Eric The Blue

Embarrassing confessions

I once harbored impure thoughts toward a co-member of a church youth group. Indeed, but for her I almost certainly would have resisted my mom's suggestion that I join.

Once in a high-school baseball game I was on-deck with two out in the last inning and I hoped that my teammate would make the last out, causing our team to lose, just to save myself the humiliation of batting again against the pitcher, who had a very good curveball. He did make the last out, we lost, and I then reproached myself for having made him make an out by cheering against him in my soul. Then I reproached myself further for irrationality. 

Once, filling out a performance review at work for a "pretty good" employee, I sped down column 4, labeled "exceeds expectations," checking every box without reading a word, just to save time. Then I thought that looked suspicious so I changed a few of them to 5. Don't actually feel too bad about that one. 

Sometimes I get pissy with my kids for asking too many questions.  I notice this only happens when I don't know the answers. 

Thinking about making this a series but it took about 50 years just to collect those four. 

COVID and the base rate fallacy

I didn't know, when I wrote this back on August 9, that the bit of Covid innumeracy I was trying to describe has a name: the base rate fallacy. A week earlier, on August 1, Damon Jones, using numbers that make the point perhaps more clearly than I did, had illustrated the fallacy in this brief Twitter thread. I'll summarize for those who don't care to follow the link.

Suppose that 9 out of 10 people who haven't been vaccinated end up in the hospital with Covid. Suppose, further, that there is a vaccine, and that only 1 in 10 of the vaccinated get a case of Covid bad enough to require hospitalization. That's a helluva vaccine, right? Your chance of going to hospital drops from 90 percent all the way down to 10 percent. It's such a good vaccine that 90 percent of the population gets vaccinated. Only 10 percent don't, for whatever reason they find persuasive—perhaps because they've heard the vaccinated can get sick, too.

Now let's consider the question of who ends up in the hospital with Covid:

Out of every 100 people, 90 will be vaccinated, and, of those, 10 percent, or 9, will end up in the hospital. Ten people will not be vaccinated, and 90 percent of them, or 9, will end up in the hospital. So 18 people in the hospital, half vaccinated, half unvaccinated. It can be terribly misleading to denigrate the efficacy of vaccines by citing the percentage of people in the hospital who've been vaccinated! Don't fall for it. Get vaccinated.

As Jones notes, it's also useful to consider what happens, in the above scenario, if only half the population is vaccinated. Then out of 50 vaccinated people, 5 end up in hospital, and, of the 50 unvaccinated ones, 45 are hospitalized. So now 90 percent of the hospitalized are unvaccinated. There are also 50 people in the hospital, as opposed to just 18. 

Mom reads Plato

Being of their offspring the bigger poindexter, I've inherited my parents' books, and last night I spent some time with a hardback volume—paperbacks, unlike atomic bombs, belonging to the future—of some Platonic dialogues that had obviously been required for a college philosophy class my mom took in the mid-1950s. Maybe she would have been able to resell it if not for her copious underlining and highlighting. Jesus, mom, why not just paint the pages with a brush? Her marginalia is also interesting and put me in mind of the opening to chapter 6 of Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin (not his most notorious book but, I think, the most enjoyable one):

The 1954 Fall Term had begun. Again the marble neck of a homely Venus in the vestibule of Humanities Hall received the vermilion imprint, in applied lipstick, of a mimicked kiss. Again the Waindell Recorder discussed the Parking Problem. Again in the margins of library books earnest freshmen inscribed such helpful glosses as "Description of nature" or "Irony"; and in a pretty edition of Mallarme's poems an especially able scholiast had already underlined in violet ink the difficult word oiseaux and had scrawled above it "birds."

In her defense, mom's glosses were not inscribed in the margins of library books—rather, in volumes purchased with grandpa's money and then, after a brief period of active duty, hermetically sealed for more than 60 years till scanned by me last night. 

It was fun to have a window cracked on my mom's mind about five years before I made her acquaintance. I'd have to read the words of Socrates, as set down by Plato and highlighted by her, to try and guess at the import she had discerned, or to make a connection between the text and her marginal notes. Before long I got at least as interested in the text as in mom's notes. The question of what students should study in school is part of the current culture war but I wonder whether the promoters of ancient Greek philosophy might be a little put off by the views of Socrates.

