Grandma's Hands

Bill Withers, live in 1974 on the BBC.  The final line of the song is in the pantheon of finest last lines in music.

Those Were The Days

 

In the 70s, you could have a beer and enjoy some quality bro time with your orangutan and it wasn’t even really all that weird somehow. pic.twitter.com/c5dNjoL2SF

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) August 20, 2026

I Gotta A Right To Sing The Blues

Composed in 1932 by Harold Arlen (music) and Ted Koehler (lyrics).  Arlen and Koehler also together wrote Get Happy, I've Got The World on a String, and Stormy Weather.  With other lyricists, Arlen wrote the music for Over The Rainbow (as well as the other songs featured in The Wizard of Oz), The Man That Got Away, That Old Black Magic, It's Only A Paper Moon, and One For My Baby (And One More For The Road).  Louis Armstrong puts his unique stamp on this version with his horn and voice.

Train Train

Like everyone else I liked and admired Dolly Parton and featured her in four posts over the years.

This is Train Train from her bluegrass period backed by the great pickers at Union Station with Allison Krauss singing backup.  You can also hear her transform Stairway to Heaven into a gospel hymn with her adding lyrics at the end, and perform a lovely version of Neil Young's After The Gold Rush with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. 

Another Travesty

Today I learned that in 2020 the University of Texas School of Journalism and Media established the Dan Rather Medals for News and Guts.  What a travesty and what a disgrace for journalism.  Read Promoting Disinformation to find out why.

Let's Play Two!

As Ernie Banks would say.  So let's do two baseball posts today.

Just realized Albert Belle turns 60 today.  Was reminded coming across this video (below) titled "Albert Belle Was The Most Un-Hinged Baseball Player of All-Time" by sportswriter Jeff Pearlman.  While a reminder of the craziness of Albert at times (just watch his assault on second baseman Fernando Vina), the title and language are somewhat overhyped as everything seems to be in recent years.  It's worth a watch and has an unexpected and relatively happy ending.  Turns out Albert and his family are neighbors of ours in Scottsdale.

Belle was an incredible hitter.  He only played ten full seasons (1991-2000), retiring just after turning 34, but he could pound the ball.  Over those ten years he averaged per season 38 doubles, 37 home runs, 120 rbi, with a .297 batting average.  At the time he retired Albert had the 10th highest career slugging percentage in major league history.

He was capable of prolonged hot streaks, over the last 90 games of the strike-shortened 1994 season hitting .367, with a OBP of .447, while slugging .757 with 67 extra base hits and 90 rbi.  During the 1995 season, Belle had 103 XBH.  During the final 87 games of the 1998 season his splits were .389/.461/.799, including 63 XBH and 93 rbi. I remember how intimidating he could look at the plate.

As far as being the "most un-hinged" ballplayer, Albert has a lot of competition.  Take Ty Cobb for example.  In my review of Charles Leersehn's revisionist biography, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, I noted:

As Grantland Rice, a friend and admirer, wrote years later:

When I first met Cobb I found him to be an extremely peculiar soul, brooding and bubbling with violence, combative all the way, a streak, incidentally, he never lost.    

Throughout his career, though much less after he retired, he reacted quickly to any perceived insult.  In commenting on his penchant for fighting Leerhsen writes:

. . . he provided such a dizzying array of examples to choose from - fights with complete strangers, fights with teammates, fights with rival players, fights with hotel employees, shopkeepers, and rowdy cranks [fans] . . .

The author goes on to provide an account of his behavior over a short period during the 1916 season; fighting with Buck Herzog of the Giants both on and off the field; an incident in Comiskey Park when, angered by a called third strike, he threw his bat into the stands; flinging a handful of dirt into the face of a Senators pitcher; and being pulled out of stands in St Louis by teammates and police before he could pummel a heckler.

I also quoted Bill Veeck:

"Wake up the echoes at the Hall of Fame and you will find that baseball's immortals were a rowdy and raucous group of men who would climb down off their plaques and go rampaging through Cooperstown, taking spoils, like the Third Army bustling through Germany". 

The Black Sox

I read Eliot Asinoff's Eight Men Out many years ago and enjoyed John Sayles 1988 movie based on the book.  Over the years, I've become aware of the many inaccuracies in both.  Asinoff and Sayles were both sympathetic to the plight of the eight Chicago White Sox players who threw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, becoming known as the infamous Black Sox. In their telling, Charles Comiskey, the Sox owner, was the bad guy who drove the players to take payoffs from gamblers.

Several years ago, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) published Eight Myths about the Black Sox, along with an exhaustive appendix of the significant, and not so significant, errors and omissions in the book and movie. 

To give you a flavor this is the first of the myths:

This is the central thesis of Eight Men Out: Charles Comiskey’s “ballplayers were the best and were paid as poorly as the worst,” as Eliot Asinof wrote. That couldn’t be further from the truth. We can’t climb into the heads of the Black Sox to know exactly why they threw the World Series. But the players themselves rarely claimed, as Asinof did, that it was because of Comiskey’s low salaries or poor treatment — and we now have accurate salary information to back that up. Newly available organizational contract cards at the National Baseball Hall of Fame show that the White Sox’s Opening Day payroll of $88,461 was more than $11,500 higher than that of the National League champion Reds, and several of the Black Sox players were among the highest-paid at their positions. If they did feel resentment at their salaries under the reserve-clause system, so did players from 15 other major-league teams. The scandal was much more complex than disgruntled players trying to get back at the big, bad boss. 

You can find the 8 Myths here and the detailed appendix here. 

With the proliferation of sports gambling sites and their active promotion during the broadast of sporting events I fear we will eventually have another huge scandal like the Black Sox. 

Rolling Down A River

In late December of 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, the young Frenchman who would become famous for writing Democracy in America, was on a steamboat traveling down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.  On December 27 Sam Houston and two Cherokee boarded the boat in Arkansas, soon meeting de Tocqueville, who was well aware of Houston's notoriety and recorded their conversation.

Houston is the most emblematic figure of that period in American history between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, as recounted previously, representing a constellation of beliefs that don't neatly fit into any of today's categories. The French traveler was meeting Sam at a low point in his life. In early 1829 he'd been the newly elected governor of Tennessee and was also newly married to Eliza Allen, when she suddenly left the governor's house in the middle of the night, and refusing Houston's entreaties to return.  The distraught Houston resigned and fled to the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) to join his Cherokee friends, with whom he'd already lived with for three years as a teenager.

Marrying Tiana Rogers, a Cherokee widow, Houston embarked on an epic drinking spree, earning the nickname "Big Drunk".  Tocqueville met him when Sam was part of a Cherokee lobbying delegation off to Washington DC, where Houston had served in Congress and was a friend of President Andrew Jackson who'd been his political mentor.

Tocqueville wrote of Houston, “His figure is athletic; everything about him indicates physical and moral energy,” and after writing of his downfall , “Since then, he has lived in the midst of the wilderness, half European, half savage.”  He then recorded much of their conversation in a Q&A format:

Q: Have the Indians a religion?

A: Some of them have no belief in the immortality of the soul. But generally the Indians believe in a God who punishes or rewards the deeds of this life in the other world.

Q: Have they any form of worship?

A: The Osages, who live on the frontier of Mexico, pray every morning to the rising sun. The Creeks have no worship. It is only in times of great calamity, or before undertaking some great enterprise, that they devote themselves to some public manifestations of worship.

Q: What sort of government have the Indians?

A: Generally a patriarchal government. Birth makes the chiefs. Among the tribes which contact with Europeans has made more enlightened, they are elected.

Q: What is the status of women among the Indians?

A: Complete servitude. The women have to do all the unpleasant tasks, and live in great degradation.

In response to a question about the intelligence of Indians and blacks, Houston replied, according to this History Net article:

. . . that he believed both Indians and black people were as intelligent as whites, and he suggested that freedom spawns intelligence while slavery thwarts it. “The Indian is born free; he makes use of this freedom from his first steps in life,” Houston told Tocqueville. “Surrounded by dangers, pressed by necessities, and unable to count on anyone, his mind must be ever active to find means to ward off troubles and to maintain his existence. This necessity imposed on the Indian gives his intelligence a degree of development and ingenuity which are often wonderful.” Meanwhile, Houston added, the black man’s native intelligence is crippled by slavery: “The first notions of existence which he receives make him understand that he is the property of another, that care for his own future is no concern of his, and that the very power of thought is for him a useless gift of providence.” 

