john's thoughts

reflections on art and life, society etc

  • The Ghosts of Movies Past–The Uninvited

    I originally thought of this title for a series about old films some time ago and I guess the title came to me by way of memories of “A Christmas Carol.” But I waited long enough to begin, that it now fits the season of Halloween. By “ghosts” here, I mean mostly the former, the lingering effect of films, both in the minds of individuals and in the rather ephemeral but I think important national subconscious-at least the subconscious of movie fans. So I begin with two kinds of ghosts to talk about, the effect of a movie and the subject of the movie itself.

    “The Uninvited(1944), is, technically, an American film but it sure seems like a British one. Set in Cornwall in the spring-summer of 1937, it concerns a brother and sister(Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey)who, while on vacation, discover a large, long deserted house and become determined to buy it. He is a London music critic and composer and she is, apparently, independently well to do. They pool their resources and succeed in getting the house, purchasing it from the owner, a crusty old carryover from Victorianism(Donald Crisp), and also come into contact with his overprotected and somewhat intimidated granddaughter, Stella(Gail Russell).

    The film, like most at the time, and fortunately, I think, in this case, is in black and white. It begins with a wide-vision shot of the sea and the audience gets to see white caps as the waters come ashore on the rocks. They also get to hear the sound of this. Meanwhile, they hear Milland doing a voice-over regarding the coasts of lands that border this part of the sea and their propensity for providing a background for ghostly events. This all sets the scene nicely and puts the viewer in an agreeable tingly mood.

    I will not go into the film in great detail here, but you need to know a little of what happens. The granddaughter, much against her Grandfather’s wishes, makes friends, barely, with the two Londoners. She and Milland seem to have a quick, closeness between them, and the stage seems set for romance, particularly when Milland writes her a song. But instead there is uncertainty and fear(“Stella By Starlight” became a jazz/Great American Songbook hit–you still might hear Miles Davis’s and other versions of it on Sirius “Real Jazz”)

    On the first night brother and sister are together in their new home, Milland hears the sound of a woman sobbing. His sister explains that during the weeks he was cleaning up details in London and she was civilizing the house, she heard this several times, and no, it’s not Lizzie, the housekeeper, whose cat behaved oddly and refused to go upstairs. “It comes from everywhere and nowhere,” she says. Yes, indeed.

    Without going into revealing details, I will merely say that this is the beginning of a tense and compelling ghost story that does not terrify you with nut cases running around with chainsaws, but may make your hair re-arrange itself a couple of times and send through you a couple of chills, so you feel as if you had just come inside on a cold winter day. Questions are asked and not, immediately, anyway, answered. The history of the house is studied and eventually, after quite a bit of tension and suspense, there are a number of ghostly manifestations(along with some explanations, too).

    If you check this out on-line you will find many people praising it. But some regard it as weak stuff, nothing like today’s “shock” films with noise, blood and violence. This is, in my opinion, a good thing. This movie is not about physical violence. It is about subtle, spiritual and psychological haunting and the different but still chilling fear it can bring. It is way more sophisticated than the gross chop ’em to bits type. It is by far my favorite supernatural film–“The Haunting” from the 1960’s would be second, but for all its qualities it is not equal to this.

    Part of the reason for this film’s excellence is found in the efforts of the director, Lewis Miller. Every scene seems to fit, to be an integral part of the story. The appearance and atmosphere of the house are allowed to play a significant role, but one you see or sense in the background, just part of the scenery of chills. When the manifestations do appear, they are not clear–they are foggy and indistinct, like something from a dream or a surrealist artist, as if telling us that this is not just a matter of other people, it’s other people from outside our reality, but real and perhaps threatening all the same.

    Given the movie’s age you might expect to creak a little bit–and it does, but only slightly. Some of the romance is a bit contrived and the attempts at humor are clearly several decades behind the curve. But these count little, they are a small part of the overall story, maybe 5% or less of the movie. And there is the brief presence of the elegant and unusual Cornelia Otis Skinner who in a very busy life acted a little bit and maybe should have more. Her teacher/counsellor is a combination of authoritarianism and doubtful sanity that you won’t forget.

    This is not a movie for people who want to be “shocked” by violence and mayhem and screaming. It is about the mystery and spookiness of encountering the supernatural and trying to figure it out, and being both afraid on one hand and anxious to learn on the other. It’s a film for people who like mystery in the most serious and meaningful sense of the term, the kind that sneaks up on you after midnight, and spooks your mind and soul rather than threatening your body. In an era where so many movies have the grossest violence with almost no subtlety at all, it is a reminder of civilized behavior and presumes it can exist among both those of flesh and blood and the wandering spirits. Try it, you might really like it.

    (Other than the common title, this film has nothing to do with the one made in the late 2000’s, maybe 2009 or thereabouts. I watched about 20 or 25 minutes of it once which was enough to determine that 1) The stories are not connected and 2) I was wasting my time)

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  • American Attitudes and Capital Punishment

    The Vietnam War was the first war which brought to the American people on the home front what really was going on; this meant that even those most reluctant to look at the world honestly were hard pressed not to admit the brutality in it. This was largely because of pictures, mostly TV news coverage, which came into its own at about this time(that’s another blog subject, right there). But old-fashioned still photographs played a large role too and there were two which stand out in the memories of those of us who remember Vietnam and that whole time and experience.

    One of them is of a naked little girl crying and running down a street while behind her bombs go off and there is incredible destruction. The juxtaposition of innocent childhood and horrifying violence was unforgettable. But I’ll bet almost as many would list as most memorable Eddie Adams’s brutally honest photograph of a South Vietnamese police official executing an accused Viet Cong terrorist by shooting him in the head at extremely close range.

    This picture is relevant to what I have to say now in that it is honest and depicts unedited and unsweetened the violence of execution. One cannot look at it and not be made to shiver at the human condition. This is part of what I wish to address right now. I want to discuss the execution which took place last week in which the State of AL executed Kenneth Eugene Smith by use of nitrogen gas. I will get back to the Viet Nam photograph and its importance in due time.

