Eric The Blue

In the mail

When you get a summons from the court, I suppose the news could be worse than jury duty. Is it unusual to get tapped three times over around 45 years of adulthood? First time the case I heard was not "ripped from the headlines": car accident, insurance company had declined to pay, blah, blah. I remember the guy next to me in the jury box took notes, and I could see he was on the side of the insurance company, 110 percent. I thought the woman who had crashed her car should get something, though not anything like what she probably hoped, and was sort of dreading having to deliberate with this fellow whose notes revealed a strong contrary opinion. Then he ended up being my ally because, of the six jurors, four wanted to spring for her new house on Park Place. Mr Hardass Notetaker and I tried talking them down to Baltic Avenue, and I honestly don't remember where we landed. Hoping for something equally portentous this time.

I store all official documents on my kitchen counter and drip pancake batter on them. 

Life hacks

What did I do today? Well, after washing a load of clothes, I watched this video on how to restring a hoodie:

 

My most available tool, the mechanical pencil, didn't work as it seems the holes in my daughter's garment are too small. While looking for a safety pin, my eye fell on one of those needles you use to pump up a basketball. That worked, maybe better than the YouTuber's assortment of pins: you can stick the thin part of the needle through a knot at the end of the string and then feed it through the track in the edge of the hood by repeatedly pinching the wide end that screws into the pump. Use your off hand to guide the advancing needle from below so that it doesn't fishtail in there and get its pointy end caught in the fabric on the sides of the track. Here is my finished product:

If you look closely, you can see that I damaged the hole to the right with my mechanical pencil fail. Make the pump needle your first option, unless you'd rather just throw away the string and say "the hell with it," which is what I would have done if it had been my hoodie. Alas and alack, it belongs to someone more particular, and with higher callings.

I know too that many of you have trouble folding a fitted sheet. My advice would be to watch this video

and then, having made a mental note of the complexities involved, wad the sucker up as if it were a giant piece of wastepaper before stuffing it into any open space your linen closet has to offer. 

Bookmark this blog for more life hacks augmented occasionally by hate speech and Shakespeare criticism. 

Regular Joe turns up on Project Runway

Henry David Thoreau advised against participating in any enterprise requiring new clothes. According to a corollary, only people of dubious character devote a lot of care and attention to the question of what to wear. I'm sure there must be counterexamples, but the experience of watching this year's SOTU didn't persuade me I'm being unfair. Regarding wardrobe criticism, I can be bipartisan: Republican on the left, Democrat to the right, possibly the most absurd specimens of their respective parties, both striking a characteristic pose in the Capitol on Tuesday evening.

 

Back to the Republicans. I don't know why they get so upset when it's pointed out that they're enemies of Social Security. The government deducts money from every American paycheck, funnels it into a gigantic government trust fund, then redistributes the proceeds to people who, in the government's estimation, need the money more than the people who just earned it. I think there's a word for that, which may account in some measure for the term Social Security. It seems odd that Republicans should think they can wear out their vocal cords yammering about the horrors of socialism and then, without causing anyone to laugh, feign outrage over being depicted as enemies of a straightforwardly socialistic program.

Rereading Romeo and Juliet

I joked recently about telling my high-school freshman that the play she's going to be reading for English class, Romeo and Juliet, is intended as a cautionary tale about what happens when people her age think they are "in love." It's possible that an earnest reader of the play could believe me. Probably shouldn't, however. 

In the first scene, Romeo is moping about, and explains, when his friends ask what ails him, that he's been dumped by the most exquisite specimen of female humanity in Verona. This elicits from his friends much cynical merriment. The scene shifts to the Capulet household, where the highly placed Paris is asking Juliet's father to bless his planned courtship of Juliet. Capulet is reluctant, on account of his daughter's age, just 13, but he invites Paris to a party he's throwing. Juliet will be there, of course, but so will a lot of other attractive young women: if after regarding them all Paris is still determined to court Juliet, they'll talk more, says her father. Back to Romeo, who's still pining after lost love in the company of his sneering friends. When by chance they learn of the Capulet party, one of the friends essentially repeats to Romeo old man Capulet's line to Paris: Romeo should go to the party, where he'll see his ex (her name is Rosalin) surrounded by a lot of other beauties, and suddenly she won't be all that and a bag of chips anymore. Romeo is indignant—

One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun
Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun

—but agrees to go, since at least he'll be able to admire Rosalin from afar (and, his friends would say, wallow in the pleasures afforded the lovesick).  He enters the ball in disguise, as the Capulets are the bitter enemies of his family, and immediately views Juliet across the room, whereupon:

ROMEO [to a Servingman]
What lady's that, which doth enrich the hand
Of yonder knight?

SERVINGMAN
I know not, sir.

ROMEO
O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear—
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

The justness of the friends' sneers is thus in every detail ratified. Romeo, a ridiculous figure, drops one pose and adopts another as easily as he might change clothes. His praise of Juliet, in perfectly metered lines adorned with chiming rhymes, is out of the Hallmark shop. And there's a lot more where that came from. In his first exchange with Juliet, she listens to a few of his lines before remarking, "You woo by the book." This has always seemed to me an aptly tart observation, raising the question of why she falls for such an absurd fellow—so hard and fast that she's soon consenting to the desperate plan that ends in their double suicide.

In reading here and there in search of enlightenment regarding such a question, I came across the following morsel from Frank Kermode: "Whenever Shakespeare is working largely from a single text, [as he is in Romeo and Juliet], one observes his readiness to accept and transform a conventional morality, and to find an appropriately limited place in his play for what had struck the author of his source as being the whole moral bearing of the story." The source for Romeo and Juliet is a long and, according to all who've read it, tedious poem, The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, by a poet named Brooke, first published in 1562, a couple years before Shakespeare had been born. From what I can understand, "the whole moral bearing" of Brooke's poem is in line with the cautionary tale I described to my daughter: in matters of the heart, young people should not take themselves so seriously, for when they do, ignoring the wise counsel of their elders, tragedy ensues. This conventional lesson is present in Romeo and Juliet, but the exposition of Romeo's callowness, preeminently the mocking treatment of his love sickness, which I assume is entirely Shakespeare's invention, obscures Brooke's tidy lesson and transforms it into something enjoyable on the stage. 

Then, as events unfold, the tidy lesson suffers more and harder blows. I have in mind two scenes, mainly. The first is the one in which Juliet's feigned death is discovered. If you're familiar with the plot, you'll remember that, having secretly married the banished Romeo, Juliet drinks a potion the night before she is to marry Paris. The potion has the effect of making her appear dead for a period of time sufficient to be entombed at the family monument. The plan is that, in addition to avoiding the wedding with Paris, she will when she awakens be reunited with Romeo, who is to be recalled from exile in Mantua. On the morning of the wedding day, then, the Capulet household is busy with wedding preparations while Juliet sleeps in. The audience knows that soon the trivialities will be interrupted by the discovery of her "death." The dramatic challenge is to draw out the scene long enough for tension to build but not so long that the audience's interest begins to flag. Of course  Shakespeare manages it perfectly. It's Juliet's nurse who discovers her. "O lamentable day!" she wails. Lamentable: usually grief does not deploy polysyllables. Juliet's mother echoes, "O woeful time!" Then the nurse again:

O woe! O woeful, woeful, woeful day!
Most lamentable day, most woeful day
That ever ever I did yet behold!
O day, O day, O day! O hateful day!
Never was seen so black a day as this.
O woeful day! O woeful day!

It doesn't rhyme, unless you count four "day"s, but each line has the correct number of syllables, and one wishes Romeo's friends were on the scene to comment. Capulet enters the bedroom and declares himself unable to speak, his grief being too great. He soon recovers, however, and there creeps into his eloquent lament regret over his meticulous plans for the wedding celebration having come to nought. This guy really enjoys planning and putting on parties. 

Recall that the idea of what I've called "the tidy lesson" is that the reckless young should listen to the advice of their more experienced elders, whose wisdom and prudence is worthy of emulation. Along this line, it might be mentioned too that, in the coming climactic scene at the Capulet tomb, the Friar who has been assisting the young lovers exhibits too much prudence, thereby abetting the tragedy. 

The second scene I have in mind relates to Romeo exiled in Mantua. The letter by which the Friar meant to inform him of the plan to fake Juliet's death miscarries, but a messenger who knows only as much as the Capulet family makes his way to Mantua with the bad news. Romeo immediately determines that life then isn't worth living: he will kill himself at Juliet's tomb and be united with her in death. How to acquire the means? He remembers seeing a seedy apothecary business, and surmises that the owner, out of financial desperation, will for a price be persuaded to supply him with an illegal dose of poison.  As he searches out the shop, alone on stage, he describes the druggist and his failing business—it's almost my favorite thing in the play:

                        Meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones;
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuffed, and other skins
Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,
Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses
Were thinly scattered, to make up a show.

His surmise about what the proprietor of this business might be willing to do, for a price, is in the event confirmed, and Romeo's speech as money and poison change hands is why I said the description of the business is only "almost" my favorite passage:

There is thy gold—worse poison to men's souls,
Doing more murder in this loathsome world,
Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.
I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none.
Farewell. Buy food and get thyself in flesh.
Come, cordial and not poison, go with me
To Juliet's grave, for there must I use thee.

I feel sure that this incident, if it is in The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, has been elaborated by Shakespeare, and that the vivid description of the place of business, as well as the expressions of worldly disgust and sympathy for the poor apothecary—"Sharp misery had worn him to the bones . . . Buy food and get thyself in flesh"—are not from his source but from his mind. It might almost be objected that the scene is too elaborate, a slack digression from the plot, or that the Romeo of the early scenes could never speak like this. Just so, however. In the course of the play Romeo's consciousness expands to such a degree that he's able to take in the suffering of others and be disgusted by the world's trivial, money-grubbing ways. Juliet had complained that he speaks "by the book" but she could not say that about his speeches in the fifth act. If you don't believe in Romeo's transformation, you can still love Shakespeare for making him talk this way. In his play, notwithstanding the poem he used as a source, speaking by the book is a sign of dubious character and it's the older generation that never leaves off. 

The freewheelin' ninth grader

I find myself listening, closely and disapprovingly, to the lyrics of current pop songs—I assume they're current pop songs—that my 9th-grader belts out, perhaps more loudly than she realizes on account of her ear buds. So, if you play one of those gambling games where you bet on who's going to die soon, you might want to consider drafting me, especially now that the last pope has croaked. Speaking of him, his view of these lyrics would likely be even more dim than mine. Hope he's enjoying the organ music that blares through all eternity at his new address. If he's lucky, popes get to listen to Bach, a Lutheran. 

Once today when the ear buds were out she told me they are going to be reading Romeo and Juliet in English class. She knows I'm interested in Shakespeare and so moans and groans while imparting this information and then sneeringly imitates the language. Her abilities in this regard extend no farther than overloading sentences with "thee" and "thou." I plan on telling her that the play is intended as a cautionary tale about what happens when people her age consider themselves to be "in love." 

I might be understating my chances of attaining an actuarial average as my own dad lived for about 50 years after first frowning on the music I played. Though I think he had to try not to smile upon overhearing, on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan:

Well, my telephone rang, it would not stop
It's President Kennedy callin' me up
He said, "My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?"
I said, "My friend, John, Bridgette Bardot". . . .

Ask me why I'm drunk all the time
It levels my head and eases my mind
I just walk along and stroll and sing
I see better days and I do better things:
Catch dinosaurs
Make love to Elizabeth Taylor
Catch hell from Richard Burton.

Leak investigation: almost as if they didn't want to find out

I've been reading about the Supreme Court's evidently failed attempt to figure out who leaked the draft of Alito's decision overturning Roe. They interviewed almost a hundred employees and everyone said, "I didn't do it." Imagine that! Did they interview the justices? You couldn't tell from the first press release—I guess they didn't predict there'd be curiosity on that point. Now they say that they did speak with the justices and none of them fessed up, either. But all nine were helpful, answered every question in addition to offering some of their own, and, in the end, they were not asked, as the other employees all were, to sign a sworn affidavit stating, "I didn't do it." 

