Former President Nixon - A Key to Knicks 1970 Championship?

With the New York Knickerbockers not making it into June again, true Knicks fans have some time to reflect. For me, it’s coming upon a scorecard recalling this 13 year-old’s train trip to MSG late November 1968 to see the hated Celtics. This was less than a month before the December 19, 1968 trade of Walt Bellamy and Howard Komives for Dave DeBusschere which would ultimately lead to a Knicks NBA championship in 1970. And now from Wikipedia I learn that “Komives was involved in a personal feud with Cazzie Russell that negatively affected the rest of the team. Russell was an ardent supporter of Richard Nixon in the 1968 Presidential election, while Komives worked for the Hubert Humphrey campaign which led to the trade.” Who knew? DeBusschere’s gritty and outstanding play, Walt “Clyde” Frazier’s promotion to point guard and Willis Reed’s becoming a force at center might just might make Cazzie Russell the MVP—notwithstanding Clyde’s 36 points, 19 assists and 7 rebounds in Game 7 against the Lakers on May 7, 1970 on his way to the Hall of Fame. Here’s to Cazzie Russell and his rather poor taste in presidential politics—-it’s not all about the x’s and o’s! And if not Cazzie, let’s give some credit to Richard Milhous himself.

LVIV

My late and beloved mother Adele Brav traveled 2 hours on a train with my grandmother on August 31, 1939 to Lviv, then part of Poland and known as Lvov or Lvow. A shopping trip the day before 4th grade. That was the end of her formal education as war broke out the next day. The Soviets had trouble occupying the city back then and gave way to the Nazis in 1941. Ultimately Lviv became part of Ukraine in 1944 in the post-war settlement(s).

UCSB Oral History Project (2003)

ONE FINE EVENING

“The past comes upon you like smoke on the air, you can smell it and find yourself gone,
To a place that you lived without worry or care, isn’t that where we all once came from?”

— Mary Chapin Carpenter from The Age of Miracles (2010)

This was back in the day, way back, a half century ago, a memory that seems at once both distant and fresh. It is the kind of memory that teases, a snapshot with faded colors and creased edges, making you feel for just a moment that you can somehow really get back there before the mortgage payments, the back pain and the sleepwalking trips to the bathroom. Before all the mistakes you and everyone else you know are going to make. Before time slips away because that is all time has ever done.

Before you learn that everything will be alright anyway but only if you let it be.

This was a Tuesday evening high school basketball game in March of 1972, a day after I turned 17 years old. It was the Nassau County semi-finals, played at Hofstra in front of more than four thousand, mostly partisan teenagers like me, the largest crowd in New York State schoolboy history. This was Arnold Stone and his underdog Lawrence Golden Tornadoes taking on William “Beaver” Smith and the prior year’s champion South Side Cyclones of Rockville Centre.

I was in 11th grade at Lawrence and had no idea what a golden tornado was or that Georgia Tech football had the nickname for a couple of decades in the early 20th century. Tornadoes. Cyclones. Didn’t give these stormy names a second thought because climate change was just another name for spring break. I knew we were the blue and gold and that was about it. There was of course that Golden Tornado restaurant on the corner of Branch Boulevard and Peninsula Boulevard across the street from Public School No. 6. A lunch hour fried egg sub sandwich with the hash brown potatoes thrown right in. An always welcoming owner named Joe whose alleged penchant for bookmaking reportedly earned some time out from behind the counter. The best pinball machine with real three-dimensional silver metal balls and genuine tilt pronouncements. Most of all, the time to eat and play with friends willing to just stand by the side of the glass and wait their turn.

They’re all gone now, the restaurant, the public elementary school, and yes, Arnold and Beaver.

I had tried out for the team the previous summer of 1971 but needed more inches, more pounds and more talent. The coach was Fred Seger, a basketball and baseball star at Nebraska in the 1950s, ahead of his time in terms of physical conditioning. An intimidating man to anyone who had some growing and growing up to do. When I found out I could walk off as easily as I had walked on, with no one noticing either, I turned to writing about the season for the school paper. This had allowed me to witness an exhibition debacle the prior fall against Suffolk County Brentwood’s Mitch Kupchak of LA Lakers fame that made me glad I was sitting safely above court level with a pen and pad. But somehow, the boys from the Five Towns were here just a few months later playing to the hopes of their mere mortal classmates, some carrying signs that read THE ONLY WAY TO BEAT A BEAVER IS WITH A STONE.

This was years before ESPN, years before its Top Plays, years before Michael Jordan and sneaker deals offered adolescents still in algebra class. Before ticket prices climbed out of reach and before someone had the not great idea to insert radio commercials between baseball pitches. Before one of my favorite movies, Hoosiers, and two of my least favorites, Space Jam and Space Jam: A New Legacy. Long before videogame NBA 2K kept too many people inside. No smartphones, no Snapchatting, no Twitter or TikTok pics. All eyes fixed on a basketball court and a scoreboard.

You can Google South Side 70 Lawrence 68 for the next month and all you will find are real estate listings, temperature readings and restaurant prices. A black and white photo shows the center jump, Arnold wearing number 33 and Beaver 34, bodies fully extended and rising, fingertips stretched towards the heavens, the basketball balanced atop their meeting left hands. Today the commentators would describe this brilliant battle as a shame someone had to lose. The game is gone, long gone, no matter how many jump shots Stone made that day in a valiant effort to take down the champion. Tony Kornheiser for Newsday---yes, that Tony Kornheiser, a few years out of nearby Hewlett High School and a few decades ahead of Monday Night Football and Pardon the Interruption---would take up most of a full sports page to pen a piece entitled South Side Wins a Tough One – But Stone Is a Winner in Losers’ Locker Room.