In the dialogue called Euthyphro, for example, the title character is one of these moral preeners who is sure the gods take his side of an ethical dispute. Socrates, occasionally exhibiting a touch of tart impatience, leads him to the question of whether the gods love things that are holy, or whether things are holy because they are loved by the gods. They agree that it must be the former. But in that case, says Socrates, you are supplying me with a mere attribute of piety (that it's loved by the gods) and not its essence (the reason the gods love it). By this point, Euthyphro has become less chatty and self-assured. He soon slinks off, and the dialogue ends without any neat resolution, but it seems an objection to the claim that morality depends upon religion has gone unanswered. For the implication is that "God commands X" doesn't answer the question "Why is X good?"

If the Platonic dialogues are accepted as a biography of Socrates, then it was within a couple of weeks of having advanced this argument that he was sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens. That is the subject matter of the dialogue called Apology. Socrates has a reputation for something resembling modesty, as he famously admitted that he might be the wisest of all men only because at least he knew he knew nothing, but in the Apology, after he's been convicted and it's time to plead for his life, he says a just sentence would be, not death, not exile, but a state pension under the terms of which he would be maintained for life in the Prytaneum, "the public hall in which were entertained ambassadors, victorious generals, winners at the Olympic games, and other illustrious citizens." The picture above is of that page in the Apology from mom's book.  The information about the Prytaneum that I've quoted is from the footnote at the bottom of the page.

The Eastman memo

Maybe I've just been enjoying the weather too much, and so can't judge what the chattering class is chattering about, but to me it's surprising that the Eastman memo doesn't seem like a Bigger Deal in the national news. Team Trump had a plan for overturning the election result, the plan was set out on paper by a Trump lawyer (John Eastman, pictured), the paper was obtained by journalists and widely disseminated, its authenticity isn't doubted, its plain language makes no attempt to apply cosmetics to the porcine content, and the media have moved on to today's scores, yesterday's games having been contested yesterday.

Here is the memo's first sentence (whole thing may be read here): "7 states have transmitted dual slates of electors to the President of the Senate." For this to be true, "state" would have to refer to free-lancing crackpots residing within its borders (as opposed to the government of the state). Everything that follows depends upon the ability of these free agent crazies to contest the result, thereby creating a "dispute" that can't be resolved. When the electoral votes of those states aren't counted, Trump is the winner by virtue of having won a majority of the undisputed electoral votes. 

This is the brain fart of a guy—Eastman—who graduated from the University of Chicago Law School and clerked at the Supreme Court for Clarence Thomas. You can't count the electoral votes of seven states because . . . some dudes who live there have a theory . . .  something, something . . . they've taken it upon themselves to appoint a second slate of electors. Which slate should be accepted? Impossible to tell!

It's serious business, a brazen try at installing as president the election loser, but I find myself dwelling on the unintentionally funny aspects of the memo. Eastman acknowledges that, after the electoral votes of seven states are tossed, and Trump declared the winner on account of being ahead 232 to 222 in the other 43, there will be "Howls, of course, from the Democrats." Such ninnies, objecting to our coup! This goal of "owning the libs," hearing them howl, is apparently the animating "principle" of every thought and utterance, the wet dream of every night's slumber. 

It's also funny, including in the sense of odd, that Eastman's memo anticipates the Democrats howling about the legalistic details of the coup instead of the coup in general: he imagines the Dems saying, "Ah, but you're wrong, you can't win 232 to 222, you need 270 to win." Of course the memo has an answer—the Twelfth Amendment:

. . . if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.

Either the Democrats don't know about the Twelfth Amendment, or they don't know that Republicans, while a minority of all House members, are a majority in 26 state delegations, the minimum needed to choose the president. Checkmate, Trump wins again!

Also funny, again including in the sense of odd, that Eastman isn't concerned about the possibility of any House Republicans not buying into this airtight case. Perhaps he's forgotten that Lynne Cheney is the sole representative from the state of Wyoming? That puts him down to 25, and as he well knows "a majority of all the states shall be necessary for a choice." 

Maybe his memo should have been longer. The legal rationale for the coup might have been yet more comically outlandish. 