It's been widely reported that the public's confidence in the Supreme Court is at the level of the juice in the puddle below the dumpster. I hope they weren't expecting a boost from this "investigation." Assume, for the sake of argument, that all the Court's employees are willing to lie to save their ass but that none would go so far as to commit perjury. In that case, there's only nine suspects left. My prime suspect, Alito himself, bursting with pride of authorship, is still alive, so there is no reason yet to ask penance for my cynicism. 

I offer this argument only for its possible impact upon others. I personally do not doubt that Supreme Court justices in general, and Alito in particular, would lie under oath as well as in other circumstances. It's one of the things Sen. Collins and I agree about. 

When not to make a free throw

Since yesterday evening was Thursday evening, I was at the Lowbrow with the kids after piano lessons, and on the TVs above the bar I could barely make out the end of the Gopher basketball game at Ohio State. It seems that with between 1 and 2 seconds left in the game we made 2 foul shots to go ahead by 3 points. In that scenario, shouldn't you miss the second free throw on purpose? You then deny the other team the chance to gain half the court or more with a long inbound pass after your made shot. Coach Eric would have told the shooter, Garcia, to bang one off the rim. Clock starts soon as someone touches the ball in bounds.

Poor Ben Johnson. His team gets a big upset win and some anonymous blogger guy says he had the wrong strategy in the last 1.5 seconds.

How big an upset? The win probability chart at espn.com indicates that, at the start of the game, Ohio State had a 97 percent chance of winning. When with 5:15 left the Gophers made a basket to go up by 64-53, the chart still gave Ohio State a 5 percent chance. Turns out that might have been low: the Gophers did not score another field goal, turned the ball over once, and missed 5 free throws (out of 9, not including the two Garcia made with 1.5 seconds left). 

Well, the Gophers are supposed to be the league door mat, so of course they're not going to blow out Ohio State in Columbus. Their last 3 games have been competitive and, before last night, entertainingly painful—lost narrowly at Wisconsin, lost in overtime at home against Nebraska, then beat Ohio State on the road. I seem to be trying to talk myself into another TV option for when it's too icy for senior citizens to walk the dog. 

On the way to piano, we were passed by an emergency vehicle, which caused the 6th-grader to recall the time, "long ago," when she had said it was quite a coincidence that a fire department vehicle should have the license plate FIRE. After a pause she added, "God, was I dumb." Almost told her that the thought 

I was stupid a few years ago but now I'm not

was apt to recur to her at regular intervals till she's at least 64. 

Notes on senescence

It seems there are few things like a significant snow event to bring into view signs of encroaching senescence.

1. I decided to do the snow removal in shifts, the better to preserve my energies. Heading out for my second go at it, I discovered that my neighbor had already finished the job. Probably viewed my efforts from the window and knew he never wanted to see anything that pathetic again. 

2. Then the plow went by and filled in the end of my driveway with approximately 3 tons of frozen crustiness. I was out hacking away at it this lunchtime when my daughter got dropped off by her friend's dad. We exchanged meteorological pleasantries, as Minnesotans will, and then, pulling away, he advised me to "be careful." 

3. A day or two before the storm, I'm stopped at a red light in south Minneapolis and a young woman, out for a run, crosses in front of me. I follow her with my eyes, naturally. As she approaches the opposite curb, she takes a short stride in order to land at the front edge of a puddle, then springs over it with her next long stride. I used to be able to do that!

4. Last time I was in an uber I was somewhat younger than I am now. Still, I guess I was old enough so that, taking my seat, I observed the driver checking me out in the rear-view mirror before changing the radio from a hip-hop station to MPR. Probably should be thankful it wasn't right-wing talk! 

5. Since I've strayed from the original theme of winter's memento mori, I might as well mention what I take to be the best bit of commentary on the recently concluded clown show in the US Capitol—someone, taking note of Kevin McCarthy's craven concessions to the certifiable lunatics in his caucus, tweeted that, in exchange for the votes needed to be elected Speaker, he had promised to use the gavel only for the purpose of pounding himself in the crotch. 

 

It profits him not

Came in from shoveling snow, turned on a cable news channel, and now I'm thinking that Kevin McCarthy should be trying to organize the House Republican caucus into an "electoral college." It's a proven remedy for the problem sometimes referred to as "can't win enough votes."

Seriously, though, there is now someone on saying, "Today's nonsense shows Republicans aren't interested in governing." He appears pretty well dressed considering he must have just awakened from a years-long sleep. 

Another bit of CW relates to McCarthy supposedly having "sold his soul" to advance his political career. Usually, as in the gospel of Matthew (16:26), the phrase refers to abandoning principles in order to get money, power, some worldly good. In A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More upbraids Rich, who, in exchange for perjured testimony, has been appointed attorney general of Wales: "Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wales?"

Poor McCarthy! He "sold his soul" and now it looks as if he won't even get the shitty little prize. 

 

True confessions &c

 

True confession: I record Jeopardy shows, and sometimes I'll watch the same contest back-to-back, just to experience the sensation of burying the actual TV contestants with my trove of knowledge. I don't know what it is about me, no doubt something bad, but I find that my enjoyment is only mitigated, not erased, by the knowledge that I'm, you know, CHEATING.

Another idiosyncrasy: when reading a newspaper or magazine article, or even the work of a famous author, the last few days Mark Twain, I will copy edit as I go along, noting to myself that a sentence, in my opinion, might be better if this word or that phrase were eliminated, or the sentence split in two, or recast entirely so as not to be structured exactly like the one two before it, etc., etc. You can imagine my pleasure when I come across a mistake that is obvious and sort of funny, the kind of thing that human intelligence but not spell check would catch. For example, the other night I was reading about the band Green Day in Wikipedia, and there was a sentence in which the context clearly required the word "causal," but it was spelled "casual"—by chance, an error making a different word that changed the meaning of the sentence to something not intended. I've gone looking for it now but I can't find it, mainly because I can't remember what article it was in—could have been the one on Green Day, or the one on Billie Joe Armstrong, or the one on American Idiot, or the one on Mike Dirnt, or maybe one I can't even now think of . . . I just don't know. 

But, since I tried to find it, I think I could now make some money on a Green Day category in Jeopardy. The band name, for example, comes from Bay Area slang—Armstrong and Dirnt are from there—for a day devoted wholly to smoking pot. Armstrong's dad, a trucker and a musician, died in the September that Armstrong was 10, a traumatic event: the song "Wake Me Up When September Ends," from American Idiot, is a memorial. Dirnt isn't Dirnt's birth name, but he would go around elementary school playing chords on air guitar, accompanying the theatrical striking of imagined strings with the sound "dirnt," "dirnt," "dirnt." So the name he acquired is an onomatopoeia. Armstrong's wife of 28 years is from Minneapolis and her brother is a famous skateboarder. He (Armstrong, not the skateboarder) made a record, Foreverly, with Norah Jones—it's a reinterpretation of the Everly Brothers 1958 album, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us. You can listen to Foreverly on YouTube, here. I did not expect ever to see Billie Joe Armstrong, Norah Jones, and the Everly Brothers within one Wikipedia sentence. Reminds me, however, of my favorite odd couple of musical collaborators: Robert Plant, of Led Zeppelin fame, and blue grass vocalist and fiddle player Alison Krauss. Here they are performing "Killing the Blues." If you click on it, pretty good chance it's the most beautiful thing you hear until 2023. Happy New Year!

 

 

 

 

 

Musky

You can tell that Elon Musk is one of these think-outside-the-box, business geniuses because a person of ordinary abilities who ran an electric car company would never think to overpay for a social media company and then while away time shit-posting on his new toy about the people most apt to buy an electric car. The car company's stock has taken a hit—

—but the market is checkers and Elon's one of these guys who strolls from table to table playing chess games simultaneously against 24 overmatched grandmasters. If he were president of Ukraine, instead of that badly dressed fellow, Putin would beg to touch his robe. 

Playing catch with dad

Thinking about my dad, who died Thursday. Feel like I must have asked him to play catch with me 10,000 times before I was 10 years old. Though he'd likely point out that 10,000 is impossible, since there are fewer than 4000 days in 10 years, many of them in winter, etc., etc. Whatever, lots of times, and I can't remember him ever saying "No" or even "In a minute"—just dropped what he was doing and got his glove. ("Look, if the ball is above your waist, and you try to catch it with your palm up, there's no place in your glove for the ball to go. Fingers up on high ones!") 

He was a physicist, and seems to have had a successful STEM career, but I'm pretty sure he was a better dad than scientist. Chuckling now to think how, in my early memories, he comes home from work wearing a thin dark tie with a white short-sleeved shirt accessorized by the pocket protector. Central casting! He played a lot of catch dressed like that, because he never said, "Let me change first." Full obit here.

 

 

I try to answer questions

Somewhat relieved that the World Cup is over as I can now get back to having answers for my kids' sports questions. It's one of my unambiguous strengths as a parent but for a couple weeks there it was all, like, "Offsides in soccer? I dunno, google it."

Math homework getting dicey, too. Sixth grade I'm still fairly proficient but when the ninth grader seeks a consultation my reaction, on seeing the problem, is often along the line of, "Yeah, um, let me think about that for a minute." Then I take around a half hour at the dining room table to figure it out, sometimes with an assist from the Internet, and when I return to her room to present my solution she breezily informs me that her classmate CeCe just showed her how to do it over Facetime.

I hope CeCe doesn't tell her about how the Eskimos supposedly set their elders out to sea on a raft. 

 

Drinking with DeSantis?

"I voted for the one I'd rather have a beer with" must be among the dumbest justifications of voting behavior you hear—although, now that I've typed those words, I'm thinking that if I had heard all the justifications this one about a tavern partner might have to be moved far, far down the list. It's among the dumbest of the ones that is regularly spoken out loud. I believe I first heard of it in connection with George W. Bush's supposed high "likability" factor—anyone would rather have a beer with him than with stiff wonky Al Gore, it was said. Did anyone at the time point out that you could not have a beer with Bush, a dry drunk?  It says something that the impossibility of it is just the beginning of the problems. Actually, I think I'd rather drink alone, since presidential candidates self-select for possessing unattractive quantities of ambition and self-regard. Fine. It's an unusual job, so maybe an unusual person: the exact opposite of what is indicated by "someone I'd like to have a beer with." 

Such were my desultory thoughts after seeing recently on the news a clip of Ron DeSantis snarling at someone. For the people who'd want to have a beer with him, the attraction could only be the pass to get all mean and bigoty even before alcohol starts abetting the nastiness. Putting to one side the meaning of his words, I doubt most people could stand to listen to that high-pitched, nasally whine of complaint for the time it takes to slam one and head for the door, let alone for four years. Yet among Republicans he currently occupies an exalted slot between the angels and Trump. What is the high-minded reason for the cachet? I predict he flames out, like Scott Walker, the former boy wonder governor of Wisconsin who so far as I know does not these days even have a show on Fox. Whom the gods would destroy they first allow to win an election or two. 

 

Low energy

What do people who don't like to read do when they're sick? Watch TV I suppose. I did some of that yesterday, too—the Timberwolves' game against the inaptly named Jazz of Utah. (The Jazz moved to Salt Lake City from New Orleans, like the "Lakers" from Minneapolis to LA.)

I follow the T-wolves just closely enough to have formed the impression that they've been winning more games since Karl Anthony Towns, supposedly their best player, was sidelined with an injury. Checking now to see to what degree my impression conforms with reality, I see that Towns was injured in a game the Wolves lost on Nov. 28, which dropped their record for the season to 10-11. Since then, they've won 3 of 4. I know, not much of a sample size, and it might be that I'm not a KAT guy. He's always whining to the officials—seems to think he's never committed a foul, and that all his missed shots should be attributed to a swallowed whistle. Just play! When Anthony Edwards thinks he's been screwed, he looks at the ref and laughs. 

