatorship of Hungary, despite so much else–it can’t happen here?

In the summer of ’73, I was lucky to work with a landscaping crew whose boss scheduled us around the hearings. Not only that, but the four of us went to his place and enjoyed the show with roast beef sandwiches, potato salad, Panama Red, and a beer we called “the green death.”

We didn’t miss a minute–even though there was no video of any ordinary tourists wearing horns, or people “filled with love” setting up a scaffold, or “patriots” who were called “very special” after chanting “Hang Gerald Ford!”

That boss passed a couple years ago, as did the guy who brought the Panama Red. The other fellow lives in California on a Keto diet and has sworn off all beer. Hard to imagine him putting up with a lush like me even if he lived across the street.

So I watch alone and imagine what they’d say. At times I remember their reactions, especially one from Panama Red who, following testimony as clearly damning as, say, that of the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on opening night last week, would yell, not so much at the television as at viewers who were still not convinced:

“What more do you want???”

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By Jeff Darcy of the *Cleveland Plain-Dealer*. He wrote an excellent article to accompany it: https://www.cleveland.com/darcy/2022/06/fox-deafens-jan-6-hearings-darcy-cartoon.html

Eyes off the Ball

There’s a saying in basketball that, if you want to understand how a team’s offense works, don’t watch the player who brings the ball up the court. Watch instead where and how his teammates move.

That may be an overwrought way of saying that something needing attention is “off” or “under the radar,” but it does imply that things are still visible, if only we look.

And that they are done in concert with the things that dominate the radar and keep our attention. Those four players go where they can receive a pass, set a screen, create an open lane, or grab a rebound.

For instance, we all heard of–and most of us heard and saw–actor Matthew McConaughey’s passionate call for gun control legislation days after the school shooting in his native Uvalde, Texas.

Few, however, heard what happened when he finished and started to leave the press conference. And those who did hear it likely thought it was a fluke when a reporter for Newsmax, a Trumpian Fox-wannabe, yelled out a question:

“Sir, are you grandstanding?”

Reports from actual news sources and postings from social media rarely mention this, and none that I have found include McConaughey’s reaction. He may not have heard it, though my saying so may be just wishful thinking.

On another team, that reporter was a player without the ball, but his question was very much on the court. No fluke, it always has been and will continue to be crucial to the right-wing game-plan.

With the ball are those who had already dismissed Sandy Hook and Parkland as false flags and the survivors as “crisis actors.” Anyone calling for common sense remedies–from Democratic senators to basketball coaches to columnists in small town newspapers–will be accused of “playing politics” or “grandstanding.”

For an Oscar-winning actor (Dallas Buyers Club, 2013), it goes deeper. As Dan Rather, another Texan, quipped:

I love how the people dismissing Matthew McConaughey as a “celebrity” fawn over the man who presided over Celebrity Apprentice and hail Ted Nugent as, well, a celebrity.

No one believes it. Not even those who say it on Fox or Newsmax or OAN or on hate-radio. That’s why neither irony nor contradiction register with them. I doubt that their audiences believe it. No rational person could possibly take the accusation literally.

Instead, such claims serve as anesthesia. That’s why there are so many, and why they are constantly repeated. Dismissing McConaughey allows them to dismiss Uvalde, every shooting that preceded it, and every one sure to follow.

The Newsmax reporter didn’t have the ball when he positioned himself to incite the actor in hopes of drawing a foul. But he figured that with all eyes on McConaughey, his real intent would go unnoticed.

His use of “sir” was a nice, if cynical, touch. Bob Cousy might have called it “finesse.” Larry Bird would have called it “bait.”

That’s what a team does when it has no offense other than forcing mistakes, cashing in on mistakes, and running out the clock till the next election until which it hopes it has kept enough people fooled enough of the time.

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