As I've written elsewhere, Sam Houston was the greatest political defender of Indian rights in the pre-Civil War United States.  While he was not an abolitionist, and owning slaves, he opposed the extension of slavery, and later secession.  Sam was forced to resign as governor of Texas in 1861 when he refused to take an oath to the Confederacy, and freed his slaves when learning of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lifes Rich Pageant

My favorite R.E.M. album, Lifes Rich Pageant(1), was released 40 years ago this summer, though my favorite song remains Driver 8 from their prior album, Fables of the Reconstruction.  The band hailed from the same place as the B-52s, Athens, Georgia.  Over its long recording career, R.E.M. had two distinct styles; songs on which you could not understand Michael Stipe's lyrics and those on which you could (Losing My Religion and Everybody Hurts are good examples of the latter).  THC much preferred the former earlier style.  R.E.M. were at their best when they featured jangling guitars,  strong melodies, and Stipe's mumbling vocals buried into the mix. I find a lot of later REM either dreary or just too much.

Burying the vocals in the mix dominated the early R.E.M. records in the 1980s.  It didn't mean that the listener couldn't make out any words in the murk.  Indeed, words and even phrases could be interpreted but there were always passages when you simply could not make out what they were saying.  And, back then, there was no internet to quickly search out the lyrics.  It also ensured that you often had no idea what the song was about, which in some cases may have been for the better.  Lifes Rich Pageant is a transitional record in which Stipe's vocals occasionally emerge above the mix.

Here's one of the best cuts from the album, These Days, and you should also listen to Fall On Me, Cuyahoga, Hyena, and Swan Swan H. 

 

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

(1)  Yes, I know it should be Life's but that how it appears on the cover of the album. 

High Performance Driver Education

Came across this 2022 article from Car and Driver, "Why Attending A High Performance Driving School Is Worth It", in which their editors attended driving schools with BMW, Lexus, and Porsche and giving all the experiences a thumbs up.

It reminded me of my own experience with High Performance Driver Education (HPDE) in 2005, when my good friend and I took our Nissan 350Z's to Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, CT.  Lime Rock is a 1.5 mile long track which hosts competitive racing as well as education and training for drivers.  The track is not an oval, rather a curving, up and down cross-country path, with a 1/4 mile straight away at the end of each lap.  Except during the straight away most of the track is only two cars wide.  The Paul Newman straight is named after the actor, a Connecticut residence, who frequently raced on the track.

 

From what I can tell from the current Lime Rock website, our version of HPDE was a little looser than what is on offer now.  My friend and I had been talking about going there for a while so our wives got together and purchased seats, giving them to us for our birthdays, which were two weeks apart.  They also informed us that they had increased the amounts on our life insurance policies.

I can't remember which outfit ran the HPDE but they warned us before the training day not to count on any insurance coverage if our vehicles were damaged.  We assumed all the risk.

It was a cold, early November morning when I set out, driving my black, 2003 Z the hour to get to Lime Rock.  We started out with about an hour of classroom instruction, learning about driving the Apex and other techniques.  The instructors emphasized that our cars were capable of much more than we realized or had the opportunity to explore in our usual driving mode.  There were about 15 of us in the class, driving a variety of cars.

(2003 Nissan 350Z)

 

During the course of the day we had four driving sessions, the first 2 being twenty minutes and the last 2, twenty five.  In between each we had about an hour for more instruction or recovering from the experience.

All the cars started together.  We had an experienced driver with each of us.  We wore helmets that had speakers and mics so we could get active directions from our instructors.  My instructor was a retired bank executive who drove a Corvette with a 729hp engine when he raced.

I was instructed not to look at the dashboard, except to be aware that when my tachometer hit red I should shift.  Your entire focus was looking at what was in front of you through the windshield.  This was an experience where you can do absolutely nothing but concentrate on your single task.  You do not let your mind wander. 

Because it was cold that morning, when we started tires were pretty hard and had limited traction until we were underway for a little bit.  We started at the bottom left of the track map heading through the Big Bend.  As we got to the second turn (Lefthander) the car in front of me failed to negotiate the turn and went off the track (it was not damaged).  This was to happen a couple of other times that day. 

I was nervous during that first session.  There were cars all around me, but my instructor was quite good, calmly coaching me to slowly add pressure to the gas pedal, head towards a point at the side of a straight stretch, then tap the brake and turn the steering wheel 90 degrees to negotiate the turn.

By my third time out I was driving much faster, feeling okay going 90+ only a few feet off another car's bumper, and being sharp on my turns. Between my third and fourth sessions, my instructor asked if I would like to go out with him driving on the track.  He borrowed a Corvette from a friend (who quietly told me my instructor's car had a blown engine that cost 30K to replace).  We strapped in and took off.  Other, more experienced, drivers were on the track at the same time. 

It was like being in a rocket ship.  A few minutes in we were coming up to the West Bend, my instructor made the sharp turn to the right at the point where the track began to slope downhill so sharply that we could not see further until hitting the crest.  But right on the crest was another car which had spun three quarters around, squarely across both lanes, and not moving.  I saw the driver staring at us with his mouth and eyes wide open while at the same time I heard in my speaker my driver go "oh, shit".  The instructor managed to react quickly enough to miss the other car by inches; I still can't believe he do so. As we sped downhill we saw a Porsche that went out of control after passing the stranded car, had spun around and crashed into a fence.  Immediately, loud horns were going off and the track closed down, while the Porsche and the stranded car were towed off.  Thankfully, no one was hurt.

It was during my third session I had my best driving moment.  The most difficult section of the track for me was at the end of the long straight away (the Sam Posey Straight), where there was a sharp turn, requiring a double shift while you were among other cars on the curve. I was often missing up the turn and coordinating changing gears with using my brake pedal.  The end of Sam Posey was where you were driving the fastest on the course.  While, at the time, I never looked at my speedometer, I was later able to calculate that I hit 130-135 mph just before the curve.  Towards the end of the third session however, I was not only able to smoothly negotiate the curve, but passed another car on the inside while in the curve.  It felt exhilarating.

Towards the end of the final session, I could feel myself tiring and my concentration fading which led to making a couple of sloppy turns so I brought my car in a couple of minutes before the session ended. 

I was physically and mentally drained at the end of the day, a drove home very slowly. My car had a layer of tire particles over it.  Running my fingers over the hood you could feel and see it. My friend had to replace all his tires after the session.

It was a wonderful day.  I came away a much better driver and it made even my commute to work on the Merritt Parkway more fun.  It was also one of those rare experiences when you are totally concentrated on one thing, which I enjoyed.

I also came away with a much greater appreciation for professional race car drivers.  I'd been on the track for a total of 90 minutes during the day and came away completely exhausted.  I was not a follower of competitive race car driving and had no comprehension of the amount of physical and mental concentration needed to be maintained by race drivers for hours on end.  They are true athletes. Hats off to them.

Streaks

In Game, I pondered the recent success of the Red Sox.  I need not have been concerned as they've now lost six of their last seven games.  Observing the Sox who won 32 of 37 but who've taken 85 games to win another 33, I naturally thought of the 1916 New York Giants and took a look at the details of their season of extremes. The '16 Giants started off losing 13 of 15, then embarked on a long road trip winning their next 17.  Following a long period of post-streak mediocrity, the Giants then won a major league record 26 in a row, all on a home stand, before losing 4 of their last five.  They went 43-0 during the two streaks and 43-66 the rest of the season.  The Giants finished in 4th place with an 86-66 record.

If the Giants had merely played .500 ball apart from their two winning streaks, they'd have won the pennant.  Looking at it from the opposite perspective, apart from their season opening and ending 3-17 record, the team won 83 and only lost 49.  