Fox poll: public supports vax mandates

I saw the news item about the Texas tourists who assaulted the hostess of a Manhattan restaurant when she asked to see proof they'd been vaccinated before seating them. The ugly incident could have been avoided if you needed a vaccine passport to fly. And, according to a Fox News poll, such a requirement would likely be a political winner (to say nothing of the public health dividend):

One odd thing: there is even more support for mask wearing than for vax mandates. Yet it's less trouble, and more protective, to get vaccinated. The below maps show pretty clearly that being a current coronavirus "hot spot" tracks closely with a low vaccination rate. 

More than 2000 deaths per day over the past week! Is it possible for a "tragedy" to be "pathetic"? Just completely unnecessary. 

The Kunin Collection at MIA

Myron Kunin was the Twin Cities businessman who founded the Regis Corporation. From the Star Tribune obit, published on Saturday, November 2, 2013:

Kunin, Myron "Mike" of Minneapolis, age 85, died peacefully on Wednesday morning. . . . Myron, a lifetime Minneapolis resident, grew up near Lake of the Isles, and lived for the last 30 years in a house less than six blocks away from his childhood home (where his mother, Florence, lived until her death, at 102, in 2007). His father, Paul, was a Russian immigrant, a barber and beautician, who owned a beauty salon in Minneapolis, and met Florence when he styled her hair. Myron was born in 1928. He attended Kenwood elementary, West High School, and then the University of Minnesota. Mike married Anita Hochfeld, of Portland Oregon, whom he met when she was visiting her cousins in Minneapolis. They recently celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary. Mike had several different jobs after college, but he eventually purchased his father's salon business in 1958, renamed it Regis Corporation, and over time he transformed it entirely. Throughout the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s, Regis grew rapidly and continuously, as Myron foresaw the changing American marketplace and adapted Regis accordingly. When he stepped down from the Board of Directors, after 50 years at the helm, the Regis corporate group had more than 13,500 salons and more than 65,000 employees.

I quote the parts of the obit concerning his business career as it was to me something of a revelation—not that he was a successful businessman, I knew that, but the scope and specific endeavor were to me unknown, for I knew him mainly as an art collector. I had no understanding of how much money he spent to acquire his collection, which was in two main areas: African statuary art, and contemporary American painting, especially portraiture, "contemporary" in the sense that Kunin was alive when most of it was created. The year after he died, Sotheby's auctioned his collection of African art for over $40 million. Part of the American collection is on loan to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. It's not hard, from the Kunin collection at the MIA, to come toward some conclusions about what interested him, and it's not what I anyway would expect from a beauty salon magnate. He put it this way in a 2005 interview:

I try to buy things that are an extension of the Renaissance, the Old Master artists, and that have some kick to them. I like a painting that reaches in and grabs your heart and stomps on it. . . .

To get a taste of what he meant, you can go here, the blog post of a recent visitor to Minneapolis who feels as I do about the Kunin collection at the MIA—it's the best thing in the museum. She has a lot of pictures of the portraits in the "portrait room," which is just one of the rooms holding the collection. Here's a picture I took of a painting in another room:

It's by John Wilde, a Wisconsin artist who died, age 86, in 2006. I could be wrong, but I think Wilde had in mind the famous painting by the Renaissance master Pieter Breughel the Elder, "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," which is the subject of possibly Auden's most famous poem. If Kunin had the same thought, it might explain part of what he liked about this picture, since he was attracted to works that seemed "an extension of the Renaissance, the Old Masters." Here, female Icarus comes to the rural Midwest and jumps out the top of a barn. As in Breughel's painting, every detail is carefully wrought and adds to the total effect. The birds flit about the nude falling figure who, though her hands are spread like wings, will soon land on the concrete below. The fence visible at the lower right is of barbed wire. Through the window at the far left the head of a man with a clown face is visible. The abandoned wagon is in the role of what Auden, in the closing lines of his poem about the Breughel picture, described as

the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

In my photo, it's almost as hard to see as clown man, but the abandoned wagon holds an abandoned doll lying prone and splayed, like the main exhibit is about to be. 

Politics and covid in the golden state

It's a dog-bites-man headline: "In a landslide, Democrat wins statewide election in California." But let me try to say something controversial about the result of the Republicans' failed attempt to recall Democratic governor Gavin Newsom.

