Buffalo Springfield . . . Again

As a percentage of recorded repertoire, I probably have more Buffalo Springfield on my playlist than any other artist - 23 of their 34 (or is it 35? more on that later) recorded songs.  They were only together for a short time but three of the band members, Richie Furay, Stephen Stills, and Neil Young, went on to long and successful careers.  While the Springfield's drummer, Dewey Martin, was okay, bassist Bruce Palmer was terrific, something I only discovered years later when listening to their albums on better audio systems.

The first album by the L.A. based band (though Young and Palmer hailed from Canada, and Neil had previously been in a band with Rick James!!) was released on December 5, 1966.  Titled simply as Buffalo Springfield it was a mild success.  I'd read about the band in some magazine and intrigued by the article, though I'd never heard any of their music, went into New York shortly after it was released to (I think) Sam Goody's, which was THE place to find the widest selection of music, and purchased the album.

I really liked the record.  It was fresh sounding and original.  All the songs were written by either Stills or Young; Furay was to start contributing tunes on the second album.  Great harmonies, intriguing lyrics on the Young songs, with Furay singing lead on most.  

However, the album was marred by its horrible production.  The arrangements were mediocre, there was no bottom (bass and drums barely there), and it sounded tinny.  Even with that it was enjoyable.

There is an oddity about that first album.  The version I still have can no longer be found.  The December 5 release contained 12 songs.  However, later in December, the band released a single, For What It's Worth, which was not on the album.  Written by Stills in November 1966 in the aftermath of the Sunset Strip riots, For What It's Worth, became the first and only hit single released by Buffalo Springfield, rising to #7 on the Billboard charts by the spring of 1967.  Trying to capitalize on its popularity, Atco Records released a new version of the first album in March, adding For What It's Worth and bumping another tune, Baby Don't Scold Me off the album.   For what's it's worth, For What It's Worth is one of my least favorite Springfield songs.

But what catchy songs.  The album starts off in high gear with Stills' Go And Say Goodbye.  His other contributions are strong, including Leave, featuring the first of Neil Young's trademark blistering guitar solos, and Hot Dusty Roads, a favorite of my high school buddies and I to harmonize on as we drove randomly around our home town.

Young's songwriting efforts included the weird and wonderful Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing, which veers between 4/4 and 3/4 time.  Not yet confident of his voice, Neil declined the vocal letting Richie take the lead.

Neil's other outstanding effort is Flying On The Ground Is Wrong, with its interesting chord structure and middle section.  And I love this lyric:

City lights at a country fair
Never shine but always glare
If I'm bright enough to see you
You're just too dark to care

Though For What It's Worth hit the Top Ten as a single, the album only had middling success.

 

Ten months later, on October 30, 1967, the band released Buffalo Springfield Again.  I consider this one of the finest rock albums ever made, an electic mix of sounds and styles that works together and would not be released today.  The album, produced by Jack Nitzsche, sounds great.  Listen to any song from the first album and then to the opening of Mr Soul, the first song on Again, and you immediately hear the difference.

The first side of the album (yes, kids, albums had sides back then) is Perfect.  Young's Mr Soul opens with its punch lyrics, harmonies and a searing guitar solo.  Next up A Child's Claim To Fame by Richie with James Burton on dobro, a catchy, country-inflected tune.  Stills gets the third slot with Everydays with its sleek, jazzy sound, accented by electric piano.  Then it's back to Neil on the ethereal, haunting, and orchestral Expecting To Fly.  The side closes with a stunning transition from the strings of Expecting to Fly to the slashing guitar on Bluebird by Stills with its closing lines; Do you think she loves you?/Do you think at all?  The dueling guitars of Stills and Young soar and it ends with the unexpected banjo play out.

The second side is strong but not as consistent as the first but it contains what I think is a Perfect pop song, Rock and Roll Woman.  Lyrics, harmony, music and all in 2:47.

 

Even as Again was being recorded the band started to fray.  Bruce Palmer was arrested for marijuana possession and deported for several months and Neil Young, for the first time, temporarily quit the band.  Neil was to repeat this behavior with Stills and Furay repeatedly over the next 35 years.

Like its predecessor, Again was only a middling success, but unlike the first album there was no hit single.

I still remember reading a glowing review of the album in Crawdaddy, the first magazine devoted to covering rock music in a critical way.  Sort of a early version of Rolling Stone.  I was a subscriber for a year or two.

Released on July 30, 1968 Last Time Around, the third and final Springfield album, was only done to fulfill the band's contractual commitments, but it is a fine recording nonetheless; its sound, while not up to the standards of Again, is much better than the first album.  The band was completely fractured by this point, as Young had definitively quit, an act symbolized on the album's cover with Neil looking in a different direction than his band-mates.  The record, stitched together by Richie Furay and producer Jim Messina, only contained two songs penned by Young, and only one on which he actually sings and plays.  The latter is the gentle I Am A Child, the former the gorgeous On The Way Home, sung by Furay (though we rush ahead to save our time/ we are only what we feel/ and I love you/ can you feel it now?).

Furay was hitting his stride on Last Time Around.  Along with the vocals he contributed It's So Hard To Wait, Kind Woman (which became a mainstay for the rest of his career, and featured Rusty Young, who was to join him in Poco, on pedal steel) and the striking oddity of The Hour Of Not Quite Rain, which sounds unlike anything else recorded by the band.  Not Quite Rain originated in a contest by an Los Angeles radio station promotion arranged with the band, in which listeners were asked to submit lyrics which the Springfield would put to music and record.  Micki Callen's poetical lyrics won and Furay composed the music.

The compositions by Stills show his sound evolving into what we heard later in Crosby, Stills & Nash and in his solo career on songs like Four Days Gone and Questions. 

And then it was over.  In August, Young began recording his first solo album, released in January 1969.  At the same time, Stills was getting together with David Crosby and Graham Nash, while Furay, Messina, and Rusty Young formed Poco.

Intially, Stills had the greatest success as CSN became probably the biggest band in the world during 1969-70.  When Young joined CSN in '70 it was seen as a boost to his career, which only saw him become a superstar with the release of After The Gold Rush in late '70 and Harvest in early '72.  Meanwhile Poco received positive critical recognition but achieved only middling success, like Springfield, with record buyers.

Stills also saw initial success with his solo career in the early 70s but that soon faded.  CSN continued as a popular touring band for decades but has not been a creative force since the 70s.  Richie Furay's career with Poco ended when he left the band in 1974, and he has been in several other groups over the years, including as an opening act for a Linda Ronstadt tour in 2006.  In the early 80s he became senior pastor at a non-denominational Christian church in Colorado.  Richie's announced a farewell performance concert in June 2022.

Neil Young has had the longest and most successful career, releasing more than 40 albums between 1969 and 2021, and though the quality has been erratic, he's been spectacularly good at his peak.  Neil is not a good collaborator; he's a guy who needs to be in charge, which is why he's walked out on Springfield, Crosby, Still, Nash & Young, and on Stills and Furay several times.  He finally found the perfect match in Crazy Horse, a bar band that plays anything Neil wants, and provides a platform over which he can do as he pleases with his guitar solos.