Operation Pedestal

On this date in 1942, the SS Ohio, an American built oil tanker requisitioned by the British Navy the month before, and loaded with 13,000 tons of aviation fuel, reached the Grand Harbor at Malta.  The rudderless tanker, a gaping hole in its stern and its decks awash, had to be towed in.  The Ohio was one of 5 ships of the original convoy of fourteen that had survived repeated German attacks to reach the island.  The fuel carried by the ship would save Malta.

The story of WW2 is dominated by great battles and campaigns, but lesser known events proved just as critical.  The arrival of the Ohio is one of those.

The Mediterranean island of Malta was the object of one of the two great sieges of the war, lasting from June 1940 to November 1942, the other being Leningrad which lasted from September 1941 to January 1944 (1).

Malta had been a British possession since 1800, its position between Italy to the north and North Africa to the south, and midway between Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria and the Suez Canal to the east, making it of immense strategic importance and a major base for the British Navy.

The events of June 1940 were to make its importance even more critical.  With the surrender of France, that country's possessions in Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco were now under the control of Vichy, the French government collaborating with the Nazis and hostile to Britain.  That same month Mussolini declared war on Britain and France, making Libya, Italy's North African colony, a threat to Egypt and the Suez.  That same month, Italy began undertaking aerial bombing of Malta, which proved ineffective.

Over the next two years, Axis efforts against the island waxed and waned, going through various levels of effectiveness.  For the British it was critical to maintaining the supply lines to its forces in the Middle East where the 8th Army was fighting the Italians, and beginning in early 1941, the Germans under Rommel, as well as interfering with German and Italian efforts to supply their forces in North Africa.  For the Germans and Italians, neutralizing Malta would enable support for Rommel and cripple British defenses in the Middle East.

At times, the Luftwaffe deployed a large part of its fighter and bomber fleet against the island, but the failure of Germany to ever launch an invasion of the isolated island was a major strategic failure on its part.

Malta had multiple vulnerabilities. It required constant supply of food for its population,  In addition, the British garrison, particularly the air force and navy required large amounts of fuel oil.  This necessitated the need for supply convoys to undertake the dangerous passage through the Med.  In early 1942, the Germans and Italians began their fiercest campaign to cut off the island and by mid-summer Malta was in desperate conditions, the food supply nearly gone and the aviation fuel essential to its defense almost gone.  An effort to send two supply convoys in June was a costly failure and by the beginning of August, rationing on Malta reached a critical point; adult male workers got 1,690 calories a day, while women and children received 1,500 calories daily.

As a last chance gamble to keep Malta going, the British launched Operation Pedestal on August 3, 1942.  The convoy, consisting of fourteen merchant ships of which the Ohio was the most important, left Britain on that date.  On the night of August 9/10, the convoy passed Gibraltar and it was at that point that the German and Italian navies and air forces pounced.  To protect the convoy the British deployed at various times, four aircraft carriers, two battleships, seven cruisers, thirty two destroyers, four minesweepers, and eleven submarines.  The Axis deployed six cruisers, twelve destroyers, twenty one submarines, and nearly 600 fighters and bombers.

Axis attacks began on August 11, with the sinking of the carrier Eagle.  The following day the cargo vessel Deucalion was badly damaged and forced to leave the convoy, and another carrier and a destroyer also badly damaged.  That night the cruisers Nigeria and Cairo were sunk and the Ohio suffered a hit, blowing a 23x26 foot hole in the hull, blowing the steering gear apart, and starting a fire which its crew was able to extinguish. The deck was blown open so one could look down into the ship. Later in the night of August 12/13 several of the cargo ships were sunk or damaged.  

(First hit on the Ohio)

 

On the morning of the 14th, the cargo ship Waimarama, carrying ammunition and high octane fuel, was hit and disintegrated but on the 13th and 14th four cargo ships reached Malta.  Right after the Waimarama exploded a damaged German plane crashed into the deck of the Ohio, causing more damage. Bombs hit the boiler room and the stern.  The crew abandoned ship but Captain Dudley Mason, looking at his burning ship, decided to return with a volunteer crew and got the ship underway again.

(Dudley Mason)

 

The destroyers Penn and Braham lashed themselves to the sides of the Ohio, running cables under the ship to hold it together as they towed it toward Malta.  Later that day, Ohio was hit by another bomb which broke its keel.  Captain Mason once again ordered the ship abandoned and then, once again, decided to reboard and restart. The following afternoon, the Ohio finally made it to Malta, still towed by the destroyers lashed to its sides, with a minesweeper acting as a stabiliser at its stern, even as it was attacked by twenty bombers that hit the ship several more times, destroying its rudder.  We'll let Wikipedia describe its entrance into the harbor:

Ohio was towed into Grand Harbour at 09:30 on 15 August, to cheering crowds and a band playing Rule Britannia. The crowd fell silent as the ships entered harbour, men removed their hats, women crossed themselves and a bugle sounded Still.  The tanker discharged oil into two tankers and water was pumped in at the same time, to reduce the chance of structural failure. Ohio settled on the bottom just as the last of the fuel was emptied.

(Ohio entering Malta Harbor)

 

(Another view of Ohio entering the harbor.  You can see how low it is in the water.)

 

Captain Mason stood at salute as the welcoming band played. Mason and his chief engineer were both badly burned and flown back to Britain for treatment. For his actions, Mason, a member of the British Merchant Navy, was awarded the George Cross, the highest British award for non-operational gallantry or gallantry not in the presence of an enemy and is considered the equivalent of the Victoria Cross, the highest military valour award.  In addition, the crew of the Ohio received a Distinguished Service Order, five Distinguished Service Crosses, and seven Distinguished Service Medals.  This is the text of Mason's award, after which he was granted a private audience with King George.

The KING has been graciously pleased to award the GEORGE CROSS to Captain Dudley William Mason, Master, SS Ohio. During the passage to Malta of an important convoy Captain Mason's ship suffered most violent onslaught. She was a focus of attack throughout and was torpedoed early one night. Although gravely damaged, her engines were kept going and the Master made a magnificent passage by hand-steering and without a compass. The ship's gunners helped to bring down one of the attacking aircraft. The vessel was hit again before morning, but though she did not sink, her engine room was wrecked. She was then towed. The unwieldy condition of the vessel and persistent enemy attacks made progress slow, and it was uncertain whether she would remain afloat. All next day progress somehow continued and the ship reached Malta after a further night at sea. The violence of the enemy could not deter the Master from his purpose. Throughout he showed skill and courage of the highest order and it was due to his determination that, in spite of the most persistent enemy opposition, the vessel, with her valuable cargo, eventually reached Malta and was safely berthed. (The award is dated 4th September, 1942.) 

Along with the nine cargo ships, Britain lost one carrier and another damaged, two cruisers and one destroyer sunk and two cruisers damaged, along with 500 dead, but Malta was saved. In November the Allies landed in North Africa and the tide of the war in Europe changed.

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(1) Leningrad was, by far, a more deadly siege with more than a third of the city's prewar population of more than 3 million perishing, most by starvation. 

Do The Strand

There's a new sensation

A fabulous creation

A danceable solution

To teenage revolution

Do The Strand 

We've had very little Roxy Music at THC.  Let's remedy that deficiency.  This is Do The Strand from the band's second album, For Your Pleasure, released in 1973.  With delightfully lunatic lyrics.

Arabs at oasis
Eskimos and Chinese

If you feel blue
Look through who's who
See like guru
And Nijinsky
Do the strandsky!

 

Weary of the waltz
And mashed potato schmaltz

Rhododendron
Is a nice flower
Evergreen
It lasts forever
But it can't beat strand power

 

The Sphinx and Mona Lisa
Lolita and Guernica
Did the strand

 

C'etait un Rendez-vous

We are approaching the 50th anniversary of French director Claude Lalouch's insane, law-breaking, early morning drive through Paris, which became his short film, the title of which in English is "It was a date",  a punchline you'll understand if you watch to the end of the film, which is less than nine minutes.  Lalouch's exploit inspired generations of racing aficionados.