    Smith had committed a murder in 1988, a vicious murder for hire in which he had killed a woman for money. He was obviously a terrible person then. I don’t know what he was last week before they took his life. But I do know this. I am not quite willing to say I oppose capital punishment absolutely and in all ways at all times. There could be some exceptions. But they would be few. I hate this form of punishment and I am not fond of people, particularly politicians, who are cheerleaders for it. If you had to list me as an an opponent or supporter of capital punishment, “opponent” would be the right column. 
    But except for a brief time about a half century ago during which the US Supreme Court had forbidden it, capital punishment has been with the US since its inception and looks like staying for some time. (It had, of course, been with nearly all nations from their inception in the past, but the great majority have now dispensed with it). The question becomes–or at least a question arises–How is it to be carried out?

     I wish we didn’t have to answer this question but the fact is we do, so here are some thoughts. Throughout history there have been many brutal and intentionally cruel executions.(Somewhat counter-intuitively, the viciousness seems to have reached its height not during the supposedly gruesome Middle Ages, but during the presumably more compassionate Renaissance–not everything, apparently was better) Others simply took life without regard to the pain involved or, perhaps. in spite of it. There have been attempts to make it more humane. 

    One way of keeping capital punishment legal is to protect people from grasping how awful it is, how likely not only to cause suffering when inflicted, but how inclined to degrade those who order it and those who carry it out, and indeed how it coarsens and cheapens the entire society that allows this. One way of preventing people from thinking about this a great deal is to shield them from it, the way older relatives often(and frequently stupidly)try to shield children from the harsher realities of life. This means not too exact descriptions of the execution itself. Use the relatives of the prisoner and the relatives of the victim for whose death he is being executed. Describe their faces and their reactions and get some quotes from them. But be careful of describing the execution in too much detail. Concentrate on the fact of what happened, but less on the details; do not allow the middle middle(sic) class ladies to whom life is a long tea party and people are all “nice” or “not nice” to learn too much of this rather extreme example of not niceness.

    This would be particularly true of photography. Don’t let the photographers too close, discourage pictures of the the actual execution and the pain that may be involved, and don’t upset the reader/viewer with too much nastiness. If they ever really turned on nastiness who knows who or what they’d go after and with what results?So while you cannot treat this in any way lightly, don’t let it get too degraded–too offensive–too off putting to your customers. Keep them protected–keep them happy or at least not too unhappy Don’t let then think about the man who carries out the duty and his family and friends. Don’t let them think about his humanity or lack thereof or what he does in his spare time, or what the duty does to him and those who love him. And if you keep the reporting clean, then likely most of them won’t think about it whole lot.

    In the days of the internet this gets a little harder to do, particularly as restrictions, legal or prudential, apply less and less., There are some fairly graphic descriptions of Smith’s execution available. USA Today ran a story in which it recounted the following details–The execution took about 22 minutes. “Smith appeared to convulse and shake vigorously for about four minutes after the nitrogas began flowing …” It took another two or three minutes before he seemed to lose consciousness. 

    Through this all he appeared to be gasping. None of us knows of course, for certain, how long he was conscious or to what extent he was conscious. So we use our own judgement–or guesses–as to how bad this was. But as for me, I simply think that it was terrible and it should never have happened. If the state is going to execute people, surely its enough to take their lives. Torture should not be part of the process and any government which pursues a policy that intentionally or not includes torture degrades itself, its people and their civilization.

    It’s not hard to kill someone humanely, assuming that such a thing can be done in a humane fashion at all. There are lots of ways you could do it. A blunt instrument, for example or a shot in the head. And now we are close to getting back to the Adams photo from Vietnam, aren’t we? I think that the whole issue here has something to do with not getting blood on our hands–literally, particularly, but also figuratively as far as possible. This means being(willfully?)ignorant of facts. And that’s why the Vietnam photograph is such a straightforward part of what I mean. Largely protected by this attitude, we want to go on as if nothing much has happened, as if the executions were carried out quietly and efficiently and the condemned man died quickly and without being tortured. 

    But too much honesty brings doubts about this point of view. The thing about the Vietnam picture is that it does two things important to our subject and they are somewhat contradictory. It depicts an execution by handgun in which a South Vietnamese police commander shot a suspected Viet Cong terrorist in the head at short range, almost no range. The picture was snapped simultaneously with the shot. The condemned man appears to be in great pain. The executioner may well have quite literally gotten blood on himself. This is the sort of thing to be avoided if you want to avoid controversy about capital punishment 

    But conversely, it shows something else. It shows the prisoner in extreme pain, but any rational person looking at it should note that the pain was almost certainly very short–like about 2 seconds. So there is a way in which the picture works both sides of the street. It both shows us the brutal violence and also shows a way of execution that would be, if not painless, then at least mercifully short. There would not be any physical torture involved.

    So where does this leave us? Sadly about where we were. I will say this further about the Viet Nam picture. It shows, to repeat myself, two things. Execution is a violent, awful thing. But, secondly, however violent and gory it is as it happens, it is possible that it can be done quickly and without prolonged torture. Regarding the first, the efforts to suppress the details–admittedly not widespread and not very successful– usually don’t work and probably wouldn’t even if they were more seriously pursed. . Their main effect, in fact, may be to provide an additional thrill to those who, for whatever, perverse reason, actually enjoy pictures of violence and killing. The ones who are considered persuadable may not be so to a very great extent. Anyway, that’s how I perceive the opinions of officialdom. I doubt if they work much but, however hypocritical, they go on. A lot of “nice people” simply won’t look, they’ll simply tune into “Hallmark” and forget it..

    The second thing about the Vietnam picture is actually, I think, more important in what it says about us as a people. One of the things that infuriates me most about capital punishment in our country is that millions of dollars are spent trying to figure out “humane” ways of doing this with drugs of some kind. Despite this US capital punishment nonetheless almost surely sometimes induces pain, perhaps torture. The Rev. Jeffrey Hood, who ministered to Smith in his last days, said he had no doubt that the thing was torture. He called it the most horrible thing he’d ever seen. And this could be so much simpler and humane(Yes, I know, each state would have to make its own law on this OR the US Supreme Court would have to set some boundaries–not easy and not impossible) But why not  something like the photograph shows? Tie the condemned in a chair. The executioner, standing by with a loaded pistol, would then shoot him in the side of the head at a range of about a foot. It would be over in a few seconds or less. Or he could use a large club which would be even quicker.