Also, my sentiments to the side, it might be that the things KAT's good at, mainly scoring, the T-wolves can get from other sources. What they really need is rebounding and a defensive presence near the basket. The guy they acquired in the off season, Rudy Gobert, gives them more of that than KAT does.  Last night, Gobert scored 22 points (despite trying just 11 shots) and led the team with 13 rebounds. D-Lo put on a 3-point shooting exhibition in the fourth quarter, when he scored 20 points without missing a shot, but who is this Kyle Anderson (pictured above) guy? He's taken KAT's place in the starting lineup and last night he had 15 points, 7 rebounds, and 12 [sic] assists. He made 4 of 5 field goal attempts and 7 of 9 foul shots. I'm taking this from the box score, obviously. Wouldn't mind watching the game again to try and figure out how a guy who shoots just 5 times is awarded 9 foul shots. The box scores at ESPN.com now have a +/- column indicating the team's net points when each player is in the game. While Anderson was playing, the Wolves were +12; they won by 10, so they were -2 when he was out. Watching on TV, I hardly noticed him: some good passes, and one defensive play when he denied a would-be dunker at the rim. D-Lo scored 30 points but was just +4. The NBA has a lot of bedazzlers but that ain't necessarily what wins games. 

According to my at-home covid test kit, I'm negative. Still possible to get sick in the boring old 2019 way, I guess. 

Herschel sprints to the wire

 

If there's a loving and omnipotent God who cares about America, today is the last one in which making fun of Herschel Walker will seem like permissible fair play instead of the kind of easy cruelty that causes smart asses to make fun of kids who ride to school on the short bus. For today it's still possible that Walker could be elected to the US Senate. Here he is, countering the suggestion of a political reporter that Georgia Republicans might not vote in today's runoff election since Democrats have already clinched majority-status in the Senate:

They're not [less motivated] because they know right now that the House will be even so they don't want to understand what is happening right now. You get the House, you get the committees. You get all the committees even, they just stall things within there. So if we keep a check on Joe Biden, we just going to keep a check on him. 

This is just barely coherent enough to persuade me that Walker doesn't know that he's running for US Senate—which, you know, is different from the House of Representatives, not that he's up to speed on the partisan alignment of the incoming House.

Ladies, cut us some slack, not all men who beat up the women in their lives are this dumb. 

After a hard weekend of nothing much at all

 

I've spent most of the long weekend verifying Paul Westerberg's maxim about how it's possible "to work up a mean mean thirst after a hard day of nothing much at all." That's him, above, performing solo "Here Comes a Regular"; the studio version, from the Replacements' Tim, is here.

I felt most alive while watching the Gopher football game. It might be Wisconsin's new thing to be just a little worse than us each year. Took some doing in 2022. Soon as the exhilaration of winning a close game against a hated rival had worn off, I asked myself: What's the best team we've beaten this season? In the nonconference schedule, we won games against New Mexico State (which finished the year 5-6), Western Illinois (0-11), and Colorado (1-11). Our wins in conference games, with the opponent's final conference record indicated, were against Michigan State (3-6), Rutgers (1-8), Nebraska (3-6), Northwestern (1-8), and Wisconsin (4-5). We had the good fortune not to have either Michigan or Ohio State on our schedule. We did play Penn State, the third best team in the league. They beat us 45-7.

In other competitions, I had the radio on this morning and heard the show's host ask Mara Liasson, NPR's Washington correspondent, what her biggest takeaway from the midterm election was. She said it was that the country, besides being bitterly divided, is also evenly divided. She noted that four states generally regarded as "swingy" moved definitively toward either the Republicans (Florida, Ohio) or the Democrats (Pennsylvania, Michigan). By her estimate, that leaves only four true "swing states," which are not on the whole particularly big ones: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin. 

My takeaways from her takeaway are, first, it's absurd that, thanks to the electoral college, the voters in well over 40 states are going to be ignored in the next presidential campaign. Get rid of the electoral college: most votes, from sea to shining sea, wins! Second, since we're stuck with the Rube Goldberg machine into the foreseeable future, trading the electoral votes of Florida and Ohio for those of Pennsylvania and Michigan is a decent deal for the Dems. Then, of the 46 states that Liasson thinks pretty clearly lean one way or the other, 22 (including D.C.), with 260 electoral votes, are blue, and 25, with 235 electoral votes, are red. You need 270 to win and the electoral vote counts of the four swing states are Arizona (11), Georgia (16), Nevada (6), and Wisconsin (10). You can see that, in this scenario, Nevada hardly matters, either: to win, the Republican would have to run the table in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin—Nevada plus the two biggest of the other three isn't enough, though at that point the outcome in two congressional districts in the states (Maine and Nebraska) that don't award all their electoral votes to the statewide winner could become determinative. 

Do such calculations seem bizarre? Put yet another tally mark in the electoral college's crowded debit column. 

A picture and fewer than a thousand words

I've looked into the question before of where the Polo Grounds, for many years baseball home of the New York Giants, was located: answer is Coogan's Hollow in upper Manhattan, adjoining the Harlem River just north of 155th Street. But I'd never realized how close it was to Yankee Stadium till I saw this cool photo from the Facebook group Baseball in Pics.

Yankee Stadium is in the foreground. Looking very much smaller, I assume because of some kind of distortion relating to camera angle, is the cavernous Polo Grounds, just across the Harlem River. Before Yankee Stadium opened in 1923, the Yankees and Giants both played at the Polo Grounds, which was owned by the Giants. The Yankees became more popular after they acquired Babe Ruth and so didn't want to be a mere tenant of the Giants anymore. It's said they chose a stadium site close to the Polo Grounds in order to taunt their former landlord with what they predicted, accurately, was an approaching era of hegemony. It was about a 10-minute walk over the Macombs Dam Bridge between ballparks. 

In the FB comments, someone points out that it would have been highly unusual for both the Giants and Yankees to be playing home games on the same night. Someone else hypothesizes that the picture was taken on the evening of September 17, 1954, when the Giants lost a home game to the Phillies and Ezzard Charles fought Rocky Marciano in a heavyweight championship match at Yankee Stadium. Maybe, but someone else observes that, farther in the background, the George Washington Bridge appears to be under construction, which would place the date somewhat later—the bridge opened in 1931 but construction on a new, lower deck began in June of 1959. In that case, it wasn't a baseball game at the Polo Grounds, because the Giants left for San Francisco after the 1957 season.

Probably the full story behind the photo is known to someone, but it's sort of fun to be forced by ignorance to speculate. The heavyweight fight at Yankee Stadium was one of the most famous in boxing history. In the sixth round, Charles opened a gash in Marciano's face and appeared headed toward victory by TKO before Marciano, covered in his own blood, rallied to knock him out in the eighth round.

In the picture, we're looking northwesterly across first the southwestern end of the Bronx, then northern Manhattan, then New Jersey. Not far out of the frame, at the upper right, is where the Harlem splits off from the Hudson River, forming Manhattan's northern tip. 

Tournament of Champions

When I issue directives or make pronouncements, my daughters have begun augmenting their eye rolls with "Ok Boomer." It's adorable! I fight back by cheering for Sam, the old guy to the right, in the just concluded Jeopardy Tournament of Champions. But then I saw the below clip of Amy Schneider testifying before the Ohio legislature about some dumb law the state was considering in order to make trouble for trans kids.

She's such a mensch that I'm okay with her beating out my demographic colleague for the $250,000 grand prize. Who is the comedian—Beth Stelling?—who says, "I'm from Ohio. A lot of people who live there don't realize that you can pack a bag and . . . leave forever." JD Vance would be one more reason to relocate.

On the other hand, considering our goofy electoral system, the migration should probably be in the other direction. There's more of us but we don't live in the right places. Poor distribution. Colonize the red states!

I wonder what Amy thinks about the shooting at the LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs. Compared to a few hundred cops at Uvalde, the club patrons made pretty quick work of the active shooter. Trying to think of a new slogan. Best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a few unarmed queers who've had a couple?

By the way, it is Beth Stelling. Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Reading the Times

Today's New York Times story concerning another Supreme Court leak is in some ways quite an odd linguistic performance. The story is here. It begins:

As the Supreme Court investigates the extraordinary leak this spring of a draft opinion of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a former anti-abortion leader has come forward claiming that another breach occurred in a 2014 landmark case involving contraception and religious rights. 

In a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and in interviews with the New York Times, the Rev. Rob Schenck said he was told the outcome of the 2014 case weeks before it was announced. He used that information to prepare a public relations push, records show, and he said that at the last minute he tipped off the president of Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain owned by Christian evangelicals that was the winning party in the case.

It's the passive voice in the first sentence of the second paragraph that seems awkward and unusual. The passive voice is what linguists call a construction that uses a form of the verb "to be" in order to leave out the sentence subject or agent—you might say, for example, that "the ball was hit" instead of "John hit the ball." In this case, the second paragraph informs us only that Schenck "was told" of the outcome. Maybe in his interviews with the Times Schenck didn't say who told him?

No, that's not it, but it seems like it's really hard for the Times to get to the point. Here's the fourth paragraph:

Mr. Schenck's allegation creates an unusual, contentious situation: a minister who spent years at the center of the anti-abortion movement, now turned whistle-blower; a denial by a sitting justice; and an institution that shows little outward sign of getting to the bottom of the recent leak of the abortion ruling or of following up on Mr. Schenck's allegation.

I was at first confused by the phrase "a denial by a sitting justice," though if I'd stopped to consider I suppose I might have hit on the conclusion that Schenck must have told the Times that a sitting justice was the source of the leak. It would be odd, however, that the identity of a Supreme Court leaker was held back until after his denial had been clumsily mentioned. Anyway, I plunged unthinkingly ahead, and eventually got to the story's ninth and tenth paragraphs:

In early June 2014, an Ohio couple who were Mr. Schenck's star donors shared a meal with Justice Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann. A day later, Gayle Wright, one of the pair, contacted Mr. Schenck, according to an email reviewed by the Times. "Rob, if you want some interesting news please call. No emails," she wrote.

Mr. Schenck said Mrs. Wright told him that the decision would be favorable to Hobby Lobby, and that Justice Alito had written the majority opinion. Three weeks later, that's exactly what happened. . . .

Why so much wheel spinning in the mud before divulging that Justice Alito goes out to dinner with Christian evangelical activists and lets them know that he's authored the opinion that will make them and their friends at Hobby Lobby happy? "You can get your PR releases ready because Sam Alito's come through again!" Seems like you shouldn't have to turn inside the paper from page 1 to receive this information. 

I'm coming toward the view that Alito is the likely source of the leak in the abortion case as well. If his lips were loose in 2014, there's no reason to think they'd be sealed in 2022. The probable motive in the abortion case would have been to lock in the decision before anyone squishy defected. Imagine the abuse that, say, Kavanaugh would suffer if it was known that his late change of heart or mind allowed Roe to stand. I'm tempted to think, too, that once you've admitted Alito as a young man must have done well on standardized tests measuring academic potential, you've exhausted his store of attractive human traits. 

Reading the story is like wallowing in stinky mire but there is one moment of unintended comic relief:

In the interview, Mrs. Wright said that while she did not have her calendars from those days, she believed the night in question involved a dinner at the Alitos' home during which she fell ill. She said that the justice drove her and her husband back to their hotel, and that this might have been the news she wanted to share with Mr. Schenck.

I'm trying to imagine Mr. Schenck's disappointment when, having been warned against email as a vehicle of communication for Mrs. Wright's portentous news, he placed a phone call and was told only that she'd left the party early feeling ill. She's a high-toned old Christian lady and also a liar. For a recent Times story that's sickening through and through, no comic relief, try this one.

 

Fox news lands a blow against drug abuse

Sean Hannity plays dumb, says he doesn’t know where the predictions of a red wave came from. So the Washington Post lets him have it with a supercut of his own Fox News predicting a red wave. pic.twitter.com/Uq2J3PMdlw

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) November 12, 2022

 

Now that this video clip exists in the world, there will never again be a reason for me to shoot heroin into my veins.

Burying the lede

The opening to an Associated Press story on Tuesday’s elections for Wisconsin State Assembly:

Wisconsin Democrats scored a major victory in Tuesday's election when they staved off Republican hopes to win supermajorities that would have allowed them to legislate without fear of vetoes by a Democratic governor.