Lalouch is driving his Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 but the sound track is overdubbed using a Ferrari and isn't always synced to the action. In order to accomplish the drive the director attempted it during August, when Paris is most deserted, particularly back in the 70s, at 5:30 in the morning, and on a Sunday.  It's August 15, 1976.

The drive is entirely on the Right Bank of Paris, starting at Port Dauphine, adjacent to the Bois de Boulogne, ending at Sacre-Coeur in Montmarte.  Along the way we see the Arc de Triumphe, Place de la Concorde, the Louvre, and encounter the cobbled streets of Montmarte.  Lalouch speeds the entire way and ignores red lights.

The first 3:15 are relatively calm.  Though Lalouch is driving fast, the roads are mostly wide and straight.  Then he makes a left turn into the Louvre, driving through a narrow tunnel ending in a blind-cross street and things get a lot more tense.  He is nearly hit by a car, he narrowly misses pedestrians, at one point to avoid a collision he drives into oncoming traffic having to swerve to miss a bus, and runs into a flock of pigeons, all as the streets get narrower, with more frequent intersections.

You couldn't do this today.  August is busier in Paris, the streets get crowded much earlier, and traffic monitoring by the police is much better.  Too bad. 

Here is the film, followed by a documentary explaining how it was done. 

Game

It may not have been the best played ball game but it sure was entertaining and exciting to watch.  Last night the Red Sox beat the White Sox in 13 innings at Fenway and I viewed all 4 hours and 23 minutes.  

Going into the game the Red Sox had won 30 of 35 games and seven in a row.  By the top of the third they were down 4-0 and I was thinking "well, everything good has to end".  They came back to tie it at 5-5 in the 4th, fell behind 7-5 in the 5th, narrowed it to 7-6 in the 7th, and then in the bottom of the 9th, with two outs and two strikes on Wilyer Abreu, he singled home the tying run and we went to extra innings.

The White Sox jumped out to a 9-7 lead in the 10th but the hometown team scored two to even it up.  The White Sox jumped out to a 10-9 lead in the 11th but the hometown team scored in the bottom of the frame to even it up.  The White Sox jumped out to a 11-10 lead in the 12th but the hometown team scored in the bottom of the frame to even it up and then, in the 13th after the White Sox finally failed to score, Caleb Durbin singled home Nick Sogard to win it for our boys.

The Red Sox had been disturbingly bad and even worse, boring, for most of this season, and on June 24 they stood at 32-46, 15 1/2 games behind the division leading Yankees.  I had barely watched an inning all season. Things suddenly changed as the Sox swept a four game series against the Yanks, the start of a 15 game winning streak.

I followed the streak but hesitated to watch a game thinking that if I did so and the Sox lost, I would bear the responsibility (yes, I actually think that way).  Couldn't resist anymore and watched the 14th game in the streak, a thrilling come from behind victory against the Orioles.

The Red Sox have now won 31 of 36 games, the best such streak in the 126 seasons of the franchise. They trail the division leading Rays by 5 games and are now only a 1/2 game behind the Yankees, and have the third best record in the American League.  And they've done it against tough opposition.  During these 36 games, the Sox have swept five series against four division leaders; the Rays, White Sox (twice), Dodgers, and Yankees.

The Sox have been doing this despite missing their best pitcher, Garrett Crochet, since April 25, and one of their best position players, shortstop Trevor Story, since May 14.  In their absence of host of players have stepped up over the past 36 games, many of whom I did not know previously.  Last night, seven different players had RBIs and ten scored runs. 

Sailing

THC has written on numerous occasions about his love for the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian, along with his admiration for the movie Master And Commander.  First reading the twenty volume series between 1990 and 2000, completing a second voyage during 2020, and planning a third cruise for 2030, I recently ran across an engaging series of essays on the books by Joshua Corey.  This one perfectly captures their essence and what has attracted me.

Corey hooked me with his opening:

Language is a writer’s preoccupation, but the language of Patrick O’Brian preoccupies his readers to an uncommon degree. Every would-be Aubrey-Maturin fan must quickly decide what their relationship is going to be to passages like this one:

“Helm’s a-lee,” he remarked—the cry usually echoed from one horizon to the other. Then “Off tacks and sheets.” He heard the bare feet hurrying and the staysail sheets rasping over the stays: he waited, waited, until the wind was one point on her weather bow, and then a little louder, “Mainsail haul!” She was in stays: and now she was paying off fast. The wind was well round on his other cheek. “Let go and haul,” he said, “and the half-seen waisters hauled on the starboard braces like veteran forecastlemen. The weather bowlines tightened: the Sophie gathered way.

I’ll be damned if I could paraphrase, even loosely, what’s going on, except on the most brute and obvious level: the sloop and crew under Jack Aubrey’s command is doing what he asked them to do, and they’re doing it well, and the sloop is moving. Some readers set themselves up with secondary sources or Google assiduously until they understand the distinction between sheets and stays, halyards and braces. More readers, I suspect, let the music of the sea-jargon wash over them, in the same way in which one can enjoy a Bach fugue without knowing the first thing about counterpoint. Still other potential readers find the sea-terms an insurmountable barrier to their enjoyment, and they put the book down—or, intimidated by the books’ reputation, never pick them up in the first place. 

I fall into the camp of those who let the sea-jargon wash over them. 

And I agree with this assessment:

The friendship between Jack and Stephen is the core, the beating heart, of a series of novels with much else to recommend them: derring-do, dry humor, Thoreauvian natural history, a bit of romance, and a level of nautical, military, and historical detail that achieves a degree of apparent authenticity surpassing the effect created by any other historical or fantasy novel that I have ever read. It is an unlikely friendship, a friendship of opposites, and on that opposition rests its appeal: the fantasy of harmonizing body and mind, social care and solitary inwardness, intuition and erudition, openness and secrecy.

If Jack Aubrey is the ego ideal of many men—honest, decisive, a natural leader, consistently courageous in the face of danger and hardship, and tactically brilliant (at sea, anyway; his best qualities tend to desert Jack ashore)—then Stephen Maturin is something closer to the reality—a writer’s reality, anyway. Jack is a man of action, a man of intensely physical life, touchingly ingenuous in many respects, true to his mentor Nelson’s oft-repeated remark, “Never mind maneuvers; just go straight at ‘em!” Stephen, on the other hand, is contemplative, withdrawn, sometimes staggeringly awkward, self-conscious, and complex.

If you haven't read the novels, but enjoy Corey's essay, you will undoubtedly appreciate the O'Brian novels and should enlist for a voyage. 

Uprising

On this date in 1943, several hundred Jewish prisoners at Treblinka, the Nazi death camp in Poland, rose in revolt and attempted escape.  About three hundred avoided the gunfire from camp guards and made it to the surrounding woods.  Somewhere between 50 and 70 were still alive at the end of the war in May 1945.

Treblinka was one of three major death camps, the others being Sobibor and Belzec, along with some smaller sites, built by the Nazis for the extermination of Jews living in the Government General of Poland, the area of that former country not absorbed into the Reich.  

Unlike concentration camps like Dachau and Buchenwald, where prisoners were housed under horrible conditions, starved, used as forced labor, and subject to arbitrary violence, dying at terrible rates, the death camps were designed to receive and quickly kill as many people as possible, keeping alive only the bare minimum to help keep the camp running.  In most cases, those arriving by train transport were dead within one to two hours of arriving.  During just over a year in operation, approximately 800-850,000 were murdered at Treblinka, 450,000 at Belzec (with only two known survivors), and 170,000 at Sobibor (which had several dozen survivors after an uprising in September 1943).

Auschwitz was a mixed camp with an industrial side using forced labor, opened in 1940, as well as an area constructed in 1942 for the the murder of Jews. About 1.1 million Jews died at Auschwitz, along with more than 100,000 Poles, Gypsies, and Russian prisoners of war.

At Treblinka, in addition to Polish Jews, about 8,000 Jews from the former Czechoslovakia and 11,000 from Thrace and Macedonia, along with 2,000 Romani were also killed. 

