Thankful

At year's end I want to give my thanks to Big Medicine and Big Pharma.  Joking here, as I dislike these phrases which are commonly used in a negative context so, while I have my criticisms of specific elements of the health care system, I'm going to use the labels in a positive way. 

Here's why.  In March, I had a saddle embolism, a large blood clot in my lungs, which temporarily stopped my heart from beating.  Thanks to two Picacho Peak State Park rangers, the Avra Valley EMTs, and the team at Northwest Tucson Medical Center, I made it through okay.

Due to the innovation of Big Medicine, the embolism was extracted from me the next day via a procedure that did not exist in 2005 and only came into common use less than 15 years ago.  If this happened back then I would have been hospitalized for several days, eventually sent home and required to stay in bed for a lengthy period while, hopefully, the blood thinners did their job and reduced the clot, all the time at continued risk of another heart stoppage.  Even if the clot dissolved there was a substantial risk of permanent heart damage because of the continued pressure of the embolism upon the heart.  Instead, the clot was removed in a 45-minute procedure, I was discharged less than 24 hours later, had a speedy and full recovery with no permanent damage, and was back to my regular routine, including exercise, within a month.

And here's where Big Pharma comes in.  The blood thinner I will be taking for the rest of my life is both more effective and has fewer side effects than prior blood thinners.  In fact, in my case, there have been no side effects.  Made by Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer, it only came on the market in 2012.    

So a big thank you to both.  Happy to still be here. 

Reading 2025: Non-Fiction Part 2

King George, Lords North and Germain, Generals Clinton, Cornwallis, Howe, Burgoyne, the Earl of Sandwich, and Admiral Rodney are The Men Who Lost America according to Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy (now that's a catchy moniker!).  The book is both a biography and a chronology of the key British figures in the prosecution of the war against the American rebels.  Lots of interesting information: I had not realized how quickly many of the players discovered the war unwinnable.  However, the structure of the book leads to a lot of repetition and the writing is pedestrian.

I've written a couple of prior posts about my readings on slavery (here's one) and this year read Atlantic Cataclysm: Rethinking the Atlantic Slave Trades by David Eltis, described by Henry Louis Gates Jr of Harvard as "a tour de force by the world's leading scholar of the slave trade".  It is the reflection of a life's work by the author and he reaches some surprising conclusions.  I'd previously read The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas by Eltis, covering the period from the early 1500s to the early 18th century.

Slavery in part of the Old World is the subject of Justin Marozzi's Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World.  Though covering a longer period (1,000 years compared to 350) the number of Africans trafficked in the respective trades are similar.  I will be writing a longer piece reflecting on the Eltis and Marozzi books in 2026.  Both are highly recommended. 

Not surprisingly, I did a lot of Civil War related reading in 2025, particularly as I often purchase books by our Roundtable speakers. 

The Great Partnership: Lee, Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy by Christian Keller, professor at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. was a very interesting study of the close relationship forged between the two over the eleven months between the Seven Days and Jackson's death at Chancellorsville.  I thought I knew everything already about that relationship but Keller brings out details, particularly about Lee and Jackson's shared religious faith, that explains their unique bond. 

Alex Rossino's investigation of the Calamity at Frederick: Lee, Special Orders No. 191, and Confederate Misfortune on the Road to Antietam was a revelation.  His methodical research process identifies the leading suspect responsible for the loss of Lee's Order 191, which when discovered by Federal soldiers revealed the position of Lee's scattered army to General George McClellan. 

I'd always found the two-week Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864 to be confusing.  Chris Mackowski's book, A Tempest of Fire and Lead, brought some needed clarity to those events.  Chris has an engaging writing style that is accessible to the non-specialist. 

Everyone has heard of Jesse James. While Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War covers his entire life, author TJ Stiles explains how Jesse's fighting experience during the Civil War shaped the remainder of his life.  There's some myth busting in this book, as Stiles shows how post-war Missouri politics assisted James in his escapades. 

In 1862, slave Robert Smalls was sent by his master to Charleston Harbor to work on a Confederate naval boat.  Smalls managed to steal the boat, smuggle his wife and two children on board and, with the help of fellow slaves, sailed it out to join the Union fleet blockading the harbor.  That story and more is the subject of Be Free or Die by Cate Lineberry.  Smalls went on to become the first black commander of vessel in the history of the U.S. Navy.  After the war, Smalls was elected to the U.S. Congress during reconstruction and purchased his former owner's house.

Was President Franklin Roosevelt effective in ending the Great Depression?  That's the topic of False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery 1933-47 by George Selgin. I grew up thinking that the answer was "of course he was!" but over the years there has been a growing controversy about the right answer.  Selgin approaches the question analytically, making a distinction between FDR's policies intended to provide relief, or to institute longer-term reforms, versus those designed in whole, or in part, to end the economic downturn.  Too much of the literature on FDR has been polemical, both pro and con, and it was helpful to have a more analytical approach. Selgin's verdict is mixed but the topic is important and complex enough that I plan on a post devoted to the book. 

I've read a good deal on the Spanish Civil War, both histories and personal accounts.  The latter have all been from the Republican perspective (including Alan Furst's outstanding historical novels).  Mine Were of Trouble by Peter Kemp is the first from someone who fought on the Nationalist side.  Kemp was a British law student who volunteered to fight in the conflict because he was an anti-communist and heard about the atrocities committed at the start of the war.  His account is very well written and while explaining why he fought and the details of battles, it does not shy away from sordid acts committed by some of Franco's units, and provides insight into the factional disputes among groups forming the Nationalist coalition.  Kemp was badly wounded and returned to Britain; with the advent of World War II, he joined the Special Operations Executive and was infiltrated into Albania to help the partisans fight the Germans, and later into Poland, events he recounted in No Colours or Crest: The Secret Struggle for Europe, which I have also read. No Colours or Crest is quite good but Mine Were of Trouble is definitely the one to read if you have a choice.

James Holland and his partner Al Murray run one of my favorite podcasts, We Have Ways Of Making You Talk, all about World War Two.  He is also a prolific author (see here for an example) and his latest is Cassino '44, covering the Italian campaign from January 1944 through the liberation of Rome in early June of the same year.  Something I particularly appreciate about Holland's books is that he uses documents written at the time, not accounts from years later, which gives his books an immediacy.  He also nicely balances strategic discussions with the personal intimate accounts by soldiers on the ground in that grinding campaign.  Northwest Europe with Normandy and the Bulge gets more attention and celebration but we owe a lot to the Allied soldiers in the Italian campaign.