I saw Neil play with Crazy Horse in 1986 and it was as good as I could have hoped, with Young's guitar soaring over everything.  In 2001 I finally saw Crosby, Stills, and Nash after being talked into it by my sister.  I was reluctant because they had a reputation back in their heyday of not sounding good in concert and their music sounded dated to me.  I went and I was wrong.  Very good show.  Harmonies were tight, Stills could still really play guitar and Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, which I'd long been sick of, sounded ten times better than the recorded version.

Spring Is Here

Spring training, that is.  Attended my first game yesterday - the Dodgers v the Diamondbacks at Salt River Fields.  Though baseball has done its best to discourage me, it was still fun to see a game.

Clayton Kershaw started for the Dodgers (that's him throwing in the photo).  Didn't throw over 90 but that glorious curveball was working.  Went four innings, gave up one hit, no walks, and made it look easy.  At this point in his career he's an incredibly efficient pitcher.  The Diamondbacks scored five runs in the bottom of the 7th and won 5-3.

Time Fades Away

Cause you know how time fades, time fades away

You know how time fades away

- Neil Young, Time Fades Away

Bill James recently responded to two questions on the "Hey Bill" section of Bill James Online (and you really should spend $3 a month for access to everything on his site), that touch on issues we've often discussed, (1) how memory and the passing of time impacts our evaluation of people and events and (2) how changing standards impact our evaluation.   While Bill is answering questions specific to baseball, his responses, as they often do, apply much more broadly to how we think about and discuss history.

The first question was why the Baseball Writers Association rejected electing Johnny Mize and Jim Bunning to the Hall of Fame, though both were eventually selected by the Veteran's Committee; Mize in 1981 and Bunning in 1996.  Mize and Bunning's careers were not long ago, the former from 1936 to 1953, the latter from 1955 to 1971.  James' response is they were not elected early because they did not meet the HOF standards of the time, though by today's baseball analytical standards they are clearly qualified.

But the essential point here is that the way of evaluating players in that era was COMPLETELY different.  It was entirely about meeting standards--a process that worked 80% of the time, but failed in some cases.  The questions of "How many games did he win for his team?" or "How much better was he than an average player?" or "How much better was he than a replacement player" or "What was his effective winning percentage?" . ... those type of questions absolutely were never asked.  They were zero percent of the process.  There was no understanding that you COULD evaluate players in that way, and there was no one calculating how players would rank if you DID evaluate them that way.  It couldn't be done; the background research had not been done to make it possible to do that.  

 

Prejudice against Mize based on personal factors didn't have anything at all to do Mize not being elected.  What it was, rather, is that the entire process by which we now evaluate players, and by which we now recognize Mize to have been a great player, simply did not exist at the time that he was on the ballot, and he was not recognized as a great player.  He was thought of as being the way we think now about Carlos Delgado or Mark Teixeira or Tino Martinez or Mike Sweeney or Ryan Howard or Adrian Gonzalez--and don't get me wrong; some of those guys may deserve Hall of Fame selection, too, when all the dust settles, but he was thought of the way that we think of those players.  

 

Bunning is essentially the same; he is not an obvious Hall of Famer in terms of meeting the traditional standards by which players were evalauted before sabermetrics.  The number one identifier of greatness for a starting pitcher before sabermetrics was winning 20 games.  The number of 20-win seasons by a pitcher is a very, very, VERY good predictor of Hall of Fame selection before 1980, and somewhat after.  Bob Lemon is in the Hall of Fame because he won 20 games 7 times--period.  Catfish is in the Hall of Fame because, in addition to some other selling points, he won 20 games five straight times.  That's all it is; there isn't anything more complicated than that.   

The second question was about Pete Rose and Willie Mays.  In response to another question on players who got the most out of their talent, James singled out Willie Mays and two other players as uniquely getting over their career 90% of what they were capable of.  The followup question asked whether Pete Rose could be considered in the same category - while less talented, he got a lot out of what he had.  Bill rejected the premise of the question.

Well. . .I think it misses something.  Rose was unique.   There is no other Pete Rose.  He not only hustled, he made a great SHOW out of hustling.  He RAN to the batter's box, running all out, as hard as he could run in that 60-foot sprint between the on-deck circle and the batter's box.  He RAN to first base when he walked--HARD.  Top speed.  He ran to the dugout at the end of the inning; he ran to his position at the start of the inning.  

 

There were other elements to his uniqueness.  He had a philosophy of competitiveness that he talked about and tried to share with others.  I remember one thing he said, "My Dad gets angry when a football player calls for a fair catch."   He charged into Ray Fosse full speed BECAUSE YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO DO THAT.  

 

He came to represent a set of values, a set of expectations, and he was, before his fall, very widely admired because of that.   It's impossible to explain to a younger reader, because the reference points have disappeared.   It's like this story.   William F. Buckley once organized a huge treasure hunt game for his children, in which he took the family's silverware and much of their china and buried it on the family's island property, I think on Martha's Vinyard but it may have been some other Island.  He did that one weekend, planning the Treasure Hunt for the next weekend, but that week a hurricane moved through, and tore the island apart, throwing around millions of tons of sand and completely re-designing the coast line.  They were never able to find the family's silverware and china.   Buckley's wife was not pleased.  

 

It's like that; there was a hurricane that moved through Rose's life, and all of the reference points to what he had once been were destroyed.   

 

Rose was a unique, one-of-a-kind player.   Willie Mays was a unique, one-pf-a-kind player.  Do they have certain traits in common?  Sure.   But were they essentially the same?  Definitely not.   They were both unique.  They were much more different than the same.  

Bill doesn't actually answer the question asked which focused on getting the most out of your talent and abilities.  But what he does reference is how memory changes our perception, particularly if you weren't there at the time.  I remember the Pete Rose discussed in the first two paragraphs.  If you don't what you are more likely to remember is the gambling scandal and his suspension and a lot of questionable behavior and bad judgment since his banning. 

One aspect of Hey Bill I particularly enjoy is that his responses are stream of consciousness.  It is evident he does not revise, edit, or spellcheck his responses.  You are hearing what is on his mind, even if it is sometimes not directly on point, or wanders off halfway through the response.  No matter what he is saying, or how he says it, the responses are always interesting, even when he is in his Jamesian gruff or dismissive mode.

As I get older I see the old guideposts and common references fade away.  What I've experienced is no longer the common experience.  Historical or cultural references I could make 20 or 30 years ago and expect a broad spectrum of people to recognize have disappeared.  The result is my thinking context is fundamentally different from someone a generation or more younger.  It's the same process every generation goes through as it ages.

---------------------------

James full response on Bunning/Mize question:

I think you are not processing how baseball careers were evalauted at that time.  Mize would have hit the ballot about 1958, 1959, sometime in there.  In that era, and for 30 years after that, players were evaluated by whether or not they met STANDARDS.  The absolute standards of Hall of Fame accomplishment were 500 homers and 3,000 hits (and 300 wins for pitchers.)  Mize being essentially a power hitter, the central test for him was whether he had hit 500 homers.  He didn't get CLOSE to 500 homers, winding up with .. ..what was it, 359 or something.  Not checking the details as I go.  He didn't get close to 3,000 hits.  