Beaver Smith would have a fabulous 4-year career at St. John’s, mostly for coaching legend Lou Carnesecca, be drafted in the 5th round by the Knicks in 1976, and play in Europe. Arnold would never quite live up to his own athletic promise in a few years of college ball at Skagit Valley College, Nassau Community College and Jacksonville University. By all accounts both would live rich lives of family and friendships, surely enjoying their past success and attention but never resting or relying on it. Beaver passed away in 2018 and Arnold just last year, both in their 60s, both long before their time.

Next month, on the 7th of March, it will be fifty years since that game. The favorite won, the underdog lost. That’s more often than not how it goes. I have always identified with underdogs. I rooted for the Mets, not the Yankees. My father was born into abject poverty and my mother was imprisoned in Europe as a child. I wrote a novel, The Other Side of Losing, celebrating the baseball fans of Chicago who spent a century waiting for a World Series championship, not realizing it was the friendships made along the way that made them winners long before the fickle bouncing balls finally behaved.

The history of competitive sports organization shows an early concern for not tipping the balance from participation towards partisanship too dramatically. The same can be said for society at large. We make too much of teams, of tribes, of races, religions. Of winners. We are all underdogs, all winners and all losers, all in this together, in this beautiful but all too brief game of life.

We have social media now and we see the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, the anniversaries, the passings. I shake my head and wonder how all those days disappeared so quickly. I don’t really recognize the face in the mirror looking back at me. Every heartburn might be heart failure, tanning freckles the dawn of melanoma, headaches and bellyaches all the possible arrival of that dreaded thing our parents whispered about as the C-word. My friends and I still spend too much time worrying and wondering why the world at large seems as broken as it was when we came into it.  I’ve said goodbye to both parents and to many good friends and family members. And to Beaver and Arnold, two men to whom I owe one very fine evening, that kind of moment that helps add to a good life. After all, if time is going to remain undefeated, it still feels damn good to get your shots up, wherever you are.

Scary Seventies

Seeing pitcher Ian Anderson star for the Braves this past month reminded me of the first Ian Anderson. I was a huge Jethro Tull fan ---Benefit, Aqualung (with Cross-Eyed Mary, Locomotive Breath, Hymn 43 and the first known recorded mention of snot running down his nose), Thick As A Brick. Never once did I wonder why he was standing on one leg to play the flute---no reason---or why he took up salmon farming at the expense of songwriting. But he has a new tune now and, judging from the cover photo, scarier in his 70s than he ever was in the 70s.

ONCE UPON A DINER

Impressive how the Internet can send one off on so many time-consuming trips; at my age, they are most often down the proverbial Memory Lane.

Today Newsday emailed me that “LI’s oldest diner closes, another victim of COVID—-The spot has served its last order of eggs over easy with rye toast and well-done home fries” https://www.newsday.com/lifestyle/restaurants/sunnys-riverhead-diner-grill-1.50368840?utm_term=sub&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Sunday%20Top%20Reads

I grew up on Long Island and have had more than my share of eggs over, rye toast and well-done home fries. I made it out to Riverhead only once and missed out on Sunny’s Riverhead Diner & Grill. Opened in 1932, it went through a few ownership changes, before this last group bought it and the land below in 2017. I feel for those folks, the owners, the employees and the regulars like the Riverhead woman in the article who explained why she became a regular. “They see me walk in and they pour my coffee. Look, I can make breakfast at home — I’m a pretty good cook. But I like connecting with my community, and that’s why I go to Sunny’s. Every town needs a diner."

She is so right. Every town needs a diner. I may have had a slightly different take on being a regular many years ago—http://www.themonarchreview.org/irregular-peter-brav/—-but the point isn’t how regular or irregular you are, it’s community and we began losing it long before this pandemic we will survive. Every town needs a diner, maybe two or three. A diner is community, sometimes 24-hour community for the starving and one with a single cup of coffee, the gregarious and the lonely, the sleepy and the insomniacs.

I remember the Sherwood Diner on Rockaway Turnpike where I grew up. It’s still there thankfully just as it was for my parents one night a week, my father every Sunday morning with his one true friend Lenny and for me at one in the morning after another night of doing what young people do in the preceding three or four hours. Eggs are more reliable than most things in life.

I remember the Rosebud Diner in downtown Ithaca. It’s closed now but it was just 77 cents in ‘77 for two eggs, toast, home fries, and coffee. We were there every Friday and Saturday night because Ithaca had a regrettable curfew for bars. We were young, not that tired and hungry. I ordered the same thing every night, dry toast, no butter, and usually had the same waitress who always heard rye toast, buttered. It didn’t matter, I simply got used to rye toast. And I remember Hal’s Deli downtown too. Yes, not technically a diner, but it had that same feel. I remember owner Sandy greeting us as if she were everyone’s mother. She is much more memorable for me than most of my professors. Motherly, with great sandwiches in 1977, and still going strong until 2017. You can’t teach that. https://www.14850.com/05233837-hals-closing-photos/

And I remember that diner at the northeast corner of First Avenue and 79th Street too. I went there most mornings in the early ‘80s on my way to the Lexington Avenue subway. Every single time I went in, I saw the same quite elderly two ladies at the first table to the right. There was never anything on that table but bottomless cups of coffee and an ashtray full of their chain-smoking remains. On one occasion, the owner lamented to me at the register that “those two are in their nineties, all they do is smoke cigarettes and drink coffee all morning long and they’re going to live forever.” He had a gleam in his eye and I knew then that he would have been crushed if they weren’t around to occupy that table. I’m sure if I walk in there this morning, they will still be there, sipping away, smoking without knowledge of laws that may have changed in the interim, in my mind’s eye anyway. Community’s like that.