Here is a map showing, by county, the result of the recall election that wrapped up Tuesday.

The brownish colored counties voted to retain the governor. The bluish green ones voted to replace him.

Here is a map showing current covid infection rates in California—cases per 100,000 residents. The darker the color, the higher the incidence of covid.

Being moderate in my views, I would never suggest that voting Republican can kill you. But it would appear that "voting Republican" correlates strongly with "presence of disease." Maybe people living in counties awash with covid are unhappy with the status quo and so voted to get rid of the current governor. But maybe a better explanation is that high vaccination rates in Democratic counties have suppressed covid, whereas in the more conservative parts of the state too many people decline to be vaxxed—because it's not enough to vote against the libz, you have to risk illness and death in order to own them. 

Say more about your "religious convictions"

 

Something one often hears nowadays is that American society, thanks to Obama or someone, has become antagonistic toward religion. Bigotry aimed at Christians, for example, is regarded as a grave problem requiring redress. What is the evidence for this view? I am not aware of candidates for office touting their atheism. On the contrary, someone like Trump—whose 70-some years on Earth haven't dented his ignorance of everything outside of the con & hustle, the void certainly encompassing Christianity and the Bible—is obliged suddenly to feign reverence when seeking the presidency: see above clip.

During this season of covid, there have been bans on public worship—but for good reason, since hardly  anything is more likely to result in a super-spreader event than people crowding into an indoor space where they then preach, sing, recite aloud a liturgy, share with one another "the peace of the Lord," successively receive communion in a face-to-face manner: all high-risk, from a public health perspective. After a choir practice last spring at a church outside Seattle, 45 of 60 singers became ill with covid; three were hospitalized and two died. Nevertheless, there has been a hue and cry about "closed churches," and the proof of the prejudicial intent was supposed to be the enterprises that remained open, such as big-box retailers. But the kinds of enterprises and activities that most nearly resemble public worship—concert halls, playhouses, movie theaters, comedy clubs, schools of all kinds—were shut, too. I do not perceive the animus toward religion, but there's a lot of evidence that something like the opposite is true.

Billy Ray Stutzmann was an assistant football coach at the US Naval Academy until he was fired this week after refusing to be vaccinated against covid. He put out a statement on Twitter attributing his refusal to unspecified "religious convictions" augmented, naturally, by "much thought and prayer." People say stuff like this all the time and apparently it's considered a breach of etiquette to seek more information about the "religious convictions" requiring adherents to remain unprotected against a highly contagious disease that's killed around 685,000 Americans. What is the theological principle? Is there a Biblical instruction? Something in the writings of Aquinas or Luther or in the sermon of a megachurch preacher who flies around the country in his private jet?

Attributing opinions and actions to your "religious convictions" gives them a status they may not deserve. Once invoked, further inquiry is shut down. It's forbidden to express curiosity, let alone skepticism, about convictions so vague that all one can know about them is that the subscriber deems them "religious." Violators of the code are anti-religious bigots. Generally, the highest card wins the trick, but Coach Stutzmann exercised every American's right to cry "Religion!" while playing one face down. At least in this one instance, the other players told him to leave the table. Progress!

Beckett and the German convict

Chapter 20 of Deirdre Bair’s Beckett biography begins:

In the fall of 1954, Beckett received a letter from the warden of Luttringhausen Penitentiary in Germany, telling him that a convict had done a German translation of Waiting for Godot and was in the process of casting and performing the play. The warden said the play had changed one of the most troublesome prisoners into a cooperative, scholarly individual, and he asked if Beckett would be willing to correspond with the prisoner to answer some questions raised by the translation. Beckett agreed immediately. Several letters passed between them, and Beckett was impressed with the convict’s intelligence and sensitivity. When the play was performed, both the warden and the convict wrote detailed accounts to Beckett, telling him how it had affected all the prisoners, and how it stirred much discussion and comment, as each man found a personal meaning in the play. They invited Beckett to visit, and he wrote a sincere letter in reply, stating that he would if ever he were in Germany again, but he thought the possibility an unlikely one. In his reply, he returned the courtesy and invited them to Paris, should they ever have the opportunity. Little did he dream anything would come of it.