    But something in the public mind rebels at this. I guess we want to think we’re too “nice” to do that–a violent act at close range in which the identity of the executioner is not hidden and for which everyone, to some extent is responsible. But, no, we want to hide it away–have it done by some kind of weird drug combination which may not work well and which may cause torture. But nobody gets blood on themselves, literally, in the process, or figuratively, and therefore the society feels itself less guilty

    If you insist on drugs, how about a bit of common sense? Give them a huge overdose of one of the many drugs which are certain death if taken in excess and accompanied by a large amount of alcohol.  This would also, for what it’s worth, be less expensive. It would also put an end to drawn out legal cases over what form of execution should be allowed. So why not be both merciful and sensible and use one or more of the more humane choices? There are quite possibly other ways than those I have suggested. Feel free to make comments on that and think about the whole question. Let’s make executions in our country a thing of the past or at least so rare that they will almost never occur. And if that’s a long term plan or an impossible one , let’s make them less brutal.  It’s the kindest thing for everyone involved– including the “nice” people.

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  • Where do we go from here?

    This is the question left to the country after the NH primary. It settled some things but left others still in doubt. Like Fareed Zakaria on CNN news I have a “take” on some things and here is mine on NH and more broadly, the Presidential contest after NH

    How is Trump doing with his party?–Pretty well, I’d have to say. He has somewhere between 1/3 and half of Republicans in his pocket and can do pretty much whatever he wants and keep them and their voting power. He is also widely followed and even respected and admired by a fair number of Republican voters who don’t quite fall into category no 1. His one serious issue within the party is that despite the foregoing, there are still a lot of Republicans(maybe close to 50% of them according to the NH stats)who mistrust him. 

    This mistrust is no doubt deeper among some than others, and it is difficult to guess at what the percentages are there. Also, NH is less likely to be a Trump state than a lot of others(SC, for example)which further complicates matters. But on the whole, I’d say he has to worry some about at least 1/3 of rank and file Republicans who still have their doubts. It is likely that many will come around eventually and be back in the tent before election day. But how many, and in what states?

    What can be stated for sure is that Trump is the dominant voice(the only one)in the Republican party now and he has the party machinery and its large wealth at his beck and call. He is likely to use both to his advantage in the campaign.

    How is Trump doing with other voters?–Outside the GOP its harder to measure this. Using NH as a measure, however, and some polling elsewhere, it appears he is doing badly, as would be expected, among Democrats. This is likely not much of a worry to the Republicans, but what might be is that he seems to be fairly badly among independents at the moment. This could change, of course, but he did not do well with them in NH where he lost about 60% of their votes. This is likely to be a close Presidential election and he needs more than that performance would show he’s getting among them to be competitive. Obviously he might do better among independents elsewhere than he did in NH but he needs to take advantage of any opportunity with them. This will be harder to do if he continues to get more shrill and contentious as he seems to have done in the last day or so with Haley. He may be the first Presidential candidate ever to turn nasty during a victory statement. He appeared to be too thin skinned to accept an 11-point victory if it was not followed by surrender from his opponent.

    How is Biden doing with his own party?-He is also doing pretty well if he keeps the question to his own folks, the Democrats. In fact, it looks as if he might make a plausible case that he does better among Dems than Trump does with Republicans. For complex reasons we won’t pursue here and now, Biden’s name was not on the NH ballot. But a write-in campaign was organized to keep him from being embarrassed by the results and without campaigning he ran up something in excess of 80% of the vote. MN multi-millionaire Dean Phillips finished with a feeble less-than-20%. Of course it is not impossible that other challenges may appear inside the party, but the chances of a serious one seem low.

    How does Biden do elsewhere?–Well, he’s not encouraged by this as much as by the party, but it could be worse. He has had startlingly low approval ratings, particularly considering the low unemployment rate. This seems to be from a number of causes, two in particular. Those would be the(mis?)perception of the US economy’s status and personal doubts about the President’s competence. 

    The economic issue has been contentious for sometime and is complicated. No reasonable person can complain about low unemployment, consistently below 4%. But not many seem to be noticing much. Come to think of it the US has not had a bad unemployment time that lasted very long for more than 40 years. The rise in unemployment that began with the Carter and Volker team’s anti-inflation drive peaked during 1981 and unemployment topped out at around 10%. It is not much remembered now, but Reagan was fairly unpopular for about the first year he was in office because of rising unemployment.(It wasn’t all his fault but as usual the guy at the top takes most of the heat) People in the 40-65 age range constitute a huge portion of the US electorate, but the majority of them have no or only a vague memory of this time. One hopes that they never have to find out that however difficult inflation may be, recessions are usually worse.

    The economy is very complicated and clearly paying more at the gasoline pump or the check out line at the supermarket are financially painful and not inclined to help incumbents. But gasoline prices have tended downward in recent weeks and inflation overall looks just a tad better. Also, there has been a small uptick in Biden’s popularity with the public. It is a not unreasonable thought that there could be a connection here. If the better economy continues, the Dems are almost certain to profit from it.

    The issue of Biden’s ability to do the job is difficult. l personally, I don’t doubt that mentally he is up to it. He actually has a fairly long list of accomplishments, mostly economic and mostly not immediately impactful, which attracts little attention and support. He appears to have played an active role in bringing this about. And his speeches are usually coherent and well delivered. Despite his long term- and still there- tendency to the occasional gaffe, he usually makes sense and shows balance. The same cannot be said for Trump who often appears to be mentally out of control, particularly when he is angry and petulant about something. Since this seems to be a lot of the time this is quite manifest, the most recent example being his graceless and self-centered “victory speech” I mentioned above. We all feel anger from time to time, but a person who can’t control his has no business in the Presidency.

    Biden’s greatest weakness in his presentation of himself to the public, however, does have to do with his age. Although I’m not personally that much worried about it, he gives and impression of lack of energy. He seems tired much of the time, not incapable of thinking or planning at all, but perhaps not tops at pushing things, pursuing ideas and plans and, frankly, intimidating people as a President sometimes needs to do. I think he would be likely to do OK with this in a second term but there may be a lot of members of the public who would disagree with me. A number of people, who might otherwise vote Democratic, might withhold their Presidential vote or vote for another candidate. A few might vote for Trump.

    Trump, on the other hand, has a powerful voice and manages to exude self confidence even when saying something ridiculous. He sounded very authoritative the other night while confusing Haley and Pelosi. How this plays with the public I don’t know. I like to tell myself they most of them will eventually see and reject his mistakes and bluffs, but I say nothing for sure about this.