In addition to the German commanders and German and East European guards, each death camp also had a contingent of Jewish prisoners who were spared immediate death in order to keep the camp running.  At Treblinka this amounted to between 600 and 1,000 men divided into three groups.  The first to manage the unloading of those arriving on the train transports, including the undressing process before they were herded into the "showers".  The second sorted through belongings left behind so they could be collected and sent to Germany for civilian use.  The final group removed the dead from the gas chambers, burying them, and later, in 1943, digging up the corpses so they could be incinerated.  Every few weeks those in the three groups, with a few exceptions needed for continuity, would be murdered and replaced by new prisoners.

In 1943 as the number of arrivals dwindled and the digging up and incineration of the dead accelerated the workers were aware that the day of their termination was approaching, leading to the planning for the breakout.  They were also inspired by the news of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April.  Under very difficult circumstances planning proceeded and a key to the German arsenal was forged, allowing the group to access guns and grenades. 

During the August 2 breakout, several guards were killed and the main gate and fences destroyed allowing about 300 to cross the antitank obstacles and ditches to reach the forest.  Though many were hunted down by the Germans or died under other circumstances a few dozen were to survive and bear witness.

Fire set during the breakout. Photo by railway worker.

 

Treblinka was finally closed in September 1943.

Names of Some of the Survivors 

Samuel Rajzman

Yankiel Weirnik 

Abraham Kolski

Richard Glazar

Chaim Sztajer

Dov Freiburg

Kalman Teigman 

Samuel Willenberg (the last survivor, died in 2016)

 

Grants from the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute, the Capital City of Warsaw and Wolf & Dora Rajcher Memorial Found have enabled a Book of Names database to be assembled of those who perished at Treblinka, many of whom had no surviving family to remember them.  The database currently has 130,859 names. 

Sound Advice

From Russell Crowe, answering a question about which of his films young men should watch.  His responses; Gladiator, Master and Commander, and Cinderella Man.  Each one cited for specific reasons.

Gladiator has a pretty ridiculous plot but a very good film and the finest part is Crowe's embodiment of the stoic mentality. For more on the reality behind the movie read The Real Maximus.  In Master and Commander he's the real Jack Aubrey.  Cinderella Man is the tale of underdog James Braddock's, a down on his luck fighter, as he seeks the heavyweight title.

Crowe has a very positive, good-natured twitter feed. 

 

Without a doubt, the most wholesome thing I’ve seen all month is @russellcrowe answering which of his films young men should watch.

It is such an earnest, thoughtful answer, framed around timeless virtues like honor, loyalty, family, and perseverance. pic.twitter.com/O0ndy7k3Xu

— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) July 27, 2026

On Second Thought

By the end of the 1920s, however, the Party was in a position to enforce ideological conformity…the new technological intellectuals were willing to be told, were willing to believe, that the task of speaking truth to power was now redundant, because truth was in power.

From Red Plenty by Francis Spufford 

Red Plenty tells of the failure of economic development planning in the post-Stalin Soviet Union.  The finest book on the twenty years after Stalin's death, described in the Sunday Times (UK) as "so weird and yet so wonderful". 

I'd Rather Go Blind

Etta James is probably best known for At Last, but as good as she is on that record released in 1960, this live 1975 performance of I'd Rather Go Blind is peak.  Her raspy voice and performance delivers an emotional wallop.

History

Herodotus: "I will proceed with my history, telling the story as I go along of small cities no less than great. Most of those which were great once are small today; and those which in my lifetime have grown to greatness were small enough in the old days. It makes no difference… pic.twitter.com/80WSHvzbyt

— Darrell Epp (@DarrellEpp) July 21, 2026

I'm slowly making my way through an annotated version of Herodotus. 

Common And Uncommon Interests

Mayor Mamdani gave a brief address denouncing Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal and genocide perpetrator but announced that, regretfully, he cannot order his arrest if he attends the annual UN meeting in New York City in September.  However, he did encourage his followers to commit violent acts if Netanyahu shows his face.

Oddly, the Mayor and the Prime Minister have some interests in common regarding the upcoming UN meeting and Netanyahu's potential visit because of the upcoming Israeli elections in October.  Current polling shows Netanyahu's coalition losing to the opposition.  If Netanyahu comes to NYC in September and faces more outrage from Mamdani and protestors it will help his reelection chances.  It is in the Prime Minister's interest that such demonstrations occur and the worse, the better for him. 

For Mamdani, who knew all along he had no authority to arrest the PM, he gets to level a factually inaccurate but inflammatory set of accusations which pleases his supporters.  It is also in his interest to foment unrest in the city if Netanyahu comes in September, precisely because his goal and the PMs are similar.  They both want Netanyahu to be reelected.  From Mamdani's perspective, Netanyahu is the perfect villain and having him continue in office advances the Mayor's objectives - the isolation and eventual destruction of Israel.  Many of those who have taken the pro-Hamas side blame everything on Netanyahu, including experienced but delusional types like Tom Friedman and Chuck Schumer, thinking if only he were gone everything would be nice and calm.  Mamdani knows the truth that when it comes to Hamas there is not a lot of difference between Netanyahu and his opposition.  Mamdani and the groups that support him want Israel destroyed.  They do not want a two-state solution.  They recognize that continuing to personalize the enemy via Netanyahu is to their advantage.  

The mayors of the two next largest American cities, Karen Bass in LA and Brandon Johnson in Chicago, are incompetent and not very smart (Johnson is downright stupid).  Mamdani is an evil man but he is clever, charismatic, and dangerous. Mamdani claims it was his hatred for Israel that set him on the path to becoming a socialist.

My paternal grandfather Louis came to the U.S. in 1905 after deserting the Russian army.  He promptly joined the U.S. army, serving two 3-year enlistments, being discharged as a sergeant and gaining his citizenship (we still have his discharge and citizenship papers).  Louis spoke six languages but insisted that only English be spoken in his presence.  As a Jew he encountered prejudice but he was proud to be an American.  This was his country.

My maternal grandfather Nate was born in the U.S. three years after his parents emigrated from Russia.  Unlike Louis, who passed before I was born, I had the opportunity to know Nate and learned his hero was Abraham Lincoln.  As a Jew he encountered prejudice but was proud to be an American.  This was his country.

My parents were the same.  They taught me to be grateful for the opportunities we had in America.  Yes, they had some criticisms of conditions but they were proud to be Americans which they considered the best country in the world.

What about Zohran Mamdani and his upbringing?

His father is Mahmood Mamdani, an Indian born Muslim who grew up in Uganda, but was educated in the United States, obtaining a doctorate from Harvard (the worst anti-Americans are created by Ivy League universities).  Mamdani and his family were expelled from Uganda in 1973 by the crazy Idi Amin, returning in 1980 after Amin's overthrow.  Since then Mamdani has spent most of his time in the United States and Uganda where he has a villa. He remains a citizen of Uganda and is not an American citizen.

After serving as director of Columbia's Institute of African Studies, in 1999 he became the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia, a position he still holds.(1)  From 2010 to 2022 he was also executive director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research at Kampala University in Uganda. 

Professor Mamdani's life work can best be summarized as blaming every problem in the Third World on Western Colonialism.  In his work, people and institutions in the Third World have no agency or ability to influence events, even after colonialism ended.  This requires tortuous convoluted "logic", leading to writing that the genocide in Darfur was not a genocide but whatever bad that did happen there was the fault of the U.S.

He's argued that America pioneered "settler-colonialism" and genocide and ethnic cleansing, which influenced later projects, including Nazi Germany.  And who was the American figure most responsible for these atrocities?  None other than my grandfather Nate's hero!  Mamdani claimed:

"With the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln generalized the solution of reservations. they herded American Indians into separate territories.  For the Nazis, this was the inspiration - Hitler realized two things: one, that genocide is doable.  Second thing Hitler realized is that you don't have to have a common citizenship."

Mahmood married film maker Mira Nair in 1991 after they met in Uganda.  Zohran is their only child.  Born and raised in India, Nair attended (surprise!) Harvard in the mid-70s and is a naturalized U.S. citizen. She's had a very successful career making theatrical (we enjoyed Mississippi Marsala) and TV films as well as documentaries.  She opposes the existence of Israel.