Read this in MORTAL MAG—-https://mortalmag.com/2021/10/27/once-upon-a-diner/

New York Past

The New York Post used to have five reasons for its continued existence. One, it had great headline writers; important articles and thoughtful opinions, of course, not so much. Two, it was founded by Fading Founding Father Alexander Hamilton who with the props provided by Lin-Manuel Miranda no longer needs the credit on his resume. Three, it had a wondrous New York sports section made obsolete by ESPN circa 1979. Four, its Page Six so successfully dove as low as possible for celebrity news and gossip but is sadly now rendered yesterday’s non-news by TMZ and the entire internet. Lastly, it employed folks and I believe it still does.

Five reasons now down to one, FOR.

Five million now up to five million and one, AGAINST.

That new one is the fact that they have located the only person on earth, the “auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles, Robert Barron”, who has managed to label John Lennon’s Imagine as “one of the worst pop songs of all time”. Listening to the song presented at the Tokyo Summer Olympics opening ceremony, he finds the “melody and arrangement are ­indeed beautiful, the lyrics are an invitation to moral and political chaos”.

Barron presents a religious screed of course and he is so entitled to that. He’s entitled also to warn us that we can never have heaven on earth, that we can only have heaven in heaven, where it belongs. And he can complain that there can’t be a “brotherhood of man” without “a common Father” while he’s at it. It’s called preaching I think, he’s probably quite good at it, and everyone’s entitled to preach to anyone who wants to hang in there and listen. And he’s entitled to guffaws and the suppression of guffaws listening to the lyrics, as Barron describes he did; it is a free world after all.

So the point is, this is on the bad old Post, not Barron. Preachers gonna preach, small church, the whole world if they can manage that. It was the Post after all that added the headline JOHN LENNON’S ‘IMAGINE’, BLARED AT THE OLYMPICS, IS A TOTALITARIAN’S ANTHEM. https://nypost.com/2021/07/25/imagine-blared-at-the-olympics-is-a-totalitarians-anthem/

That’s what the Post does, headlines, when they’re not busy inspiring one former president in 1989 to wrongfully attempt to lynch the Central Park Five, invading anyone and everyone’s privacy for any reason, falling in lockstep with the rest of the Fox News empire, and generally doing their daily part to make bipartisanship, compromise, reasoned discussion, and, yeah, peace on earth a little less likely.

And now, with a preacher’s words, they’ve brought Imagine into it. Please refrain. Imagine is an honest and concise review of a few thousand years of what has brought us to this point, weaved into a dream, a beautiful dream for humanity, simple as that. Call it long-term planning, a model, a vision. Just please don’t call it “an invitation to moral and political chaos” or headline it as “a totalitarian’s anthem".

Some might add, you’re better than that, New York Post, but I will have to disagree.

INTERDEPENDENCE DAY

In the later years of his long life, before his memory blurred, my father would routinely celebrate July 4th of 1949 aloud. That was the day, he would remind me in a gleeful uncharacteristically raised voice, he met the love of his life. Pressed for details, he would recall a Brooklyn boy, just three years removed from braving his way with the Fighting 69th Infantry from France through Germany to the Elbe River meetup with the Russian Army. Sneaking into a Macy’s Store Workers Union Independence Day dance at the Hotel New Yorker that evening, he met my mother to be. Mom was a shy Polish immigrant the same three years out of Europe, from years of displacement in a Siberian forced labor camp all the way to joyous employment in Ladies Sportswear at the Herald Square flagship store. The Flatbush boy and the Polish girl would begin 65 years of codependence, very proud Americans leaning on each other always to gamely try to soothe vivid memories of hunger, fear and death.

                They needed each other and so do we, all of us.

                This is the 245th birthday of our nation, celebrated from sea to shining sea in an extended weekend of beaches, grilling, music, parades, and fireworks. It is a day we recall those courageous, brilliant and usually squabbling forebears who managed to come together for one purpose, departing English rule, crafting a forever memorable document in the Declaration of Independence to set their course. All of it is, and always will be, worth celebrating daily.

                Yet at the beginning of this third decade of a century dominated by global terrorism, never ending foreign wars, climate crises, political polarization and literal and figurative wall construction, an actual insurrection at our nation’s capital, record levels of global inequality and international debt, falsehoods, and racial and religious hatred, perhaps it is also time to celebrate interdependence, and a declaration to that effect. We just cannot make it alone, not America first in the world, and not financial and ruling elites who seek refuge and status behind well-guarded gates and on islands and other planets. We need each other and the pandemic should have made that more obvious than ever before. We need schools, medicine, clean water, clean air, good jobs, safe roads, healthy food, safety nets, smart policy, and we need them throughout this nation and the world, and we need them now. Interdependence. It worked for my folks. The person leaning your way today will be someone you can lean on tomorrow. Depend on it.

WHO KNEW?

I have friends who browbeat me about Saddam, who insisted he had to go, who bought all the lies about weapons of mass destruction, who smiled at the quick victory Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the rest of them declared. And when it all went wrong, and millions of human beings departed and trillions of dollars vanished, those friends shook their heads and mouthed….