I'm currently reading Vietnam's American War by Pierre Asselin.  In Dereliction of Duty (HR McMaster's indictment of the process by which American ground forces became engaged in Vietnam)  I referenced a previous book by Asselin, Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War: 1954-65.  Asselin speaks and reads Vietnamese and has access to the archives of the Vietnam government, which have become available to researchers over the past thirty years.  His work focuses on the perspective of the Vietnam communists, and often upsets the neat story told by Western academics.  His new book takes us back into the ancient history of Vietnam, along with its colonization by France before America's involvement begins in 1954.  That background is essential because Asselin's thesis is that Vietnam was engaged in a civil war between communists/nationalists and anticommunists/nationalists into which America got dragged, rather than a conflict between patriotic Vietnamese (who happened to be commies) and the Americans and their Vietnamese puppets.  Another book I will be writing more on.

Reading 2025: Non-Fiction, Part 1

Ancient History 

What happens if you are a Greek mercenary, deep in Mesopotamia, and the guy you hired you gets killed in battle and his cause collapses?  Read Anabasis by Xenophon to find out.  Also called The March of The Ten Thousand, Anabasis is the story of those mercenaries, hired by Cyrus the Younger in 401 BC to help seize the Persian throne from his brother Artaxerxes II.  This is one of those books I'd read about countless times but had never read until this year.  Xenophon, one of the mercenary commanders, wrote Anabasis about thirty years after the events.  Before reading I'd been under the impression that the core of the book covered the fighting retreat of the Greeks after the battle of Cunaxa until they reached the Black Sea but that's only half the story.  Quite an adventure and a reminder of how different and violent the Classical world was.  

Cato the Younger was Caesar's great enemy at the end of the Roman Republic.  Fred Drogula's study attempts to reconstruct Cato's life and motives and provides a convincing explanation for his ultimate ineffectiveness and inability to help forge a compromise that might have saved the Republic.

Peter Brown is considered the leading historian of late antiquity and Through The Eye of A Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD, is a masterwork.  I had some hesitation before starting the book, worried it might be dry and too scholarly.  It is certainly scholarly but not dry and extremely well-written and engaging.  The title is from the words of Jesus as recounted in the New Testament, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."  Avoiding cynicism, Brown provides a sympathetic study of how a struggling church, embraced by a minority of the population in 350, becomes the dominant and wealthiest player in the formerly Roman west two centuries later as it tries to reconcile the words of Jesus with the conditions of the disintegrating empire.  Making the reader rethink some of the common assumptions about that era, Brown focuses on individuals like Augustine, Ambrose, Pelagius, Jerome, Ausonius and others to help the reader understand the arguments over the appropriate role of wealth and the wealthy within the Church.  In other books and articles I've found it difficult to understand the nuances of early Christian theological arguments, but Brown provides admirable clarity in this work. A very rewarding read.

A decade ago THC wrote about the history of Rome after the 4th century (Belisarius Enters Rome)  relying greatly upon Richard Krautheimer's classic work from 1980, Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308.  The last few decades have seen an upsurge in archaeological activity in Rome focused on the post-Empire history of the city and this year I read two books by Hendrik Dey incorporating the new information; The Aurelian Wall and the Refashioning of Imperial Rome, AD 271-855 and his most recent work, published in 2025, The Making of Medieval Rome: A New Profile of the City, 400-1420.  Building upon the work of Krautheimer and the recent archaeology, Dey's books provide an update portrait and way of thinking about the city during its "dark ages".  I will be writing more about both books in 2026.

Israel

The Old City of Jerusalem is, as the name states, "Old" and contains the Temple Mount.  However, it is only in the past three decades that close to, but not within, the Old City is the City of David, dating back to King David around 1000 BC.  When The Stones Speak by Doron Spielman tells the story of its discovery and excavation and the political storms ignited by the archeological work.  Spielman has worked on the project and the discovery part is quite exciting, particularly finding the passageway between the City of David and the Temple Mount.  Because the area of the City of David is adjacent to an Arab settlement and given the Palestinian strategy to deny any historical Jewish connection with Jerusalem, each step of the excavation process has triggered controversy.

In The War Of Return, Einat Wilf argues the hypothesis that the highest aspiration of the Palestinian people is to have their own state has been proven to be incorrect as they have repeatedly demonstrated that the destruction of the Jewish state is a higher priority.  She writes that the actions of the United Nations, and of Western Nations, and the peculiar nature of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has contributed to the inability to resolve the conflict.  UNRWA created a unique category of refugee for Palestinians, unlike that of the tens of millions of other refugees around the world created in the wake of WW2.  UNRWA has become a facilitator of Palestinian rejectionism and the only hope to resolve the conflict is the dissolution of UNRWA.  I previously wrote about Wilf and her hypothesis in An Irreconcilable Conflict of Principles.

Music

I read the first two volumes of Ricky Riccardi's trilogy on the life of Louis Armstrong, Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong and Heart Full of Rhythm: The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong.  Riccardi is director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in the borough of Queens, NYC (worth a visit!) and himself a musician.  This is an incredibly well researched and almost day by day account of Armstrong's life and brings a lot of previously unknown information to light.  Riccardi is a great admirer of the man but does not shy away from giving us a portrait of the man in full.  If you like Armstrong's music you'll find some new cuts to enjoy and be overwhelmed by the man's drive and talent.  It remains a miracle to me that a young man could come from such a trying and terrible background and grow to display not just enormous talent but such a positive disposition and view of life. It's why I've written many times about Armstrong.

Inspired after watching A Complete Unknown, I read Elijah Wald's, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties.   Dylan Goes Electric gave me a much better understanding of the folk music revival of the 50s, Pete Seeger's key role, and why Dylan's rejection to being annointed the savior the folkies had been searching for was so significant.  The movie and the book also inspired my recent visit to the Dylan museum in Tulsa.

Reading 2025: Fiction

My favorite novel of the past year is Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.  It only took me 40 years to get around to reading, finally prompted to do so by this article by David Polansky in The Hedgehog Review.  I'd read the other book Polansky writes about, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, about twenty years ago.  Although admiring McCarthy's writing I much prefer Lonesome Dove.

Lonesome Dove is an epic tale, and much more hard and grim than I'd anticipated.  With its two compelling main characters, equally compelling side characters, and intersecting story lines it employs some of the sentimental tropes of traditional Westerns but tells an unsentimental, unyielding and, at times, brutal story.  It took about 75 pages to fall into its rhythm but since the novel is more than 800 pages that's an acceptable admission fee.

Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae remind me of the characters played by John Wayne in John Ford's The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, half-barbarous men needed to tame the frontier but who are unsuited to live there once it is civilized.  As Gus says to Woodrow, "Me and you done our work too well. We killed off most of the people that made this country interesting to begin with".

It had been many years since reading PD James crime novels featuring Inspector Adam Dalgliesh.  The Children of Men is not a crime novel, instead set in a near future England where children are no longer born.  Though full of action it is quite a reflective and pensive novel.  In some ways the future it predicts has already happened.  