    Three is still a long way to go in getting delegates. Is it all over on the Republican side? No, there’s still room for Trump to make a serious mistake and it is always possible(though this appears less and less likely)that the various prosecutions of Trump might bring to light information that would cost him votes. The smart money seems to be going on the idea that nothing will come of those cases in various courts until after the election. Time will tell.

    Regardless, here’s a nightmare scenario for the US and the world. Suppose little if anything comes out from the court cases before the elections. Trump is elected. Then, shortly after the election information begins to emerge from the prosecutions(Jack Smith’s is the best bet)that Trump did in fact commit serious crimes. But now he’s President-elect and any attempt to stop his ascendency to the Presidency will almost surely result in legions of Proud Boys and other semi-lunatics in the street? What do you suppose would be the next big thing?

    Well, there’s still a lot of time. There’s no need to go into deep depression yet. Just watch what’s happening and rather than keeping your powder dry, keep your minds alert.

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  • Long evening but short answers

    It was a long evening if you chose to watch last night. I chose not to after the first reports established that Trump was going to win easily, something about 90% of the serious viewers were expecting. I might have watched a little more if the combination of a long, cold, hard day and a couple of glasses of dry sherry hadn’t given me an unexpected hour and a half or so of sleep. But it made no difference in that I missed little if anything of import.

    All of us who watched knew Trump was going to win big–the only question was how big? The answer turned out to be a lot, though not quite an avalanche or even a landslide. The real importance is that it was enough–more than enough–to established that Trump is the only dominant leader in this new(??)GOP that has emerged in the last decade or so. Since he more than doubled the combined vote totals of DiSantis and Haley, and since there are no big name Republicans sitting on the sidelines who might aspire to party leadership of one kind or another, he is firmly in charge.

    At the same time the win is not quite overwhelming as an indication he owns the party–not yet, anyway. That will take at least one more try, obviously in NH, to determine. His total last night came to 51% which is impressive, but still means that nearly half the participants voted for somebody else. The question is, how many of these people would be OK with voting for Trump if he gets the nomination, how many would be outraged and possibly refuse to vote for him, and how many would fall in between those two extremes. This may be difficult to decide and take some time

    But it may not matter much in the long run. Likely Trump is going to get the nomination, though he leaves IA with only an 11 delgate lead so far. But DiSantis’s campaign looks to be about done. He is not likely to do well in NH, a state which follows his ideas to a rather small extent, in politics, economics, cultural issues or whatever. And if he doesn’t do well, say runs a poor third there, it might be folding up the tent time, or at least time to quit talking as if his nomination is likely or even within hailing distance of being likely. In other words he must do well in NH or it’s almost certainly the end of his chances for the nomination.

    Nicky Haley finished third, not far behind DiSantis. That is respectable considering the polls of several months ago which showed her far behind. But I’m pretty sure she hoped for better than her 19.1% of the votes, 2.1% behind the beleaguered FL governor. She and her people are attempting to put a positive spin on this and they may succeed to some degree. But she is short of where she and her supporters had hoped to be and NH is likely her last serious chance to establish herself. 

    Of course, she might succeed. NH people are independent and largely moderate to liberal in many of their opinions. And, very importantly, NH has an easy open primary where a registered voter gets to chose their party ballot without fuss or hassle. This means a lot of Democrats and Independents could flock into the GOP primary where few of them would vote for Trump or DiSantis. So this means Haley might get a boost from moderate reminded Republicans and a few outsiders. As we have previously noted, the most recent poll showed her within single digits of Trump and a victory could liven her campaign considerably. Even a small loss of one or two points might help. I have mentioned these possibilities before, but they bear repeating because NH is likely the last chance for stopping the Trump juggernaut. Slow him down there or it’s likely all over.

    Well, except that there are still those court cases out there. The civil case regarding a defamation issue with writer E Jean Carroll opened today and Trump(unnecessarily, legally speaking)attended. This one, given the public’s tolerance for Trumpian misbehavior is likely to give the country more light than heat and little enough of that. As I mentioned the other day, I think Jack Smith is the one who has the goods on Trump. But as time goes on it appears more and more likely that Trump’s people will keep this potentially damaging case out of the public’s mind until after the election. Then it will be too late to change much.

    So, I think the US is heading for another Trump-Biden race. There are, as noted above, a couple of places where the former President could stumble, but it looks less and less likely. Biden faces no such challenges, only the ones imposed upon him by age and appearance, and, just as importantly, by the public’s apparent ignorance of his accomplishments and unwillingness to acknowledge that there are ways in which things are getting better, economically. This means a long but not very exciting time for politics junkies and news people, but it appears now that this election season may be fairly dull–until the election is on the horizon. Then–well, it’s anyone’s guess. In the meantime remember the often quoted Chinese curse of centuries ago–“may you live in interesting times.”

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  • Leader AWOL, competitors nervous

    The last debate begore the primary/caucus season begins is tonight in Iowa. Far from the stage full of Republican hopefuls we saw a few months ago, we are now down to two, one time SC Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, and FL Gov Ron DeSantis. Not that there aren’t others who are still trying. The most notable of these is one time NJ Gov Chris Christie, who didn’t meet the requirements for getting on camera this time.

    But he’s still the only announced GOP candidate who is willing to say out and out what he thinks of Trump. And to hear him tell it, he’s not going anywhere. And he is, I think, likely telling the truth on that. He usually does, however odd that makes him among Republican leaders.

    The obvious MIA candidate is former President and current front runner Donald J Trump who is supposed to hold some campaign event this evening while the debate is going on. Trump has been said to be perfectly happy to stay out of the debates as long as he maintains his lead. This strategy has served him well enough so far, but I do think there may be a time limit on it. Unless he can wrap things up quickly, some people, even some Trump people, may begin to ask uncomfortable questions, such as “Why won’t he go on TV with the others? What’s he think he would be risking?”

    These are reasonable enough questions and likely ones Trump and his people don’t want to have to answer. They may not have to, but I’ll bet a shiver went through them when that poll was released yesterday that showed Haley had closed in on him in New Hampshire to the point where his once 20+ point lead had faded to single digits.

    Now I know IA is not NH and that their way of choosing a candidate in their “caucus” is unusual, not to say unique. I also know that the IA results are often confusing and frequently have temporarily put the brakes on apparently successful campaigns–but usually only temporarily. But the NH news still has to be disturbing. What if IA, always a wild card, yields a different winner than Trump, or anyway a smaller than expected victory? And then he goes on to lose NH or win it by only a couple of points?

