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.

Return From Domme

We returned from our month in Dordogne about ten days ago.  A last tranche of photos.

One of the two gates through which you can enter Domme by vehicle.

 

Panorama from the park on the north side of the town, overlooking the Dordogne River.  Location is a two minute walk from our rented house.

 

View back to Domme from village of La Roque Gageac.  This gives a good perspective of the heights on which the town is located.  The photo above was taken from a point about center where the elongated structure appears along the wall.  To the right is the town park.  Our house was located right behind it.  To the left is the center of the town.

 

Section of early 14th century wall on south side of Domme.

 

The reality of everyday life; disposing of trash at the bins just outside the town walls.  We were here every other day. 

Domme At Night

We've returned to our favorite spot in Europe for the first time since 2022, the little walled town of Domme in southwest France.

Some evening photos from around the place we are renting.

Koji

Our 12+ year old dog, Koji, passed today.  A wonderful companion, named for Koji Uehara, closer for the 2013 world champion Boston Red Sox.  We knew we were getting a Lab puppy that November and decided if the Sox won the World Series she would be named Koji.

A mellow and loving dog, great around children.  Diagnosed recently with multiple tumors, which Labs are prone to, and having a couple of seizures, she was rapidly declining.  Hard for us to see her go, but it was the right thing to do at the right time.

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. 

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. 

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.

 

Anniversary

Today is the 50th anniversary of a personal event that is significant for two reasons.

The first is that on the evening of July 18, 1975 the future Mrs THC and I attended a Red Sox game at Fenway Park.  It was the first Red Sox game we attended together.  We'd met a few weeks prior and attending this game is the first event in our relationship that we can place a firm date upon.  And, in two weeks, we celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary.

It was also the occasion of the longest home run I've seen hit in person, courtesy of Jim Rice.  

This led to the post from 2017 which follows. 

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

This is prompted by a conversation at the recently concluded Analytics Conference of the Society for American Baseball Research held in Phoenix.  At lunch I was talking with a fellow attendee who mentioned that at his first game at Fenway he'd seen Mark Fidrych pitch against Luis Tiant.  It turned out I had been at the same game on May 25, 1976 (see The Bird).

I'd been able to figure out the date of the game with the invaluable help of Baseball-Reference.  I've also used BR to reconstruct the first time I saw Willie Mays play and the day I met him (see Meeting Willie Mays), as well as narrowing down the possible dates on which I'd seen my first major league game (My First Ballgame?), and even figuring out what New York Giants game my dad had attended in 1939 based on a blank scorecard he left me (Baseball Scorecard 1939).  After the lunch conversation, I decided to use BR to track down another event I remembered vividly and to see how my recollection matched up with the facts.

What I remembered for certain

The longest HR I ever saw in person was hit by Jim Rice in a game at Fenway in 1975 against the Kansas City Royals.  I remember being stunned at how hard it was hit, how fast it got out of the park, and how far it went.

What I thought I remembered

The homer was hit off Jim Busby, the hard throwing KC pitcher.
Bill Lee was pitching for the Sox.
The Red Sox won the game easily.
The HR was a rising line drive that went over the left center field wall, to the right of the Green Monster and to the left of the flagpole (this was before the centerfield scoreboard was built).
The ball was still rising as it disappeared into the night.
We were sitting in the grandstands underneath the overhang between home and third base.  "We" refers to the future Mrs THC and I.

(Fenway in 1975.  This photo of Fred Lynn shows the outfield as it existed then.  You can see the flagpole.)

What I found out

The game was on July 18, 1975.  Busby and Lee were the pitchers and the Sox won 9-3.  Rice's homer was off Busby, who lasted only 3 1/3 innings, giving up seven runs, but striking out six.

Bill Lee tossed a vintage Bill Lee-style complete game, giving up six hits, walking one and not striking out anyone.  Lee got 16 outs on grounders (including seven in a row at one point) plus two more on  pop ups.  The only Royals to cause Lee trouble were Hal McRae (single, double and triple) and Harmon Killebrew (double and two-run homer in the 9th).  It was also great fun to see Lee tie John Mayberry up in knots with an eephus pitch.  George Brett went 0-4, with three grounders.

I found several articles referencing Rice's titanic blast leading off the third inning for Boston.