The Democrats remain a feeble minority in heavily gerrymandered Wisconsin. But they just managed to retain enough seats to prevent Republicans from the two-thirds majorities that could have overridden the vetoes that Gov. Tony Evers used frequently in his first term. 

Republicans needed to flip five Assembly seats and one in the Senate. They got the Senate seat when Romaine Quinn defeated Kelly Westlund for an open seat in far northwestern Wisconsin. 

But Democrats defended three of the six seats Republicans had targeted in the Assembly. . . .

Evers vetoed nearly 150 GOP bills during his first term. With enough votes to override Evers, the GOP could have dramatically reworked state politics over the next two-year legislative session—including reshaping election administration to their advantage in a key battleground state.

Um, pardon me AP, but you've buried the lede with that fleeting allusion in the second graf to "heavily gerrymandered Wisconsin." The statewide vote tally for the Assembly is incomplete, but Wisconsin Democrats won the races for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general. It's a 50-50 state, unless it's 51-49 in favor of the Dems. Yet on account of gerrymandering the Dems are reduced to celebrating the "major victory" of having "staved off" the prospect of a Republican supermajority in both houses of the state legislature: We got as many votes as they did, probably a few more, and as a result the expert map drawers will have a veto-proof majority in only the Senate! In the Assembly, our deficit will be no worse than 35-64! Whew!

I love how the story says that Republicans, had they done only a little better on Tuesday, would then have been in position to "reshape election administration to their advantage." LOL! 

What's the opposite of doom scrolling?

Maybe logging on to enjoy Republican explanations of "what went wrong"? Steve Hayward, of the Power Line blog, begins his recap

There is no way to sugar coat this pitiful Republican performance.

and then proceeds to sugar coat the pitiful performance. According to Hayward, it all has to do with parallels to the midterm election of 44 years ago:

We remember what happened two years after that dismal 1978 midterm. And while Joe Biden has to be reckoned a big winner yesterday, it means that in due course the big loser was . . . the Democratic party. . . .

I can guaranty you that there are many old-line Democrats who secretly hoped Democrats would get crushed, so they could ease Biden out and clean out the crazy progressives who have hijacked the party. Instead Democrats are certain to take their relative success as evidence that there is nothing wrong with their message or their policies. Let them persist in this view. 

The Democrats have bad policies and a messaging problem? Let them persist in this view.

I love a good morning-after quip, and my favorite of this morning goes, predictably, to James Carville. Jon Ralston, whose name when it appears in print is generally followed by the phrase "dean of Nevada political reporters," has predicted that the state's Democratic incumbent US senator, Catherine Cortez Masto, who narrowly trails in her re-election bid, will pull through on the strength of untallied mail-in ballots from the Las Vegas area. When Carville in a TV interview this morning predicted the same thing, he was asked why he felt sure Cortez Masto would win, and he immediately replied: "When Jon Ralston says it's Easter, I dye my eggs."

I believe that, as of lunch time on the morning after, only one US Senate seat has switched hands. That's in Pennsylvania, where, as one would expect, the Republicans nominated for an open seat a horrible candidate: Mehmet Oz, a quaky TV doctor endorsed by Trump. It's not the biggest reason he's unfit to represent Pennsylvania, but Dr Oz lives in New Jersey. When last Saturday he was urging his supporters to get out the vote, he told them to talk to their neighbors—"Do it before the Steelers game tomorrow," he said.

The Steelers weren't playing. It was their bye week. 

If only Dr Oz, who came to national prominence telling Oprah what poo should look like, was their absolute worst. They could still slip into the Senate majority by winning either Arizona or Nevada and then a run-off in Georgia. Not sure they should even hope for that, however, as it would raise the profile of their Senate candidate in the Peach State. Trump usually endorses people who are even more damaged than he is, which somewhat limits the pool, but in the person of Herschel Walker this box was checked. 

I see that the House projection right now is that Republicans will win 220 seats, "plus or minus ten." Since 218 makes a majority, their chances are better than 50-50. For this, they can probably thank the Supreme Court of the Republican party: 

Since January, judges in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Ohio have found that Republican legislators illegally drew those states' congressional maps along racial or partisan lines, or that a trial very likely would conclude that they did. In years past, judges who have reached similar findings have ordered new maps, or had an expert draw them, to ensure that coming elections were fair. 

But a shift in election law philosophy at the Supreme Court, combined with a new aggressiveness among Republicans who drew the maps, has upended that model for the elections in November. This time, all four states are using the rejected maps, and questions about their legality for future elections will be hashed out in court later. 

The immediate upshot, election experts say, is that Republicans will almost certainly gain more seats. . . .

David Wasserman, who follows congressional redistricting for the Cook Political Report, said that using rejected maps in the four states, which make up nearly 10 percent of the seats in the House, was likely to hand Republicans five to seven House seats that they otherwise would not have won.

So, if any Republican is thinking this morning that it could have been worse . . . yeah, sure, it could have been fair. To give credit where it's due, I haven't heard (yet) any defeated Republican blame the Communistic genies known to reside inside voting equipment. 

Man on the street speaks

About 1-in-4 Americans die of heart disease.

American: I'll have a cheeseburger with fries!

The chance of winning the Powerball jackpot is less than 1-in-292 million.

American: You can't win if you don't buy a ticket!

Here is journalist Elizabeth Kolbert reviewing the literature on "Why Facts Don't Change Our Mind." I was put in mind of this general topic of irrationality while growing depressed by "voter interviews" on TV news. One guy says he could fill his tank for $50 when Trump was president and now it costs $200. Let's see, gas today costs about $3.70 per gallon, so x is to $3.70 as $50 is to $200: x is then 93¢.

You could not buy gas for 93¢ a gallon when Trump was president. In fact you couldn't buy it for twice that. It did cost less: Covid was raging, demand was down, and meanwhile the president was carrying on about the wonders of Ivermectin, to say nothing of the possible curative properties of ingesting bleach or shining an ultraviolet light up your arse ("through the skin," to be precise, "or by some other method"). Alas, he was then diverted by the need to overturn an election.

If his side does well on Tuesday, at least it will prove elections are free, fair, and secure again.

Table talk

I took the above pic of my school lunch one day last week. As my 4th-grade charges and I proceeded toward a classroom, we passed in the hall the school nurse, who clucked disapprovingly. Maybe she didn't see the apple and frozen fruit cup. Plus, those are red peppers beneath my "turkey dog." 

You know what happens when grade school kids get an apple for lunch? A thousand apples in the garbage, a single tiny bite out one side. Good apples, too. At least the french fries aren't wasted. The mini donuts were terrible.

There's no sense trying to teach my mentees anything while they eat, so usually I hurry them through their meal, though sometimes I enjoy just listening.

BOY: What's that you wear on your head?

GIRL: It's my hijab.

BOY: I see a lot of girls wearing those around here.

GIRL: It's our Muslim culture.

BOY: You wear it to bed?

GIRL: [Laughs.] I never wear it at home. Only in public.

BOY: Why?

GIRL: In our culture, you're not supposed to see my hair.

BOY: [After a pause, looking at her intently.] I want to see your hair.

GIRL: [Another pause, as if for moral reflection. Then with a perceptible flourish she pushes back her hijab, which falls to her shoulders, revealing her bare head. She nods, tilting her scalp toward the boy.] There! Look!

BOY: [Sounding disappointed, but with a smile.] Your hair's just reg'lar. 

[They laugh. She pulls her hijab back into place.]

ME: Yesterday, we worked on some subtraction problems that did not require us to borrow and regroup. Today . . . .

Second chance in Jeopardy, with a dig at Lauren Boebert

Some online training I had to take included the above image from a Jeopardy college tournament show. The picture isn't clear, but the category the young Caucasian brainiacs avoided for as long as they could is "African American History." You'd think the political indoctrination and Woke dogma that Republicans assure us kids are subjected to at college would make them all eager to shout, "Who were the Tuskegee Airmen?" But, no, TikTok celebrities for a thousand, Ken.

Speaking of Jeopardy, there is a Second Chance tournament going on right now. Contestants who lost close games to Super Champions like Amy Schneider have been invited back to play against one another in a sort of Noble Losers bracket—two brackets, actually, with the winner of each advancing to the upcoming Tournament of Champions, where they will have a chance to avenge themselves further. I have a crush on the first Second Chance qualifier, Jessica Something-or-Other from Nashville. (Forty-five years ago I knew the full names of my crushes.) I got used to cheering for Jessica when on her first show she was giving Matt Amodio, who had won like a thousand games in a row, a run for his money. Then in Final Jeopardy Matt implausibly couldn't answer a question in the geography/history field, and Jessica didn't bet as much as the other challenger, who won the game. Then that "other challenger" won like ten more games in a row, so you could say that, without ever winning a game, Jessica played .500 ball against Super Champions. Now she lapped the field in her Second Chance bracket, and she seems like a normal person, not an idiot savant or any of their near relatives. 

My favorite in the other bracket is Do-Hyoung Park, a St. Paul native who studied computer science at Stanford and now covers the Twins for mlb.com. Renaissance man! He had the misfortune of going against Amy Schneider, who, assuming Ken Jennings has no secrets, is the greatest transgender Jeopardy player of all time. Do stayed with her throughout the game and would have won if she'd drawn a blank in Final Jeopardy. She didn't, of course. Do's Second Chance game airs tomorrow (Wednesday the 26th). I'm glad he wasn't in Jessica's bracket as its torture when ambiguity infects your rooting interest. 

Someone who's not a candidate for Celebrity Jeopardy? Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado. Can someone explain to me why this data reflects poorly on Biden?

Here’s how many individuals on the FBI’s terror watch list CBP arrested over the last 6 years:

FY’22 : 98
FY’21 : 15
FY’20 : 3
FY’19 : 0
FY’18 : 6
FY’17 : 2

Border security is national security, and we’re all in more danger thanks to @joebiden.

— Rep. Lauren Boebert (@RepBoebert) October 24, 2022

He arrests terrorists and has also been caught on tape telling his son that he loves him. Scandalous! Boebert was recently reading a Bible verse off a teleprompter when she became confused by the phrase "wanton killing." She interrupted herself to admit she was clueless about the connection between homicide and the Chinese menu item known as a wonton. According to the polls, Kevin McCarthy has only a few more weeks to wait before he can make her the chair of a congressional committee. 

Facts versus the crime "narrative"

 

I pointed out, here, that homicide rates are highest in red states. Since Republicans try to win votes with tales of out-of-control violent crime in big bad blue cities, I have often wondered to myself why a Democrat never seems to cite data pertaining to the issue. It's just a fact, for instance, that the states with the five highest homicide rates are, in order, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Missouri, and Arkansas. Maybe hot weather causes armed citizens to shoot one another? I don't know, and neither do Republicans. Illinois, a favorite whipping boy of the Republicans on account of Chicago, does crack the top 10 at number 9—which means, by the logic of the complaint, that it's doing better than the bottom five and also better than South Carolina and Tennessee (numbers 6 and 7, respectively). 

I doubt it was because she received my telepathically transmitted advice, but I see now that the Democratic challenger in Oklahoma's gubernatorial race pointed out in a debate that, under the Republican incumbent, the state has higher rates of violent crime than either California or New York. The video of the entire debate is above; the exchange I'm referring to begins at the 41:00 mark. The reaction of the Republican governor is sort of funny. He laughingly denies that it's true and appeals to the audience: "Oklahomans, do you believe that we have higher crime than New York or California?" The audience, and even the debate moderators, seem to think it's a wild charge: "We'll fact check that," says one of the questioners. When he does, he'll discover that she's right. Of course there are fewer homicides and other violent crimes committed in Oklahoma than in New York or California. But the number of these crimes per 100,000 population is somewhat higher in Oklahoma, and an Oklahoman is more likely to get shot than a Californian or a New Yorker. 