Who knew?

Not quite an apology but almost an acknowledgement.

I knew. We knew. We who know that the path to world peace is not through world war. We who don’t see every almost daily horrific mass murder by lunatic misguided individuals as an invitation to crackdown, to panic, to manufacture more and deadlier weaponry, to wage war. We who know that the solution is not to throw billions and billions of bomb dollars at what is absolutely a human tragedy and crisis but rather to hurl humanity at the problem. Share the wealth just a little bit more equitably worldwide and throw safety net, occupational, healthy food, clean water, shelter, educational, medical, environmental, local community, artistic, and cultural dollars at the problem and in a generation or less the bulk of American dollars will go to bridges and not bombs. The powers that be will still have more power and wealth than they could possibly ever enjoy and consume. Alienation, hatred, bitterness, and a compulsion to destroy will lurk in fewer and fewer corners of this beautiful nation and planet. The last four years we had a president who talked tough and preached trickle down all the while slashing programs designed to help the young find a good path and the old survive. Many of those same friends shook those same heads….

Who knew?

Not quite an apology but almost an acknowledgement.

It will have to do, let’s move forward.

A hundred years ago we didn’t have a standing army and a gargantuan military line item feeding our GDP. We didn’t see the need to always deploy our young men and women in hostile territory. Yes, it is a dangerous world getting more dangerous every day. But it should be obvious by now that tribalism and walls and bombs and bullets don’t work. Books do, butter does, volunteers, medicine, communications and technology, fair wages, they all work wonders. Not overnight but over time. America first is not about exclusion or tribalism; it’s about leadership, about the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth setting an example of equality, fairness, cooperation, and brotherhood that the rest of the planet will be all too eager to follow.

Soldiers follow orders. If we truly want to honor the memory of those bravest of us every Memorial Day, those who lost their lives in passionate pursuit of ideals they embraced with every ounce of their being, those who sacrificed everything for us, we need to be worthy of giving those orders.

In memory of my father Herman Brav, pictured below on the right with a Brother in Arms with the 69th Infantry in April 1945 Germany, and all the men and women who have served our nation so courageously.

Memorial Day 2021

This Memorial Day, thinking about my Dad and the WWII journey he never wanted to talk much about other than "I saw a lot of action" and "I made it home". Thinking about his best buds Gambino and Walisko who did not and all the other brave souls who never made it home from foreign lands either. My father was 69th Infantry, 271st Division from 1942 to 1946, from Camp Shelby in Mississippi to England through France, Germany, Belgium, Leipzig, Buchenwald, Switzerland, and on that great ship home to NYC in March 1946. One irony is that the displaced Polish refugee he was going to fall in love with years later was on another ship, from Murmansk to Philadelphia, at the very same time. Miss them both so much.

WITHOUT YOU

When they say the internet has given us too much information at our fingertips, perhaps they had Harry Nilsson and Without You in mind. It was released during my junior year of high school on every radio station at all hours of the day and night, eventually rising to everyone’s Number One in early 1972 and winning that year’s Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. Opening with an unforgettable piano intro before Harry Nilsson’s sorrowful voice begins.

No, I can’t forget this evening or your face as you were leaving,
but I guess that’s just the way the story goes. 

The song was everywhere even as Nilsson, Brooklyn-born and concert-shy, was not. Labeled by Paul McCartney as “the killer song of all time”, it was the perfect wailing plaint for this 16 year-old dreaming of love, the ultimate declaration of commitment.

I can’t live if living is without you,
I can’t live, I can’t give anymore. 

As serious as serious gets. Real love in the face of apparent loss.

I mostly missed out on Harry Nilsson then and am only finding him now, more than a quarter century after his fatal heart attack at 53. With the internet and all the fleshing out of anything it offers, there is the good and the bad. For most of my life, the song itself was enough. Every time I heard that spare but simple piano opening, I was in awe of this ballad, dwelling on the beautiful flow, that piano, Nilsson’s voice, the powerful chorus, and the overwhelming power of love whether found or lost.

Only now am I learning that the song was a rarity for Harry Nilsson, a hit written by someone else. Pete Ham and Tom Evans of Badfinger had collaborated across time and space. Ham had written If It’s Love, some very good lyrics in search of a chorus which he later located in bandmate Evans’ I Can’t Live. In one of the more dramatic examples of the whole is just so much bigger than the sum of the parts, the combination of the two works in progress worked, if not for Badfinger which released it on 1970’s No Dice (a version missed by yours truly and pretty much everyone else). Adding Gary Wright’s piano, Harry’s voice, an orchestra, and world-class production a year later was the difference maker. Ham recalled: “As soon as we heard it, we knew that was the way we wanted to do it but never had the nerve…Nilsson’s version really showed what you can do with a song, production-wise, and with a good singer. It blew me away.” Two decades later, Mariah Carey’s powerful cover sparked interest for a new generation. That’s the good news.

The bad is mostly about Badfinger, a group influenced by The Beatles and signed to their Apple Records, a band that might have been more aptly named Badkarma, Badfortune, or Badnews. Their George Harrison produced hit ballad Day After Day (“...looking out from my lonely room, day after day, bring it home, baby, make it soon, I give my love to you…”), theme song for stalkers No Matter What (“…no matter what you do, I will always be around, won't you tell me what you found girl, ooh girl want you, knock down the old grey wall, be a part of it all…”) and Paul McCartney composition and open invitation Come and Get It (“…if you want it, here it is, come and get it, but you better hurry ‘cause it’s going fast…”) still resonate after all these years but bad management, bad decisions and bad luck killed the good band. Not Ham and Evans though; they killed themselves. Ham in 1975, Evans eight years later, both by hanging, both upset over money and royalties, much of which would have derived from Without You. Ham, broke and 28 years old, left a note: “[Manager] Stan Polley is a soulless bastard. I will take him with me.”