Mercy! A Celebration of Fenway Park's Centennial by Curt Smith, describes Rice's homer as one of only six to clear the centerfield wall before the 1976 park alterations.  The others were by Hank Greenberg (1937), Jimmie Foxx (1937), Bill Skowron (1957), Carl Yastrzemski (1970), and Bobby Mitchell (1973).

On July 23, 2015 the Boston Herald, as part of a series about the 1975 Red Sox, carried an article entitled "Jim Rice's Mammoth Home Run off Steve Busby":

The righthander mis-spotted a fast ball and Rice, the Boston rookie slugger, sent the ball out of the park just a little to the left field side of dead center. Rice's home run, making the score 6-0, didn't clear the famed Green Monster, but rather the back wall of the park behind the rows of bleacher seats.

And it did not just slip over that back wall – which in itself constituted a feat reportedly accomplished only five times previous – it exited Fenway somewhere near the top of the flagpole reaching far above the wall.

Then Boston Globe sports writer Peter Gammons famously wrote the "ball was stopped by Canadian customs".  In a 2009 Boston Globe story, reporter John Powers wrote that Yawkey said it was ""unquestionably the longest ever'' hit at Fenway.

The winning pitcher that night, Bill Lee got a good look at Rice's clout.

"Once it leaves the ballpark, it goes over Landsdowne Street, it usually lands in the flatbed of a truck, a train, a truck that's heading west, so it ended up in Buffalo, for all we know," Lee said during a recent visit to Axis Bat Technology in Fall River. "It was an amazing line drive type shot. It wasn't one of those towering high fly balls that (Dave) Kingman hit.

I also learned from the article the game was not televised

At the Sons of Sam Horn website, I found this recollection from someone in the bleachers that night:

I was sitting in the Fenway CF bleachers in July 1975 when I saw Jim Rice teed off on Steve Busby and hit the longest home-run I've ever seen at Fenway. This was before the "600 Club" so there was probably the jet-stream effect, and before the centerfield scoreboard, so there was just a moderately high wall behind the seats in CF. Rice hit a bomb to straight-away CF, that cleared the CF back-wall (behind the batters eye) and from my vantage point some 430-450 ft from home that ball still had an upward trajectory as it left Fenway. It was probably a 500 footer.

At the Baseball Think Factory, Rice answered a question about a homer he'd hit in Comiskey Park this way:

I don’t remember that home run.  Comiskey was a very small ball park.  It was shorter than Fenway to centerfield, short to leftfield, and shorter than that in right.  I had two long home runs in my career that stand out in my mind:

I hit one into the 3rd or 4th deck (however many they have, it was the top one) in Yankee stadium off Matt Keough.  I think Keough hit me with a pitch twice in that game, but third time I got him.

The other home run, which is probably the biggest shot of my career, was off of Kansas City pitcher Steve Busby in 1975.  Mr. Yawkey said it was probably the longest home run he had ever seen.

I'm a little surprised at how close my memory was to the actual event.  Nice to have my recollections confirmed.  It doesn't always happen that way.

The entire game took only 2:07 to play!

And, by the way, it was the very first game that the future Mrs THC attended with THC.  Not a bad night at all.

Thanks, America

On July 4, 1905, 120 years ago today, my paternal grandfather Louis landed in Boston, having escaped from Russia.  Six weeks later he enlisted in the United States Army, joining the 23rd Infantry Regiment.  Louis served two 3 year enlistments, being discharged with the rank of sergeant and gaining his U.S. citizenship about which he was very proud.

Happy birthday, America. 

The photo below is the only one we have from his military days.  Louis is on the far left.  You can read more about Louis here.

 

Stagecoach

John Ford's 1939 film, Stagecoach, made John Wayne a star and got Ford an Academy Award nomination for Best Director.  It's also the first of Ford's many films set in Monument Valley on the Navajo Reservation along the Arizona-Utah border.  This shot from the movie captures the spectacular setting, which I have visited twice and plan on returning to again.

 

A heart-stoppingly sweet shot from 1939's Stagecoach directed by John Ford: pic.twitter.com/6GyrHzOdEl

— Darrell Epp (@DarrellEpp) May 2, 2025

(2019)

Return Of The Magic Bus

 

Back in 2017, THC did a post on the memorable trip he took with the future Mrs THC on the Magic Bus in September 1978, traveling from Athens to Paris.  The post has drawn more comments than anything else on Things Have Changed.  As wild as our adventure was, many of the comments have matched or exceeded our experience for sheer weirdness.  The Magic Bus remains prominent in the memories of many of its passengers forty and more years later.