A very affluent, privileged couple given education, refuge, and acclamation in America, a country they despise.  In their view both Israel and America are settler-colonialist societies which deserve to be destroyed. 

Regarding her son, Nair gave an interview in 2013 in which she stated:

"He is a total desi [South Asian].  Completely.  We are not firangs [Westerners] at all.  He is very much us.  He is not an American at all.  He was born in Uganda, raised between India and America. He is at home in many places.  He thinks of himself as a Ugandan and as an Indian." 

Until 8th grade Zohran attended the expensive tuition Bank Street School for Children, which proudly announces its progressive bona fides on its website.  After attending the Bronx High School for Science, Zohran went to Bowdoin College, a small progressive liberal arts school in Maine where he majored in Africana Studies (one of those new majors that is about indoctrination) and founded the college's Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter. SJP calls for the dissolution of Israel and celebrated Hamas' October 7 attack as a "historic win for the Palestinian resistance".

Zohran was designed from birth by his parents as a weapon against Israel and the United States.  His purpose is to gain the political power that allows him to accomplish those goals. He's learned to be slicker than his parents about how he shows his contempt for America but it shines through when he speaks about Israel.(2)

Zohran Mamdani became a naturalized American citizen in 2018.  He should never have been allowed to become a citizen with this background and he perjured himself by taking the oath of citizenship requiring him to defend the Constitution.  This points out the importance of this country becoming more diligent and responsible in deciding who is granted the privilege of citizenship.  Screening is essential because once citizenship is granted, the person is entitled to all the rights, privileges, and due process of his fellow citizens.  Zohran makes a powerful case for enhanced immigration and naturalization restrictions.  

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

 (1) That Mahmood Mamdani holds an endowed chair from the family of Herbert Lehman is an insult to a real American and a sign of how degraded Columbia University has become. Lehman served as Governor and Senator of the state of New York.  The Jewish Lehman also served on the boards of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti Defamation League.

(2)  Mamdani plays a word game in which he always refers to Judaism as a religion but not to Jews as a people.  We are both. From his perspective a religion should not have a country; I know that is inconsistent with the 22 Arab Muslim states and the 50+ state members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation but never mind. In his world view, Jews would be fine practicing their religion as long as they are subordinate to his politics and would be tolerated as long as they follow his rules.  It is a rejection of the idea of toleration as not something bestowed, but that which we owe to each other, as George Washington expressed in his letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island.  Just another aspect of Mamdani's reject of American ideals.

Your Own Sweet Way

Let's go beyond mellow and laid-back and sluggishly stumble our way to the almost comatose.  Get your favorite drink, relax in a comfortable big chair, and listen to the The Notting Hillbillies performing Your Own Sweet Way.  Featuring Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits on guitar and vocals (he also wrote the song).  Mark doesn't play a lot of notes but every one he plays is just right.

And remember:

It doesn't matter what I say
What I do or what I think
You can lead a horse to water
You can't make him drink
You'll go your own sweet
Your own sweet way 

The Martian Turtle

From Astronomy Picture of the Day.  Photo by the Mars Curiosity Rover, now in its 14th year of exploration of the Martian surface.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS; Processing & License: Thomas Thomopoulos

Explanation: Is this a fossilized turtle on Mars? No. Although resembling a large Earth tortoise, this is a layered rock outcrop on Mars that is estimated to span about 15 meters, making it much larger than turtles on Earth. NASA’s robotic Curiosity rover came across this unusual mound, dubbed Miraflores, last month during its 4922nd Martian day exploring Mars. The small butte may survive because it was somehow more resistant to erosion than surrounding rock. More recent wind has now covered its top with orange Martian sand. Below the top shell, many layers of stratified rock are visible, possibly indicating a long history of intermittent wind-blown sand being deposited and then hardened by ground water. Similar wind-eroded layered landforms, such as yardangs in the Qaidam Desert of China, exist here on Earth. Curiosity and its companion rover Perseverance continue to investigate the ancient history of Mars as well as searching for signs of primeval life.

 

I'm A Believer

 While I have some quibbles about wording this seems pretty good to me.

 

Obsession

 President Trump gave an address on election security.  Why?  He made two points.  First, that China had "interfered" in the 2020 election and had obtained voter information but he presented no evidence that China had actually manipulated voting.  No big surprise there.  And did he announce any new actions against China in response?  No.

Secondly, that the intelligence community suppressed that information and prevented it from reaching President Trump as part of its collusion against his administration.  Certainly possible given the IC's involvement in the Russia Collusion Hoax.  However, a few excerpts from emails aren't the proof.  After all, former DNI Tulsi Gabbard (thank goodness, she's gone) released a report and emails purporting to show IC collusion from the first Trump administration but, on close examination, the report and the documents were overhyped. 

The speech was a waste.  If the President was going to speak to the American people it should be on whatever we are up to with Iran.  We seem to have entered yet another phase in the Iran War, which started in 1979 with the regime's declaration of war on the United States.  We deserve some clarification about what the goals are here, instead of speculation.  It could have also possibly helped him with the mid-terms coming up if he could effectively make the case for what he is doing.

What this shows is Trump's continued obsession with the 2020 election.  The truth is the Democrats outmaneuvered the Trump administration.  They may have played dirty, but not illegally. 

"The Deep State and Democrats colluded to sabotage Trump, spread disinformation, and loosen voting laws so that Dems could mass harvest ballots and engage in various legal but unprecedented methods of collecting votes" is a valid argument.

"10 million votes were fake" is not.

— Everybody is Insane (@colorblindk1d) July 17, 2026

And the truth is that in 2020 Donald Trump "spit the bit" as George Steinbrenner once said of Ken Clay, a moment later to be immortalized on Seinfeld.

He was played for a fool with the Covid relief bill that allowed changes to the election process for 2020 that were taken full advantage of by the Democrats.  Meanwhile his campaign was completely unprepared to capitalize on those changes or to monitor what the Democrats were up to.  Maybe it would not have made a difference because his entire campaign was a shambles.  

At the beginning of the year it was widely accepted that Trump would win reelection, but starting with Covid everything fell apart as it highlighted Trump's weaknesses, beginning with his daily press conferences where he was out of control, easily baited by the press, and allowed himself to be manipulated by Anthony Fauci, the 21st century version of J Edgar Hoover.

Then came his pathetic response to the George Floyd riots when his response amounted to tweeting "law and order" on a daily basis but doing nothing to try to halt the orgy of violence and destruction. 

What happened after the election was worse.  Despite the fact that his campaign's own polling accurately predicted the outcome in the battleground states, with the exception of Georgia they thought would go for Trump, the president immediately claimed the election was rigged, tossing out an ever changing crop of allegations to keep his most fervent supporters at fever pitch.

I thought Trump would give it up after the electoral college met on December 14, and confirmed Biden's victory.  I was wrong. Instead he doubled down, leading to the disgraceful events of January 6.  No, he did not plan an insurrection; Donald Trump does not do planning.  Instead he is always improvising to see what happens and then makes his next move.  But his rhetoric and actions are responsible for stirring up his supporters to the point that they got out of control on the 6th.

Those events also showed that Trump's top priority is always Trump.  On January 5, Georgia held its runoff election for its two senate seats.  Winning those seats was critical to the Republicans controlling the Senate.  Trump spoke at multiple rallies, ostensibly to support the Republican candidates.  But after briefly telling audiences they should vote for the R's he would go on extended rants about how the election was rigged and how his supporters votes wouldn't count.  He successfully suppressed R turnout and the Democrats won both seats.  It's not hard to see how Trump knew, whether consciously or unconsciously, that if the Republican candidates won it would undercut his claim that the November election was stolen.  He needed the R's to lose.

Trump's neediness and ego nearly resulted in the end of democracy, from which we were only spared by Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, to whom we owe thanks. 