 

There were other standards that were important as well, of course--a .300 batting average, winning batting championships, winning MVP Awards, holding  major records, and playing for championship teams.  

 

Mize was close to DiMaggio in terms of Home Runs and career length, and not terribly far behind him in batting average, but DiMaggio was a completely different animal; he had won three Most Valauble Player Awards, was a great defensive player and had been a key figure on many championship teams.   Mize was not a GREAT defensive player, had not won any MVP Awards and was not a key figure on any championship teams, although he was a spear carrier on a couple of Yankee teams at the end of his career.  His image was badly hurt by the phenomenon of the 1947 New York Giants, who hit more home runs than any team in history up to that point--which was a very well known fact at the time--but had finished fourth.  The idea was that "they're not really great players; they're just guys who hit a bunch of cheap home runs in the Polo Grounds, where it was less than 300 feet down the foul lines."  

 

But the essential point here is that the way of evaluating players in that era was COMPLETELY different.  It was entirely about meeting standards--a process that worked 80% of the time, but failed in some cases.  The questions of "How many games did he win for his team?" or "How much better was he than an average player?" or "How much better was he than a replacement player" or "What was his effective winning percentage?" . ... those type of questions absolutely were never asked.  They were zero percent of the process.  There was no understanding that you COULD evaluate players in that way, and there was no one calculating how players would rank if you DID evaluate them that way.  It couldn't be done; the background research had not been done to make it possible to do that.  

 

Prejudice against Mize based on personal factors didn't have anything at all to do Mize not being elected.  What it was, rather, is that the entire process by which we now evaluate players, and by which we now recognize Mize to have been a great player, simply did not exist at the time that he was on the ballot, and he was not recognized as a great player.  He was thought of as being the way we think now about Carlos Delgado or Mark Teixeira or Tino Martinez or Mike Sweeney or Ryan Howard or Adrian Gonzalez--and don't get me wrong; some of those guys may deserve Hall of Fame selection, too, when all the dust settles, but he was thought of the way that we think of those players.  

 

Bunning is essentially the same; he is not an obvious Hall of Famer in terms of meeting the traditional standards by which players were evalauted before sabermetrics.  The number one identifier of greatness for a starting pitcher before sabermetrics was winning 20 games.  The number of 20-win seasons by a pitcher is a very, very, VERY good predictor of Hall of Fame selection before 1980, and somewhat after.  Bob Lemon is in the Hall of Fame because he won 20 games 7 times--period.  Catfish is in the Hall of Fame because, in addition to some other selling points, he won 20 games five straight times.  That's all it is; there isn't anything more complicated than that.   

 

Bunning won 20 games only one time.   There are other standards, there were other standards that were relevant to Hall of Fame selections 30 years ago, but Bunning's 224-184 career won-lost record is not really of a Hall of Fame standard.  I would guess that MOST starting pitchers with records similar to that are not in the Hall of Fame.  (Dennis Martinez, 245-193; Frank Tanana, 240-236; Luis Tiant, 229-172, George Mullin, 227-196; Mel Harder, 223-186; Paul Derringer, 223-212; Hooks Dauss, 222-182; Jerry Reuss, 220-191.)   Bunning never pitched for a championship team, and was badly hurt by the collapse of the 1964 Phillies, in the same way that Mize was hurt by the 1947 Giants.  

 

It was NOT prejudice.  It was not.  The processes by which these players are now recognized as great players simply did not exist, or carried no weight in the discussions.  There was a different process of recognizing greatness.  By THAT process, Mize and Bunning fell short.  

 

An Honorable Man

Damian Lewis performing an excerpt from Marc Antony's funeral oration speech from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.  Wonderfully done.  It is a reminder of the brilliance of Shakespeare's language.  How many of these phrases have become a part of our common heritage, so easily familiar to us four hundred years later?

 

What remains most puzzling about the assassination is the lack of thorough planning by the conspirators beyond the act of killing Caesar.   Though there were many plotters, Brutus, because of his reputation for integrity, fidelity to the Republic, and possibly because of the rumor that he was Caesar's son (probably not), was the key participant, and it was Brutus who insisted that Caesar be the sole target.  Antony, Caesar's chief subordinate, who could have easily been killed, was instead deliberately spared.  It was as if the conspirators thought once Caesar was dead the Republic would spontaneously regenerate itself, a fatal error, compounded by allowing Antony to speak at Caesar's funeral.

In reality we don't know precisely what Antony said, and he certainly would not have said it in the same tone as Lewis.  Immediately after the assassination, public opinion was divided in Rome.  Antony would have been speaking in a public forum to a large crowd without the benefit of modern amplification.  His speech, of necessity, was pitched more broadly and more loudly.  Whatever he said, it was effective, rousing the crowd, generating outrage and anger.  What was now a mob left the scene and began hunting down the conspirators who had fled to their homes and strongholds.  Eventually they were to flee Rome altogether.  Within two years, most of the conspirators were dead.

Caesar's death triggered more than a decade of civil wars.  First, between his supporters and his killers and then among his supporters culminating in the conflict between Octavian (Caesar's nephew) and Marc Antony and Cleopatra.  It was only with Octavian's victory at Actium in 31 BC, Antony and Cleopatra's suicides the following year, and, by order of Octavian, the murder of Caesarion, the 13-year old child of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, that the civil strife ended.

We're #1!

Balding got so excited by this culinary breakthrough, he couldn't even spell correctly!  Apart from this his twitter feed on China is outstanding.

Personally I'm disappointed Hostess used artificial flavors instead of natural Twinkies flavors.

 

No wonder other countries hate us: they can only envy America's level of innoventiveness pic.twitter.com/iYz5nPZdKl

— Ukranian Hacker Balding 大老板 (@BaldingsWorld) March 25, 2022

Liminal Spaces

Liminal Space - a location which is a transition between two other locations, or states of being

Liminal Spaces - a weird, but compelling, twitter feed

 

pic.twitter.com/87PJgLYK5K

— Liminal Spaces (@SpaceLiminalBot) March 19, 2022

 

pic.twitter.com/Vmx2QDYaYx

— Liminal Spaces (@SpaceLiminalBot) March 18, 2022

pic.twitter.com/jCAmwP1pP9

— Liminal Spaces (@SpaceLiminalBot) March 17, 2022

Book Of Lost Books

A couple of years ago I read The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a marvelous four volume fictional series by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.  The Shadow of the Wind, the first novel in the series, had been recommended to me.  Set in Barcelona in the first half of the 20th century, it proved a fascinating mixture of history and vivid characters with surrealistic Gothic romance overtones, dealing with the Spanish Civil War and Franco's regime.  I went on to read the other three volumes, which take the story both forward and backward in time - 2,500 pages in toto.

I was reminded of the Zafon novels upon coming across an article about the recent discovery Libro de los Epitomes, a cross-referenced index to a library of 15-20,000 volumes assembled by Hernando Colon, the illegitimate (but recognized) son of Christopher Columbus, in the 16th century.

The significance of the index is that Colon's ambition was not just to collect well-known books, but every book that had been published or, as he wrote, "all books, in all languages and on all subjects, that can be found both within Christendom and without".  Colon's collection included almanacs and news pamphlets, as well as books.  Though only 4,000 volumes of his collection survive in the Biblioteca de Seville, the book summaries in the index, written by readers paid by Colon, who then edited their summaries, provide information on many books that have completely disappeared over the past 500 years.