    I personally feel that the court cases against him are potentially damaging. Jack Smith seems to have the real goods on him and I think the information from that trial might be enough to sink Trump’s chances. But his tactics of delay look as if they are going to work and the facts won’t get out until after the election. If he should win the election and then the facts get out before the inauguration and are damaging, the US could face a very dicey situation, which might call on both(or all?)sides to exercise the greatest restraint and good will. And good luck with that one.

    As to tonight, it may be interesting–maybe not. DiSantis has never seemed to me to be anywhere near presidential material and while his public persona has improved slightly as his people have taught him how to present himself, he still doesn’t look like a President to me. Since he is trying to be the Trump who isn’t Trump there are likely to be few big surprises. 

    Haley is obviously the superior of the two in intelligence and personality and could score a knockout, though knocking out DiSantis with Trump still leading could be meaningless in the long run. She has handled herself well most of the time, though she had to work her way through a downer when she flubbed that Civil War question. It should have been obvious that the most sensible and patriotic thing to say(and also most likely, the most politically astute one)was that the root cause was slavery, though you could make it a bit more complicated by discussing constitutional issues–like secession.

    I look forward to hearing both of them quizzed on two things–immigration, particularly the mess on our southern border, and foreign policy/national security, particularly Ukraine-and Gaza and the Houthis and Iran, and ISIS and–well, you get the idea. Biden is vulnerable on the southern border issue since his administration seems to have failed to find anything approaching an effective and desirable approach for three years. Of course the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama/Trump administrations failed for around a quarter of a century, but the situation is worse now and obviously something new is needed. It may be interesting to see what the two competitors tonight have to say.

    On the other foreign policy issues Biden has done well(except for Afghanistan)and his main trouble, like with much of his domestic policy, is getting the word out. It should be at least mentioned, of course, that both the Ukraine issue and the mess in Gaza are dangerous flashpoints and one or both of them could explode. There is the potential for real trouble with each of them and the Republicans in Congress, particularly in the House of Representatives, are not looking cooperative.

    When it comes to foreign policy DiSantis has pretty much followed the Trump line, to the extent you can find a coherent one. Halley has shown much more common sense and understanding of the difficulties the world and therefore the US face at this time and has also shown some interest in and possibly talent for, coping with them. This may not be a big part of this evening’s exercise, but be alert to the possibilities.

    Personally, I look forward to both the spin from supporters and the analysis from reporters. I might try of little bit of that myself.

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  • My animal(s)

    I have to go with the cat–or cats, if you will–when I was growing up it was definitely uncool for guys to like cats. But I did and still do.(Actually, TV commercials seem to be trying to indicate guys can be cat-lovers too, now–progress!!)Actually, I’m one of those (unusual?)people who deeply loves both dogs and cats, but I also have to be a cat-man if forced to choose. I love their purring and their supposed indifference to people which for some becomes a deep love–I love their tendency to feel out your feelings and treat you accordingly–I love the cat curled in my lap or with his paws on my chest, kneading me a little bit(OK–small ouch)-I love the glow of mystery and privacy that always surrounds cats, but that they share with you in their own way and at their own time and pace–As a member of ASPCA I donate and fight for all animals, but cats are first, last and always my friends-JBP

    Daily writing prompt
    What is your favorite animal?
    View all responses
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  • Some reading at Christmas–but maybe not Christmas reading

    Like last year I have chosen to tell you about some reading I think you might find enjoyable and/or inspiring and/or interesting. It is not “Christmas reading”in the the way people usually use that term since it has nothing directly to do with Christmas. But since it invites you into the considerations of religious philosophy–questions about faith, doubt, meaning etc I think it may be said to fit the season–or at least some of it will–could depend upon your mood.

    I LIKE ANN LAMOTT A LOT

    Anne Lamott, “Hallelujah Anyway Rediscovering Mercy”, copyright 2017, Riverhead Books, 176 pages

    If you read my article on Anne Lamott about a year ago, or if you’ve read some of her since, then you sort of know what to expect. You know this wasn’t a book written for people who think every religious expression should be couched in terms acceptable in a grade school level Sunday school class. Well, Anne is obviously very fond of young children, but that’s not her style. If there’s such a thing as a hard-boiled(if soft hearted)religious writer with a flair for (sometimes slightly raunchy)humor, then she’s it. So enjoy

    Anne begins this one by observing there are times in just about every life during which the person needs help or answers or something along that line. But where do you look, particularly if you’ve already experienced some of the usual answers and found them unsatisfactory? She quotes the Old Testament prophet Micah who she opines likely looked like a stoner and smelled like a goat, But he asked, famously, what we needed to do but “do justice and love mercy,and walk humbly with thy God.”

    Now I’m sure a lot of religious writers have quoted this, but then followed with advice that was pietistic or unrealistic or both. But Anne won’t do that to you because she’s honest with herself about herself and so she’s honest with the reader too, “Right off the bat I can tell you that ‘walk humbly with thy God’ is not going to happen anytime soon for me or my closest friends. Arrogance R Us”(She reversed the R but I can’t)

    So, you now know to a large extent who you are dealing with here. A woman who won’t take BS and won’t lay any on you. She knows her own feeling and failings and she know those of her friends and she knows those of the human race. And she has developed around 2000 opinions and several hundred jokes about them. And she’s fallen into the clutches of BS sometimes and has tasted failure and addiction, abandonment and depression But “Hallelujah Anyway.”

    Her book is a kind of rambling reflection on life and what it’s taught her. It is vaguely but not more than vaguely chronological. She often gives you specifics of experiences and then explains how she dealt with them–or, sometimes, failed to deal with them. Her writing, as always, is fast and uncomplicated, though the lady and her thoughts are certainly not.

    On p 48 she tells us “The path away from judgement of self and neighbor …requires giving and, horribly, receiving. Going without either of them leads to fundamentalism of all stripes, and fundamentalism is the bane of poor Mother Earth.” There’s no way out, sometimes she says, except admitting that you’re wrong and and sorry. You don’t want to. It’s hard to do.

    “But I can’t launch forgiveness of my own volition …To have borne broken hearts and seen such broken lives around the world is what gave us a shot at becoming mercy people.”