Intriguing, and I was looking forward to “Beckett Meets Some Cons,” but the story peters out amusingly and somewhat in the manner of an absurdist drama such as Beckett himself might have written. The following winter one of the inmates, having been released from prison, violated the terms of his parole and walked, hitchhiked, and rode in freight cars to Paris to meet with Samuel Beckett. It was the very fellow who had translated and staged Waiting for Godot at the prison. He wasn’t dressed for winter weather and arrived in Paris half-starved in addition to half-frozen. He didn’t know how to contact Beckett so went to the theater of Roger Blin, the actor and director who had first staged Waiting for Godot a couple years earlier. Bair then writes, deadpan though I think it’s quite funny:

Blin took him backstage while he tried to contact Beckett by calling several bars in Montparnasse, as there was still no phone at the rue des Favorites [the street on which Beckett lived]. When he failed to reach Beckett, he borrowed a heavy jacket and took the convict out for dinner. He wanted to give him money for a hotel room, but the man had no identity papers and was afraid to try to register without them, so Blin took him to his apartment.

The next day was very wintry. Blin left the convict alone in his apartment and set out to find Beckett. When he soon succeeded, and had explained to Beckett the situation, the renowned creator of theatrical vagabonds flatly refused to meet the criminal runaway. Bair suggests the refusal had little to do with the man’s social status—Beckett was famously reclusive and hated meeting anyone new. But it seems the “sincere” letter he’d written the prison was pro forma. He never expected to be taken up on the offer and directed Blin to tell the man that he (Beckett) had left Paris for an extended period. He also gave Blin a “substantial” sum of money to turn over to the man to get him on his way.

Perhaps not that surprisingly, the man had other ideas. He rather liked Paris, the more so since the most obvious alternative was returning to Germany, where he was wanted for violating parole. Moreover, he’d been given warm clothes, a place to stay, and a meal at a nice restaurant. These theater people might have been bohemian outsiders but they weren’t as outside as he was. Blin had a squatter and didn’t like it.

For a few days, he endured this arrangement. Somehow, though, he learned, while stewing over what to do, that the man’s criminal offense had been a violent one. Blin had been deprived of his ease and convenience and now he feared for his safety, too. With trepidation, he determined to evict his guest. But then, arriving home after his work day at the theater, intending to perform the unpleasant task, he discovered his apartment vacated. There was a note from the ex-con explaining that he could not abide the Paris cold and was headed to the south of France.

“He thanked Blin graciously for his hospitality,” concludes Bair, “but made no mention of Beckett.”

I click on high-brow click bait

 

Online subscribers to The New York Times receive a daily “newsletter” that a couple days ago included a link to “Quiz: If America Had Six Parties, Which Would You Belong To?” Maybe the quiz is intended as interactive fun, a bit of subscriber-friendly click bait—if so, it worked on me. You answer twenty questions and they assign you a place on their graphic together with the name of the political party closest to your views. My result is shown above.

I think the NYT has me pegged but there are things about the graphic that surprise me. For example, the party that brands itself “Christian” is all-in on economic conservatism but apparently a little squishy on social issues. Immigration? Race? Guns? If you take the quiz, you’ll see that the social issues probed are mainly those three plus abortion and gay rights, and I’m reasonably sure the “Christians” are with the “Patriots” on abortion and gay rights. But to be a perfect fit for the Christian Conservative Party you have to strongly agree that “[w]ealthy people spur innovation,” strongly disagree that “[i]t’s the responsibility of government to reduce income differences between people,” and be strongly opposed to:

—government regulation of business

—raising the minimum wage

—raising taxes on income north of $200,000.

More patriotic than the patriots!

It’s also interesting—or symptomatic?—that the upper-left quadrant of the Times’s graphic is empty, indicating perhaps  that there is no political home, even with six parties, for those who are “economically liberal” and “socially conservative.” This suggests that not many Americans (for example) think abortion should be illegal in all, or almost all, instances—and that government should generously support poorer citizens who are raising children. 

Still hittin it hard

Last night around 9 o’clock I made myself a cup of instant coffee and while stirring in a splash of milk thought to myself, “It’s 8 in the morning somewhere, damnit.” If you’ve ever wondered whether I’m the same hard-charging bad boy you may have known 30 or more years ago, I think you have your answer.