 Last month THC was contacted by Spiros Vasiliou, a writer for the popular Greek online newspaper, Reader.gr, who was working on an article on the Magic Bus and had come across my 2017 post, which I gave him permission to use.  I learned that the Magic Bus, which began as a transport on the Hippie Trail in the early 70s, going all the way to Nepal originally, also had a place in Greek culture and memory.

You can find the lengthy article here, including photos and excerpts from my post, but you'll have to do the translating yourself! 

Spiros also told me that the Magic Bus inspired a very popular rock song in the 1980s by one of the pioneering Greek new wave bands (it's got 2.4 million views on YouTube).  The band was Tripes and the closest translation of the song title is Psyche Taxicab.

These are the translated lyrics:

London, Amsterdam, or Berlin

You've forgotten exactly where you want to go

No matter how much I borrow, I won't let you

Go for rides on the Magic Bus anymore

 

Traveling soul 

And if I want to be by your side, it's hard to stay

It's time to see my own life

On this trip I won't wait for you

 

I'll go shopping and one night

What I have inside of me for you I'll erase

The road you've taken is a one-way street

And I don't see you turning back 

Take a listen.  It's pretty good.

 

 

Translation of the section on our trip:

American Mark Stoller is one of the thousands of passengers who traveled to Greece in the late 1970s on the Magic Bus. Several years ago, he decided to record that experience on his blog. What followed was something he never imagined. Dozens of responses to his text, from people who had similar experiences! “I am still amazed that my post on the Magic Bus has received more comments than anything else I have written on my blog since I started it in 2012,” he tells us. “So many years later, my wife and I still have such enjoyable memories of our month in Greece and the Magic Bus,” he adds, and kindly provides us with the itinerary of the trip, as it was distributed to passengers in the summer of 1978!

The article then goes on to include a long quote from my 2017 post.

 

Old School Boston

I enjoy the photos at Old School Boston, having lived in the area from 1973 until 1992.  The pictures below are of some of my often-frequented spots from those days.

I worked in Harvard Square from June 1980 through January 1982 and spent a lot of time there throughout my years in Boston.  Had a few burgers at the Fatted Calf in Kenmore Square, and frequently ventured into the North End and Salem Street where Ida's was one of our favorite restaurants.  A very different city back then. 

 

Mass. Ave., Harvard Square 1973. (Ernst Halberstadt photo) pic.twitter.com/ANT1TMBtXn

— Old School Boston (@OldSchoolBoston) February 20, 2025

The Fatted Calf Kenmore 1979.
( Photo courtesy Anty Diluvian) pic.twitter.com/tUAbQzZv59

— Old School Boston (@OldSchoolBoston) February 28, 2025

Salem Street 1975. @BPLBoston pic.twitter.com/YJdVsYLoZY

— Old School Boston (@OldSchoolBoston) February 21, 2025

The Drive In

Behold! California's first drive-in, in Los Angeles, in 1935: pic.twitter.com/agEggdOtkK

— Darrell Epp (@DarrellEpp) February 23, 2025

 

The town I grew up in had a drive in.  Saw several movies there with my parents.  The first one that comes to mind was The Outsider starring Tony Curtis, a biopic about Ira Hayes, the Pima Indian who was one of the flag raisers on Iwo Jima that I recently wrote about.  The film was released in December 1961 saw I probably saw it in the spring of '62 when I was eleven.

The Lone Ranger

I was 5 1/2 when we moved from our apartment in Stamford to a house in Norwalk CT in the fall of 1956. One of the things I remember from my time in that apartment was watching two Westerns on TV (along with the Disney Davy Crockett series); Hopalong Cassidy and The Lone Ranger, the latter with its stirring opening and closing theme from the William Tell Overture.  Although I remembered The Lone Ranger, there was only one show I specifically recalled in detail - the origin story of the character.  I recently came across that show and it turns out it was the first episode of the first season.  I must have seen it as a rerun because the show began in 1949 and ran through 1957.

Watching that first episode for the first time in more than 65 years I realized why it made such a big impression on me.  We learn in that first episode that John Reid, about to become The Lone Ranger, vows never shoot to kill, only to wound, believing that justice belongs to the legal system.  Yet that first show is very violent though, in keeping with the times, not graphically so.