Harry Nilsson passed in 1994. When one recalls his debut as a singer on Hoyt Axton’s Everybody’s Talkin’ (“…everybody’s talking at me, I don’t hear a word they’re saying…”) from Midnight Cowboy; learns that he wrote One (“…one is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do, two can be as bad as one, it’s the loneliest number since the number one…”) that Three Dog Night made famous in 1969; smiles along with Spaceman (“…bang, bang, shoot ‘em up destiny, bang, bang, shoot ‘em to the moon…”), Me and My Arrow (“…me and my arrow, straighter than narrow, wherever we go, everyone knows, it’s me and my arrow…”), Coconut (“…she put the lime in the coconut, she drank ‘em both up, she put the lime in the coconut, she called the doctor, woke him up…”), I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City (“…I’ll say goodbye to all my sorrow, and by tomorrow, I’ll be on my way…”), and (his friend Randy Newman’s) Sail Away (“…in America you'll get food to eat, you won't have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet, you'll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day, it's great to be an American…”); listens to the hyper Gotta Get Up (“…gotta get up, gotta get out, before the morning comes…”) and anthem Let the Good Times Roll (“…c'mon baby, let the good times roll, c'mon baby, let me thrill your soul, c'mon baby you're the best there is, roll all night long…”) from his Nilsson Schmillson LP masterwork; and revels in the joy he expressed with Over the Rainbow and other classics in his standards album A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, we know his passing was sadly way too early. Same can be said for Pete Ham and Tom Evans. We’ve all gone on living without them, thankful for what they left behind.

*********

NOTE: In researching this piece, I came across a terrific online music magazine Elsewhere. I plan to check out more of it when I have the time. https://www.elsewhere.co.nz/somethingelsewhere/6654/badfinger-and-harry-nilsson-without-them-no-without-you/

Of NFT, Wealth Tax and Toilet Paper

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/arts/design/nft-auction-christies-beeple.html

Read the news today, oh boy….see above link...someone named Beeple (never heard of him) sold an NFT (never heard of it) for $69 million through auction house Christie's. I have never understood the market pricing for art that you could actually hang on a wall or collectibles you could hold in your hand. When prices got truly out of whack for items that weren't quite Picasso or a 1952 Mantle rookie card, I thought it said a good deal about the amount of money flying around the world into the hands of the very chosen few. But now that we've let pricing insanity get into cyberspace with these Non Fungible Tokens, I have two things to say. One, where is that Wealth Tax? Two, I have decided to cash in and make available the very first of a series of photographs of toilet paper stuck to shoes around the world, this one a certified (by me) original of a (possibly) famous (possibly) French woman in Paris in 1983, auction details coming soon and part of a set guaranteed not to exceed 100 numbered digital prints.

Brothers in Arms...Coming Soon

I can't begin to think how my life would be without the music of our times. You may have noticed from prior posts that Mark Knopfler is in my Top 5 (with The Beatles, Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Joni Mitchell). Of all his amazing musicianship and songwriting, Brothers in Arms still stands out for me. Just stumbled on Joan Baez doing it in 1987 but there's nothing like the Dire Straits original from 1985. I still own the domain name as my first (written in 1992 and as yet unpublished) novel bears the same title.

https://music.amazon.com/search/brothers%20in%20arms%20dire%20straits?filter=IsLibrary%7Cfalse&sc=none

What I've Learned

I have promised myself and everyone I know not to think about or talk about the current administration after this coming Wednesday. But there are a few things I've learned about the last four years that have helped me understand things just a little bit better so I am passing them along.

1. When someone wonders aloud "Who knew?!?!", the answer is usually everyone except the speaker.

2. The terms stable genius and unstable moron are synonymous.

3. Although approximately 75 million Americans love horseradish and anchovies, it doesn't make them good.

4. Covfefe can be a noun, adjective and adverb.

5. The phrase a lot of people are saying is meant to refer to anyone still working at Fox News.

6. The My Pillow Guy scares me more than anything Stephen King ever created.

7. You actually have to win to get tired of too much winning.

That’s it, little life lessons now, hopefully distant memories in the near future. Hoping for the best, for all of us!

MAILING FROM PHILADELPHIA (and Georgia, Arizona and beyond)

Not long after the turn of a century that so often seems to be spinning out of control, one of my favorite musical artists, Mark Knopfler, released his second solo album. It was six weeks before the seminal Bush versus Gore election, a fissure that has been cracking ever wider since.

Sailing to Philadelphia tells the story of English surveyors George Mason and Jeremiah Dixon on their way across the Atlantic for the 1760s mapping project of their lifetimes, and so it still seems, ours. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrLdKYRBOEE On its face, the 233-mile Mason Dixon Line running west and south from Philadelphia was the culmination of dispute resolution that would delineate part of the border between Pennsylvania and Delaware to the north and Maryland and what is now West Virginia to the south. It would quickly become so much more than that, a literal divide between slavery and abolition, a symbolic separator of North and South in these United States. Marked stones placed a mile apart on the ground, the Delaware River, maps with legends, tangents and keys, all evolved into a wall seemingly higher and more impenetrable than anything ever fancied for Mexico.