The Libros was recently discovered in the collection of the Arnamagnaen Institute at the University of Copenhagen.  The Institute primarily houses works in Icelandic or Scandinavian languages with only 22 volumes in Spanish or by Spanish authors.  Somehow, the 2,000 page, volume had remained unrecognized.  The collection in which it resides had been donated to the University by the Icelandic scholar Arni Magnusson in 1730.  How Magnusson obtained the Libro de los Epitomes remains unknown.  Plans are underway to digitize the volume and make it widely available.

The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books, a biography of Hernando Colon by Edward Wilson-Lee, was recently published.  I'll be reading it.

Now, if we can just find the books that were housed in the Library of Alexandria!

Numb

I've always had mixed feeling about Pink Floyd.  On the negative side of the ledger, I've found much of their catalogue to be boring and pretentious while also detesting their primary songwriter, Roger Waters.  On the positive side we have the spectacular 1973 record, The Dark Side Of The Moon, David Gilmour's guitar playing, and Comfortably Numb from Floyd's 1979 album, The Wall.  My distaste for The Wall caused me to resist the appeal of Numb for many years until hearing the 1994 live version (below) for the first time, perhaps a decade ago, a version far superior to the album take.  

The 1994 version is awe inspiring, truly a peak musical experience.  Gilmour's singing brings out the beauty of the lyric:

When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
I have become comfortably numb 

His guitar playing matches the emotional feel of the song and the closing 4+ minute solo is simply overwhelming.  Lots of guitarists play faster and with more notes, but the careful design and tonal quality of Gilmour's solos, here and elsewhere, make him a master of evoking emotions of regret, loss, and yearning in his listeners.  We've had many great rock guitarists, but the only ones I think of as comparable with Gilmour's emotive ability are Mark Knopfler and, at his best, Neil Young (listen to the two solos on Powderfinger).

Other than Gilmour's guitar, the music is simple, yet well thought out, creating a firm bed upon which the vocal and guitar float.  The ambiance that results is striking, complementing the lyric, and anchoring the guitar solos.  Even the little deviations from that soothing flow are well done - listen to the backup singers at the 3 minute mark.

I don't usually pay attention to light show, but even that is superb at the Pulse concert.

I'm sure everyone who attended that show remembers it.

A final thought on Floyd.  I placed the song Another Brick in the Wall in the pretentious and highly overrated category when it was released, but must admit that in the 2020s it seems prescient, though probably not in the way Waters intended when he wrote it.   We've entered a world in which the educational establishment is determined to impose a mind-numbing conformity on its young inmates, from the time they enter school until the day they graduate. It's a new religious orthodoxy in which purging heretics(1) is more important than teaching children the reading, writing, math, and thinking skills they will need in the future.  Instead they are intent on making them just another brick in the wall, inert and hammered into place.

Teacher, leave them kids alone!

-----------------------------------------------------------

(1)  In fact, our institutions of higher learning appear to be reverting to their origins in medieval Europe, requiring professions of adherence to the one true faith.

19 Notes

. . . on Covid

1.  The worst current covid outbreaks are in East Asia and, of these, the worst is Hong Kong, which had previously managed quite well, relying up strict immigration requirements and quarantine measures.  To my surprise, however, the elderly vaccination rate was quite low so when Omicron hit it took quite a toll.  Currently, Hong Kong is having the US per capita equivalent of over a million cases a day and 11,000 deaths daily.

2.  It is reported that the Hong Kong outbreak has spread to China, and major cities are closing schools and imposing quarantine measures.  This inevitably means further supply chain disruptions between China and the rest of the world.  Adding this to the existing covid induced supply chain disruption along with the more recent Russia-Ukraine war disruption, means we are all in for even rougher times.

3.  Official reported global death toll from covid is a little over 6 million, but it may actually be as high as 18 million.  It is very difficult to make cross country comparisons because of this.  I can tell you there are now 45 countries or jurisdictions reporting death counts in excess of 2,000 per million population, and the U.S. is #18, but I cannot with confidence tell you whether that ranking is correct, or whether other countries reporting less than 2,000, actually exceed this threshold.

4.  Example 1 of the difficulty even in the U.S of making comparisons.  It turns out that states are using different definitions of covid deaths.  Massachusetts has just announced it is revising its definition.  The state had defined as a covid death, any death where covid was listed as one of the causes on the death certificate, or where the deceased had been diagnosed with covid at any point within 60 days of their death.  Massachusetts revised the latter criteria to only include deaths where covid was diagnosed with 30 days of date of death.  The state is imposing this retroactively, which will reduce its previously reported death toll by 15%.

5.  Example 2 of the difficulty in making state comparisons.  Comparisons of raw, unadjusted data can be misleading, particularly if average age is not accounted for because of the relative severity of the disease on the elderly.  If you look at Arizona and its neighbor state, New Mexico, Arizona's death rate is 15% higher, but if adjusted for age the difference is 2%.  Unadjusted v adjusted data is even more dramatic in other instances.  Florida's death rate is 50% higher than California's, but Florida has the second oldest population in the country (Maine is the oldest), while California has a much younger population profile.  Adjusted for age, Florida still has a higher rate, but it is 4% instead of 50% (as of mid-February).

6.  There are also many other population and geographical characteristics that may play a role in the results.  It would be good to explore these in a data drive analysis.  For instance, I mentioned that Maine has the oldest population in the U.S., yet its unadjusted death rate is one of the lowest.  For that matter, the three northern tier New England states all had relatively low death rates.  

7.  It would be useful to get more detailed analysis on international comparisons to see if we can find anything useful for us in America.  For instance, the Netherlands death rate/official case is only 0.3% and its per capita rate less than half the U.S., even though its per capita case rate is higher.  Why?  Are they counting differently?  Are their demographic differences?  Are they treating the infected differently?  I wish there were more reporting.

8. Why did public health officials fail to place a big emphasis on actions people could take to protect themselves in addition to masking (let's put the debate over effectiveness to the side for now), distancing, and vaccines?  It was obvious early on that emphasizing losing weight, exercise, getting outdoors, working to keep medical conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure under control, Vitamin D levels, were all important to reducing the risk of serious outcomes, yet these were mostly ignored.  Why?

9. The vaccines were oversold as preventing covid infection and that damaged the credibility of vaccination efforts.  However, they were, and remain, effective in reducing the risk of serious consequences if you get covid.  If you are old folks like us, or a younger person with underlying conditions like diabetes, immune system dysfunction, untreated high blood pressure, or seriously overweight, getting vaccinated and boosted is the most effective strategy you can have.

10. Further to #9, I am tired of reading attacks on vaccines by those who deliberately focus on cases and ignore adverse outcomes.  We can directly see the difference in the Omicron surge in East Asia and Oceania.  Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand have all seen huge surges in cases but, of the three, only Hong Kong has seen a surge in fatalities because of its low vaccination rate among the elderly.

11.  I'm also tired of arguments by advocates who focus on U.S. data and ignore the rest of the world when it suits their needs, and then turn around and use international data when it does suit their needs.  Or, for that matter, those who selectively use international data, ignoring any that contradicts their argument.