Actually, I think the fact checking has occurred, because the other day Marc Thiessen, a wingnut columnist whose delusions are published on the editorial page of the Washington Post, wrote a piece dismissing "the red state murder problem" as a "bogus claim" intended to divert attention from a raging crime epidemic in Democratic cities. He doesn't deny that violent crime rates tend to be highest in red states, but argues that this is because of all the criming in "Democrat-run cities" like New Orleans, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Birmingham, Alabama. Without these cities, says Thiessen, crime rates in the red states would drop significantly.

But this is no argument at all. Blue states have "Democrat-run" cities, too. St. Louis and Kansas City are in Missouri; New Orleans is in Louisiana; Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland are in California; and New York City is in New York. Rates of violent crime are considerably higher in Missouri and Louisiana than in California and New York. Why? Thiessen's column is just gaslighting, but, if I was determined to take him seriously, I'd say his solution to the riddle must be that blue cities in red states are hell holes compared to blue cities in blue states. If you value your life and live in Birmingham, move to L.A. before it's too late! 

Johnson on Shakespeare at work

No doubt the literary world is anxiously awaiting the promised sequel to my mini essay on Samuel Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare. I discussed briefly there Johnson's defense of Shakespeare for having violated the "dramatic unities"—the idea that, in a play, the elapsed real time while the audience watches in the theater must match the elapsed time depicted in the stage action. Shakespeare obviously cared nothing for this dictum. In Othello, for example, the action begins in Venice and then shifts to Cyprus, at the other end of the Mediterranean, where the same leading characters reconvene. It is today about a 3-hour flight from Italy to Cyprus, so several hundred years ago the journey could not have been achieved while an audience took in the action of the play. In Shakespeare's history plays, of course, wars are begun and ended within the same drama. We are not supposed to believe that Macbeth killed Duncan and then was killed himself around three hours later. According to the theory of the "unities," the theater experience is diminished by these obvious corruptions of "reality." 

I did not mention that Johnson takes up the question of whether Shakespeare was even aware of violating theater convention:

Whether Shakespeare knew the unities and rejected them by design, or deviated from them by happy ignorance, it is, I think, impossible to decide, and useless to enquire. We may reasonably suppose, that, when he rose to notice, he did not want the counsels and admonitions of scholars and criticks, and that he at last deliberately persisted in a practice, which he might have begun by chance. [The word "want" is here a synonym for "lack"—Johnson is saying Shakespeare likely received the conventional advice of "experts" and rejected it.]

This is interesting to me mainly for the suggestion relating to Shakespeare's character and private views. The suggestion is of the impatience of a professional practitioner for the theories of "scholars and criticks." He knew what worked, at least for him (and his audience). He wouldn't have wanted to discuss the question. He had no time for that—too busy—and would just have ignored the advice.

This suggestion, admittedly slight, lines up pretty well with several other small details Johnson has gleaned from his reading of Shakespeare. Here he is criticizing Shakespeare for what we might call general sloppiness:

The plots are often so loosely formed, that a very slight consideration may improve them, and so carelessly pursued, that he seems not always fully to comprehend his own design. He omits opportunities of instructing or delighting which the train of his story seems to force upon him, and apparently rejects those exhibitions which would be more affecting, for the sake of those which are more easy.

It may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his work, and, in view of his reward, he shortened the labour to snatch the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly represented.

If we can put aside the tendency either to concur or disagree, and just allow that Johnson might be on to something, it seems worth noting that there comes into view a picture of a man with much to do and not enough hours to do it in. It is easy to imagine such a man being impatient with the learned views of theoreticians about matters on which he, without formal education or privileged background, had built a busy and successful professional career. Johnson, in a mode still generally critical, then observes:

I am indeed far from thinking, that his works were wrought to his own ideas of perfection; when they were such as would satisfy the audience, they satisfied the writer . . . .

It does not appear, that Shakespeare thought his works worthy of posterity, that he levied any ideal tribute upon future times, or had any further prospect, than of present popularity and present profit. When his plays had been acted, his hope was at an end . . . .

So careless was this great poet of future fame, that, though he retired to ease and plenty, while he was yet little declined into the vale of years, before he could be disgusted with fatigue, or disabled by infirmity, he made no collection of his works, nor desired to rescue those that had already been published from the depravations that obscured them, or secure to the rest a better destiny, by giving them to the world in their genuine state. 

Of the plays which bear the name of Shakespeare in the late editions, the greater part were not published till about seven years after his death, and the few which appeared in his life are apparently thrust into the world without the care of the authour, and therefore probably without his knowledge.

It seems Shakespeare just didn't care about the things we contemporary people think an author must care about. He didn't care about the "unities," sure, and he also didn't care that his plays weren’t as good as he might have made them, if he'd had more time and fewer obligations, or that there was no published collection of his plays, with the text as he had originally written it, that would project into the future his genius. He was a professional theater person who had begun as an actor, had acquired an ownership interest in an acting company and, eventually, the theater in which they performed, and by the way was simultaneously supplying this company, from about 1590 to 1610, with one or two new plays per year in order to attract the public to their theater. He pursued these activities in London while keeping a family and a big house back in his hometown of Stratford-on-Avon, about a hundred miles away. The plays, widely regarded as among the greatest works of the world's literature, as they encompass everything that humans have thought or felt, and express it memorably, were pretty clearly regarded by their author as nothing too special, just one facet of his professional activity in the theater biz. He made a good living at it.

Passing my goal

I can usually make my daily step goal (8500) with miscellaneous moving around plus two outings with the family dog. To fly past it like this requires something unusual, like October golf. We ride in carts, but when you hit the ball off line and have to find it so you can hit it off line again, there's nothing to do but walk back and forth in the leaf litter. The chance of spotting the ball and stepping on it are approximately equal. They clear the leaves off the fairways but that ain't where I hit 'em.  

Get quite a lot more exercise my way. Let the other fellas go for a low score.

If today turns out to be my last round of the year, I finished the season with a bogey 5. Fairly representative. Drove it a decent distance but—surprise!—off line into the right rough. There was a tree in my way but I could aim at the left edge of the green. I hit it quite a bit left of that. Then I pitched it all the way across the green and off the other side. Then I made a half decent putt from the fringe before holing around a 3-footer. Apparently my playing partners cannot concede a putt while shivering. 

He's just a kid who's 4!

 

I mentioned, here, Jennifer Senior—mostly her journalistic accounts of the social science relating to human happiness. She's also the author of a book about parenting called All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting. She took the title from a chance conversation she had at a playground with a new dad who, when she asked how he found fatherhood, replied that it was "all joy and no fun at all." Well do I remember wanting—yearning—to be left alone on the playground bench while the kids played, but of course someone's unhappy every other minute, and then they want to be pushed on the tire swing, and then someone falls and gets hurt, and then, and then . . . no fun at all. I think the "all joy" was mainly the guy's way of acknowledging how he knew he was supposed to feel.

But the playground was no match for the peculiar, numbing torture of children's TV programming. The worst show ever was Caillou, about this Charlie-Brown looking boy and his perfect little kids' world, the loving parents, the doting grandparents, the friendly townspeople, and, above all, the grating jingle:

I'm just a kid who's 4,
Each day I grow some more,
I like exploring on Caillou!
So many things to do,
Each day is something new,
I'll share them with you on Caillou!
My world is turning, changing each day,
With mommy and daddy and finding my way!

In the typical climactic scene, Caillou visits, say, the fire station, where the firefighters invite him to climb aboard their biggest truck and toot the horn while working the steering wheel. They tell him he'll be a great firefighter one day, if he wants. They give him a fire helmet and everyone beams and laughs. After he's climbed down, his proud parents embrace the little egghead as the theme song kicks in. He's just a kid who's 4, each day he grows some more, Caillou!

I suffered this vivid flashback while watching political news on TV. It seems that Herschel Walker, the Republican US Senate candidate from Georgia, has gone on some field trips to police stations and the nice cops gave him "badges" that he now displays to anyone who'll listen to a potential senator's version of show-and-tell. Well, it's probably better for him and his campaign that people are talking about his toy badges rather than his secret children, the women he's beat up, and the abortions for which he's either advocated or paid. His official position on abortion is evidently that he's pro-life except in those cases where he's the one who knocked her up. Our country has a population of 330 million, a hundred of whom are members of the Senate, and there's about a 50-50 chance that he'll be one of them. Feeling small for having been nauseated by Caillou.

Dr Johnson's Shakespeare

I've been reading Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare with considerably more enjoyment than I can remember deriving when, years ago, it had a place on a syllabus in a folder in my backpack. What did I make, back then, of the defense Johnson offers against the charge that Shakespeare violated the dramatic "unities," a critical standard holding that if the running time of a play is three hours then the action depicted on the stage must represent three hours in the lives of the characters?  This obviously precludes travels of any distance or scenes involving the same character set in different places. Any familiarity with Shakespeare's plays, including some of the very best known ones (say, King Lear and Othello), proves that he cared not at all for this standard, if he even knew about it. Here is Johnson's version of the complaint:

The necessity of observing the unities of time and place arises from the supposed necessity of making the drama credible. The criticks hold it impossible, that an action of months or years can be possibly believed to pass in three hours; or that the spectator can suppose himself to sit in the theater, while ambassadors go and return between distant kings, while armies are levied and towns besieged, while an exile wanders and returns, or till he whom they saw courting his mistress, shall lament the untimely fall of his son. The mind revolts from evident falsehood, and fiction loses its force when it departs from the resemblance of reality. 

His rebuttal begins:

The objection arising from the impossibility of passing the first hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, supposes, that when the play opens, the spectator really imagines himself at Alexandria, and believes that his walk to the theater has been a voyage to Egypt, and that he lives in the days of Antony and Cleopatra. Surely he that imagines this may imagine more. 

And he proceeds energetically in the same vein for a few pages, with the result that one is surprised when, indent, new paragraph, Johnson suddenly admits:

Yet when I speak thus slightly of dramatick rules, I cannot but recollect how much wit and learning may be produced against me; before such authorities I am afraid to stand . . . .

But he's just demonstrated that he's not afraid to stand against them. Is the above admission actually a sneer, the intended meaning being that there is no wit or learning on the other side of the argument? The content indicated by the ellipses tends to disprove such a notion, as does Johnson's essential conservatism, which led him to defend, on many questions, the judgments of time. The question relating to the aptness of the dramatic unities appears to be a case of his intelligence defeating his reactionary impulses—reluctantly, but with verve, and not only in this instance, he defends a view that but for his honesty and mental vigor he'd be inclined to reject. It's one of his endearing qualities. 

Just how conservative his judgments could be is on display when, having summarized aspects of Shakespeare's genius, he comes to his reservations:

His first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evil in books or in men. He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose. . . . [H]is precepts and axioms drop casually from him; he makes no just distribution of good and evil, nor is always careful to shew in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better. . . .

This seems to approach the view that only sermons and moral exhortation are permitted, and indeed Johnson went so far as to give his imprimatur to a 17th-century adaptation of King Lear in which at the end Cordelia marries Edgar, the king vanquishes his foes, and all is well in the world. The conclusion to Johnson's discussion of Shakespeare's greatness—

This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirrour of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious extasies, by reading human sentiments in human language, by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions.

—appears to refute his leading criticism, inasmuch as a drama that is "the mirrour of life" will inevitably offend the sensibilities of a Christian moralist. One can imagine Shakespeare replying, "Sorry, Sam, it's not me but the world that's indifferent to the progress of good and evil."

The most interesting parts of the Preface (to me) concern the passages that touch on the vexing question of Shakespeare's biography. But . . . another day. 

Pariah

Today while walking the dog I had a conversation with one of the neighborhood's young kids. I believe he's a 2nd-grader. For sure he broke his arm about the time school started. I remember one of his buddies, who was on the scene when it happened, gravely reported to me that "you could see the bump where the bone pushed his skin up." He needed surgeries, pins . . . yech. I asked today if I could see his cast, which is smaller than the one he had last time we talked. While displaying it for me, he volunteered that it was coming off in about three weeks, and that his mom had said they would have a "cast off party." He then fell silent for a second or two, and I thought I could see the wheels in his head spinning. Next thing out of his mouth was, "She says I can invite a lot of people, but not the whole neighborhood."