Reid, along with five other Texas Rangers, including his brother, are in pursuit of a gang of outlaws.  They ride into a box canyon and are ambushed.  Reid is badly wounded and the other Rangers killed. This is the scene I remembered all these years and I think it was the unusual level of violence that made it stay in my mind.  Reid's life is saved when the Indian Tonto rides into the canyon while hunting, finds the wounded Ranger and helps nurse him to recovery.  We also find out that years earlier, Reid had saved Tonto after his family was killed by raiders from another tribe.  The outlaws believe Reid dead, and Reid decides it is better for them to continue to believe it, and adopts his new identity as The Lone Ranger.

Clayton Moore plays The Lone Ranger and Jay Silverheels is Tonto.   Silverheels was a Mohawk and an outstanding athlete before making his film debut in 1938.  Silverheels appeared in all 217 episodes of The Lone Ranger, while Moore missed one season because of a contract dispute.

What We Say, And Don't Say

Yesterday, I read a piece by Joseph Epstein in the Wall Street Journal, "Maybe It's Time for Jewish Self-Segregation", prompted by the increase in American anti-semitism, some from elements on the Right and institutionally on the Left, mainstreamed by academic theory as I've described before.

I was startled to see this anecdote which Epstein recounted as occurring when he was five.

My father asked me what I had learned in school one day, and I told him the poem "Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe", which I began to recite.  When I came to the n-word - before "tiger" had been substituted as a more appropriate alternative - my father angrily stopped me and told me I was never to use the word again, especially since our people, like the Negroes (as they were called then), had been long persecuted and called all sorts of terrible names.

Epstein was born in 1937 so this occurred in 1942.  What caught my attention is that I had a very similar experience with my father when I was probably six, in 1957, when attending a summer day camp for the first time.  I had already learned the version of Eenie, Meenie with "tiger" but that day a camper told me there was another version, though he did not explain why, and recited it to me. I had no idea what the n-word meant. Either that day or the next I was sitting next to my dad while he drove and I recited the version using the n-word as something new I'd learned.  Like Epstein's father, my dad angrily stopped me, explained why it was a bad word, and told me never to say it again.  I can't remember if he also, like Epstein's dad, referenced the Jewish experience, but he did at other times, telling me of what it was like growing up and encountering prejudice as a member of the only Jewish family in a small Connecticut town in the 1920s and 30s.

I'm 73 now, dad passed a decade ago, and I've not said that word since that day.  It wasn't only what he told me - he lived his life in a way that I could see by how he treated people and who he had as friends that this meant a great deal to him, and so it did to me.

Remnants

But it’s weird to be a Jew in Prague. While there is a remnant of Jews still living there, you can't help but be struck by the museum-like nature of the Jewish presence in the city.

You should read this Substack article by Russ Roberts on his recent trip to Prague.

Jewish life may not be vibrant but tourism for Jews and about Jews is quite healthy. The Jewish part of town is thronged with visitors eager to see those old synagogues, the Holocaust memorial, and the Jewish cemetery.

And yes, some Jews still live in Europe 80 years after the Holocaust. But the Jewishness of Prague and Vienna and similar capitals is in the past rather than the present. There is something macabre about savoring the Jewishness of Prague’s past knowing how the story ended.  

I knew this of course before I went to Prague, at least in some abstract sense. Visiting in person makes vivid what has been lost.

We visited Prague in 2014.  Lovely city.  We also visited the Jewish sites, including the memorial with the names of the tens of thousands transported to their death by the Nazis. 

I had an experience similar to Roberts' more than thirty years ago while visiting Worms, Germany in the early 90s.  I had a business trip to Europe which was to start with a meeting at our plant in Worms on a Monday and I decided to fly over early to help with the time adjustment, arriving on Saturday morning.

It was January when the daylight was already very limited and a gray mass hung low over the city during those nominal daylight hours creating a penetrating gloom on my walks.  The Nibelungen Hotel was my residence, decorated in a palate of grays, browns, and blacks, very appropriate to Worms and the time of year.  I visited the cemetery, the oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in Europe with its origins in the 11th century.  The Nazis destroyed all of the other Jewish cemeteries in Germany but were persuaded to keep the one in Worms for historical purposes.  It resembles the photo of the Prague cemetery (below) except that the trees are much older, thicker, taller, and more twisted.