    Later Anne tells us the story of the Good Samaritan. Nearly everyone knows the story, but she goes over all the main points just in case you’ve forgotten, ending with an explanation of how the Samaritan got the injured man to an Inn-Keeper “who welcomed them both.”

    Then she adds, “Who is our neighbor? The person who helps us when we are suffering. And implicit in this story is Jesus saying, you go do this too. …The reviled Samaritan might be …a person at the other end of the poitical spectrum. In Texas it would be a drag queen tottering up to a Tea Partier in a ditch …Those who have gotten sober all began as the man in the ditch …But they also wanted us to extend ourselves to our own horrible selves …It was and is the hardest work ever. ” And as a recovering alcoholic of many years standing, Anne knows.

    And so it goes. Anne knows the bottoms and the tops, has seen them both, lived them both, and survived to tell the tale. Now married for the first time and trying to stay on good terms with a 29 year old son who inherited some of her instability, she’s doing OK–maybe. But nothing is easy–or has been in her past.

    “I converted to Christianity while I was drunk … and about a year later, several months sober, I was baptized.” She phoned her pastor first and said she couldn’t go through with it, she was too damaged and foul to do it. He told her “to get my butt over to church, that I wasn’t going to heal sitting alone on my …houseboat. He said that I didn’t have to get it together before I could be included, and, in fact, couldn’t get it together without experiencing inclusion.” So she went ahead with it and therein hangs a tale, some of which you’ve just heard. Of course some of it turns up in nearly everything she has written, too.

    She particularly makes her point in her final chapter which begins with the statement that mercy began to reach out to her when she was five. She was with her father who was fishing with another man. The other man made a crack about her hair.
    “Then he used the most evil word on earth, in a declaration about who must have been hiding in the woodpile. And my dad, the love of my life … laughed.” Her father did nothing and later said nothing to her to indicate he thought the other guy was a jerk and he just wanted to placate him. He noticed than Anne was feeling terrible on the way home and suggested she grow thicker skin. “This would turn out to be the battle cry of my childhood. I should have thicker skin, i.e., just be someone else entirely.”

    She carried this anger and pain for years and one day during a psychoanalytic session, a revelation came to her-“And I suddenly saw and could feel in my adult heart that my father had viewed the fisherman as a harmless, helpless, jovial, ignorant redneck. He was not colluding with him but understanding him. …I forgave myself for the fisherman’s words and behavior.”

    And her message, sometimes stated pretty outwardly, sometimes not, is there. We all have needs and we all have bad feelings and sometimes do wrong things. Try to understand those who have wounded you, but don’t forget in the process to forgive yourself.
    “The world keeps going on. You can have yet another cup of coffee and keep working on your plans. Or you can take the risk to be changed, surrounded, and indwelled by that strange yeasty mash called mercy, there for the asking.”

    Sound too easy? Maybe, but try it sometime–may be harder than you think–and more rewarding. In any event, hats off to Anne Lamott for showing us a way nearly all of us knew was there somewhere, but which most of us likely forgot along the way.


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  • The Republicans, Steve & Edie, and the Editor of the National Review

    I watched most of the Republican debate last night, though I admit to nodding off towards the end. I also watched TV, mostly CNN, this morning to see how people were reacting. Here are a few immediate(therefore suspect, but I hope passably and decently considered)reactions of mine–

    Vivek Ramaswamy–I praised his intelligence and articulation about a month or so ago. I am glad I never praised anything else about him and I don’t think I ever shall. Wasting his potential articulateness and his intelligence, he has chosen to go for making noise, being the loudest, most intrusive and obnoxious of the candidates. He might even make Trump look like a gentleman. He has no restraint and is very short on honesty or common sense or both If he actually believes his incredulous “inside job” stuff, then he’s lacking in sense. If he is doing it because he thinks a lot of ignorant fanatics will follow him, he’s just demagoging it. Given the depths of self-deception and insidious twisting of truth the human mind is capable of, it is not impossible that he’s doing a bit of both. His only significant influence will be as a spoiler and he may fall short of spoiling very much. I hope that is the case.

    Ron Disantis is rising a bit in the polls and seems to be learning some of the rules of the game. From a strictly technical point of view he did better last night, mostly getting his facts straight(mostly!!)and largely keeping his voice down and not shouting, except when losing his temper with Nikki Halley. He still has personality issues and this difficulty will be hard,–perhaps impossible–to fix. He just seems unsympathetic to me. I also dislike most of what he says, which I find largely warmed over far right BS, possibly distilled a bit to make him sound less like Trump.

    Nikki Halley is the most impressive of the Republicans who actually have a chance of getting the nomination. Well rehearsed and well groomed, she is photogenic and articulate and, very importantly, she is capable of expressing outrage(Disantis and Ramaswarmy gave her plenty of reason)without sounding shrill, hysterical and out of control. Although I disagree with her on a lot of issues, she at least seems to offer some respect to those who differ from her and to be willing to seek compromise. She also has a good sense of international issues and US commitments abroad. She could be a tough candidate to beat, particularly if she was wise in her choice of a running mate.

    Chris Christie is my pick of the lot and the one(well, maybe Vivek too, I guess) who clearly has no chance of being nominated. The ONLY one on stage who was ready to launch an out and out attack on Trump and tell the whole truth about the former President, I though he was very effective. He also did a good job, both morally and technically, of defending Nikki from some of Ramaswamy’s more goofy sounding and insulting remarks. He managed, in an era of assumed sexual equality, to look like a old-fashioned gentleman defending a wronged lady, but doing so without demeaning her. Ramaswamy likely made this easier by behaving like such a jerk.

    Chris is at 2% of the Republican voters surveyed, which makes him essentially tied with Ramaswamy. But before jumping to conclusions, consider this. Ramaswamy really wants to be President. He apparently has deluded himself into thinking he has a chance now. And his 2% is among the people he needs, people who will be likely to vote in the Republican primaries. With Chris it is different. He has no chance of becoming President this election and he knows it. His only desire is to thwart Trump. So it’s more important how he polls among the larger population. A higher reading there would enhance his prestige among the public and ought to have some effect upon the party. Furthermore, he IS polling well in New Hampshire as is Halley; NH is the only state I know of so far which has chosen to, for the moment at least, favor the two unarguably sane and intelligent Republican candidates. How Chris does in later polls which might show the public’s taste at considerable variance from MAGA Republicans could be very important. Also, if he should win in NH he might be on his way–not to the White House, but to an honorable position as the man who kept Trump out of it.