I guess I'm out! 

My WASPy kids in the diverse Minneapolis public schools

I'm no parenting expert, but I know you have to feed them, and I feel intuitively that it's probably good to have conversations with them, too. Thus at our house such supper-hour repartee as:

"How was school?"

"Fine."

"Have you been advised by an attorney to keep your answers brief?"

"You always say that. It's not funny."

Sometimes she—the middle-schooler—does better. Minneapolis public schools were closed this past Wednesday.

"Why no school on Wednesday?" she asked.

"It's Yom Kippur, a Jewish holiday." (I have all the answers.)

"I love the Jews," she says.

I then launch into an explanation of why Sandy Koufax did not pitch Game 1 of the 1965 World Series, Dodgers versus Twins.

"Dad, dad, I don't care!"

I talk to her older sister, too. 

"How's school?"

"Fine. But I don't know what to write an essay about."

"What class?"

"Social Studies. It's called 'Race and Identity.'"

"Well, do you have to choose among options, or is it completely your choice?"

"My choice. Problem is, I'm a Basic White Girl with she/her pronouns." She gestures toward the heavens and whines, "I got nothin'!"

She ended up getting a 98 for an essay about her 50% Norwegian heritage. I read it before she turned it in. Fairly solid effort, though the part about making lefse with her aunt was a fabrication. She's been invited to help make lefse. Only thing she's ever done is eat it. Delivery system for butter and sugar. I suggested a paragraph concerning how, back when "our people" came to America, immigrants were so despised that the federal government gave them 160 acres of rich farmland. She said her paper was already long enough (2 pages, double spaced). 

Twins at the end: shit the bed edition

Lots of ways to describe the Twins collapse, but to me perhaps the most vivid is suggested by this tweet from Aaron Gleeman, who covers the team for The Athletic. On May 24, the Twins beat the Tigers, 2-0, in a game at Target Field. The win lifted their record to 27-16, eleven games over .500. They lost their next two games and were never again eleven games above .500. They hung around first place into September, because divisional rivals Detroit and Kansas City were hapless, and the division's better teams, the Guardians and the White Sox, were, like the Twins, stuck around the .500 mark. These circumstances tempted some, certainly including me, to think that the Twins were possibly the best team in baseball's weakest division. But if you throw out those first 43 games, the Twins have to be grouped with the Tigers and Royals, not with the Guardians and White Sox. Here are the records of the division's 3rd- through 5th-place finishers over the season's last 119 games:

Twins     51-68
Tigers    51-68
Royals    50-69

I know, the first 43 games count too, but, from the time the weather warmed to the end of the season, the Twins were as bad as anyone in baseball's worst division.

Yes, injuries. I was watching one evening a week or two ago when, trailing by a run with the opponents batting in the bottom of the eighth inning, the Twins brought in a new pitcher, which elicited from play-by-play guy Dick Bremer the hopeful comment, "If Thielbar [or whoever it was] can work out of trouble, the Twins have due up in the ninth the middle of their order." I can't remember if the pitcher got out of the jam, but it hardly matters, because "the middle of the order" was Gio Urshela, Jake Cave, and Gary Sanchez. You can imagine the fire power lurking in the bottom of our batting order, on the off chance one of those guys reached base! Actually, Urshela had a nice year for the Twins, but he's not anything like a major league cleanup hitter. Cave and Sanchez? Nothing against them, but neither one hit .215 or had an on-base percentage of .285. By this point in the season, of course, the team on the Injured List could have beaten the team we were putting on the field, as Team Can't Play included outfielders Buxton, Larnach, and Kepler, middle infielders Polanco and Lewis, first baseman Kirilloff, catcher Jeffers, and most of our best starting pitchers: Maeda, Mahle, Paddack, Dobnak (and relievers such as Coulombe, Alcala, and Stashak). 

I don't know what to say about injuries. If you're hurt and can't play, you're hurt and can't play. See what I mean about having nothing to say? But I will say that guys sure seem to get hurt a lot! I feel guilty about enjoying professional football, as it's obvious the players are damaging themselves, but maybe I should feel similarly about baseball? Also, my dim fan's impression is that when a guy gets hurt, there is an official announcement concerning the nature of the injury and how long the player will be sidelined. Then, if it's two weeks, the two weeks pass, and then two more weeks pass, and when a month after that he still isn't playing, I've mostly forgotten the guy's on our team as there has been no updated diagnosis or prognosis that I'm aware of. It's as if The Injured List is a waiting room in another galaxy. 

I'm happy that Luis Arraez won the batting championship (though I can also imagine Aaron Judge complaining in his soul that he was deprived of the Triple Crown by a banjo hitter). The other Twin postmortems I've seen invariably name Jose Miranda as a bright spot, and who would disagree, but is rookie reliever Jhoan Duran invisible? He appeared in 57 games, pitched 67.2 innings, allowed just 14 earned runs (about one every five innings), had 8 saves, no blown saves, 18 holds, a WHIP of 0.98, and 5.6 strikeouts for each walk issued. Deserves a mention! 

Pitchers and catchers report for spring training in about four months.

Electoral data points

1. 

If I'm clicking about The Web at night and discover suddenly that it's 3 in the morning, the site I'm most likely at, if not baseball-reference.com, is this "extremely detailed map of the 2020 election." It shows the result of the last presidential election at the precinct level—that is, the vote totals reported out of every polling place (almost) in the land. It's full of curiosities, like the one pictured above, which displays the result in one of the rare precincts in Los Angeles County carried by Trump. As you can see, it's in Beverly Hills. You can make out two main roads within the precinct. The east-west one that divides the precinct into a northerly and southerly half is Sunset Boulevard. The north-south road that intersects Sunset Boulevard near the precinct's eastern edge is Rodeo Drive. If you use the above link to go to the site itself, you can zoom in to a level where those street names are labeled. I wanted to stay out far enough to suggest how anomalous the Beverly Hills result was, compared to the surrounding territory. Biden carried Los Angeles County by 71 to 28 percent. In the dark blue precincts, his advantage was no less than 85 to 15 percent. But in the Beverly Hills precinct where the head of the National Rifle Association buys his Italian suits—your dues hard at work, schmucks!—Trump won by 19 points.

I admit that highlighting the result in a single precinct (though in the context of the ones around it) is a pretty sketchy method of rebutting the frequently heard claim that Democrats are "elitist snobs" while Republicans are the party of "working people." More scientific methods might include, for example, exit poll data indicating Biden carried voters earning less than $50,000 per year by 57 to 42 percent. He also carried those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 by a nearly identical 56 to 43 percent margin. Trump, however, won voters with 6-figure incomes by 54 to 43 percent. These macro data points tend to confirm the micro one from Beverly Hills, though in my opinion the micro one is a little more eye-catching—like the shoppers along Rodeo Drive.

The exit poll data, overall, are about as interesting as the extremely detailed map. Here's just one more revealing bit, out of many. "Are you white and a born-again Christian?" Of those answering No, 62 percent voted for Biden. Of those answering Yes, 76 percent voted for Trump. It's easy to see why.

 

 

Lunching out

I usually work, without taking a lunch, till about 1 o'clock, and notwithstanding the morning oatmeal am famished when walking out of school. Luckily the most direct route home takes me past some favorite eateries that I haven't visited since pre-pandemic times. Today it was Kramarczuk's, where I had the cabbage roll pictured above, with rye bread and the side of cucumber, tomato, and onions in a vinegar dressing. If I remember right, it was about $12 for everything. Regarding the bread: delicious, but back in the day you just served yourself from the plastic bags left open by the napkins and stuff, and they'd bring out new loaves when either the rye or pumpernickel was depleted. Now if you want bread they give you three slices from the loaf they keep on their side of the cafeteria line. Probably shouldn't complain since my own habits may have played a part in the development of the new policy. 

After spending the morning around 4th- and 5th-graders and their mostly 30ish teachers, it was nice to dine surrounded by mature Slavs—maybe I'm not next in line for extinction, after all. I'm sort of curious about where they come from, however. They used to live in the neighborhood, which is now specked with high rises that are presumably home to the young professionals who may be seen walking their designer dogs while on a work break from the home office. Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s no longer possible to buy a case of High Life at Surdyk's, the neighborhood liquor store that now includes a cheese shoppe. For gazillions of my out-of-town readers, Kramarczuk's is in "lower northeast" Minneapolis, just across the Hennepin Avenue bridge from downtown. It used to be inhabited by people with names like, well, Kramarczuk, who would have had no use for local businesses such as "Base Camp Fitness."

I like how, if you click on "salads" at Kramarczuk's online menu, the first listing is for "American Potato" and the second is for "German Potato." You can have kale but you'll have to scroll. 

One day last week I lunched at Emily's Lebanese Deli, about a mile up University Avenue, almost to Broadway, where nordeast still looks like nordeast. I had some kind of a combo platter and was reminded that, though famous for liking everything, the stuffed grape leaf isn't among my all-time favorites. I'll go back, but maybe not before I've had the Bar Burger at the bar in Jax. Seventeen dollars, but what the hell, I used to get by without a part-time job. Might have a beer with it. 

Queens and princes, senators and footballers

Stunned to read that Prince Andrew didn't want Charles to be King, and even lobbied the Queen to implement a work-around. Big, if true. 

Been reading about Brett Favre, too. Maybe I should be thankful that I don't have a butt-load of money as no Republican official would ever think to tempt me with a scheme whereby a few million dollars intended for impoverished Mississippians gets “misdirected” to my accounts. Apparently Favre's defense is that he had no idea where the money came from. Plausible—but, if he's that dumb, he should run for US Senate, like Herschel Walker. In a few years, then, the three stupidest senators could be Tommy Tuberville (former head football coach at Ole Miss and Auburn), Herschel Walker (former star running back at the University of Georgia), and Brett Favre (former star quarterback at Southern Mississippi). I realize Favre isn't running for high office, but he's grifting, so it's only a matter of time.

Before disagreeing, note that I said stupidest, not vilest. The vilest is probably Ted Cruz, of Texas. I'm going through the SEC in my head, thinking of their schools and senators, an exercise that reminded me just now of Marsha Blackburn. She represents Tennessee in the US Senate and may be dumber than any of the footballers. Lincoln should just have let the South go. It would be okay if these blockheads were senators from another country. 

Among schoolchildren

I got a part-time job working around 20 hours per week, and I find that if I give up watching Twins games on TV, a sacrifice like swearing off the picking of scabs, I have as much time as before to read, sleep, walk the dog, and do my best to help with 6th- and 9th-grade math homework in the evenings. Lots of math, actually, since my gig is working as a math tutor at an elementary school in Columbia Heights, the suburb I grew up in.

First impression: lots more Spanish spoken than when I was growing up—I guess it's the first language, and the one still spoken at home, for around half the kids in the school, which is called Valley View. It's not the one I went to more than 50 years ago, but the building footprint is identical to the one I did attend less than a mile away, and the experience of being in there is the flip side to what I felt recently when stopping at an exurban Target with the same layout as the one by my house: it all seems familiar, but it's weird that everyone in the store is white.

Today at Valley View I helped a girl take a math assessment on a laptop. She's black, wore a head covering, and, though I noticed on a form that the language spoken in her home is supposedly Somali, her English was fluent and unaccented. Very fluent. Perhaps another Norwegian would call her an over-sharer, one of these kids who, every time the teacher asks a question, has her hand in the air: "Oh, oh, me, call on me!" For her math assessment, she sat with one leg crossed over the other, neither one reaching the floor and the foot of her top leg vibrating rapidly as she gave her attention to each problem. After every answer, a new problem would flash up on the screen, and I'd hear her whisper to herself, "Oh my God!" Once, when she said it with particular vehemence, I peered over her shoulder to get a look at the problem: adding not two, not three, but four numbers together, and requiring (it soon developed) a fair amount of what is now called "regrouping." 

Kids crack me up. After an elementary career spent scoffing at school, my new middle-schooler now walks with friends to the neighborhood Caribou, where they do their homework together. At least that's what they tell me they're doing. They bring their backpacks and money for smoothies, so it's either largely true or a somewhat elaborate ruse. She has called me a "school nerd" but, honestly, I did my homework alone, in my room and at the last minute, if at all. 