Finding a new series of well-written historical novels is always a joy.  Alfred Duggan, an Englishman born in 1903, wrote 15 novels between 1950 and his death in 1964, and I read six this year.  While some are still in print, a couple I could only find secondhand as Ace Paperbacks, sold for 50 cents back in the 1950s!  Duggan's novels are all set in the classical or medieval eras.  The ones I particularly enjoyed were Conscience of The King, a speculative life of the founder of the Kingdom of Wessex in the sixth century, The Little Emperors, the story of the final chaotic years of Roman rule in Britain during the early fifth century, told from the perspective of a bureaucrat, and Knight With Armour, the tale of an ordinary English knight on the First Crusade.  Duggan is excellent in conveying the mental framework of his characters as reflecting the eras they lived in.  

Sink The Rising Sun is the debut novel by my friend Jon Gabriel.  Set in southwestern Australia in the opening months of America's involvement in World War Two, it is the tale of a submariner trying to stop the advance of Japan into the waters of Southeast Asia.  Well-researched and written, it's a gripping tale that accurately portrays the balance between boredom and action in the naval life.  Jon was a nuclear reactor technician on a submarine and brings his experience to this adventure.  

The High Crusade is 1960 science fiction by Poul Anderson, in which English knights and villagers during the Hundred Years War encounter an alien spaceship which they seize but then, in turn, find themselves hijacked and off to adventures in a distant galaxy.  How they cope and whether they succeed or fail in their new environment makes for an amusing tale.

Thomas Perry is a crime and mystery novelist.  Pro Bono, set in California with an well imagined and engaging plot, is the first Perry novel I've read. While writing this post I looked up his bio and found that he died in September 2025.  With thirty novels published I have a lot more ahead of me. 

Another historical novelist I enjoy is Robert Harris.  Precipice is set in the summer of 1914 when a British intelligence officer is assigned to find out how secret government communications were disclosed and stumbles across the affair between Prime Minister Asquith and the young Venetia Stanley.  A good read, but not his best.  If you haven't read Harris before I recommend starting with Fatherland; Act of Oblivion; Pompeii; or An Officer and a Spy.  His 2026 release is about Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the right hand man of Augustus, a great subject for a historical novel.

Finally, I read the latest installments by three crime novelists who I've collectively read more than 50 times.

The Lincoln Lawyer, Mickey Haller, features in Michael Connelly's The Proving Ground, involving a case in which artificial intelligence plays a role in the murder of a young woman.  Another solid entry from Connelly.

The 20th novel by Robert Crais starring Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, The Big Empty, is one of his best.  A mystery with some very unexpected twists.

Martin Walker's Bruno, Chief of Police series is set in the Vezere and Dordogne River valleys of France, a frequent destination for us over the years. I enjoy the settings for the novels, but the 18th in the series, An Enemy In The Village, continues the recent trend of a decline in quality in the stories.  If I had not enjoyed the earlier books so much I would stop reading the series.

Winston's Christmas Message

When he received news of Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill felt a sense of relief, writing that on the evening of December 7 he "went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved", knowing that now that America was in the war, victory was inevitable.

He then proceeded to invite himself and his military chiefs to visit President Roosevelt in Washington DC.  Arriving on December 22, he found that FDR had provided him lodging in the White House.  Two days later, FDR asked Churchill to join him for his annual Christmas message broadcast on radio.

This was Winston's message to America: 

I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home.  Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother’s side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States.  I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome,  convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.

This is a strange Christmas Eve.  Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other.  Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field.  Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart.  Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm.  Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace.

Let the children have their night of fun and laughter.  Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play.  Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.

And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.

Merry Christmas Baby

 It's that time of the year again when THC posts the Otis Redding version.

 

Last Minute Shopping?

Too bad it's not 1954!

 

This 1950s child's toy came with 4 types of uranium ore and a Geiger counter. It wasn’t cheap either, selling off the shelf in 1950 for 49.50, around the 500 mark in today’s money. pic.twitter.com/Wyr98qw81n

— World of Engineering (@engineers_feed) December 16, 2025

The First Writing?

I've posted about Irving Finkel of the British Museum before.  Here he is expounding his theory that a discovery at Gobekli Tepe in Anatolia proves that writing was developed several thousand years before previously thought.  He also explains that significance that the ancient writing we do have from Mesopotamia provides a very narrow, and perhaps misleading, window onto that world.

Finkel is always entertaining and has a knack for explaining complex topics in an understandable way.  I have no idea if his theory is correct but you'll enjoy listening to him. 

I Meant To Say Cheerio

The final scene from Local Hero.  I've loved this movie since seeing it with Mrs THC more than 40 years ago.  The soundtrack by Mark Knopfler is an integral part in creating the unique feel of the film.  During the early 80s Scottish director Bill Forsythe made a magical trio of small budget offbeat films - Gregory's Girl, Local Hero, Comfort & Joy.

No Comment

 

Girls after one minor argument: “I’m never speaking to you again.”

Boys after calling each other fascist and jihadist: pic.twitter.com/wNzEH7Ac9E

— Faizan (@faizannriaz) November 22, 2025

Moonlight At Wharfedale

Another painting by an artist I discovered only a couple of years ago, John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-93).  Wharfedale is one of the Yorkshire Dales and is north of Leeds.  A master at capturing light in the evening.

 

He May Have A Point

 

Jerry Seinfeld captures humanity's greatest paradox in a single line. pic.twitter.com/gLDjptD1Sx

— The Cinéprism (@TheCineprism) November 26, 2025

Forever Young

Bob Dylan recorded Forever Young in December 1973 and it appeared the following month on the album Planet Waves.  One of his best known songs, he released another version in 2023 on the album Shadow Kingdom.  Dylan was 32 when he wrote and recorded the song.  He was 82 when he recorded it for the second time.  It hits differently.  I know it did for me listening to it at 72.  The original is a song of aspiration and hope for his young ones.  Fifty years later he knows how it turned out and it shows in his voice and informs how we react.

Dylan married Sarah Lownds in 1965 and four children were born between 1966 and 1969 (3 boys, one girl), while Bob also adopted his wife's daughter from a prior marriage.  He had last toured in 1966, using the excuse of his injuries from a motorcycle accident that fall to stop his hectic recording and touring schedule.  While releasing several albums in the following years he only played a couple of one-off concerts and become a mysterious, remote figure.

In his eccentric and revealing autobiography, Chronicles Vol. 1, Dylan describes the reasons for his withdrawal in two passages.  The first in a conversation with The Band's Robbie Robertson while driving around Woodstock:

He says to me, 'Where do you think you're gonna take it?"  I said, "Take what?".  "You know, the whole music scene."  The whole music scene! . . . No place was far enough away.  I don't know what everybody else was fantasizing about, but what I was fantasizing about was a nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard.  That would have been nice.  That was my deepest dream.