I love the song itself, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1997 novel Mason & Dixon. It is a role play between two genuine rock stars in their prime, James Taylor’s baker turned stargazer Mason and Knopfler’s fun-loving longtime surveyor Dixon, echoed by Knopfler’s beautifully haunting guitar.

Now you're a good surveyor, Dixon, but I swear you'll make me mad
The West will kill us both, you gullible Geordie lad
You talk of liberty, how can America be free
A Geordie and a baker's boy, in the forests of the Iroquois

Now hold your head up, Mason, see America lies there
The morning tide has raised the capes of Delaware
Come up and feel the sun, a new morning has begun
Another day will make it clear, why your stars should guide us here

We are sailing to Philadelphia, a world away from the coaly Tyne
Sailing to Philadelphia, to draw the line, a Mason Dixon Line

I am listening to those lyrics again, hearing new meaning, with the backdrop of this past week of nail-biting votes tallied in every corner of this country, and most importantly in the City of Brotherly Love (also known for the rest of 2020 by city resolution in honor of the 19th Amendment, and perhaps forever, as the City of Sisterly Love). The irony and the hope seem clearer to me than ever before. A career public servant, a good man risen from Pennsylvania and Delaware, accompanied by a good woman risen from the battles of history, confronted with the challenge of this generation and all that will come after that. Knocking down walls, blurring lines, changing the arc of history for the better. I’m pretty sure George and Jeremiah would approve. Come up and feel the sun, a new morning has begun. Indeed.

Almira Gulch 2020

November 6, 2020 Update

“Oh, what a world, what a world, who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?”

For many years I’ve seen comparisons between the true believers in our current president and the faith of the populace and newcomer Dorothy in that wonderful Wizard of Oz. Seems I wasn’t alone because Kamala Harris, Jeanne Moos, Hillary Clinton back in the day, and surely millions of others, saw the similarities.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/09/13/kamala-harris-trump-small-dude-wizard-oz-comparison-sot-mxp-vpx.hln

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n87Eq9EY4To

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/jul/19/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-entrance-wizard-of-oz-video

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-09-29-billionaire-wizard-trump-exposed-as-a-tax-avoiding-wizard-of-oz/

Once exposed from behind the curtain, the mere mortal flimflam wizard makes sure to sweetly bestow a diploma, medal and heart-shaped testimonial on Dorothy’s three flawed companions before flying the coop in his hot air balloon. Sweetness? Bowing out gracefully?

Maybe I was looking in the wrong direction. It was not so nice Almira Gulch, soon to be the not so nice hag from the west, who “owned half the county” (although it does not appear that she was heavily leveraged), hated dogs, wasn’t against shouting a lot, and used the court system ad infinitum to get her way. Sure, she was pretty good on that bicycle, had good posture, and elocution, but I’m thinking she, and her melting alter ego, may well be the better fictional ancestors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jcm4kwmz44

Times have changed. Here’s hoping that, unlike Auntie Em who held her tongue for twenty-three years, some of those “Christian women” will speak up on Tuesday after only four.

Trick Down ECONOMICS

"...what we’ve learned is that unemployment can be even lower than we thought and not result in troubling levels of inflation...we had 3.5% unemployment, which was sort of the lowest period of sustained unemployment in 50 years. And we didn't see inflation result...with globalization, things can be made anywhere, and that means it's difficult to raise wages or prices. So if you raise wage costs or prices, someone will find a cheaper place in the world to make a product or increasingly to deliver a service. And all of that is enabled by advancing technology..." --- Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell interview with NPR September 4, 2020 https://www.npr.org/2020/09/04/909590044/transcript-nprs-full-interview-with-fed-chairman-jerome-powell

This, and much of the rest of the interview, is an explanation that the Federal Reserve’s mandate will not see it accomplishing what some might think it can and should. Yet we continue a laser focus on the Fed, wait for it to wave its magic wand, lower rates, buy bonds and maybe even stocks. For a generation all its magic has done is increase inequality and take focus away from what really needs to be done for the vast majority of the people in this country who have little capital but plenty of energy and desire to work to prosper too.

Although Chairman Powell has much in the way of explanation of what the Fed does, how interest rates work and how he thinks inequality rose so sharply, we have been watching the Fed’s magic act for a long time now. Fixating at the end of the last century on whether Allan Greenspan's bulging briefcase portended another rate cut. Imagining Ben Bernanke wincing a bit when big business took its bailout billions and did a much more efficient job of buying back stock, searching out overseas tax loopholes, restoring and then boosting eye-opening top level executive pay, and keeping average man wages stagnant than investing in manufacturing in this country or creating good-paying jobs with reasonable benefits.

Powell tells us that wages have been stagnant for a long time and he tells us some of the reasons why, matter of factly, all during an era when job insecurity, retirement security, food insecurity, and security insecurity have soared in sync with the major stock exchanges. The Fed takes out its tool chest to support business, through less manic times and the ever more recurring crises, and I’m sure hopes that this time will be different. Sharp-eyed financiers understandably accept cheap money and, trust me on this, their number one priority is not boosting employee compensation but rather sending down as little trickle as possible. The Fed is de facto a cheerleader for the fantastical trickle-down when it should be a pallbearer.

Of course there’s no inflation, and there isn't going to be any, ever, not in the lesser struggling economy the Fed measures. The inflation is over in the other economy, the one with the 30 million dollar condominiums and 20 million dollar yachts, the one with the capital that will benefit from the low rates and scream socialist at anyone who questions where all that cheap money came from and what they should do with it.