Confession of error

This article, "Confession of Error on My Abortion Post," by a National Review writer, seems to me like the first cousin of a Freudian slip. The author, Andrew McCarthy, had criticized Sen. Lindsey Graham's call for a federal abortion ban after 15 weeks gestational age, on the ground that it would prevent states from adopting stricter limits, including comprehensive bans with no exceptions for rape such as have already been adopted in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. But Graham's proposed federal law would do no such thing. States that wanted comprehensive bans could still have them. The 15-week ban would apply nationally to states that, for example, wanted to retain the same access to abortion as existed under Roe. 

My take on this is that McCarthy assumed Graham, a politician, was attempting to dress the wound the Dobbs decision has inflicted on Republican prospects in the midterms. One can imagine an agreement, advertised as a compromise, whereby Republicans, in order to secure a nationwide ban after 15 weeks, would give up the extreme measures that have been enacted in a slew of red states. If Democrats voted against such a "compromise," Republicans could then ask: Who's extreme? McCarthy, however, doesn't want red states to have to live with a mere 15-week ban, even if it might be good politics.

But he was wrong about what the senator is proposing. Graham, too, is unwilling to force red states to permit abortions up to 15 weeks after fertilization. It's worth recalling, I think, that the winning argument at the Supreme Court was that the Constitution is silent on abortion and that states therefore should be able to do as they see fit regarding abortion policy. People like McCarthy and Graham celebrated the decision, but its logic was so "summer of '22." Now it's been a few weeks, football season has begun, and it develops that only states with legislatures and governors who agree with Graham and McCarthy should be left alone to do as they see fit. Graham, especially, wants the Big Bad Federal Government to enact a national law telling Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island, Illinois, Minnesota, California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and others that what they'd like to do, which is what they have been doing for years, is now going to be illegal. "Federalism if you agree with me; a national ban for all who don't."

It's sort of comical to see one nut having to apologize for assuming, falsely, that another nut feels constrained by logic, coherence, consistency, and an election-year wish to appear "reasonable."  

Kids go to “school,” education does not occur

We senior citizens like to think of ourselves as old hands who've seen it all, but twice a week I'm shocked by something, and one of the two for this week is going to be this article, in The New York Times, about private Jewish religious schools in New York. It begins:

The Hasidic Jewish community has long operated one of New York's largest private schools on its own terms, resisting any outside scrutiny of how its students are faring. 

But in 2019 the school, the Central United Talmudical Academy, agreed to give state standardized tests in reading and math to more than 1,000 students. 

Every one of them failed.

And continues:

The leaders of New York's Hasidic community have built scores of private schools to educate children in Jewish law, prayer and tradition—and to wall them off from the secular world. Offering little English and math, and virtually no science or history, they drill students relentlessly, sometimes brutally, during hours of religious lessons conducted in Yiddish. 

The result, a New York Times investigation has found, is that generations of children have been systematically denied a basic education, trapping many of them in a cycle of joblessness and dependency. . . .

The schools appear to be operating in violation of state laws that guaranty children an adequate education. Even so, the Times found, the Hasidic boys' schools have found ways of tapping into enormous sums of government money, collecting more than $1 billion in the past four years alone.

Maybe I’m shocked only because I’ve had a possibly exalted view of the intellectual acumen of Jews ever since I learned Albert Einstein was Jewish in the same week I heard Archie Bunker tell Edith that he didn’t want a Jewish doctor “unless I’m really sick.” Years ago I saw a movie, "Jesus Camp," about young kids sunk in the religious zealotry of the adults in their lives, and was nudged toward the view that Christian fundamentalism is child abuse. Now I’m thinking the phenomenon is ecumenical. It's outrageous that government supports with tax dollars religious schools that aren't teaching kids any math or science or literature (besides the Bible) while the politicians most eager to give them money are complaining about test scores at public schools and purging the libraries of books fundamentalists don't want to read. You can disagree with me, but I don´t want to hear from you till you’ve solved a problem from my 9th-grade public school kid’s math homework tonight:

Write an equation for the parabola that cuts the x-axis at 3, passes through (5, 12), and has an axis of symmetry at x = 2.

Apparently the children of Hasidim would benefit from being subjected to a standard form of adolescent torture that their elders, though plenty cruel, are in no position even to imagine.

Kids follow the news

I remember sometimes getting annoyed at people who would regale me with stories about their charming children. It's not necessarily your turn now, because there's still time to click the back button.

I have a 6th-grader and a 9th-grader, both girls. On Thursdays, the 6th-grader has a piano lesson at 6:30. I don't like trying to fit supper into the window before music, and even less do I enjoy thinking about what to make for supper while driving home from the lesson after 7:00. So it occurred that last night about 7:30 we were taking our usual Thursday night seats at the Lowbrow when the 9th-grader's phone dinged. Because she's socially ambitious and admires all her sister's friends, the 6th-grader immediately demanded to know who the text was from. Without looking up from her phone, the 9th-grader adopted a practiced tone of jaded indifference and answered:

"What if I tell you who it isn't from? It isn't from the Queen of England."

On the road

I guess the state of New Jersey is attempting to edify motorists by posting signs like this at rest stops along the Garden State Turnpike.

Since a liberal arts education is worthless but for the rare occasion it allows you to shake your damn head while contemplating the work product of people who’ve landed an 8-5 office job, I'm not going to suppress the urge to note that the sign's claim is dubious for several reasons, including:

1. Aristotle was born after Socrates died, which would have made it hard for the two of them to speak over one another, on arête or anything else; and
2. Socrates, the first of the three to be born, was executed in 399 BC, so the date of the fake quote is off by a couple thousand years. 

It'll all be forgiven if the rest rooms are clean.

'Twas the night before

It's the night before the first day of school—potentially fraught and maybe more than usual at our house as younger daughter is starting middle school tomorrow and older one is starting high school. Right now they are fighting about who will shower first, because the one who goes second has to wipe it down. I don't think this issue has arisen before. In the past, the argument has always ended with someone saying, "Ok, I just won't take one then." The response to that has sometimes been, "Ok, I won't either." You know it's a big night when strength of inclination to shower tops the aversion factor associated with performing a 3-minute chore. The old tactic has been retired and the fight has moved to new ground. 

I have to say that the coping mechanisms employed to mitigate stress are kind of charming. The older one told me today that she and her friend discovered that they have their first- and second-hour classes together. "So," she explained, beaming, "if we get lost going from English to Science, we'll be tardy together, and it will be a lot less awkward." Younger one almost always adopts an attitude of aloof indifference when being lectured by older sister, but this evening, at supper, she listened attentively to every bit of advice that a recent grad could offer. Any port in a storm. 

I have to do laundry. Final decisions haven't been made and all options must be available.

UPDATE: As I was saying good night to them, the high schooler got a text from an old elementary school friend. They've lost touch with each other to a degree: the friend was home schooled after having a difficult transition to middle school, so for a few years has been removed somewhat from the social mix. But now she's going back to high school. Her text, which came in about 11:15, said: "Want to eat lunch with me tomorrow?" Apparently "orientation night" was a disorganized disaster but here's hoping that in around twelve hours these two can find the lunchroom and each other. 

#tardytogether
#bekind

Twins in August

The Twins in August were a .500 club, 14 wins and 14 losses. You might think that a team in contention for a divisional title would go backwards with a record like that over 28 games, but the Twins place in the Central Division standings did not change: they were a game behind the division leading Cleveland Guardians on August 1, and they were a game behind them on September 1, too. A local sportswriter, taking note of this fact, set out yesterday the records of the contending teams over the last 65 games:

Guardians  32-33
White Sox  32-33
Twins         31-34

Well, that's what it's been like all year. Here are the same teams over the course of the whole season, a couple days into September:

Guardians    68-62
Twins           67-64
White Sox    67-66

I was watching the Twins one evening in the middle of August when TV color guy Justin Morneau declared, "One of these teams is going to get hot and win the division." It's true that one of them is going to win the division. I have no idea why he thinks one of the teams is sure to "get hot." Over five months none has. Seems more likely to me that the sixth month will be like the other five. My candidate for color commentary is, "One of these teams is going to win the division by going 17-14 over a thrilling stretch drive." (It's your job to hype interest with expressions like "thrilling stretch drive.")

The Twins' problems aren't obscure. With Buxton and Polanco not playing, the bottom of their batting order is anemic. For the last couple nights, it's been Cave, Sanchez, Celestino. I love pulling for all three, as I have personal reasons for identifying with players who struggle, but facts are facts, and these guys' OPSs are, respectively, .674, .677, and .635. Since Sanchez is our regular catcher, and catchers aren't really expected to hit, let's swap him out for Kepler: day after day, then, we have in our outfield, at the start of "the stretch drive," Celestino (.635) between Cave (.674) and Kepler (.680). To help you get your bearings, the overall OPS in the major leagues so far this year is .707, and outfielders are expected to hit.

Then there is our pitching. After a good April and May, it's been a weakness, and the team was praised for adding three proven pitchers at the August 2 trade deadline. But the trio's results in Twin uniforms—maybe the word is "mixed." Jorge Lopez, for whom expectations were perhaps highest, has four saves but also a loss and two blown saves in 12 games as a Twin. Tyler Mahle got roughed up in Chicago tonight, his first start after being removed from an August game with a sore shoulder and diminished fast ball. Michael Fullmer has been good, not great, which is to say: he's added needed depth. I'm pretty sure we weren't expecting to have half our August games started by either Chris Archer, Dylan Bundy, or Aaron Sanchez, and it's fortunate that all three are doing about as well as could be reasonably hoped. We were 6-8 in their starts, 8-6 in games started by Joe Ryan, Sonny Gray, or Mahle. 

If the Twins weren't in contention, I'd still turn on the TV about 1.5 hours after starting time in hopes of seeing Jhoan Duran pitch. Omg, wtf, etc.! In the last week of August, he pitched in three games, one inning each time, nine up and nine down on four strikeouts and some weak grounders. For the year, his ERA is sub-2 and his WHIP barely registers. He has 11.5 strikeouts and two walks per nine innings pitched. These numbers, however, aren't as telling as the way opposing hitters will take a Duran pitch, then step out of the batter's box to share a laugh with the catcher and umpire. Apparently 102 mph with late diving action is detectable in person, too.  To have a chance, I think you'd have to be able to swing an ironing board. 

College boy

Have been recalling lately how I paid for college. Items in the news, you know. Basically, my parents bankrolled my college education. I recall having a campus job washing dishes in the cafeteria a couple times per month. That was good for a trivial amount of pocket money. I also took out a loan for the relatively small portion of the big bill my parents didn't cover. I think maybe they thought it was important I have "skin in the game." Anyway, it was the kind of loan where you get the money, and you don't start paying it back till you're done with school and working. Then, you pay like on a mortgage, and interest accrues on the unpaid principle. When that day came, my dad gave me the money to pay off the loan, and he stepped into the shoes of my creditor—nice for me, as his interest rate was zero. Even nicer: after I'd been paying him awhile, he told me one day to forget about it, which until now I mostly did. 

My parents weren't rich—middle class tending toward affluent, at best. I think they were able to save a tidy sum for my college (and my sister's) because, one, they placed a high value on education—just as something good in itself, without reference to any goal of "getting ahead"—and, two, by inclination and upbringing they preferred to live modestly. Also, college didn't cost as much in the 1970s. I think I remember that in my sophomore year the cost of tuition, room and board at my college was $4050. The year before it had been under $4000, and it never reached $5000 while I was there. Today, it's $63,110. 

Probably you can see where I'm going with this. All things considered, I probably shouldn't be the one to bitch my guts out about the federal government forgiving $10,000 of student loan debt for people who lacked the advantages described above. It's true that loan forgiveness does not address the underlying problem of high college costs. But I wonder whether this argument doesn't turn against the people making it. Especially at public colleges and universities, a leading factor in rising costs is that they are not funded as generously by taxpayers as they were 40 years ago. The schools therefore cut programs and pass along costs to students, who take out loans and fall into debt at 20. The people who complain bitterly about loan forgiveness are the same ones vehemently opposed to what they regard as "lavish spending" on higher education. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that what they're actually against is people of modest means attaining a college education.