12.  Closing many schools in 2020-21 was a disaster.  Polling indicates most Americans significant overestimate covid risk for children.  It is thankfully very, very small.  We should not repeat this when we have the inevitable covid waves in the future.

13.  Europe took a very different approach to both keeping schools open and masking for children under 12.  Studies found no adverse impacts from the European approach.

14.  Fitted N95 masks can be effective in preventing infection.  Non-fitted, non-certified N95s can be sometimes effective.  Cloth and surgical masks have very little utility.  In the latter case, if those who wear cloth and surgical masks tend to keep more distance from others and to isolate themselves more frequently that may have benefits in reducing infection.

15.  Even before Covid it was apparent the CDC was a troubled organization.  Its mission had expanded and focus drifted from its original task regarding infectious diseases, in part because of Congressional mandates, in part because of the increasing ideological preoccupations of the public health field.  But its incompetence during Covid has been staggering.  I thought Trump's CDC Director, Dr Redfield, was bad, but Dr Walensky, Biden's appointee, has been even worse, sounding panicked, sending conflicting messages, and promoting unsound studies.  Under this administration, the teacher's union president, Randi Weingarten, actually runs Covid policy so perhaps it would have been better to just appoint her.  Congress needs to reform the CDC and return it to its original sole mission regarding infectious diseases.  Of course, it won't.

16.  We still don't know how Covid-19 originated.  I think it was an accidental lab leak in Wuhan but both the lab leak and natural origins need to be properly investigated which has not been done.  China will never cooperate, but there is a lot of additional information available in the United States which is obtainable if Congress took action.  Both the NIH and NIAID (Dr Fauci's agency) have obstructed efforts to FOIA information and the EcoHealth Alliance (funded, in part, by NIH and DoD, has refused to make public documents which could clarify its role with the Wuhan lab.

17.  Will anyone have the courage to force Dr Fauci out of government?  During the early phase of the pandemic the doctor had the advantage of contrasting himself with the random musings of Donald Trump.  Of course, even Andrew Cuomo looked good compared to Trump because, unlike Trump, he could fake empathy even as he massacred nursing home patients.  Fauci's deliberate obstruction of the origins investigation, along with his role in labeling it a racist conspiracy theory, was prompted by his fear that his funding of projects to bring bat viruses to Wuhan may have been linked to the start of the pandemic.  His actions are a disgrace and deserve condemnation.

18.  Once Fauci is gone, I am convinced, if anyone investigates, we will find many scandals at NIAID, just as we did at the FBI after Hoover's death.  Dr Fauci's reign is a prime example of letting an executive run a government agency for decades while escaping accountability.  The doctor last treated patients 51 years ago; has been a senior executive at NIAID for 48 years; and run the agency for the past 38 years.  Every manager in that organization owes their job and their future to Dr Fauci.  Nothing is done without his direct approval or approval by his devotees.  NIAID has a $6 billion budget, a large portion of which goes to funding virology research.  Fauci is the largest funder of such research in the U.S. and possibly the world.  Research careers are dependent upon the doctor's favor.  When Josh Rogin wrote Chaos Under Heaven, his book on the Trump's administration's China policy, he reported that he was unable to get virologists to speak on the record about Fauci and the origins of Covid because of his control of their funding.  Reportedly, over the course of his career, Fauci several times turned down potential nominations to head NIH.  That's because he is a very astute bureaucrat.  He already controlled a large budget and bureaucracy at NIAID, an organization embedded within NIH.  Why heighten his profile, increase his risk of accountability and have to learn and control an even larger bureaucracy when his current position insulated him from all of that?

19.  When is the next variant and what will be its impact?  More importantly, how will we react?

Brothers In Arms

Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I've witnessed your suffering
As the battles raged higher

And though we were hurt so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms

I've posted this song before (though not this version), but it seems to always remain timely.  The unique sound of Mark Knopfler with those mumbled, yet moving, lyrics and the fat, lush guitar.

Colossal Ambitions

In the event the Confederacy won its independence in the Civil War, what was it planning when it came to foreign policy for the new nation?  Last month's speaker at the Scottsdale Civil War Roundtable was Adrian Brettle of Arizona State University, who set out to answer this question in his recent book, "Colossal Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Post-Civil War World", which I recently finished reading.

Colossal Ambitions takes us from the first days of secession through the entire war until its end.  According to Brettle, while some of the specifics of post-war plan changed with the ebb and tide of Confederate success; expansive at the beginning and during periods of apparent success like the fall of 1862, or when anticipating Lincoln's defeat in the 1864 election; more modest after the reverses of 1863 and in the dark days after Lincoln was reelected, the overall direction remained constant.  As Brettle reminded us in his talk, some of their notions seem inconsistent with each other, and others hard to believe they took seriously as we look back from the 21st century, but this is what many Confederate politicians and thought leaders really did think.

The Confederate worldview saw the anti-slavery movement losing momentum and believed that England and France were beginning to regret their anti-slavery actions.  They saw the Confederacy as part of a modernizing wave, with free trade utilizing a labor model based on slavery for those parts of the world suitable for it and providing a new world of global commerce, stretching from slavery's "natural" home extending from the Confederacy south to Brazil, across the Atlantic to Europe and even to China.

Confederates viewed their nation as providing the way towards the future as capital and labor worked together, rather than against each other, as in the North.  In their vision, the fact that the elites owned both capital and labor (in the form of slaves) was a much better solution than in places where ownership was divided.  From the Confederate perspective, division of ownership meant capital owners had no regard for the interests or welfare of labor and treated them as disposable, whereas in their system the ownership of both meant owners would take care of both.  As Brettle writes:

"the very survival of African Americans depended on their protected subordinate condition, which would only be guaranteed by Confederates granting African Americans a defined role in society.  By contrast, in an economy in which members of the races had to compete against each other for waged jobs, such as the Union envisaged by Lincoln promised, African Americans would fail and subsequently perish"

The reconciliation of labor with capital in a free trade system based on slavery, contrasted with what the Confederates saw as a ruthless capitalist system based on Yankee greed and exploitation, along with runaway individualism.  Brettle points out, Confederate leaders:

"attempted to conceive the new nation as a project confronting the unbridled individualism of the era.  Without going as far as to embrace new theories of socialism, they argued that a sense of solidarity underpinned its claim to nationhood.

One can see this theme in much of the contemporary Southern writing of the time.  For instance, Mary Chesnut's diary is filled with references to Yankee greed and the only interest of Northerners being money, while Southern life was filled with gentility and concern for all.

We encountered an interesting example of this theory in action when reading Frederick Law Olmstead's account of his travels across the South just prior to the war, published under several titles, most recently as The Cotton Kingdom.  While crossing a river in Alabama, Olmstead noticed the dangerous job of loading and unloading heavy cargo from boats was done by Irish laborers while slaves stood idly nearby watching.  Inquiring of the reason for this, Olmstead was told the Irish were used for the task precisely because it was so dangerous.  If injured they would simply be dismissed and their employer have no further obligations towards them.  Slaves were not used because the high risk of injury meant that, if they were injured, their owners would have the obligation to provide medical care, and continue to feed and house them even though they could do no productive labor while recovering or even if permanently disabled.  Slaves were a valuable asset requiring protection, Irish laborers were not.