The second in which he writes of moving several times to avoid the plague of reporters seeking him out: 

Even if these reporters had been allowed in the house, what would they find?  A whole lotta stuff - stacking toys, push and pull toys, child-sized tables and chairs - big empty cardboard boxes - science kits, puzzles and toy drums.

Whatever the counterculture was, I'd seen enough of it.  I was sick of the way my lyrics had been extrapolated, their meaning subverted into polemics and that I had been annointed as the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest [etc] . . .  What the hell are we talking about?  Horrible titles any way you want to look at it . . .  What mattered to me most was getting breathing room for my family.(1)

The lyrics, written for his young children:

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong  (Chorus)

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung  (Chorus)

Bob and Sarah divorced in 1977 (she is now 86 and has never spoken publicly about the marriage).  I don't know anything about their children, but son Jacob said in a 2005 interview, "My father said it himself in an interview many years ago: 'Husband and wife failed, but mother and father didn't.' My ethics are high because my parents did a great job." (2)

Forever Young also reflects a different viewpoint than that expressed in some of his earliest recordings.  From 1962 through 1964 Dylan developed a reputation as a "protest singer", a label he bitterly resented and ultimately rebelled against.   Though he is still sometimes called the "voice of his generation", Dylan never spoke publicly about the Vietnam War, either in opposition or support, despite it being the rallying point of protest in the second half of the 60s into the early 70s.  

The song that marked that transition was My Back Pages from Another Side of Bob Dylan, released in August 1964, with lyrics acknowledging that issues and life were more complicated than he had previously portrayed.

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate, " I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull, I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

 

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My existence led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

A self-ordained professor’s tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now 

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

Bringing It All Back Home (March 1965) would be his first album containing no songs that could be classified as "protest". 

 

When Dylan sings "may you stay forever young" he circles back to the chorus of My Back Pages, "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now".   In Back Pages, he is saying that he is dropping the posed sophistication of someone pretending to be a wiser and older man in exchange for becoming the young man with still a lot to learn.  Ironically, Dylan is wise enough to know he needs to be younger, or perhaps, as young as he actually is, a lesson many of his compatriots failed to learn.

 

Eight years later, with four young children, when he sings "may you stay forever young" it means always being open to learning and gaining wisdom, not closing themselves off or thinking that they know it all.  What Dylan is driving it is revealed in this lyric, "May you have a strong foundation/ When the winds of changes shift".  He knows that things change (as does THC), in October 1963 having recorded The Times They Are-a-Changin'.  But that powerful anthem contains these lyrics: 

And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'

 

Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'

The song was written at the time of a great moral crusade, the need to admit black Americans to the full panoply of rights afforded to other American citizens.  But moral crusades are few and far between, though many mistake other issues for crusades.  In Times They Are-a-Changin', Dylan warns everyone to support the change or be swept away.

 

Ten years later, a wiser Dylan sings of the importance of a "strong foundation" because all "winds of change" are not necessarily good, each requiring careful evaluation against a moral framework, recognizing it takes great internal moral strength to withstand those winds.  Lacking a strong foundation leaves one vulnerable to manipulative charismatic leaders, too easily swayed by peers, public opinion, or media, or blindly willing to follow the lead of credential wielding experts. 

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(1) While rereading some of Chronicles in preparation for writing this post I came across another passage which explained something else I've written about - how terrible Dylan was in concert with Tom Petty during the 80s, the only time I've ever seen him perform in person:

I'd been on an eighteen month tour with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.  It would be my last.  I had no connection to any kind of inspiration. . . . Tom was at the top of his game and I was at the bottom of mine. . .  My own songs had become strangers to me.  I didn't have the skill to touch their raw nerves, couldn't penetrate the surfaces.  It wasn't my moment of history anymore.  There was a hollow singing in my heart and I couldn't wait to retire and fold the tent.  One more big payday with Petty and that would be it for me.  I was what they called over the hill.  If I wasn't careful I could end up ranting and raving in shouting matches with the wall.

I had written and recorded so many songs, but it wasn't like I was playing many of them.  I think I was only up to the task of about twenty or so.  The rest were too cryptic, too darkly driven, and I was no longer capable of doing anything radically creative with them.  It was like carrying a package of heavy rotten meat.  I couldn't understand where they came from.  The glow was gone and the match had burned right to the end.  I was going through the motions. 

(2) Dylan wrote at least two songs about his marriage; Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands from Blonde On Blonde (1966) and Sara from Desire (1977), the latter as his marriage was collapsing, and which includes the lyric "Staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel/Writing "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' for you".  Sara is searing and emotionally wrenching.  On the other hand, Dylan makes a lot of stuff up, so did he really write Sad Eyed Lady for Sara, or did he make it up as part of his last ditch appeal to his wife?

The Bulge

The Battle of the Bulge, between December 16, 1944 and January 28, 1945 remains the most costly battle fought by the American military with over 80,000 casualties.  It was Hitler's last offensive, a desperate gamble to split the Allied front and shatter the British/American alliance with the Soviets, taking place in wooded, hilly terrain in Luxembourg and Belgium.

What most Americans know about the Bulge (including me until recently) focuses on the siege at Bastogne and the valiant actions of the 101st Airborne, most recently celebrated in the fine Band of Brothers series.  However, there was much more to the battle as I learned in 2023 by listening to We Have Ways of Making You Talk, the top notch WW2 podcast hosted by two British military historians, James Holland and Al Murray, when they hosted John McManus, an American historian, who'd written Alamo in the Ardennes, about the 28th Infantry Division and its battle against the Germans in the opening days of the offensive, prompting me to read and write about the book (see Alamo in the Ardennes). 

Last December, Holland and Murray, along with McManus, did a 9-part podcast on the battle, focused on its opening days and on American units outside Bastogne, the siege of which is not mentioned until the seventh episode.  They provide an illuminating discussion of the strategic and logistical folly of the German plan, while shining a spotlight on the actions of outgunned and outnumbered American units who managed to completely disrupt the German timetable in the first four days, making the failure of the offensive inevitable.  These small actions, involving companies and regiments at obscure crossroads in the woods are given the attention and recognition they deserve and it completely changed my perception of the battle.  The series is a fitting tribute to those brave American soldiers.

I highly recommend giving it a listen.  You can find it here and searching on The Battle of the Bulge or use the podcast app on your phone.  Make sure to have a map in hand to follow the action! 

And now planning a trip next fall to the area. 

All Those Moments Lost In Time

The title of an essay by David Polansky, a favorite of mine, in praise of 80s movies, a decade in which Mr and Mrs THC went to the movies a lot, back when that was a thing.  According to the author, 80s cinema has a branding problem compared to the 70s and 90s;

But if there is one thing that does define ‘80s cinema even as it defies attempts to neatly characterize it, it is sheer variety. Indeed, the decade can be broken down into several categories, which in the aggregate resulted in an impressive volume of cinema of lasting if underappreciated value. 