Unless, of course, they're good at sportzing. No one complains about taxpayers footing the college bill for good sportzers. You can read here about how the government allows affluent people to save for college while simultaneously reducing their tax bill. No one seems bitter about that, either.

 

Biden owes Americans an explanation on why a truck driver who didn't go to college is now responsible for the student loans of a rich lawyer.

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) August 24, 2022

And it does not tend to diminish my support for a policy initiative when I notice that those in opposition, including US senators, have no better tactic than to lie about it. Since "rich lawyers" earn more than $125k/year, they are barred from having their loans forgiven under the plan. 

Dressing up

 

Family wedding tomorrow. Daughters have been planning for weeks what to wear. Today they asked, I thought a little worriedly, if I knew what I was wearing, so I looked in the closet, put something on, and modeled it for them. They studied me impassively. I think the younger one thought the verdict could go either way, because I saw her look at the older one, as if willing to take a cue. Older one finally pronounced me "okay," at which time younger one elaborated, "Passable, barely."

It's good I passed inspection because it seems my options on these occasions are limited: I found in the pocket of the blue blazer I had on the church bulletin for the funeral service of a friend's mom. It's dated June 18, 2021. I'm thinking that if I can maintain roughly the same weight, at the rate of one use per year this blue blazer should get me to the finish line. 

Scott Shapiro tweets

 

I want to plug my favorite tweeter, law professor Scott Shapiro, who, as revelations connected to Trump's casual home storage of classified documents became more stupefying, tweeted:

As a young boy, I was at a creepy circus when an old witch hobbled over to me and whispered in my ear: "Donald Trump is not entirely trustworthy."

I see now that was just yesterday, when he was on fire. For example:

A real shame that the FBI never raided Hillary Clinton's home for her emails, because Republicans would have been forced by their own principles to defend Hillary.

I've seen enough: I'm ready to call the 2020 race for Joe Biden.

Interesting thought experiment: what if a Democrat had sensitive government information in her basement?

A couple days ago, he tweeted:

Programming announcement: I'm officially undecided about DeSantis. I will be doing my own research on the Florida governor and presenting my findings on here. More to come.

A few hours later:

I think I found an instance of Ron DeSantis acting hypocritically. Checking my analysis, but this could be big. 

Between those two, demonstrating his versatility:

The great economic innovation of NFTs is getting people to pay you for absolutely nothing in return.

A smattering from the past week or two:

It's unreasonable to demand coup leaders keep records secure during active rebellion.

When I was 10 years old, I was at the circus on a school trip. An old witch hobbled up to me and whispered in my ear: "The future is so bleak that Dick and Liz Cheney will be the voices of Reason."

Coup leaders warn of a second coup if DOJ prosecutes them for their first coup.

Finding it hard to believe that Trump would be careless or worse on matters of national security.

Trump had a standing order to repeal every law he broke.

I am losing faith in the Republican party to act responsibly.

He ruthlessly mocks "the Supreme Court of the Republican party" in an ongoing series of tweets along the line of, "SCOTUS rules 6-3 that Ted Cruz's wife actually is ugly." "Set to hear oral arguments on whether his dad killed Kennedy." "Cruz submits amicus brief arguing Trump is right, his dad really did it." I'm just making those up, in order to inject some semi-original content here, but you get the idea. Here's a real one:

Supreme Court rules 6-3 that Diabetes isn't a real disease because the word does not appear in the Constitution.

Shapiro tweeted out the above meme on the day Trump took the Fifth a couple hundred times in a deposition related to the New York attorney general's investigation of the Trump Organization's allegedly corrupt and unlawful business practices. Though unburdened by a legal education, I wonder whether there isn't a natural conclusion to be drawn—namely, that by answering truthfully Trump would declare his own guilt.

Anyhow, Shapiro has around 80k followers, which is probably not as many as would enjoy his tweet-sized commentary. 

Reading in bed

Someone has said of Dr. Johnson's trademark ponderous style that no imitator had ever failed to make himself ridiculous. The only possible response is that neither did Johnson always avoid making himself ridiculous. Last night, reading along in bed "The Life of Richard Savage," I came to the following passage:

Lord Tyrconnel affirmed that it was the constant practice of Mr. Savage to enter a tavern with any company that proposed it, drink the most expensive wines with great profusion, and when the reckoning was demanded, to be without money: if, as it often happened, his company were willing to defray his part, the affair ended, without any ill consequences; but if they were refractory, and expected that the wine should be paid for by him that drank it, his method of composition was, to take them with him to his own apartment, assume the government of the house, and order the butler in an imperious manner to set the best wine in the cellar before his company, who often drank till they forgot the respect due to the house in which they were entertained, indulged themselves in the utmost extravagance of merriment, practised the most licentious frolics, and committed all the outrages of drunkenness.

I feel somewhat confident that this is unintentionally funny. Something about the use of polysyllabic diction and odd elevated phrases to narrate "low" tavern behavior makes it so, and Exhibit A of the laughable effect might be the way in which the one crystalline string of words—"expected that the wine should be paid for by him that drank it"—is scrunched between "refractory" to describe pissed, stiffed drinking companions and "method of composition" to describe Savage's remedy when things got tense. By the way, regarding that remedy, it's a bit of a challenge to see through the draperies, but "assumed the government of the house" indicates that Savage plied his companions with his landlord's wine, not his own. Licentious frolics ensued and the trouble that began at the tavern was forgotten. 

Just a few pages later, however, one comes to one of those passages that make me love Dr. Johnson. (He'd probably substitute "reverence" as a verb for "love.")

That Mr. Savage was too much elevated by any good fortune is generally known; and some passages of his Introduction to The Author to be Let sufficiently show that he did not wholly refrain from such satire as he afterwards thought very unjust when he was exposed to it himself; for, when he was afterwards ridiculed in the character of a distressed poet, he very easily discovered that distress was not a proper subject for merriment, or topic of invective. He was then able to discern that if misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced. And the humanity of that man can deserve no panegyric who is capable of reproaching a criminal in the hands of the executioner.

On the other side of the gen gap

More and more, I have that experience of speaking earnestly, or with enthusiasm, to my kids about something and then watching as the curtain draws slowly shut across their face. For example, I was explaining recently about the concept of a "record album," a collection of songs recorded for play in a certain order that people used to listen to over and over again, with the result that to this day, if I hear "Thunder Road" somewhere, soon as it's over I hear in my head the first notes of "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" and am genuinely startled when the next sound is anything else. Bizarre-o! 

I assure them that I am familiar with the concept of a "playlist," but do not partake as it prevents you from being exposed to new things, with the result that you sink into fuddyduddism. It is highly amusing to them that I should declare myself "open" to "new things" on the same day that I complain about young teen fashion. Have they noticed that with "new" jeans you pay a lot extra for big rips across the thigh?

They wouldn't be interested, but the other day I listened to the Emmylou Harris station on Pandora while pedaling my stationary bike in the basement. Within about 45 minutes, I heard all the following, all great (or at least enjoyable), and all I believe unknown to me five years ago.

• Emmylou Harris, "Red Dirt Girl"
• Emmylou Harris and John Prine, "Angel from Montgomery"
• Alison Krauss, "When You Say Nothing At All"
• Emmylou Harris (with Willie Nelson), "Gulf Coast Highway"
• John Prine and Nanci Griffith, "Speed of the Sound of Loneliness"
• Emmylou Harris, covering Townes Van Zandt's "If I Needed You" 
• Merle Haggard, "Mama Tried" 

If I made them listen to any of these, they'd laugh me into the 2020's. 

 

The Geek surveys many scenes

"Gleeman and The Geek" is a podcast for fans of the Minnesota Twins. Gleeman refers to Aaron Gleeman, who covers the Twins for The Athletic. His podcast sidekick, "The Geek," is John Bonnes, the proprietor of Twins Daily, an online news site for all things Twins. I have a friend whose knowledge of the Twins' farm system calls to mind the adjective "encyclopedic." He's also fond of informing me, for instance, that Luis Arraez is batting .260 against left-handed pitchers (.360 against righties) and that the opposing team's batting average against Sonny Gray on his third trip through their batting order is .320. I used to think the devotion to Twins Studies exhibited by such esoteric knowledge must exceed that of fundamentalists for the Bible, but, having now driven to Wichita with him by way of a Des Moines stopover, I realize that his secret is listening to "Gleeman and The Geek" in the car and perusing Twins Daily on his iPad while ingesting the morning dose of caffeine. If he can store for recall one morsel per session, a conservative estimate, it's still more than enough to amaze a more casual fan.

On the podcast, which is both smart and funny, Gleeman comes off as the bigger geek while Bonnes supplies the laugh track. I come to discover, however, that Bonnes is a nerdish number grinder as well, and not only on the topic of baseball. Both guys live in downtown Minneapolis, and Bonnes, judging by his social media posts, is highly annoyed with the Grand Old Party's narrative concerning a crime wave that's made our city center not just unlivable but dangerous for the courageous suburban sojourner who wants to go to Target Field and maybe enjoy a late meal with a few drinks after the game. His retort is a series of posts called Today's Dangerous #DowntownDawdle, which consists mostly of selfies of him and his wife enjoying themselves in crowded downtown establishments. He always calls out the business name, and usually in the background you can see a plated sample from the menu and a few dead soldiers—neither he nor the Mrs. appear to be teetotalers. The subtext is plainly, "Another fun night without getting shot!" He's also a pretty good photographer: a recent variation was a picture of the just risen sun glistening off the sides of Minneapolis's glassy skyscrapers—it concluded with a thank-you to his dog, whose weak bladder I guess accounted for him being outside with his phone at that hour. 

Since The Geek has a lot of followers, it was just a matter of time before some people started replying with links to news stories about our mean streets. What about the lead on KARE 11 last night? Your head's in the sand! Get real about crime data! Sure, it's great for you in the prosperous North Loop, but what about the less privileged? (Everyone knows Republicans care deeply about the less privileged.) Bonnes's response was an exercise in social sabermetrics: he applied Minneapolis crime statistics to demographic data and roughed out the probability of being assaulted in downtown Minneapolis. Executive summary: if you dare drive east into downtown on 394 from, say, Wayzata, you might as well go to the game/concert/play/saloon/restaurant/show because, once out of your car, by far the most dangerous part of the evening is over. He notes that his calculation overstates your peril considerably if you are not the kind of person to get into drunken arguments with strangers in bars. 

I see that Dr. Scott Jensen, the GOP candidate for governor, has interviewed some 70ish ladies from outstate Minnesota somewhere who say they are too scared to come to Minneapolis anymore. Well, yeah, of course they're scared: they've been listening to you, not geeky John Bonnes! Anyway, what is the Republican solution to the problem candidates like Jensen are loudly diagnosing? Their brief is a lie, inasmuch as the point seems to be that violent crime is a problem mainly in big cities in blue states with Democratic mayors and governors. Of the ten states with the highest murder rates in 2020 (the last year for which comprehensive data is available), eight have voted for the Republican presidential candidate in every election this century. Murder rates in Trump states were 40% higher than in states carried by Biden. The five states with the highest murder rates are, in order, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, and Missouri. Of the hundred biggest cities in America, only two are in these five states, but all five have a Republican governor and a Republican majority in their state legislature—not just for the last year or two, either. You can look these things up. It's as if the failing students were shouting advice about how the others should study. 

ADDENDUM

Tonight’s “Dangerous” #DowntownDawdle :
• #MNTwins win, duh.
• Nur-D album 💿
release party at First Ave
• midnight drinks 🍺 on O’Donovan’s patio
• a 2:30 AM walk (stumble?) thru downtown’s mean streets.
• Our status: yet again, still alive. 👫😉 pic.twitter.com/wTkjFcyE0W

— John Bonnes (@TwinsGeek) August 20, 2022