Trump's priorities can also be seen in the fate of the J6 defendants, most of whom entered the Capitol through open doors, committed no violence or acts of destruction, and after wandering around peaceably left the building, yet were prosecuted nonetheless.(1)  Trump raised somewhere between $150 million and $250 million based on the plight of the J6 defendants and his "stop the steal" campaign, yet none of that was spend on providing legal or other assistance to the defendants.  The result is many of the defendants had to rely on unsympathetic public defenders or fell prey to inexperienced grifter lawyers who did not know what they were doing.  Its quite a contrast with how the Democrats effectively provided support to their violent supporters during the George Floyd summer.

Trump's destructive obsessions can be seen in the damage he's done in Arizona where I live.  Trump and his MAGA supporters in the state insist the 2020 election was stolen in Maricopa County.  It wasn't stolen.  If you compare the 2020 results with 2016 on a precinct by precinct basis, you discover that Trump picked up some votes in Hispanic and poorer White precincts while losing more in the wealthier White areas.  Yet Trump's claims led to the ridiculous Cyber Ninja audit and the descent into insanity of many of the state's Republicans. 

It also likely had some knock on effects nationally.  Arizona's governor in 2020 was Doug Ducey, the very popular (he won reelection in 2018 by 15 points) and capable Republican who defied Trump's instructions not to certify the state's election results as valid, enraging the president. The term limited Ducey left office in 2022, with the lunatic MAGA acolyte Kari Lake losing the governor's race.  There was speculation Ducey would run for Senate in 2022 but he decided not to.  The reason many informed observers gave is that while Ducey would have easily won in the general election against Mark Kelly, he would have had to go through a grueling primary battle in which he would run against a MAGA candidate supported by Trump, who called Ducey a "weak RINO" who he would never endorse, and that "MAGA would never accept" him running.  Instead we had the bizarre candidacy of Blake Masters who got stomped by Kelly.  Yet another Senate seat lost to the Democrats in order to satisfy Trump's ego.  Thanks a lot.

MAGA is simply whatever Donald Trump does at any point in time.  It is not a philosophy, it is not a movement, it is not an organization. When he leaves office in January 2029 he will leave a shambles behind.  I pity whoever is the R candidate in 2028 because they will have to live with Trump incessantly commenting on the campaign, unwilling to leave the scene and the starring role in his reality show.

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

(1)  I supported the pardon of those who peaceably entered and left the building and did not engage in violence or destruction.  I opposed the pardon of those who did engage in violent acts. 

Homeward Bound

 Painting by David Tutwiler.  I like the mid-20th century atmosphere.  

 

Sympathy For The Devils

A couple of things I noticed in the past few days, which seem related.

Minnesota attempted to avoid the deportation of a immigrant from Laos who had been convicted of raping, on multiple occasions, a 10-year old girl, and had lost his legal status as a result of the conviction.  In a final desperate attempt to thwart deportation, the state's Board of Pardons, consisting of Governor Tim Walz, AG Keith Ellison, and Chief Justice Hudson voted to pardon the rapist.  Despite this, Secretary of State Rubio properly ordered his deportation.  

Commenting on Rubio's decision, Governor Walz protested that "we can't all be judged on our worst day".  Since there were multiple rapes it's too bad no one asked Walz which was the  rapist's "worst day".  Probably were some pretty bad days for the victim also.

Just another example of the privileged status of those here illegally and of the moral obtuseness of their defenders.  For more, see Footnote 1 in The Death of Compromise. 

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

From Jeff Giesa, with the legend "This is what the panel that sends you to the gulag will look like."  In the Gulag, the "professional" violent criminals, called Urki or Blatyne, were used by those running the camps as enforcers against the political prisoners (called Zeks).

 In preparation for this future, SS (Smarmy Smile) Zohran Mamdani went to Rikers Prison to build some loyalty to him by watching the World Cup semifinals with inmates  While enjoying the match Mamdani sat next to an inmate who had strangled his wife to death.  I'm pretty confident the mayor didn't waste any time thinking about the woman. 

Recent Reading

Fiction

After Lonesome Dove last year, the finest novel I've read in a while, recent fiction reading pales in comparison. 

A Murder in Springtime by Martin Walker, is the 19th in his series about Bruno, Chief of Police, in the Vezere Valley of Dordogne, our favorite spot in France.  It continues the decline in quality of his more recent work with poor plotting, a lot of lecturing, and lazy characterizations.  As much as I enjoy the region, that's it for me - no more Bruno. 

Philip Kerr has a series about Bernie Guenther, a Berlin police detective during the Third Reich.  Bernie is opposed to the Nazis but keeps getting roped into situations that require him to cooperate to some extent, while simultaneously trying to expose them.  A Man Without Breathe, the second Bernie book I've read, is set around the 1943 discovery by the Germans of Stalin's Katyn massacre of thousands of captured Polish officers.  While the situation is intriguing and I keep wanting to like these books, I don't think they are well written or plotted.

In Los Angeles, Michael Connelly is still trying to find a lead character as compelling as Harry Bosch, who has aged out.  Ironwood, set on Catalina Island, is his latest attempt.  A good, but not compelling read.  At this point, I prefer Robert Crais' series with Joe Pike and Elvis Cole when it comes to LA crime stories.

I am looking forward to the release of Robert Harris' next historical novel in August which is about Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa.

A couple of weeks ago Mrs THC and I watched the Lonesome Dove miniseries.  While it could never match the novel it was still quite the experience; enjoyable, funny, moving.  Tommy Lee Jones is excellent while Robert Duvall is just astonishing. Followed the book very closely, taking much of the dialogue directly.  The only significant deviation was the final scene. I can understand why the change was made as the novel ends on an ambiguous and abrupt note, which I preferred but it would not work on TV. 

Non-Fiction 

The first three attempts to climb Mount Everest in 1921, 1922, and 1924 are the subject of Wade Davis in Into The Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest.  All were British expeditions.  At the time Everest was inaccessible via Nepal, so the three British led expeditions, all went from Sikkim into Tibet, which at the time was an independent country, to approach the mountain from the north.  Most of the climbers were World War One veterans, most of whom were fully immersed in the horrors of that conflict, and Davis does an excellent job tying their experiences into the attitudes they brought to the expeditions.

The expeditions were permitted by the Dalai Lama and supported by Tibetan porters and Sherpas and Davis spends considerable time explaining their culture and religious beliefs. The first expedition traveled hundreds of miles and had to find out how to get to Everest in a way that would allow for a climb to be attempted.  Given the lack of equipment and clothing that is common today for climbing, along with the lack of oxygen, it is surprising so much was accomplished on that first try. The second expedition saw six Tibetan porters die in an avalanche, while the third climaxed with the disappearance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine near the peak of Everest. Mallory's body was found in 1999 while part of Irvine's was discovered in 2021.  An incredible tale, well told.

The tale of Coronado's expedition (1540-42) into what is now the American Southwest and Great Plains is the subject of The Lost Cities of El Norte by Peter Stark.  While I've read other accounts of this exploration, this is the best, in part due to Stark being a fine writer.

I read Julian Jackson's biography of Charles De Gaulle in 2024 and just finished France on Trial, his account of the trial of Marshal Petain in 1945 at which the 89 year old head of the Vichy Regime was convicted of high treason and conspiracy to overthrow the Republic and sentenced to death, a sentence commuted by De Gaulle. Jackson explores the complex factors behind the trial as well as the day to day details. Interesting probably to a very limited audience.

The Witches by Stacy Schiff covers what is known as the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, which resulted in the hanging of 19 convicted witches, but which actually grew to engulf more than twenty Massachusetts communities with more than 700 people accused in those months.  My interest was triggered by the recent discovery that Mrs THC is not only descended from John and Priscilla Alden of the Mayflower voyagers but from individuals who were accused of being witches in 1692 as well as others who were accusers.  Before reading Schiff's book I only knew about the events of 1692 at a very general level.  She does a good job laying out how the hysteria erupted and grew and I had no idea of the extent to which it infected the colony.