Just looking

Spent much of the afternoon at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Have long had an inkling, now confirmed, that I’m under appreciative of the kitchenware from the T’ang Dynasty. Same holds for most religious art. Regarding the above Madonna & Child, painted by the Italian Segna di Bonaventura in about 1325, the explanatory note visible at the lower right of my photo (click to fix the orientation) directs attention to how the artist indicates the humanity of the Christ child by having him play with his mother’s fingers—and, I thought, by how his head resembles that of the 40ish alcoholic who lived across the via from Segna.

It’s not a universal rule, but generally my interest rises as we approach current times. The below painting, which by pacing off its width I estimate to be 18 x 15 feet, is sharp and visually striking: you can’t make it out in my photo, but VICEROY is printed with photographic realism on the white paper of the cigarette extending farthest out from the pack. The museum’s explanatory placard in this case reads:

Jesse Trevino
American born, 1946

Mi Vida, 1971-73
Acrylic on drywall, mounted on aluminum

Jesse Trevino was drafted out of art school in 1966 and deployed to Vietnam as an infantryman. A few months later, he was seriously injured while on patrol, and doctors eventually amputated his right arm—the one he had used to paint. He painstakingly created Mi Vida with his left hand, marking his rebirth as an artist. It portrays his postwar life, from his new prosthetic to his daily coffee and pan dulce. Trevino painted Mi Vida in private, on the wall of his bedroom, when he was still struggling with chronic pain and the transition to civilian life. Before his rehabilitation, he had made art for assignments and had not painted from his life. With this ambitious work, he found a new direction for his art, rooted in his experiences and perspective as a Chicano. He went on to become a major public artist in Texas, making large-scale murals and mosaics for civic spaces. 

 

Abortion in Texas

This new Texas abortion law—whoa! If you’ve clicked, read through that first sentence, and are still with me, you probably are aware of the law’s main provisions, but the little details are startling too. For example:

Notwithstanding any other law, a civil action under this section may not be brought by a person who impregnated the abortion patient through an act of rape, sexual assault, incest, or any other act prohibited by sections 22.011, 22.021, or 25.02, Penal Code.

In other words, a Texas woman impregnated in a sexual assault may not procure an abortion after about the first six weeks of pregnancy; if she does, she or her doctor, or her friend who drove her to the clinic, or her mother who gave her money, may be sued in civil court—but, relax, the person who sues her can’t be the one who raped her. That guy is enjoined, as lawyers say. If he wants some of the bounty (which is ten grand), he’ll have to work something out with someone else. His brother, maybe.

The immediately preceding section of the law—the whole text is here—reads:

Notwithstanding any other law, a court may not award costs or attorney’s fees under the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure or any other rule adopted by the supreme court under Section 22.004, Government Code, to a defendant in an action brought under this section.

No doubt the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure provide in some instances for a defendant who prevails to collect attorney’s fees from the plaintiff. The purpose would be to discourage frivolous or weak lawsuits: if you sue and lose, you have to pay the other guy’s costs. The crafters of the abortion law took care to state that it would not be subject to any such arrangement. Abortion vigilantes must not be discouraged from bringing their suits!

The Supreme Court’s decisions—majority and dissents—in the matter are here. All are worth reading. In my view, the conservative majority—three Trump appointees plus Thomas and Alito—is just running interference for Texas. They aren’t saying the law is constitutional (it plainly isn’t), but there are “complex and novel antecedent procedural questions” that give them pause, so, no, they won’t stop the law from going into effect. It’s a way of saying they’re going to play along with Texas’s absurd workaround for its new law being flatly unconstitutional. Supreme Court precedents going back close to 50 years haven’t been reversed, the justices insist—but it is in fact the case that Texas has barred women living there from securing a constitutional right. This is okay because . . . “complexity,” “novelty,” “procedures.” The justices tip their hat to Texas for being so clever.

For a woman in Texas, how would it be different if Roe and Casey had been [formally] overturned?