    OK, enough politics for the moment. You may have noticed a show entitled “Steve Lawrence and Edie Gorme–My Mom and Dad” which has played on PBS recently. I think it’s a one timer, not part of a series. I haven’t seen it yet but I’ve got it on the DVR and certainly look forward to seeing it. If you would look at my first blog, more than a year and a half ago, you will find them mentioned.

    Steve and Edie were popular for years, but I think of them as coming mainly in that time when old fashioned Great American Songbook -type pop music was being driven out by rock. I don’t hate rock, incidentally, I actually like some of it quite well. But I loved the old, more adult seeming(to me, anyway)music which preceded it, particularly when, as with Steve and Edie, it bore some relation to the slower, more romantic part of jazz, what I like to call “night club jazz.” It appears the show will be repeated several times in the near future, so check your local PBS station for details. You won’t regret it–I hope.

    Then there’s Ramesh Ponnuru, editor of the National Review. He recently gave me a good reason to make one more comment here and to combine politics and music. On a recent(the most recent)version of “Face the Nation,” the moderator asked for comments about the remarkable ongoing career of the Rolling Stones. The other three participants were at least somewhat praising of them, but not Mr Ponnuru.

    Pursuing a version of conservatism which I think might have irked William F Buckley,Jr (I once admired him and still do in ways), Ponnuru was both dismissive and contemptuous. He had a number of disparaging remarks about the RS one of which included the words “moral turpitude” with which he was charging them–decades of it.

    Well, OK–I don’t agree with everything the Stones have said or done or stood for–they clearly have their lackings. But that’s just part of the story–and also there’s the music. They have never been one of my favorite groups, but they have produced some good songs–“Angie,” the slow, heart-breaking love song with the gorgeous piano solo is my favorite. Then there’s “Ruby Tuesday” about the girl who just “comes and goes.”–and several others. There’s also the fact that in their 80’s they’re still out there looking and acting like rock stars at least on stage.

    It seems for both the music and the spirit they deserve credit. A bunch of guys that age with the moxie, energy and will to do what they do just about have to be admired in my opinion. And it seems some generosity might be in order here. So, Mr Ponnuru, I suggest that for your own mind and persona and even more for the reputation of your magazine and the conservative philosophy, you might want to think this over again. If you change your mind, well, say so–and if you don’t, well, that’s OK too–your choice. Just remember that politics and morality, life and art, are all part of the same deal–being human and living in the world. Oh, yes, and thanks for listening.

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  • Current reading

    I am reading the delectable Anne Lamott’s “Hallelujah Anyway.” Anne is the funniest, saddest, feistiest and most lovable advocate for Christianity you are likely to find. She likes to ask things such as if there is love and mercy at the center of the universe, then why is everything so screwed up? Her answers are not orthodox but I think few except some hide-bound pietists will be able to find anything heretical in what she says. Try her, you’ll like her-JBP

  • The Poet of the Mean Streets

    “Small Mercies” by Dennis Lehane, Copywright 2023, Harper Collins, 299 pgs

    It is not easy, at first anyway, to classify Dennis Lahane as a writer. He’s not quite a mystery writer though his books are often whodunits of a sort along with other things. “Crime writer” would likely be a better description because he nearly always writes about crime. I doubt if many of the chairmen of English Departments at US universities would accept him as a serious writer, worthy of being taught in their courses. But they would be making a big mistake.

    Lehane is most of all a tough guy writer. He is reminiscent of the “hard-boiled”school of bygone times, writers like James M Cain. But I think he’s better though it is hard exactly to say why. I guess it’s because he is a genre writer and yet transcends genre writing. Now I imagine what I just wrote is a cliche but cliches are sometimes true and I am willing to stand by this one.

    Lehane has the ability to look into the human heart and soul and to describe what he sees there. He sees both good and evil, mostly the latter, but the good not to be ignored or despised. And he is, at bottom, I think, a guy who pulls for the good guys but thinks they usually lose. Maybe be we could call it realism, but therein hangs a long argument which I don’t want to have right now.

    Whatever, I think Lehane is way beyond the minimum for being taken as a serious writer. He knows the heights and depths of human hearts and souls but he also knows the byways and nuances of US society, particularly the working class of the big cities and most particularly the poor of the Boston area. What his personal history and background are I don’t know, but he is obviously familiar with these people and their ways and while he does not suggest anyone emulate them he does not despise them. He understands the pain and meaninglessness many of them have to deal with and he knows most of them will not make it out to a wider world. But he will tell his readers about them and celebrate their gritty heroism, nonetheless.

    “Small Mercies” is supposedly about the bitter protests and resistance that occurred during the busing/integration controversy of September, 1974. And, indeed, this is true. The company saw that it got a cover that suggests this subject and the inside flap mentions that there is the busing controversy and there is a crime which seems unrelated. But the two, it continues are not unconnected.

    All of this is true, but it misses a serious issue. The book is about Mary Pat Fennessy and her world, the people she knows, the things she does, the life she leads. Because it describes this life in detail, it is also about the “Southie” area of Boston where all the trouble was. But the book is more about Mary Pat than it is about integration and social protest.

    Please don’t get me wrong. The busing controversy is always there in the background. Knowledge of it hangs over most of the characters much of the time and the reader’s mind just about all the time. But this is a book about a person, Mary Pat, more than it is about social events, protests, etc, important as they are. And Mary Pat is, I think, one of the great characters of American literature.

    OK, I’m not qualified to say that. I’m a one-time bureaucrat and history teacher and a big time mystery and movie fan-definitely not a literary scholar. So I guess you’ll have to check it out yourself to see if you agree with me about Mary Pat. I hope that you will.(By the way, Lehane chose to tell this story entirely in the present tense–an odd choice, maybe, but I’d say a good one–it worked).

    Mary Pat is not an entirely good person–far from it. She is in her early 40’s, has had two failed marriages and two children. The boy was a Vietnam Vet(remember, this is mid-1970’s)who survived combat in the war and died of the drug culture at home. His sister is 16 or 17 and a high school student. Mary Pat works as an aide in a retirement home, not a very nice one, and gets the worst and most off-putting jobs most of the time. She basically hates the work but has no other choice. She makes enough to hold together her fragile two-person household.