Palestine 1936 by Oren Kessler and Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel 1917-47 by Bruce Hoffman deal with aspects of the struggle over the fate of the Palestinian Mandate held by Britain from 1922 to 1948.  Although there were outbreaks of Arab violence against Jews in 1921 and 1929, it was only with the Arab Revolt of 1936-39 that the British became seriously entangled in the disputes over the Mandate.  The Arab Revolt, the subject of Kessler's even-handed account, while initially directed toward Jews eventually focused on the British, triggering massive crackdowns and reprisals.  Though the revolt was eventually crushed it had longer consequences, prompting the British to propose a partition of the Mandate, a plan reluctantly accepted by the Jews and rejected by the Arabs, and, in an attempt to pacify the Arabs, for the British to radically restrict the number of Jewish immigrants it would allow into Palestine, at a time when many European Jews were trying to flee Hitler.

Hoffman writes of the Arab resistance to the Jews and even more so, on the eventual emergence of Jewish groups, primarily Irgun and Lehi, which actively sought retaliation against Arabs, including at times innocent civilians, and against the British military.  He explores the sometimes murky connections between the Irgun and the Haganah, the mainline Jewish military organization which eschewed the tactics of Irgun and Lehi, in which they sometimes cooperated and sometimes fought each other.  Hoffman judges Irgun's approach, under the direction of Menachem Begin, who proved to be a brilliant strategist, to be the critical element in getting Britain to surrender its Mandate.  Palestine 1936 was very good but I found Anonymous Soldiers to be particularly informative.

An Abundance of Caution by David Zweig was an infuriating read.  Not that it was a bad book.  In fact, I highly recommend it.  It is a detailed, well-researched, and accurate account of the decisions to close schools and keep them closed during Covid.  Zweig, living in suburban New York with his young children and grew increasing frustrated with the actions of authorities at the local, state, and federal level, prompting him to dive into the available data.  What is infuriating about the book is reading how available information was repeatedly ignored by American authorities, even though by the spring of 2020 European data showed school posed no greater risk than staying at home.  I'd been aware of some of the research Zweig references but he pulled together a lot of additional information I'd not been familiar with.  What America did with children and Covid is a disgrace and resulted in both short and long-term damage.  I will definitely write a longer account on this topic.  

Cry Baby Cry

From Revolver on, John Lennon, who disliked his voice, insisted it be processed or altered, primarily through compression (called ADT), most famously on Tomorrow Never Knows when he instructed George Martin to make him sound like the Dalai Lama singing from a mountaintop. As someone who appreciated Lennon's vocals on the early Beatles albums, I did not like the production treatment of his vocals on the later records, which stripped out the fullness and warmth in his voice.  Cry Baby Cry is from the White Album in 1968, a song I liked on a double album of uneven quality.  However, this is Take 1 before Lennon's voice was altered and additional instruments added to the track and the vocal is superior to the final version.

Vertical

Wonder how Pete Townshend's vertical jump height compares to Michael Jordan's.  Of course, Pete is doing it with a guitar.

 

Pete Townshend at Royal Albert Hall on July 5 1969. Note the Hiwatt amps on a chair. pic.twitter.com/P8fNq1YZVP

— Darrell Epp (@DarrellEpp) July 7, 2026

Maine Bound And Down

We spend summers in Maine, returning to Arizona in October  Last September I started seeing lots of posts in my Facebook feed from a guy named Graham Platner, mostly yelling about genocide in Gaza and using the usual code phrases regarding Jewish influence.  Seems he was running for the Democratic nomination for Senate.  I thought he was just some nut who'd get wiped out in the primary.  Instead he drove the incumbent Democratic governor, a solid progressive, out of the race and won the nomination.

That's despite:

- the Jew bashing

- the Commie loving

- the Nazi tattoo wearing(1)

- the phony background story 

- enlisting in the Army, not because of patriotism or a sense of duty, but because he liked killing people 

- mocking the death of his fellow soldiers 

- the rape fantasies (to be fair he said he'd only rape to establish dominance not as a sexual thing)

- sexually assaulting a Republican woman 

No, what it took to finally drive him out of the race was sexually assaulting a Democratic woman.  Tells you a lot about the state of the Democratic party in Maine.  None of the other stuff mattered - and the Jew bashing was seen as a positive by D voters. You could also already tell how bad Platner was just by looking at the Senators endorsing him early on - The Bum (Sanders), The Cherokee Princess (Warren), The Dirtbag (Gallego), and The Callow Youth (Murphy).

Actually, it's a bit misleading to say it was the sexual assault on the D lady that did it.  The truth is that a week ago, polls in Maine showed Susan Collins (R) edging ahead of Platner in the Senate race.  Usually, Collins trails the D challenger, only pulling ahead in the final couple of weeks of the campaign, but here she was beginning to open a lead on Platner in early July, spelling his doom.  Time for the D's to pull the plug in time to insert another candidate, so time to come forward with the sexual assault claim. 

Platner is a strong indicator of where the Democratic party is headed in Maine but there was another story, under covered in the media, that really tells you about the danger Maine Democrats (and those similarly situated elsewhere) pose to our democracy.

In early 2025, a Republican State Representative, Laurel Libby, posted a photo of a local high school track meet on Facebook.  One of the winners in the girl's competition was a boy who claimed he was a girl.  The representative stated in her post that this was wrong and boys should not be allowed to compete in girls competitions.

The Maine House of Representatives is narrowly controlled by Democrats, 75 to 72.  The House voted on party lines to censure the Republican representative and, until she apologized, banned her from speaking and voting in the House.  Not even one Democrat representative saw anything wrong with this action.(2)

Rep. Libby filed a federal court action seeking an injunction against the House for stripping her constituents of representation in the legislature.  In the District Court, a Biden appointed judge saw nothing wrong with the silencing of Rep. Libby and refused to grant the injunction.  Libby appealed to the First Circuit but a three judge panel of Biden appointees saw nothing wrong and declined to grant the injunction. 

It finally took an appeal to the United State Supreme Court to get Libby's request granted (Sotomayor and Jackson dissenting). After the Supreme Court action, the legislature lifted the sanctions.

What happened to Rep Libby is as much an indicator as Platner's primary win, of how radical Maine Democrats have become.  Libby was opining on a public issue, taking a position that all polling shows is the majority position of all Americans nationwide.  Yet every Maine representative voted to silence her, and Democratic appointees at the District and Appellate Court levels refused to intervene.

What has become ever more evident over the last few years is that Democrats have convinced themselves they are entitled to use all measures to suppress dissent, and will use any excuse to do so. To them, democracy is when they win everything.  They oppose diversity in viewpoints.  Look at their hysteria over losing control of just one social media platform - twitter when Elon Musk purchased it. They have an insatiable need to control every avenue of opinion, every institution, every organ of government. What happened in the Maine state legislature in 2025 is just the front of the new wave of repression.  If the Democrats attain a trifecta at the federal level and stuff the Supreme Court with radical justices, a plan they have adopted as their goal, in the future elected opposition figures like Rep. Libby will be successfully suppressed.  There is no "moderate" wing of the Democratic Party left.

Taken together, the path forward for Maine Democrats is to find a new candidate who is Jew-bashing, Commie loving, and thinks boys should play on girl's teams and be allowed in their bathroom, but does not sexually assault Democratic women.  

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(1)  Best quip I saw on this was that Platner's autobiography is called Maine Kampf. 

(2) The nominal justification for the sanctions was that Rep Libby included a photo and name of the boy in question.  Here's how the game is played; whatever a Democrat says or does is free speech, whatever their opponents do is, even it is speech, is the equivalent of an action and deemed harmful or unsafe and thus justifies suppression.  Here's how it works if your actions break the law but are in support of a Democratic favored cause. Recently, several members of Antifa were convicted and sentence to prison for violent acts in Dallas as part of their anti-ICE activites, including shooting a law enforcement officer in the neck.  In Democratic circles this was reported as being sentenced because of "protests", so it becomes another example of Trump's "fascism".

Waitin' For My Ya-Ya

Time we had a little zydeco music (a fusion of Cajun and rhythm & blues) here.  It's a cousin to Dr John's style of music.  This is Buckwheat Zydeco from 1985, a cover of Lee Dorsey's 1961 original.  Buckwheat Zydeco (aka Stanley Dural Jr) had a long career, winning five Grammy's between 1985 and 2010.