He goes on to break down The Old Masters; Around The World; Independent Americana; Peak Genre; and The Late, Great Middlebrow Movie.

That last category, which no longer exists, encompasses twenty films, of which we saw 15 or 16 in the theater during that decade.  In light of last night's news I note that three were directed by Rob Reiner; Stand By Me, When Harry Met Sally, and The Princess Bride, all of which we saw and greatly enjoyed, the last being a classic that I've watched many times. And let's not forget another Reiner classic, 1984's This Is Spinal Tap.

We were very upset to hear about Reiner's death along with that of his wife and of the family tragedy behind it; one child a murderer and another child left to find the bodies of her parents.  We thank Rob for the enjoyment he gave us and hope that he and Michelle may rest in peace. 

The title of Polansky's essay is from another classic 80s film. 

End Of A City

Ephesus, located on the Aegean coast of Turkey, was one of the great cities of the Greek and Roman world, along with being significant in the history of early Christianity. Today it is a ruin.  This video explains why and how it happened.  It is particularly good explaining the geophysical reasons for its decline and how spoliation works when it came to disassembling much of the city's monumental architecture.  It's also a reminder of the fragility of civilization.  During Roman times the governmental structure, finances, and technology allowed for the dredging to keep the harbor of Ephesus open, but once the empire became poorer and technical knowledge declined, so did the ability of the city to thrive. 

Hanukkah

We've lit the candles for the first night, while thinking of those murdered and wounded while celebrating the holiday at Australia's Bondi Beach.  Hanukkah celebrates the Jewish victory over those who would oppress and deny us religious freedom.

A word on the situation outside the United States (I'll have more to say on the U.S. soon) and Israel. Between 80 and 85% of the world's Jews live in the United States or Israel.  Another 8% live in three countries (about 400,000 in each); the UK, France, and Canada.  Two of those countries, the UK and Canada, have governments hostile to Jews, while France is more neutral, though Jews constitute the overwhelming majority of hate crime targets (including assaults, rapes, and murders) and, more recently, cancelled the traditional national Christmas and New Years celebrations on the Champs-Élysées in Paris because of fear of terrorist acts by its Muslim population.(1)  In all three countries the toxic combination of leftist politics and a growing Muslim population has left Jewish populations at risk.  Absent a dramatic change in political culture, the future is not good for the Jewish communities of these countries.

In the next tier are two countries each with about 100,000 Jews (together, about 1.4% of the global population); Australia and Argentina.  Australia can be placed in the same category as the UK and Canada, with a government hostile to Jews and a rapidly growing Muslim population.(2)  Argentina has an antisemitic history but its current government is led by a man who identifies as Jewish so, at least for now, it has the brightest prospects of all.

As Hussein Aboubakr Mansour wrote in the wake of Bondi Beach:

Any sober observer must be honest. Outside the United States, there is no Western political establishment with either the will or the capability to address this problem, let alone reverse its growth. The future of Western Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is likely to be increasingly Jew-free and increasingly dysfunctional.  

One of the prayers we say when lighting the Hanukkah candles is "Blessed are you Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who performed wondrous deeds for our ancestors in those ancient days at this season."  May that happen again. 

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(1)  France has deployed 7,000 soldiers across the country to protect “places of worship and sensitive sites.” The deployment, originally meant to be short term, has become open ended. The French Ministry of Defense states “our commitment is long-term, for as long as this situation requires.” Minister of the Armed Forces Catherine Vautrin echoed the message, “the terrorist threat is permanent.” President Macron has already admitted this is a war with no end in sight.

Interior Minister Nunez: “We’ve dealt with terrorism, we’ve dealt with separatism, now we’re tackling infiltration" and looking into “the links between representatives of political movements and organizations and networks supporting terrorist activity or propagating Islamist ideology”.

In May, Macron received a government investigative report that Islamists are infiltrating France's republican institutions and are a threat to national cohesion.  The report (leaked to Le Figaro), drawn up by two senior civil servants, found evidence for a policy of "entryism" by the Muslim Brotherhood into public bodies like schools and local government.  According to the report, "entryism means getting involved in republican infrastructure… in order to change it from the inside. It requires dissimulation… and it works from the bottom up."

The report goes on to say that the Muslim Brotherhood was losing influence in the Middle East and North Africa, and so was targeting Europe, backed by money from Turkey and Qatar.  This is not an effort limited to France.

"Having given a Western look to the ideology in order to implant themselves in Europe, (the Muslim Brotherhood) tries to lay down the roots of a Middle Eastern tradition while concealing a subversive fundamentalism."  The "Western look" the authors refer to is dressing Islamism in the robe of the fashionable academic jargon of settler-colonialism and the oppressor-oppressed framing.

The report states unequivocally that “Hatred of Jews,” is a core ideological element, often laundered through anti-Zionist slogans.  Just like American college campuses and every university Middle East Studies Program. 

According to The Free Press, "The report details a wave of online influencers—trained in Brotherhood institutions, fluent in grievance politics, and calibrated for younger audiences. Some present as activists fighting “Islamophobia”; others cloak Islamist ideology in therapeutic or entrepreneurial language." 

Interestingly, in response to the report, French intelligence agencies recommended the government get tougher on Israel in order to placate its growing and unruly Muslim population.  Macron took the advice, recognizing a Palestinian state in September.  It's not going to work.  The Muslim Brotherhood target is Western Europe, not Israel.  All that recognition does is show weakness.  

(2)  In 2000 the current Australian Prime Minister led demonstrations in Sydney in support of Yassir Arafat after he walked away from accepting a Palestinian state at the Camp David talks and prepared to launch a series of suicide bombings against Jews. After decades of Australian support for Israel by all governing parties, the current PM withdrew Australia's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  No surprise, since his man Arafat shocked President Clinton and others at Camp David when he denied there was ever a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount! And, to this day, that is what Palestinian children learn in school.  Since Oct 7, 2023, the PM has demonstrated on numerous occasions that his animus extends to the entire Jewish people.  

For more on the lies about the Temple Mount read this THC post which provides some background, along with an account of the 2015 New York Times article propagating this fake news.  For more than a decade the Times has viewed its role as creating a permission structure to allow progressives to become anti-semites. 

Never Forget

 

Induction

I was recently privileged to be inducted as an associate member of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, joining the Picacho Peak Camp in the Department of the Southwest of the SUVCW.  The SUVCW, with over 6,000 members, is the successor organization to the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), the organization of Civil War veterans formed at the conclusion of that conflict.

The SUVCW is a Congressionally chartered non-profit corporation with three missions; Patriotic Education; Honoring Union Veterans and Veterans of all U.S. conflicts; and Preserving and Perpetuating the Grand Army of the Republic. 