Of Good Music and Bad Parties

I’ve been thinking a lot about the upcoming Republican National Convention in Charlotte getting started on August 24. It can’t be easy planning such an event in the best of circumstances and coordinating logistics for thousands of unmasked true believers this year will be even tougher. Scattering people of color at good camera angles in the middle of all that whiteness. Finding folks without shares of stock to thank goodness for tax reform. Trotting out seniors who worry about Mexicans more than losing their Social Security. Tough road to haul.

Finding the stars and influencers to show up will be harder than filling Celebrity Row for Knicks games at Madison Square Garden the past few years. (Turtle from Entourage was there every night I was and I’m not sure he’s done anything since Turtle from Entourage.) Kanye certainly won’t be available; he’s off on his own campaign trail that starts and ends in his own mind. Do count on the usual suspects though. Gary Busey, James Woods, Dennis Rodman, Jon Voight, Chuck Woolery, Scott Baio, Dean Cain, Stacey Dash, Ted Nugent. Either find the money to get them to Carolina or beam them in on the giant screen.

But what about the music? It seems unfair that all the good songs are controlled by all the pinko lefty songwriters and artists that are always sending out those annoying lawyer letters after the fact. A quick check on Wikipedia reveals that the list of musicians opposing the use of their music by Trump and the Republicans sounds like the roster of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicians_who_oppose_Donald_Trump%27s_use_of_their_music#:~:text=In%202015%2C%20vocalist%20Michael%20Stipe,video%20containing%20the%20unauthorized%20use

As Trump was campaigning for president, Aerosmith was decrying his use of Dream On, Bruce was shutting down Born in the U.S.A. and R.E.M. was ending It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine). Adele, Elton John, Neil Young, Nickelback, Pharrell Williams, Prince’s estate, Queen, Rihanna, the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, and even Luciano Pavarotti have all gotten into the act of negation. Yet my favorite has to be Beatle George Harrison’s estate which condemned the 2016 convention organizers for introducing daughter Ivanka Trump to Here Comes the Sun but subsequently conveyed possible permission for Harrison’s Beware of Darkness. https://music.amazon.com/search/beware+of+darkness

As someone once said, sad, very sad.

Yet songs are available and they should be played, intellectual property rights and artistic feelings be damned. Any party that can stop the post office can certainly fill out a dance card. So here they are, my carefully curated recommendations for great evenings of musical introductions to the stars of the Republican Party. Please do feel free to add to the list or come up with your own suggestions. But hurry, the convention’s only a week away, and you can’t have a good party without good music.

Stephen Miller, Senior Advisor REFUGEE (Tom Petty) https://music.amazon.com/search/tom+petty+refugee

Elizabeth Prince DeVos, Secretary of Education SCHOOL’S OUT (Alice Cooper) https://music.amazon.com/search/schools+out+alice+cooper

Mitch McConnell, United States Senator YOU’RE NO GOOD (Linda Ronstadt) https://music.amazon.com/search/you%27re+no+good+linda+ronstadt

Steven T. Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury PIGGIES (Beatles) https://music.amazon.com/search/piggies

William Barr, Attorney General LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY (Warren Zevon) https://music.amazon.com/search/lawyers+guns+and+money+warren+zevon

Michael R. Pence, Vice-President MOTHER (John Lennon & Plastic Ono Band) https://music.amazon.com/search/mother+john+lennon and bonus track MOTHER (Pink Floyd) https://music.amazon.com/search/mother+pink+floyd

Donald J. Trump, President EVERYTHING IS BROKEN (Bob Dylan) https://music.amazon.com/albums/B00138J9X2/B00137XAUG?tab=CATALOG&ref=dm_wcp_albm_link_search_c

Let's Kill All the Editors

When she is old enough, Philadelphia Eagles receiver Marquise Goodwin will teach his daughter, Marae, to put family first. (from Bear Hugs and Bubbles: Why Some NFL Players Opted Out by Ben Shpigel--New York Times August 8, 2020)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/08/sports/football/nfl-players-opt-out.html

Sorry, Ben Shpigel, the rest of your Times Sports Section cover story following that less than stellar lead sentence is terrific, informative, heart-wrenching, and well-written. Not your fault that editors are scarce and very busy, trying to keep up in a news cycle that’s moving much too fast with too many players, many of whom are skilled only in gaining social media hits.

Where have you gone William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, our nation turns its undotted i’s and uncrossed t’s to you? The Cornell professor Strunk and his former student White didn’t collaborate per se on Elements of Style, the eponymous guide for putting pen to paper concisely and effectively. First issued by Strunk in 1918, revived by White in 1959 and believed to be dead in 2020, the brief guide was not without its critics. University of Edinburgh Professor of Linguistics Geoffrey Pullum apparently once said that “several generations of college students learned their grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White, and the result is a nation of educated people who know they feel vaguely anxious and insecure whenever they write however or than me or was or which, but can't tell you why.”

I love you, Times. Love you too, Washington Post. You are all that stand between me and a future of Kanye West, Donald Trump, Jr. and Mark Zuckerberg. You still do have reporters covering every inch of the globe and editors too, even if they are overwhelmed, underpaid and endangered. You tell me daily, hourly if I venture online, all the ways we are going down for the count. In a world of WhatsApp, TikTok and Quibi, where phraseology is LOL and OMG, who needs elements of style, grammar and punctuation anyway? It’s or its, their or there, no more worries, and someday soon no more editors.