It was also a perspective that saw the Confederacy remaining a predominantly agricultural land, whose wealth would grow as a commodity exporter, and while importing finished goods without being hampered by tarrifs, as was the current case when slave states were part of the Union.  This viewpoint was evidently held by a majority of the influential class in the seceding states,  though there was a minority view to the contrary which held that the South needed to develop a substantial industrial base, and that would not occur until slavery ended and free labor expanded.  The proponents of this viewpoint, such as John Archibald Campbell of Alabama, later a Justice of the Supreme Court who participated in the majority ruling in the Dred Scott case, did not envision social or legal equality for freed slaves, merely seeing slavery as an impediment to the growth of the white South which, for its sake, needed to be eliminated over time. 

The vision of a benevolent, free trading republic based upon slavery combined with an understanding by the black population that it was in their best interests, was contradicted by times by Confederate fears.  As Carl Paulus pointed out in his recent book, The Slaveholding Crisis: Fear of Insurrection and the Coming of the Civil War, ever since the slave revolt in Haiti in the 1790s, Southerners had feared potential uprisings among their slave population, a fear enhanced by the plot of Denmark Vesey in South Carolina in the 1820s and Nate Turner's uprising in Virginia a decade later.  It's why John Brown's 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, with its intent to ignite a massive slave revolt, caused such alarm.  The growing slave population was a source of constant worry (the American slave population was the only one in the Western Hemisphere with a natural growth rate not dependent on external replenishing) and expansion was seen as a way of moving that potentially dangerous population south and west, thus "diluting" it.  Holding parallel visions of slavery as a positive good, recognized by the enslaved, as well as fearing violent revolt by the enslaved is certainly not consistent, but both views existed simultaneously.

At the same time, there was a distinct expansionist element to Confederate thinking, though how direct it was would depend on the circumstances.  To some extent, desires for outright conquest and annexation had been tempered by the embarrassing failure of the filibustering expeditions in the 1850s in Mexico, Nicaragua, and Cuba, as described in The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire 1854-61 by Robert E May.  At times, it was envisioned that Mexico, in particular the northern part, would become part of the Confederacy, as well as some of the Caribbean islands.  Some even envisioned a Confederacy extending into Central America, but it seemed to its proponents to be a natural process of assimilation by a superior culture, rather than by filibustering.

The Confederacy also had a distinct view of future relations with the rest of the United States.  Annexation of the Southwest was seen as a given and the relationship of the new nations with the tribes of the Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma) were considered important.  In the Confederate racial hierarchy, Indians were considered not white but had higher standing than blacks which meant, in the Southern view, Indians were regarded more highly than in the North.  The Confederacy actively sought, and successfully obtained, alliances with those tribes.  How those tribes (Seminole, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw and Cherokee) ending up preferring the Confederacy over the U.S., even though those very states had expelled them three decades before, is told in Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country by Fay Yarbrough.  Part of the answer is that all the tribes had black slaves; in the case of the Choctaw these amounted to 15% of the population.  Slavery among these tribes was not outlawed until 1866, pursuant to new treaties reestablishing their relations with the U.S., a year after passage of the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the states.

As to the states remaining the Union, Confederates thought that once their independence had been confirmed, the U.S. would further split into its own confederacies, based on New England, the Midwest, and the Pacific Coast.

Brettle presents ample evidence that explains how Confederate reconciled in their owns minds a coherent  vision combining slavery, free trade, and a modernizing nation.  It also further demonstrates the absurdity of the arguments made by a small subgroup of libertarians that the cause of the Civil War was tariffs, and Northern desire to economically dominate the South (as I discovered a few years ago).  It has led them to invent a narrative of the events leading to the war consistent with their ideological preoccupations.  They also argue that slavery would have naturally withered away by the end of the 19th century.  What they refuse to recognize is that the Confederacy saw slavery as essential to its economic model as an independent nation, with the elimination of tariffs as a mechanism to help that model prosper.  The peculiarities of this model would, I believe, have ensured the existence of slavery into the 20th century, and perhaps delayed its late 19th century abolition in Brazil and Cuba.

The predominance of slavery as the issue prompting secession, underlying the logic for the entire Confederate experiment, comes up over and over again.  It continually surprises me to see arguments raised to the contrary (1).  We have so much contemporary evidence from 1860-61.  Even late in the war, the critical importance of slavery to the existence of the Confederacy was frequently touched on.  Brettle gives us two examples; the first from Governor Zebulon Vance of North Carolina on November 28, 1864; the second from Jefferson Davis on September 30, 1864:

[the ] "proposition to emancipate them by the Confederate States government . . . would stultify us in the eyes of the world and render our whole revolution nugatory [because] our independence is chiefly desirable for the preservation of our great political institutions the principal of which is slavery".

"The great State institution of the South was the true basis for such a government . . . [as a result of slavery] here then, and here only, every white man is truly, socially and politically equal to every other."

----------------------------------------------------

(1)  Three questions sometimes get confused regarding causes of the Civil War:

First, why did states secede?  To preserve the institution of slavery.

Second, why did the civil war occur?  A more complicated question.  Once the states had seceded, the new Confederacy insisted on the surrender of Union property, including military infrastructure, and the Union refused to acknowledge secession, making preservation of the Union its primary war aim.

Third, why did soldiers fights on each side?  For many different reasons.  And don't forget that many were drafted into service on both sides. 

Once the war began, all calculations regarding slavery changed for the Union.  Democratic Senator Reverdy Johnson, who opposed abolition prior to the war, gave a remarkable speech in Congress on April 5, 1864 in support of the proposed Constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.  Johnson remarked that  if the Founders had anticipated the current condition of the country, "they would have provided by constitutional enactment that the evil and that sin should at a comparatively unremote day be removed."

He then stated that although he would have opposed such an amendment prior to the war, "now, that that war is upon us; that a prosperous and permanent peace cannot be secured if the institution is permitted to survive", later adding:

". . . as we at present are, I cease to hope that the Government can be restored and preserved so as to accomplish the great ends for which it was established, unless slavery be extinguished.  If it be permitted to remain, it will ever continue a subject upon which treason may be able to excite the madness of the southern mind."

Of course, Abraham Lincoln was closest to the truth in his remarks at his second inaugural:

"One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves not distributed generally over the union but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. "

Be Careful Crossing The Street

On December 19, 1935 Thomas D Schall was fatally struck by a car.  Schall was blind.  And a United States Senator.  We've had some colorful characters in Washington and Schall ranks high on that list.

Born in 1878 into desperate poverty in a cabin outside Grand Rapids, Michigan, after his father deserted the family, Schall's mother moved the family to the small town of Wheaton in Western Minnesota.  Though he did not attend school until he was 12, Schall soon discovered a gift for oratory (he was also a boxer and baseball player); the president of Hamline College in St Paul heard him and arranged a scholarship.  Schall transferred to the University of Minnesota, graduating in 1902 and from St Paul Law School in 1904.