Though the Jewish community was wiped out during the time of the Third Reich, there is a Jewish museum in Worms which I also visited.  It was a strange experience, leaving me feeling like a spectral figure peering into a lost past, the member of a lost tribe.  Perhaps it would be like an American Indian descendant from one of the New England tribes that exist today only in memory.

Roberts goes on to note another absence in Prague.

But one night in Prague, I realized that the lost Jewishness of Prague has a very strange bedfellow. I was sitting in St. Clement’s Cathedral listening to an hour-long concert of classical music’s greatest hits—Mozart, Bach, Pachelbel, Schubert, Vivaldi, and others. I realized that Judaism is not the only religion that is a shell of its former self in the sense of its role in the daily life and culture of a great city. The same would be true of Christianity. 

The Christian impulse that built such magnificent cathedrals and inspired some of the finest music human beings have ever composed, plays no role in the current culture of Prague any more than Judaism does.

 It was a strange moment for me, this realization of kinship between the two sister religions. It does make a difference that Christians were not herded into railroad cars and murdered as the Jews were. But both religions are essentially being kept alive by a remnant, a remnant that is not embedded in a serious way in the life of the city other than as a tourist attraction. I don't remember who made the observation but it is a deep one, that some of the greatest creations of human beings--the cathedrals in particular, but you could also include the music--were inspired by something very few Europeans believe in any longer—Christianity. 

As a Jew thinking about Christianity in Europe, what comes to mind is the Inquisition, the blood libels, the pogroms, and the church-driven expulsions from country after country. It’s harder to remember that Christianity was a revolution in how we human beings see ourselves. The post-Christian attempts to inspire a new way of seeing ourselves, communism and fascism, dwarf Christianity in their cruelty to the Jews and to humankind generally. 

Though not as dramatic as in Europe, we are also seeing an ebbing in Christian belief in the United States.  But people always need to believe in something.  Something will fill, and may already be filling, that need.

It's part of the new world that is emerging.  The Cold War ended in 1991 in a way that no one, other than Ronald Reagan, would have predicted a decade earlier.  Since then a new world has been struggling to emerge, an emergence accelerated, in retrospect, by the 2008 financial crisis, and which has been accelerating even more rapidly in recent years.  What the shape of that world will ultimately be is unpredictable.

A Little Extra From The Garden Hose

Super 70s Sports strikes again!

Yes, Mr and Mrs THC had a waterbed for about 15 years and it looked almost exactly like this one, except it had no mirror.  Like Three Year Letterman, we were able to purchase it without financing.

Our dog did puncture it once with his claw, necessitating emergency repairs.

Whenever romance was in the air, you always wanted to top it off with a little extra from the garden hose. pic.twitter.com/NkgES0ONKe

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) March 12, 2024

The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This

(Barrett Jackson Custom Auto Auction)

I can remember as a child, the Good Humor truck coming up the street on a summer afternoon while we were playing in the field across the street, its signature music blaring.  Unlike the Steve Wright joke, the song it played was not Helter Skelter. 

The title of this post is taken from the name of a song by Love from its 1967 masterpiece Forever Changes.

Summertime's here
And look over there
Flowers everywhere
In the morning, in the morning

Duster

I drove a Plymouth Duster (manufactured from 1969 to 76), passed on down from my dad.   Great car.  Slant-6 engine lasted forever; too bad the body rusted out so fast!  And, yes, it did not explode.

6. Won’t explode upon impact … pic.twitter.com/7go9xCL5pm

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) October 17, 2023

Reconstruction

We just returned from a week long trip to Paris.  Since the fire of 2019, Notre Dame has been converted into a giant construction site with a goal of reopening by the time of next year's Olympic Games in Paris.  The site is surrounded by large temporary walls on which are photos and text describing the details of the reconstruction process.  At night, the site resembles a massive factory complex as you can see from the photos below, which also show the two 6-story office complexes temporarily installed on the site.

The front of the cathedral still looks much like it did before the fire.  We look forward to the completion of the restoration.

On our last night we had a pleasant dinner at Restaurant Paul on the Place Dauphine, located near the west end of the Ille de la Cite, the island on which Notre Dame is situated.  These photos show the view as we stood up after finishing our meal, and then crossing the Seine via Pont Neuf as we walked back to our apartment.