 

Twins in August

The Twins had a winning August—14 victories, 13 defeats. It was their first month with more wins than losses. Perhaps that's just a blip along the way of a mediocre team's long walk through a long season. Still, it's worth mentioning that their best month followed immediately upon having traded their best hitter (Cruz) and their best pitcher (Berrios) for players whose value is almost entirely prospective. Moreover, their schedule in August was their most difficult so far, and not just by a little: they had series against the Astros, the White Sox, the Rays, the Yankees, and the Red Sox. The highlight of the month, maybe of the season so far, came when, from the 5th through the 15th, they had consecutive series against the Astros, the White Sox, and the Rays, the three division-leading teams in the American League. A Twins fan looking ahead, in late July, to that stretch of games might have predicted the final implosion. Instead, they won 3 out of 4 in Houston, then returned home to win 2 out of 3 from both the Sox and the Rays.

Alas and alack, their next road trip was to New York and Boston, where the results were more in line with expectations. But they were competitive, and since they were relying on younger and unproven players, especially among the starting pitchers, this suggests they could be competitive in the future, too. 

Or not. If you look behind the wins and losses, you see, for example, that the Twins were outscored in the month by 29 runs in the 27 games. I said they were "competitive." Someone else might say they were "mediocre."  In the White Sox series, they lost 11-1 before winning 5-4 and 1-0. Winning close games (which they did) is a good sign. Getting pelted (which they also did) is a bad sign. Their success in close games may be attributed in part to effective relief pitching, but through July 31 they were giving up 5.3 runs per game, worst in baseball except for the woeful Baltimore Orioles, and in August they allowed . . . 5.3 runs per game. Starting pitching is by far the biggest question going forward. In that 1-0 victory over the White Sox, the Twins tied a major league record for most pitchers participating in a shutout (4), which seems more like a symptom than stray accident. 

If you follow the team, but your memory only goes back a couple of games, you probably think all this is crazy, because in those two games they gave up a total of 6 runs and lost them both. This was against the Cubs, who in their previous three games had allowed 30 runs. (One was a shutout win; in two losses they allowed 17 runs and then 13 more.) You never know what will happen! Who will play shortstop for the Twins next year? What is Luis Arraez's best (or least bad) position? Can Byron Buxton stay in the lineup? If so, can he play all year like he played this April? And who can get guys out at the start of the game, like 16 or 18 of them?

 

 

Beckett at war

 

Still enjoying Deirdre Bair's biography of Samuel Beckett, in which I've now progressed to the World War II years. The last passage I read, page 325, made me laugh out loud in a coffeeshop. The Vaucluse is a region in southeast France where Beckett was hiding from Nazis:

People in the Vaucluse were able to go on with their lives throughout the war with relatively little interference from either warring side because the area was out of the way in the unoccupied zone. They had adequate food, never lacked wine and seldom went without cigarettes.

He had to hide because he was active in the underground resistance to the Nazis. Up to that point in his life, Beckett had been determinedly apolitical, but, as he later explained to an interviewer:

I was so outraged by the Nazis, particularly by their treatment of the Jews, that I could not remain inactive. . . . I was fighting against the Germans, who were making life hell for my friends, and not for the French nation.

Beckett made light of his resistance activities, which he described as "Boy Scout stuff." After the war, however, he received a citation from the French government, signed by Charles de Gaulle, that read:

BECKETT, Sam: A man of great courage, who over the course of two years, demonstrated his effectiveness as an information source in an important intelligence network. He continued this work well past the limit of personal security. Betrayed to the Germans, from 1943 he was forced to live clandestinely and with great difficulty.

Lived "with great difficulty," though with lots of wine and cigarettes. During peacetime it's perpetual Mardi Gras in The Vaucluse.

I promised two anecdotes relating to the absurd romantic entanglements to which Beckett as a young man was subject, and then only delivered one. Here is the passage describing the other I had in mind:

As the summer drifted on, [Beckett] grew silent and tight-lipped when friends mentioned Betty, but he never asked about her. He drifted into a sexual relationship instigated by the woman he called Frica, but almost before it began it was ended by both their mothers, who realized the unsuitability of the liaison and saw to it that both their errant children were separated by great physical distance.

The absurdity of this small episode in the history of parental helicoptering derives mainly from the fact that Beckett was at the time precisely 30 years old. His father had recently died, and he was living at home, in the suburbs of Dublin: there was a profitable family business in which he refused to work, but neither could he live independently, as there wasn't much of a market for freelance intellectuals. Another reason he lived through the war with relative ease is that his brother, who did work in the family business, regularly sent checks to him in occupied France.