To become a full member of the SUVCW, one must be a direct descendant of someone who served in the U.S. military during the Civil War, and such ancestry goes through a rigorous vetting process before a membership application is accepted. 

Because all of my ancestors arrived after the Civil War, I am eligible to become an associate member of the organization.  Several members of the SUVCW are members of our Roundtable and having spoken to two of the three camps in Arizona, I was very honored to be asked to join as an associate.

I know my parents and my grandparents would all be very pleased with my membership in the SUVCW, given how proud they were to be Americans, and how they honored those who established and sought to preserve the Union. The posts that I've done on my paternal and maternal grandfathers make that clear. 

24 Hours Back From Tulsa

Have a friend here in Phoenix who is a fellow music lover and also a fan of Bob Dylan.  We'd talked about visiting the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa (Dylan's archives are in Tulsa because that's where Woody Guthrie's archive and museum is).  Earlier this year he found out that Billy Strings (another mutual favorite) was playing a Tulsa concert on December 10 so we decided to make a road trip.

Fortunately, Southwest Airlines has direct flight to Tulsa, so on the afternoon of the 10th we flew there and attended Billy's concert that night.  I'd seen him once before and have watched endless live videos on YouTube.  Billy and his band don't have a warm up act.  They start at 8 and end around 11, with a 20 minute break in the middle.  One of the things I like best about his music is though I only recognized about a 1/3 of the songs, everything they played was incredible.  The rest of the group; mandolin, bass, banjo, and fiddle are as talented as Billy. We, like most of the audience, spent most of the concert on our feet.  

We were in the 12th row of seats but in front of us was an area without seats where fans can stand for the entire concert.  At the end of the show, Billy slid off the stage and hung out with the folks in that area.

His shows are a magical experience.  Will see him again.  Upon returning to AZ realized the concert marked exactly 4 years since I first heard Billy Strings (read Away From The Mire).

One of the last songs Billy played was Don't Think Twice, It's Allright.  Appropriate since we visited the Dylan Center the next morning.

The exhibits at the Dylan Center take you through Bob's career and are set up in an entertaining fashion.  It includes previously unavailable photos, recording takes, letters, and drafts of lyrics, along with videos from Dylan interviews.

The special exhibit was Dylan Goes Electric, sparked by the movie A Complete Unknown and Elijah Wald's excellent book Dylan Goes Electric!, by itself worth visiting.  The highlight was a film about the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, the first part of which consists of interviews with some of the surviving key players (and their conflicting memories) and culminates with Dylan's entire performance that night which consisted of three electric tunes (Maggie's Farm, Like A Rolling Stone, It Takes a Lot To Laugh It Takes a Train to Cry) and the two acoustic tunes he came back out to play to calm the audience down, It's All Over Now Baby Blue, and Mr Tambourine Man.

All the interviewees recount that the Newport sound system was awful and Dylan's vocals were inaudible during the electric set. However, in the film the sound has been remastered so you can clearly hear the vocals and, it turns out, Dylan was in fine form.

Listening to Baby Blue when Dylan returned to the stage, it's unmistakeably meant as a warning to the hardcore folkie contingent who disdained his turn to electric that The Times They Are a-Changin'.   

Leave your steppingstones behind there
Something calls for you
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue 

We had enough time before our flight to make a brief visit to the Guthrie Center which is next door to Dylan.

Billy plays most of his solos with eyes closed.

Lyrics from Mr Tambourine Man with Dylan's handwritten changes inserting "in the jingle-jangle morning).  Below is the Cash Box Top 100 for the week in September 1965 when Like A Rolling Stone displaced The Beatles Help! at Numero Uno.  The Top Ten also includes another Dylan song, It Ain't Me Babe by The Turtles at 7.

Below: Pete Seeger is often portrayed as strongly objecting to Dylan's turn to electric.  Pete's contention is that his objection to Dylan at Newport was that the electric music was so loud it drowned out Dylan's lyrics.  This is a 1968 letter from Pete to his father about the recent release of Dylan's album John Wesley Harding.  I really like the last paragraph: "Maybe Bob Dylan will be like Picasso, surprising us every few years with a new period.  I hope he lives as long."  He has done so.  If you are in any doubt listen to Oh Mercy (1989), Time Out Of Mind (1997), Love and Theft (2001), and Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020).

 

24 Hours From Tulsa

 Exactly.

Thanksgiving

A day late, this is the first paragraph of President Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863; a sentiment I particularly like:

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and even soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God. 

You can find the full text here. 

 

40,000 Headmen

40,000 headmen couldn't make me change my mind  . . . 

Traffic. 1968.  Music - Steve Winwood (and vocals).  Lyrics - Jim Capaldi (and drums).  Woodwinds - Chris Wood.  Maybe - Dave Mason (guitar).  

Harvest Moon

 Tonight is the Harvest Moon so it's time to listen to Leon Redbone performing Shine On Harvest Moon.

 

Man Down

On September 13, 1968, Major General Keith Ware, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, was killed at Loc Ninh, Vietnam when his helicopter was shot down. Along with Ware, his three command staff and the four-man crew also died. Ware, 52, was the highest ranking American officer to die during the Vietnam War.

Ware was the first WW2 draftee to become an Army general and received the Medal of Honor in recognition of his actions in 1944. 

The 25-year old Ware was drafted in July 1941.  Sent to Officer Candidate School he initially served as a squad leader, seeing action in the 1942-3 Tunisian campaign, the July 1943 invasion of Sicily, the January 1944 assault at Anzio, and in the August 1944 landings in southern France.

His leadership qualities were quickly recognized and he was promoted several times, eventually commanding the 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Division.  He received the Medal of Honor for his actions on December 26, 1944 at Sigolsheim, a small town, near Colmar in the Alsace region of France.  The most decorated American soldier in the war, Audie Murphy, served under Ware, receiving the Medal of Honor for his actions in January 1945.

Ware decided to stay in the military after the war, eventually rising to be assistant commander of the 2nd Armored Division and then becoming, in the mid-60s, the army's Chief of Information.  He volunteered for service in Vietnam, arriving in early 1968, just in time to face the Tet Offensive. 

According to an article in HistoryNet, at the Battle of Loc Ninh, though Ware knew the North Vietnamese Army "had anti-aircraft weapons on the ground but ordered his helicopter to fly at low altitude despite the risk to allow him to pinpoint enemy positions and more effectively coordinate the battle".