    Mary Pat is not an attractive person in many ways. She sounds not particularly physically attractive from Lehane’s description. She is intelligent but poorly educated. She has tastes that, mostly, would be equal to those of working class housewives in the poorer parts of a lot of American cities. He language is crass and often confrontational. She uses profanity and vulgarity frequently in a manner that will be familiar to anyone who has experienced certain parts of our society or even read much about them.

    So we see the surface of what kind of person we have here–a crude person, an unsophisticated person, not an interesting person. This is a person you or I would not wish to hang out with. You wouldn’t want her at your party. I certainly wouldn’t want her at mine. And I don’t think either one of us has to be ashamed of this. At the risk of sounding like a conservative, there is little question that people from the middle class on up are usually more pleasant to be around(not always more moral, not always more trustworthy, not necessarily less given to nastiness and betrayal, but nicer–and I am middle class enough myself to recognized a certain value in that.)

    But Lehane has more in mind than this. Lehane is interested in that real person, that genuine personality and soul that lurks inside all human beings and in many cases is rarely revealed to others. He is interested in what drives people to certain behaviors and what allows certain regrettable behaviors. And he is stingy with the answers as he should be, because Truth is stingy with them to anyone who asks.

    But Lehane tries. He digs into Mary Pat’s deepest feelings and lays them bare for all of us to see. They are not always joyful(usually not)but they are honestly displayed. Most of all they are human, and humans are complicated and usually contradictory and often screwed up in one way or another.. And so is Mary Pat.

    Early in the story, Mary Pat’s daughter disappears on a date. Mary Pat is concerned but not exactly panicky at first. But as more time passes she becomes more and more worried and begins to search and to imagine. At about the same time a young black man dies in a confrontation with some whites at a station. It appears that this might be connected to the busing quarrel or at least affected by the feelings it engendered. It is also possible that Mary Pat’s daughter was involved.

    So we follow Mary Pat as she tries to find out what happened to her daughter and encounters reminders of the big community concern on they way. And we may get some feeling for the concept, that when you see a crowd of people protesting or supporting something, it is good to remember that the crowd is made up of individuals, each with their own story, and this is a large part of what they bring with them

    We see many things in Mary Pat. She is loud and abrasive. She is fiercely protective of her daughter. She is often foul mouthed and willing to fight, verbally if not physically. But she is not averse to physical combat if it comes to that, and in one memorable scene she dishes out a vicious beating on a boy whom she blames for her daughter’s plight.

    But we also note this. There is great love in Mary Pat. It has often been misused and abused, by her family, her two husbands, and others, but it is still there and is now centered on Jules, her daughter. This love is, in the long run, the main thing in her personality or, to put it more dramatically and possibly also more realistically, in her heart. It is responsible for her occasional rages and words of contempt. It is responsible for her deep grief and regrets. And to some degree it is responsible for another large part of her, her capacity for hate and revenge. For she is a person who does not easily forgive and forget. She will hold it against one and track one down if necessary.

    Occasionally Mary Pat has a memory intrude on her troubles. She thinks of something from high school, or another part of her youth She thinks of some of the good times early in one of her marriages. And although it is impossible to imagine a fond smile coming to this woman’s lips, maybe something like that happens inside her–and then quickly goes away.

    Mary Pat is also courageous. And this brings us to the one other motif of the book. There is always, at least in the background and sometimes much closer, the mob. The mob apparently ran Boston or at least most of Southie.

    They control many small businesses. They commit mayhem when they need to and through bribery or trickery usually get away with it. They are relentless in tracking their enemies or anyone who has betrayed them. If you live in Southie you know this and you learn to get along. Mary Pat has learned but is not happy with the lesson and in the end not accepting of it.

    There is also a small part in the book for the police. they are not in it a great deal, but they are portrayed a beleaguered but-as far as we meet them–mostly honest–they know they can’t take down all the big bad guys, but they’ll do what they can do. And Bobby Coyne, a youngish police detective with a sense of both reality and justice, is one of the book’s best characters.

    But Mary Pat is the main person and the main thing in the story. Mary Pat as Everyman(woman?)or as least everyone in Southie, or perhaps all American cities or perhaps…well, take that as far as you wish. You might just be right.

    Lehane is too complex and sophisticated of a writer to insult us with a simple “there’s good and bad in all of us.” It is not, of course, that that is not true. It is that it is a simple-sounding idea that gives us a longing for a deeper explanation. And while some of these things are beyond reasonable explanation Lehane does do this in his own way.

    About the last 30 pages of this book are very suspenseful and very fast moving .These are the “action’ parts where we actually witness a good deal of the violence that occurs between Mary Pat and others. And it is in these that Lehane reaches his ultimate as a writer and an observer of human nature as we get brief, frenzied, often hateful and yet curiously understanding conversation between victims and victimizer.

    And we see that in some weird, contradictory way that they all have an “I” hiding in there somewhere, maybe a lousy one, but an “I” all the same. They all have a soul and a personality and something of that sort has at some time had thoughts about existence.. The thoughts were not very sophisticated or well expressed, even to themselves, but they were there. And there is a strange kind of comfort in this, I think, in knowing that even in human monsters, there is some level of humanity, maybe long since inactive, maybe useless as a source of behavior, but stubbornly there despite it all.

    And possibly this is the final message, if there is one. Lehane’s prose is so well done and his thoughts flow so sublimely in this end part that this book approaches being poetry. It’s not the kind you’d find in a poetry class, but I think that’s still what it is. It is the poetry of despair and hope, of joy and sadness, of decency and violence–the poetry of how it all fits together and tells about the mean streets so many people face–like the literal mean streets of Southie or the metaphorical ones of, well, nearly everyone somewhere. And in this hectic, frenzied way, there is a great deal to be learned about what needs to be done and perhaps could be done by our society. But there’s also, a smidgen of hope. It lurks somewhere in the human heart, the part of it that can’t be cured by medicine or diet or anything physical. It can only be cured by other sources.


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  • Daily writing prompt
    What historical event fascinates you the most?
    View all responses

    I am absorbed by reading about the outbreak of Word War I. How did this mess, which destroyed a civilization, and a century and more later is still affecting the world, come about? Who were the main characters? What about the political, economic, and diplomatic events and trends which were involved? Whose “fault” was it? (I think there’s an answer to that, but it’s not easy to determine). Are there similar trends today? If so, what are the implications?

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