Off to a promising start as a trial lawyer specializing in personal injury cases, young Schall's life was transformed by an accident in 1907, while trying a case in Fargo, North Dakota.  At a cigar stand, Schall was trying out a new electric cigar lighter.  Unfortunately, it had been plugged into the wrong outlet and when ignited it flashed in his face.  Over the next three months he went completely blind.  He decided to resume his practice with the assistance of his wife Margaret for reading and writing and built a successful practice based on his trial skills.

In 1914, Schall ran for Congress on the Progressive Party ticket, winning the race and being reelected in 1916.  In 1918 he switched to the Republican Party and was elected to three more terms.  In 1924, Schall was elected to the Senate, becoming the first blind senator, and was reelected in 1930.

Accommodations were made for his blindness; the House allowed him to have a personal page for which he thanked fellow Members:

“To the blind man, work is a pleasure and by giving me the means to do more work you have expanded my pleasure and released me from bondage and given me freedom. The hands which reach out to me and the voices which encourage me make bright the otherwise gray days and give me a renewed zest to fight the game of life.”

After joining the Senate he was allowed to have a guide dog on the floor of the chamber. Margaret continued to assist him in Washington with reading and writing.

All through his life, Tom Schall loved public speaking.  In this biographical sketch, Peggy Chong writes:

One thing he loved to do was to speak to the people.  It is said that he would talk to any group at great length on current issues.  Most of his supporters were the poor people of Minnesota.  He would address crowds, primarily outdoors at community picnics or on street corners, from the back of a car.  It didn't matter to him.  It has been said that, if three people were found loitering outside his Lake Harriet home, he would take the opportunity to speak from his retaining all to those who would listen.

Despite his blindness, Schall continued with an active life, learning to fly, becoming a skilled horseman, and enjoying shooting, as you can see!

On the evening of December 19, 1935, Senator Schall stopped at a grocery store on his way home to Maryland.  While crossing the Baltimore-Washington Highway in the evening darkness, assisted by an aide but without his guide dog, both were struck by a hit and run driver, who was later identified and arrested. The senator died three days later, while his aide survived a fractured skull.

As a politician, Schall was always controversial, enjoying feuds, and constantly facing close elections.

As a progressive, Schall supported regulation of business and child labor laws, but later became an outspoken opponent of President Franklin Roosevelt, accusing him of being a communist and planning to establish a dictatorship.  The increasingly vituperative nature of his attacks on FDR led to headlines like this one in the September 5, 1934 New York Times:

ATTACK ON NEW DEAL RENEWED BY SCHALL; Senator Asserts NRA Codes Censor Press, Rayburn Act Curbs Radio, Wires.

For a flavor of the relations between Schall and FDR you can read this 1934 exchange of letters. 

Upon his death, Time Magazine noted:

"Of all the Senators who sat in the last session of Congress the one least liked by his colleagues was undoubtedly the late Huey Long. Had a secret vote for that distinction been taken, a runner-up to the Louisiana "Kingfish" would probably have been blind Senator Thomas David Schall of Minnesota. He was so unmeasured in his attacks on President Roosevelt, his wife and family, that even the sternest opponents of the New Deal shivered. But just as Senators were shocked by the assassination of Democrat Huey Long, so last week they were shocked by the tragedy that befell Republican Tom Schall."

Thomas Schall was survived by three children and wife Margaret, who passed in 1954.

Holland-Dozier-Holland

 From 1963 into 1968 if you purchased a Motown Record and saw Holland-Dozier-Holland listed as the writers, you knew you were getting quality.  

Brothers Eddie and Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier wrote for Martha & The Vandellas (Heat Wave; Nowhere To Run; Jimmie Mack), Marvin Gaye (Can I Get a Witness; How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You), The Miracles (Mickey's Monkey), Freda Payne (Band of Gold), Jr Walker & The All Stars (I'm A Road Runner), The Isley Brothers (This Old Heart of Mine), and Chairmen of the Board (Give Me Just A Little More Time).

H-D-H scored 27 Top Ten singles in those five years, peaking with their work with The Supremes and The Four Tops.  For The Supremes they wrote ten #1's and two other top ten singles, including Come See About Me; Stop In The Name of Love; and You Keep Me Hanging On.

The Four Tops were my Motown favorites in the mid-60s, and H-D-H wrote their 1965 breakthrough single, I Can't Help Myself, which reached #1.  They followed that up with Baby, I Need Your Loving; It's The Same Old Song; Bernadette; Standing In The Shadow of Love; Wake Me, Shake Me; and the greatest of all Motown songs, Reach Out I'll Be There, with lead singer Levi Stubbs' passionate vocal alternating between singing and shouting.

 

Reach Out hit #1 in October 1966.  It's funny what was important to my 15-year old self and that I still remember; there was a back and forth at the top of the charts between Reach Out and an execrable song by The Association (1), Cherish, so I was rooting for the Four Tops.

The Holland Brothers and Lamont Dozier are all alive and in their early 80s.  Thanks for the great music, guys!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(1) The Association was one of those mid-60s groups mostly put together in the studio but which evolved into a real band.  They had three huge hits, Cherish, Never My Love, and Windy, none of which I liked but I thought their very first single, Along Comes Mary was great.  This is the fast paced single version and below is a slower paced take they did on Ed Sullivan which also contains the unusual lyrics, which were difficult to understand on the original single.

Travels

My top travel destinations that I've never been to are Israel and Istanbul and the Aegean Coast of Turkey.  Below is a satellite photo of Istanbul, its sprawling suburbs, and the Bosphorus.

pic.twitter.com/V9AjIce28T

— Archillect (@archillect) March 6, 2022

Istanbul is on the European (left shore) where the Bosphorus discharges into the Sea of Marmara.  The old city is on the promontory, just south of the inlet.  It is also the location of the ancient city of Byzantium, founded in the 8th century BC and later refounded as Constantinople by the Emperor Constantine in 330AD.  Conquered by the Ottomans in 1453 and later officially renamed as Istanbul in 1930; as They Might Be Giants reminds us, it's now Istanbul (Not Constantinople).

Ideally, we'd start with a visit to Istanbul to see both the modern city and the archaeological remnants of its long history and then travel down the coast of Asia Minor to the excavations at Troy and on to the ruins of the cities of the Classical World such as Ephesus.   Ephesus is also the setting for Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors and we are great fans of the Flying Karamazov Brothers interpretation of The Bard's work, which we watched on several occasions with our children.

Ephesus

Ghosts Appear And Fade Away

After Men At Work, for a brief period in 1983 the biggest band in the world, broke up a couple of years later, Colin Hay, lead singer and composer or co-composer of their material, hit a pretty rough patch.  He relocated to Los Angeles, his solo records flopped, and he spent most of the 1990s playing to tiny audiences in whatever venue would have him.  In the early 2000s he began a career revival due to his steady commitment to playing on the road, being featured in the series Scrubs, and having one of his songs on the platinum soundtrack for the movie Garden State, written and directed by Zach Braff, who'd gotten to know Colin via Scrubs.

Where his Men At Work songs were often jokey and light, Hay's solo work is more personal.  He is also quite a storyteller in his solo shows.

Let's start with a couple of tunes Colin reworks from his Men At Work days; my favorite, Overkill, and, of course, Down Under.  On Overkill, stick around to watch the audience.