Medal of Honor citation:

Commanding the 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry, attacking a strongly held enemy position on a hill near Sigolsheim, France, on 26 December 1944, found that 1 of his assault companies had been stopped and forced to dig in by a concentration of enemy artillery, mortar, and machinegun fire. The company had suffered casualties in attempting to take the hill. Realizing that his men must be inspired to new courage, Lt. Col. Ware went forward 150 yards beyond the most forward elements of his command, and for 2 hours reconnoitered the enemy positions, deliberately drawing fire upon himself which caused the enemy to disclose his dispositions. Returning to his company, he armed himself with an automatic rifle and boldly advanced upon the enemy, followed by 2 officers, 9 enlisted men, and a tank. Approaching an enemy machinegun, Lt. Col. Ware shot 2 German riflemen and fired tracers into the emplacement, indicating its position to his tank, which promptly knocked the gun out of action. Lt. Col. Ware turned his attention to a second machinegun, killing 2 of its supporting riflemen and forcing the others to surrender. The tank destroyed the gun. Having expended the ammunition for the automatic rifle, Lt. Col. Ware took up an M-1 rifle, killed a German rifleman, and fired upon a third machinegun 50 yards away. His tank silenced the gun. Upon his approach to a fourth machinegun, its supporting riflemen surrendered and his tank disposed of the gun. During this action Lt. Col. Ware's small assault group was fully engaged in attacking enemy positions that were not receiving his direct and personal attention. Five of his party of 11 were casualties and Lt. Col. Ware was wounded but refused medical attention until this important hill position was cleared of the enemy and securely occupied by his command.

 

Monument

 From 1935 by artist Kwase Hasui.  Via Alexander's Cartographer. 

 

Kwase Hasui (1883-1957) was considered Japan's leading printmaker and became very popular in the United States during the 1930s.  Some other examples of his work, from Wikipedia.

 

Not All Disrupters Are The Same

It's said at the end of this post from Assistant Village Idiot, one of the few long time bloggers who has not gone off the rails over the past decade. AVP also makes an astute observation about what might explain the findings he refers to.

RFKJr, among many other myths that he believes*, thinks psychiatric meds are contributing to the high-profile shootings we've been seeing, and thinks we should "look into it." Well, this is only one study in Sweden, but it does have an N=247,420 with robust results. Prescribing ADHD medication resulted in lower adverse "real world outcomes" such as self harm, traffic crashes, and crime. Interestingly, the effect seems to be weakening over time as the number of prescriptions increases. 

In this longitudinal population-based study of 247 420 individuals using ADHD medication between 2006 and 2020, we consistently found ADHD medication to be associated with lower rates of self-harm, unintentional injury, traffic crashes, and crime across all analyzed time periods, age groups, and sexes. However, magnitude of associations between ADHD medication use and lower risk of unintentional injury, traffic crashes, and crime appear to have attenuated over time, coinciding with an increase in prescription prevalence during the same period. The weakening trends for unintentional injury and traffic crashes were not fully explained by changes in age and sex distribution of the medication users, whereas the trend for crime was no longer statistically significant. These findings suggest that the declining strength of the associations of ADHD medication and real-world outcomes could be attributed to the expansion of prescriptions to a broader group of individuals having fewer symptoms or impairments.

My guess on this reveals one of my biases, but it may turn out to be true in this case. A broad range of interventions pick off the low hanging fruit at first, whether this be in medicine, education, economics, or crime. As this success is experienced by the doctors, politicians, or teachers, they try the solution on a wider group that less-obviously fits the the category and surprise! It doesn't work as well on every Tom, Dick, and Harry. The Law of Diminishing Returns. I used to see this in mental health, where an intervention like ECT's would work spectacularly well on some people with depression, but treatment-refractory patients of many diagnoses would eventually end up at the "shock treatment" door, because patient, family, and prescribers were all frustrated and willing to try less-likely interventions.

*The current fallback argument by his supporters are that the CDC and the medical establishment badly needs disruption and he is supplying disruption, so shut up, you liberal weenie. I find this unconvincing. Just because an institution needs to be disrupted does not mean that any particular disruptor is on the right track. Not all disruptions are equally valuable. Saruman wanted to disrupt Mordor, after all.  

RFK Jr is very glib, a plaintiffs personal injury lawyer, and a believer that conspiracies underlay every aspect of society.  There are no honest disagreements.  You are either good or evil.  Observing his technique in interviews over the decades you see him deploying the same approach against interviewers who don't know the details about which he is speaking.  He overwhelms the interviewer by spewing out a long list of studies and findings.  The problem is he starts by fairly accurately referring to two studies, then cites 3 more where he misstates the conclusions, and wraps it up with 4 studies summarized accurately but where there are a dozen other studies with better methodology that reach opposite conclusions none of which he cites.  He does this over and over again. 

The agency he oversees needs disruption and reform but he is the wrong person to do it.  He is not about open scientific inquiry.  When appointing committee members or authorizing studies they are designed to reach the conclusion he wants.

UPDATE:  In a September 5 piece in the Wall St Journal, former CDC Director Susan Monarez (hand-picked for the role by RFK Jr, who fired her after 29 days), writes that at a August 25 meeting with the HHS Secretary:

 I was told to pre-approve the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled
with people who have publicly ex-pressed antivaccine rhetoric. That panel’s next meeting is

scheduled for Sept. 18-19. It is imperative that the panel’s recommendations aren’t
rubber-stamped but instead are rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted

or rejected.

A Congressional committee should ask Monarez to testify under oath in more detail about her assertion. 

La Roque Gageac

La Roque Gageac is a small riverside village along the Dordogne River which we first visited in 1977.  Our most recent stop was in 2022 and we hope to return next spring.  We stay in the bastide town of Domme on a cliff on the other side of the river, about a 10 minute drive away (which you can see center-right in the first photo below).

La Roque has only one street on which you can find restaurants, gift shops, and a hotel. Behind are a couple of rows of houses with narrow pathways and all back up by a cliff, pockmarked with caves used as a refuge by the inhabitants during the Viking raids of the 9th and 10th centuries and when other disturbances occurred during the following centuries.

 

The Cisco Kid Goes To War

The Cisco Kid was a half hour TV series broadcast from 1950 to 1956 of which I have a vague recollection watching as a youngster.  Starring Duncan Renaldo as the Kid and Leo Carrillo as his sidekick Pancho, as Robin Hood-type outlaws, it was based on a 1907 short story by O. Henry.  Apparently it was the first TV series to be filmed in color though, at the time, I didn't know it because we, like everyone else, had a black and white TV (I never owned a color set until the mid-1980s).

The Cisco Kid is also the title of a million selling hit song from 1973 by the band War, which commenced with these lyrics:

The Cisco Kid was a friend of mine
The Cisco Kid was a friend of mine
He drink whiskey, Poncho drink the wine

 

War began as a group of musicians in Southern California.  Linking up with singer Eric Burdon (formerly of The Animals) they produced the hit, Spill The Wine, in 1970.  Splitting from Burdon the following year, War went out to have a series of hit albums and singles during the 1970s.

The Cisco Kid is from The World Is A Ghetto, the best selling album of 1973, which also contains the beautiful title song.  War had a very tight rhythm section, which with catchy melodies and lyrics, resulted in a lot of chart success.