Come to the point. We will skim, we will peruse, we will get it I’m sure, that thing we used to refer to as the meaning, the gist, the crux. Even if we are left wondering from time to time what ever happened to that too young lady receiver for the Eagles.

NON-EDITOR’S NOTE: At some point between my reading of the hard copy of the Times this morning and my perusal of the online version tonight, the editor I was pining for woke up and that first sentence now reads: When his daughter, Marae, is old enough, Philadelphia Eagles receiver Marquise Goodwin will teach her to put family first. I may be onto something here. The hard copy of the Times as first draft, the online version as always ready for that editor to show up.

APPLICATION QUESTIONNAIRE FOR EMPLOYMENT AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The United States of America is an equal opportunity employer and has required completion of this application questionnaire since January 1, 2020 as a vital executive screening tool. It is estimated this form will take 1-2 minutes to complete.

1. Do you like dogs?

 Yes, proceed to Question 1A

 No, proceed to Question 2

1A. Which of the following would you prefer as the family dog?

 Spaniel  Labrador  Terrier  Cerberus

2. Do you like music?

 Yes, proceed to Question 2A

 No, proceed to Question 3

2A. Which of the following would you prefer to listen to?

 Classical  Jazz  Rock  Blues  Rap  Funeral Dirge

3. Do you like romantic movies?

 Yes, proceed to Question 3A

 No, proceed to Question 4

3A. Which of the following would you prefer to watch with a loved one?

 Say Anything

 Love Story

 Dirty Dancing

 An Officer and a Gentleman

 When Harry Met Sally

 Double Indemnity, Presumed Innocent, Rear Window or anything on the Lifetime Movie Network

4. Do you drink alcohol?

 Yes, proceed to Question 4A

 No, proceed to Question 5

4A. What is your favorite alcoholic drink?

 Rum and Coke  Martini  Whiskey Sour  Wine  Beer  Bloody Mary or Megyn

5. Do you enjoy yoga?

 Yes, proceed to Question 5A

 No, proceed to Question 6

5A. What is your favorite yoga pose?

 Cat Pose  Downward Facing Dog  Tree Pose  Locust or other Plague

6. Check the most accurate completion of the following: I believe Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa:

 Is smiling

 Is sorrowful

 Is someone I’m unfamiliar with

 Is looking to bed me and only me

7. Check every pickup line you’ve used to date:

 I’m rich and that should be enough for you.

 See these huge hands, draw your own conclusions.

 Follow my lead tonight and you will be overcome.

 As president, I would build a wall to keep out everyone but you.

8. Have you seen the movie Titanic?

 Yes, proceed to Question 8A

 No, proceed to Question 9

8A. Your favorite Titanic character was:

 Rose because she was willing to sacrifice for love.

 Jack because he was willing to sacrifice for love.

 Cal because he was willing to sacrifice everyone else.

9. At your bedside you keep a copy of:

 Bible  Goodnight Moon  War and Peace  Speak Loudly and Be A Big Dick

10. If you could have dinner with one American historical figure you would dine:

 With Abraham Lincoln

 With Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 With Nikola Tesla

 With Lou Gehrig

 With Jonas Salk

 Alone

11. Which statement best matches your feelings?

 The Republican Party is nothing but a front for the wealthy and the Russians.

 The Democratic Party is nothing but a bunch of kumbaya peaceniks coming for your guns.

 The Socialist Party is nothing but a bunch of losers who’ve never known the joy of firing someone.

 The television program Party of Five had four too many lead characters.

 I am the life of the party.

12. Your most effective phrase to confuse fact with fiction is:

 I have a bridge in Brooklyn….

 A lot of people are saying that….

 I have the best words….

 In Texas and in Florida, we get an A+. I think we’ve done just as good in Puerto Rico….

13. You feel that the greatest threat facing America is:

 Climate change

 Global terrorism

 Exploding inequality

 Viral pandemic(s)

 A divided nation

 Support for my candidacy

Dear Diary

I always advise young people who want to write to keep a journal. I had one once and just located it as we continue to curate our stuff. Pictured below, it was given to me in March 1968 by my sister after she received it at a friend's Sweet Sixteen. The 13 year-old me made exactly one entry and that was it, the end of my diary writing (which is probably a good thing because three days later the world was going to get even crazier with the horrific assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.). But the best part is what my 12 year-old daughter wrote in it thirty years later that I’m only seeing now.

April 1, 1968 Dear Diary, it was a rain to shine day. Got 86 on Lit Test. I almost won $5.50 on WMCA April Fool’s contest. I played baseball. We got clobbered 20-10. I’m gonna start playin’ hardball from now on. Look out world. I’m not really nervous about my upcoming bar mitzvah. It should be pretty good. Peter

P.S We’ve just stoppped the bombing & President Johnson announced he won’t run again.

May 9, 1998 Hi Dad, this is your DAUGHTER JULIA. I repeat, Julia. Now now don’t be frightened. It is now 1998. You are 43 YEARS OLD. You had A NICE BAR-MITZVAH AND WENT TO CORNELL & HARVARD. A great many things have been invented since you wrote in this diary. (By the way, why didn’t you write in it more? You’re obviously not much of a diarist, even though you are now a WRITER. Yes, a WRITER and a LAWYER.) Cellular phones, MTV, computers. The inventions are endless. Okay, you married a beautiful smart woman currently in the college business (professor). Her name is JANET. She gave birth to me, 12 years old now, and GREGORY, 8. Yes, we are YOUR BABIES. I hope this is not too overwhelming, DAD, but I felt the need to inform you. Bye-bye now, Your Daughter JULIA