Overkill is about the thoughts that keep you awake in the middle of the night.  Happens to me.  Those thoughts have always been worse than the actual problems faced when awake, because then I can do something about the problem other than worry.  It's what Colin is referring to when he sings, "Ghosts appear and fade away".

Here are a couple of his solo tunes, Waiting For My Real Life To Begin and I Just Don't Think I'll Get Over You.  On the latter, you can listen to a few minutes of Hay's funny stories.

Pausing At The Precipice

I've been reading Tanner Greer's blog, The Scholar's Stage, and his twitter feed for the past couple of years, initially because of his writing on China.  He is always interesting.  Greer's most recent piece is Pausing at the Precipice, regarding how to respond to Putin's invasion of Ukraine.  My sympathies and emotions are with Ukraine, but the essay, quite properly, hits a cautionary note.

He writes about the Western response to date:

They are a natural, proportional, and even predictable response to Putin’s decision to settle the question of Ukrainian nationhood through the force of arms. Yet it is precisely the naturalness of our policy that we should be wary of. A righteous reaction may be a dangerous one. The imperatives of action disguise an ugly truth: in the field of power politics it is outcomes, not intentions, that matter most. Failure to slow down and examine the assumptions and motivations behind our choices may lead to decisions that feel right in the moment, but fail to safeguard our interests, secure our values, or reduce the human toll of war in the long run.

He then goes on to cite Michael Mazarr’s 2019 book, Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America’s Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy (which I read last year and found to be the best thing I've read about America's decision to invade Iraq).  Greer writes of that decision:

The administration did not intentionally mislead the nation into battle; motivated reasoning, not deceit, warped their understanding of events. Oil was never central to the campaign; when it appeared in war council discussions, it did so only under the rosy assumption that Iraq’s oil revenues would be sufficient to cover reconstruction costs. Contrary to the received wisdom in many quarters today, the invasion of Iraq was not about about spreading liberal democracy in the Middle East. That justification for the war came mostly in 2004 and the years that followed, when the WMD threat had been exposed as delusion. Liberalism did not lead us into Iraq so much as keep us there. 

Perhaps the most astonishing fact about America’s invasion of Iraq is that the National Security Council never formally debated the decision to wage war. “One of the great mysteries to me,” wrote one NSC principal after leaving office, “is exactly when the war in Iraq became inevitable.” His confusion is understandable: there was no moment, no meeting, where the pros and the cons of invasion were laid out in full. No one ever asked “should we invade?” Instead they debated questions like “if we decide to invade, what must we do to prepare?” and “When we invade, what must our objectives be?” Mazarr explains this curious lack of first-order thought, the origin point of the motivated reasoning that produced both flawed intelligence assessments and unnecessarily hasty demands for action, as a byproduct of moral imperatives.

Catastrophic misjudgment rests on the convergence of two elements: an emergent sense that there is a moral imperative to act paired with a breakdown in the formal decision-making processes designed to force policy makers to carefully weigh the potential consequences of their decisions.  

The entire essay is worth reading.

My additional thoughts:

As sympathetic as Ukraine's plight is, the interests of the West and of that country may diverge as the war continues.  Now that the Russians have invaded, I think it harder for Ukrainians to accept any settlement that might lead to that country's neutrality or that in any way allows Russia to claim even the tiniest victory.  But unless the West is banking on the overthrow of Putin and his replacement by someone more acceptable (a very risky bet under the circumstances) it is in our interests to seek a settlement, even as we strengthen the NATO alliance and impose sanctions.  In order to get there, however, statesmen need to be thinking down the road and not just about short-term actions.

In the case of Mazarr's book it confirmed some things that became evident to me during the course of the Iraq War; for instance the complete lack of coordinated planning about what to do with Iraq once the initial invasion succeeded, but I was astonished to read about the complete lack of a comprehensive discussion about whether to go to war.

Leap of Faith also raises the question of who has the requisite wisdom to make long-term assessments.  At the time I viewed Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell as seasoned and experienced and had confidence in their decision making abilities (I felt less sure about GW Bush).  In reality, it turned out that Rumsfeld and Powell, while never fully on board with the decision, retreated to passive-aggressive behavior while Cheney, to my surprise, ran amuck while ignoring the domestic political lessons from every conflict the United States had engaged in during its existence.  Even with that, the ultimate responsibility for failure resides in President Bush, who failed to engage in the details, and with National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice who failed to force a definitive and reasoned discussion about Iraq, and to resolve, or elevate to the President, the differing visions of Rumsfeld, Powell, and Cheney which became evident during the run up to the war.

There is one significant difference between Ukraine and Iraq.  Iraq was an unforced error.  The initiative was with the U.S. and we had time to consider it.  Time pressures are much different with Ukraine.  Decisions must be made.  It does not make it any less dangerous - in fact, it may be more dangerous - but time means more pressure on everyone and even more need for resisting the momentum that occurs in these situations and careful consideration for second and third order impacts of decisions.

There are several posts I've written touching on the same concerns:

Japan's decision to attack the U.S. in 1941

The U.S. decision to enter combat operations in Vietnam (see Dereliction of Duty)

The Event at Sarajevo

And, of course, Mastering The Tides of the World

Passing The Time

 . . . while wondering if there will be a baseball season.

I first saw this in 2020 but had forgotten it until Super 70s Sports, the best account on twitter, revived it recently.

What a swing that gal has!  Great stance, great bat speed.  And listen to how the ball sounds coming off the bat.  That is Emma Humplik of Orange, Texas when she was in high school.  Emma is now at the University of South Florida and we wish her the best.  And don't forget to give a tip of the hat to whoever is doing the tossing from a sitting position!

Hit like a girl. Goddamn.

pic.twitter.com/jiCDRzzU83

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) February 28, 2022

The screaming line drive blast she starts with immediately reminded me of a game I saw in Fenway Park. Sitting near the Red Sox dugout, I watched Jack Clark get hold of a pitch and send it on a line over The Wall in left field.  You could feel the power when he connected with that incredible bat speed and it seemed like it took only a milisecond for the ball to leave the park.

I went back and checked Clark's history.  He came to the Red Sox at the tail end of his career and hit 28 home runs in 1991.  The home run I witnessed occurred during a day game.  According to Baseball-Reference, Clark hit 8 home runs in day games at Fenway that year.  Through a process of elimination, it's likely the homer I witnessed took place on August 3 or 4 that year, when the Sox played the Toronto Blue Jays on a weekend and Clark homered in both games.  His blast on the 4th is described as to "deep LF", while the one the prior day is "line drive, deep LF", making it the most likely candidate.

I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night

1966 music checklist:

Weird band name? Check (and, yes, this was before Strawberry Alarm Clock and Moby Grape)

Fuzz tone guitar? Check

Hey, don't forget the backwards guitar! Check

Snappy drum into lick? Check

Lots of echo? Check

Psychedelic title and lyrics? Check

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Electric Prunes!   I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night hit #11 on the Billboard Chart in the fall of 1966.  I was 15 and thought it the coolest song.  Composed by Nancie Mantz and Annette Tucker who wrote seven of the 12 tunes on the band's first album.