Other songs worth a listen by War include Slippin' Into Darkness, Low Rider, and Why Can't We Be Friends (with the immortal lyric, "I know you're working for the CIA/They wouldn't have you in the MAF-I-A").

A lot of the riffs and rhythms in War's songs have been covered and sampled by many other artists and used in movies and other shows. 

Outback

Chris Arnade writes of his travels, mostly walking, through the world, with a focus on avoiding downtowns and tourist spots, observing how life is lived for "regular" and particularly in the U.S., by those who are struggling.  His substack is Chris Arnade Walks The World.  It provides a very different perspective than your usual travelogue.  He's also the author of Dignity: Seeking Respect In Back Row America.

Chris recently returned from Australia and just published Alice Springs, Townsville and Crossing the Australian Outback.

The outback is like an extreme version of America's flyover country, and most Australians literally do only fly over it. When I announced my original Sydney-to-Townsville-to-Alice Springs bus route, I was struck by how many people had strong negative opinions about both places, especially Alice Springs, despite never visiting them. I began jotting down their responses, and by the time I left Sydney, over a hundred people had warned me against going, about ten were neutral or positive, and only five had actually been to the outback.

This was like the cartoonish US stereotype of an out-of-touch coastal urban elite, but in this case, the opinions weren’t confined to the elite, but to almost everyone of every class who lives within fifty miles of the dense (for Australia) southeastern coast.

On Alice Springs:

Since everything I was told had been proven wrong, including that the bus ride would be a little slice of hell, I arrived in Alice Springs close to convinced it would be a little slice of heaven, a festival of desert felicity, complete with kumbaya circles of Aboriginals dancing and singing with their now reformed and newly tolerant colonial masters. Or maybe I was going mad, and delusional, from thirty hours without sleep in the unforgiving landscape.

It however wasn't a little slice of heaven, at all, and by the end of the first day I realized that the only thing that everyone who had warned me, had gotten completely correct, was that Alice Springs is, to use Australians favorite vernacular2, a shithole. A shithole of majestic landscapes, and wonderful people, but still a shithole. 

Read it to find out why. 

An Irreconcilable Conflict Of Principles

"His Majesty's Government have thus been faced with an irreconcilable conflict of principles... For the Jews the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish State. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine". 

- Ernest Bevin(1), British Foreign Minister, February 1947, explaining to the House of Commons why Britain decided to terminate the Mandate for Palestine(2) and refer the matter to the United Nations. 

I recently learned of this statement for the first time watching a Podcast by Fleur Hassan-Nahoum(3) in which she interviews Israeli politician Einat Wilf.  I've been able to confirm the accuracy of the quote and the exact language.

 

The first 6 minutes of the podcast are invaluable because it provides a succinct explanation of the reason for the conflict, though I recommend listening to the entire thing. 

 

 

Einat Wolf is a former Labor Party politician, serving as an advisor to Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres in the 1990s and later as a member of the Knesset.  In 2011 she left Labor and is now unaffiliated politically, though she opposes Benjamin Netanyahu.  In 2012 I attended a talk by Wilf at Yale University.

 

The reason I found the first part of the podcast particularly interesting is her discussion of how, as she describes it, her "hypothesis" of how to achieve a two-state solution proved to be incorrect, and what she now believes the correct hypothesis to be which, as she states, is encapsulated in Bevin's 1947 statement, from a time before Israel existed and before there were any refugees. 

 

Her original hypothesis led her to support the Oslo Accords and the Camp David peace proposal and other two state peace proposals, which were ultimately rejected by the Palestinians.   The events of the 21st century have led her to conclude that the Palestinian cause is based on the total negation of Israel, rather than being willing to accept a two-state solution, refusing to allow Israel to exist as a Jewish state, under any terms.

 

Wilf's point has only been reinforced since October 7, 2023.  The Western academic, progressive, and NGO mob supporting Hamas are not doing so in support of a two-state solution.  They want Israel eliminated.  They are not hiding it.

 

Her transformation since the 90s is similar to mine.  Realizing the risks of Oslo but optimistic that the peace process would succeed.  In retrospect, Oslo was a disaster for Israel because it got the peace process backwards, believing that small "confidence-building" measures would lead to peace, rather than insisting that the big and fundamental disputes be resolved before proceeding to confidence building measures that would eventually allow a full and lasting settlement to be implemented.

 

Nonetheless, the 2000 Camp David talks, the unilateral withdrawal from South Lebanon the same year, and in 2005 from Gaza, along with Prime Minister's 2008 peace proposal, were all attempts to reach peace.  All were rejected and instead there was the Second Intifada from 2001-3 in which 1,000 Israelis were killed and the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2006.

 

The result was the political destruction of what was once a political powerful Israeli peace camp.  At this point there is not much difference between Israeli parties regarding national security.  While there is much internal disagreement over how to bring the current war in Gaza to a close, virtually no one in Israel thinks a two-state solution along the lines proposed at Camp David is practical any more.  I'll add that I have no idea what the right strategy is regarding Gaza at this point.  My only observation is that Netanyahu's strategy seems increasingly more focused on maintaining his political coalition than in ending this phase of the conflict.

Wilf's argument in her recent book, The War Of Return, is that the actions of the United Nations, and of Western Nations, and the peculiar nature of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has led to the inability to resolve the conflict.  UNRWA created a unique category of refugee for Palestinians, unlike that of the tens of millions of other refugees around the world created in the wake of WW2.  UNRWA has become a facilitator of Palestinian rejectionism.  

 

The only way to create even a chance, however slim, for a peaceful solution is to dissolve UNRWA, and for the Western nations to stop trying to solve the conflict and leave it to the Israelis and Arabs to work it out if they can.  

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(1)  Ernest Bevin was a socialist and became foreign minister in the first Labour cabinet at the end of WW2.  A fervent anti-communist he was instrumental in the establishment of the Marshall Plan and in the creation of NATO.  He was also an anti-Zionist.

 

(2)  The Mandate for Palestine was granted to Britain at the peace conference after WW1.  It encompassed the territories of today's Jordan, Israel, West Bank, and Gaza.  In 1922, Britain split the Mandate into two sections.  One, constituting the bulk of the territory, became Jordan and the British installed a Hashemite Arab monarch.  Jews were forbidden from living in this portion of the mandate.  The other parcel was what is known as Palestine.  During the period between the establishment of the mandate and 1948, Jews living in this region referred to themselves as Palestinians or Palestinian Jews, while the non-Jews referred to themselves as Arabs.  In his 1947 speech Bevin refers to Arabs, not Palestinians.

 

(3)  Fleur Hassan-Nahoum is a Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem.  She is descended from a Moroccan Jewish family and is an opponent of Benjamin Netanyahu.